Brave New World
The Magic is Out There
For the first time in years, the day after my last game session I found myself wanting to not only start writing the next adventure, but also actually wanting to play Pathfinder again right away. Usually after a session I need to take two or three days away from the game to decompress; it takes a lot of energy and focus for me to run a game now. My Pathfinder game, however, gave me energy instead of taking it away.
I want to make this point clear, because I read sometimes on rpg.net about GM burnout. Also, my wife has wondered at times why I continue gaming when it can be so frustrating at times (or even disastrous). I believe GMs keep going not only because we do love gaming but also because we believe we will recapture that magic, that energy, that buzz that gaming gave us all those years ago when we first started.
For years, I wanted to believe I could recapture that. At some points (like December of 2009) I was willing to give up on gaming if it wasn't meant to be. But I went forward cautiously and I have finally discovered you can't go back but you don't have to stay stuck either. You can find new magic in gaming. You need to find an RPG that allows you to do well the thing you most enjoy as GM (tell stories, engage in daring conflict, investigate mysteries etc.) and then keep looking for like-minded players until you find them. After that, the magic begins anew.
I loved AD&D 1E and 2E and D&D 3.0 and 3.5 and I'm ready to recapture the magic of fantasy gaming. Feel free to join me on my journey and check out the ideas I generate along the way. If you have something I should know, whether you play Pathfinder or not, please feel free to post those ideas here as well so I can also benefit from your experiences.
Why Pathfinder?
During the years I've been writing this column, I've run into quite a few crazy gaming situations. And over a couple of decades plus of running games, I've seen even more. But my players wanting to stop a story they liked using D&D 4E (4E) so they could have more options (in our opinion) in an unknown story in Pathfinder at first surprised me. But their explanations make sense in hindsight.
Here are some quotes I heard about the options in the Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide and about the Pathfinder rules in general:
"You can do anything" (said with a huge grin and referring to making the character the player sees in his mind's eye).
"For the first time since AD&D 1st Edition, rangers will be able to fight with weapons other than two weapons or bows (options like using two-handed weapons or natural weapons)" and the response, "And why shouldn't they be able to?"
"I liked the 4E story and I wanted to see how it ended. But I felt we could do so much more in Pathfinder."
"I like not being tied to a handful of builds that 4E provides."
And I realized that, to me, 4E is a game for exploring rule options and how everyone using the rules interacts with each other through roleplaying and conflict. Rule interaction is what is prominent in the design. The Orcus draft for 4E specifically said don't make D&D 3.75 make a whole new D&D game. These rules are currently evolving further with Essentials.
Pathfinder is a game for telling stories, specifically with words on paper, and also through the interaction of the game group. The story is what is prominent in the design. The actual rules came out for Pathfinder originally simply to support the Adventure Path stories Pazio was telling. These stories are further evolving with the introduction of novels set in Pazio's world and the Pathfinder Society starting a new season with an overarching metaplot. GMs using their own homebrewed world are being given the tools to tell their own stories with new rulebooks packed with many new options from rules to helpful advice on improving a GM's ability to direct the group's ongoing story.
I am a reader and writer first and foremost and have always been drawn to RPGs that help me tell stories more so than anything I find in the game's art or the computer support or purported rule balance. Robust rules that model heroic reality (when possible) come a close second for me as I use them to move the story along and keep it exciting.
For the first time since June 2008, the debate about whether to play 4E or Pathfinder ended peacefully for my game group and a crisis was averted. And now everyone in our group can't wait to see what happens next in Magnimar, city of monuments, in the world of Golarion. I'll explain how I chose that campaign setting next month.
Who Plays Pathfinder?
In my area at the beginning of 2010, not many people played Pathfinder. It wasn't being sold in many stories and the organized play wasn't available.
A few months later and now Pathfinder is in most game stores and even chain bookstores. Organized play has started. The word is spreading that Pathfinder helps players join together to create the story that they jointly imagine.
My group consists of eight players including myself. Four of the eight had never roleplayed before 2010 and two of them started out with Pathfinder. My newest player is both a writer and a reader and was drawn to Pathfinder by another player because of the story elements Pathfinder champions.
Nuts and Bolts
To get started with Pathfinder, I had to decide on what rulebooks I needed.
The Pathfinder RPG has two essential rulebooks for GMs as far as rules go: the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary. These two books contain the rules that D&D used to collect into the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual.
However, I wanted more than just rules to support my game. Well worth the additional cost, the GameMastery Guide provides a GM with helpful advice ranging from adventure, city, and world design, to a page of useful words to learn to increase a GM's storytelling vocabulary, to pregenerated NPCs, and more.
These three books could support any campaign for years. Gameplay will be familiar to players of D&D 3.0 and 3.5 but there are differences. The differences are what make the game for me.
The differences become even more pronounced if you add in the Advanced Player's Guide. This book is the first rulebook by Paizo to contain all of their own created rules. It takes what is D&D in new and focused directions as envisioned by Paizo.
While having hard copies of these books is great, the PDFs are only $9.99 each. Almost any player can join in at that price.
Direction of Pathfinder
Paizo is moving Pathfinder in certain directions. First, Paizo focuses on their customers and interacts with them directly online, through e-mails, and at conventions. They sell PDFs (and the rule PDFs are a well priced great bargain) because fans want them.
They do open playtests and consumers don't have to pay a subscription fee to get the playtest documents. Through contests and the possibility of submitting Pathfinder Society scenarios, they give fans the chance to become game designer freelancers themselves and sometimes even game designer professionals. Mark Moreland recently went from dedicated fan and PathfinderWiki Administrator to employment as a developer at Paizo.
Second, Paizo embraces the open game movement and most of their rules are open to other companies. Paizo incorporated not just Wizards of the Coast monsters but also twenty open source monsters from Necromancer Games, Inc. into the Bestiary. The Bestiary brings back some classic Gygax monsters like the froghemoth and vegepygmy. Paizo also updated a few of their own monsters from 3.5 to the Pathfinder rules in the Bestiary.
Third, Pathfinder reaches all the way back to AD&D 1E for inspiration. For example, the Advanced Player's Guide gives the option to rangers to fight with weapons other than two weapons or a bow including but not limited to mounted combat and weapon and shield. I haven't seen this option since AD&D 1E (although maybe a supplement allowed for this and I missed it).
Pazio also brought back the cavalier in the APG. In an online article, Bart Carroll at Wizards wrote that he thinks the AD&D 1E cavalier's mount is mostly useless due to frequent dungeon crawling (and Wizards removed the mount from the 4E paladin). Pazio went with a different approach, which is trusting the GM to work with the players to fit the mount into an ongoing campaign. Bart also puts forth his opinion that taking away paladinhood from a character for violating his or her code can create problems between GM and player (and again Wizards has removed this option from 4E) but Paizo kept this long-standing tradition in the game.
Fourth, horror is slightly more prevalent in Pathfinder than in D&D. Eldritch horrors are included in the Bestiary and new base classes like the alchemist (think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), inquisitor (a Van Helsing-like character), and the witch have a pinch of the flavor of terror. Monsters are more horrifying because some of them engage in such vile acts (see the ogre comment below).
Finally, Pathfinder doesn't flinch from grown-up themes. The GameMastery Guide gives the advice to be cautious on what to include and not include by discussing it with your players. One monster description notes that ogres engage in incest, necrophilia, and rape for example. Rules allow player characters to be temple prostitutes, drug users, drunks, and murderers and gain rule benefits if they take any of those options. These darker elements don't overwhelm the game, but they are available in small doses for GMs that want them. Again, Paizo gives the options and the GM and players together determine the limits and what to use and not use.
Next Month
Picking a world for Pathfinder and deciding on the first adventure.
Charlie
