How I run it: Pathfinder 2e House Rules

One of the beautiful things about Pathfinder 2e is that it doesn’t require a lot of homebrew to get it up and running. For the most part, if you can think of something you’d like to do, the rule is in the books somewhere. Still, it’s not uncommon for groups to come up with their own house rules, and my tables are no different. I’ve developed my own list over the past few years, aiming to make play smoother and set table expectations early. Or, once, misreading a rule and then deciding I liked my interpretation better.

Medicine: Treat Wounds

Per RAW, you have to call out your DC for treating wounds ahead of time. The first time I saw this rule, I thought that you’d get the best possible result based on your training, and I played that way for quite a few levels before I got corrected by a player. I decided to stick with the rule, though.

It cuts out the in-the-moment hemming and hawing over which DC to go for
It still rewards investing in the skill since you can’t get a DC you didn’t train for.
It offers more bang for the buck, meaning players are more willing to use it.

Hero Points

I love Hero Points and want to see them used. I also hate remembering to give them out. RAW, you’re supposed to give them out when players do something heroic, but this has always annoyed me as a metric. I’ve found it leads to people who play support getting ignored (even though they’re playing a big part in those big hits for front-liners) and some players hamming it up in hopes of getting rewarded. Also, I’m busy GMing the game, keeping a dozen random things in my head at one time, all while keeping a poker face in place. I don’t want to keep a subprocess open dedicated to “Are the players being good enough?”

So, instead, I put Hero Points on a timer. Every hour, every player gets one. I don’t even bother watching the clock: the players do that. This takes something off of my plate at no cost to the players.

Recall Knowledge

One of the few places where Pathfinder 2e is vague is what information Recall Knowledge gives players. Post Remaster, this has been clarified, allowing the player to ask a question but not receive a numerical value, which was already a house rule for most people.

Except for me.

This may be my “Ears of the City” trauma speaking, but I don’t enjoy Q&A mechanics in most games (MOTW being one of the few I enjoy). I also play with experienced players who just want a chance to not metagame, knowing that the thing they’re looking at is immune to fire. So, I toss the AON entry at them and move on.

It’s a lot of information, so if a player is new, I point out the most important parts of the entry to them or if I know the players haven’t seen this creature before.

Yes, it’s a huge reward for one roll, but that encourages players to use Recall Knowledge. They’re less likely to bother if they have to blow three actions to get all the information. This way, it’s sensible to do in the first round, along with buffs and positioning.

Secret Rolls

Speaking of Recall Knowledge, let’s talk about secret rolls.

I know I should do more of these; I just can’t be bothered. To do them, I have to ask someone for their bonus and roll for them (so not very secret) or have their bonuses in front of me (when my screen real estate is already at a premium). Then, I have to keep my admittedly terrible poker face in place while telling them the result. It’s not a huge amount of extra work, but running a game is about managing all the little things that can eat up your attention and energy, and this one isn’t worth it.

Besides, I have good players who love to lean into a bad result. Did they get a Nat 1? They’ll insist that thing is true until proven otherwise. It’s fun to watch them play out the result rather than try to figure out if what I told them was true or not.

Activating Auras

Sometimes, a house rule comes less for ease and more because the GM keeps screwing up. Many creatures in PF2 have auras, and many of those auras are considered to be ‘always on.’ Except… I never remember they had them until combat started, and many times, several players have charged in and acted.

So, my players know that I only activate them on the creature’s turn, sometimes blowing one of their actions if I feel like the players could use some help (I almost always regret this since the players are generally fine). Yes, I could use the aura feature in my VTT, but I hate having a bunch of blobs all over my screen when I don’t need them.

Automatic Bonus Progression

This is less a house rule and more something you can expect in any game I run. This alternate rule is my ride-or-die. With it, I can stop worrying about whether players are getting enough treasure to buy their base runes.

RAW, it’s suggested that I should be adjusting treasure, but I’ve never bothered with that. As long as they’re limited by level, the power creep of having a bit more gold doesn’t seem to come up.
I also don’t adjust for spellcasters. I know some people do this, but so far, it hasn’t been an issue in any of my campaigns.
Because of ABP, property and striking rules are useless, so players convert those directly to cash.

Monthly games

I’ve written before about my love of monthly games, but they do come with some house rules of their own. Specifically, I assume that players rest between sessions, no matter what we end up on. Due to the time between games, it’s easy to forget where we left off or accidentally hit ‘rest’ on a sheet.’ Also, time is more precious with a monthly game, so you don’t want to waste ten minutes trying to figure out if we need to regain spells or hit points.

Rolling is in the open, using the VTT’s dice roller

Yes, even mine.

I don’t care if players can see the bonuses.

No, you can’t set up a camera to point at your shiny number rocks, so you can avoid using a digital roller.

You don’t even know what ‘pseudorandom’ means.

What the hell is wrong with you?

There’s often a Lodge nearby

As I’ve said before, I’m a fan of the GMPC. As a result, I’ll often hand-wave that there’s a Pathfinder Lodge nearby with NPCs ready to hire. I even use the Iconics since they come with sheets and fun backstories! They WILL take their share of the loot, and after their initial sheet, the players are responsible for running them and gearing them up, as well as deciding how to level them up.

And that’s it!

While I run mostly RAW, I fully believe in tweaking the rules that make my life easier or work better for my table. These are tweaked for a table of players with high system mastery and are good at keeping OOC knowledge out of in-character choices. They may not work for a table of players who can’t help but use the knowledge they shouldn’t have,

Population Generator 2.0: Now Online!

A few years back, I created a Python script that generated the population of a town, complete with family groups, jobs, wealth levels, and personalities. In the back of my head (and in that post, if we’re being honest), I needed to convert it to something that could run on a webpage. Well, here we are, a brief four and a half years later, and I finally finished it!

I’m somewhat competent in JavaScript, but I’m an expert at procrastinating writing it.

What it does!

The script was borne of the desire to have a town of people who already had names and stuff going on. There are a million town map generators out there, but I really wanted the people because my players always insisted on knowing the shopkeep’s name, ancestry, age, favorite soup, etc. I was tired of making it up on the fly. (Note: I did not add favorite soup to the script.)

The generated town is made up of families (a family is anywhere between a single adult to two adults and five children). Each family has a residence (ranging from ‘the street’ to a private estate), and every adult has a job. Every adult is given a random ancestry, a job, three personality traits, and a socioeconomic status (e.g., poor, struggling, middle-class, etc). If the residence is a shop, it’s given a name (easily my favorite part of the script). Then, we place the family in a ‘sector’ that usually matches their wealth level.

The tool lets you generate one family (displayed on the page) or a whole town’s worth, which you can download as a CSV (basically, text-based spreadsheet, which you can open in Excel / Google Sheets / Numbers / etc).

GO PLAY WITH IT!

The Nitty Gritty

What’s the maximum size for a town? Bruh, that depends on your computer. This computation is happening on your end, not mine, so you can make some huge cities if you have a beast. My machine didn’t blink at a city of one million, but that may cause other browsers to crash.

Genders are male, female, and gender-neutral. The latter is a broad category and is up to the GM how they want to interpret it for an NPC. It might be someone who’s gender-fluid, doesn’t identify with any gender, is androgynous, etc. In the same vein, adult couples can be any combination of same-gender / opposite-gender, and pairings don’t affect whether they have children. The Serum of Sex Shift exists, after all.

Children’s ancestries are based on their parents, though I’ve decided not to get any more exotic than half-elves and half-orcs. If the parents’ ancestries match, the children match them. If they’re a human + orc/elf pairing, the children are half-orc/elf. Anything else, the children get a random ancestry from one of their parents.

The names are pulled from all over… and I wish I’d thought to keep the original sources. Some appear to have disappeared, and I have no record of others.

Traits are pulled from a random page from MIT, and I wish I had more context for it because it’s an awesome list.

Population percentages are pulled from an awesome Reddit post. u/VestOfHolding, wherever you are, whoever you are, you are awesome.

Find an issue? Have an idea?

Have a form. I make no promises about how quickly I’ll address bugs and suggestions because I plan on shifting to other projects. Still, I’m always open to expanding the script!

Starfinder: Why get into 1e NOW?

Next month, Starfinder Enhanced drops, which looks like it will be the last book for Starfinder 1e. Starfinder 2e is on the horizon, with the playtest dropping in August 2024. I just started getting into Starfinder, which has led to some people asking me if I will hold off until 2e drops. Isn’t it a waste of time to get into a system that’s ending?

Nope! Because, in my opinion, this is the BEST time to get into a new system. I even have some experience in this, as one of the people still playing Pathfinder 1e when 2e came out. I found advantages to staying in both ecosystems.

History

I’m a long-time Pathfinder 1e player. I jumped on the Paizo bandwagon when D&D 4e happened (they were still 3.5), and when they released a completely new system, my group immediately adopted it. While I’ve played in other systems, most of my regular games have been PF1e.

When 2e came out, I was invited to co-run a West Marches game, with the only restriction being that it had to be in Pathfinder 2e. This led to me playing both systems simultaneously, which is something that, four years later, I still do. My home game is mostly 1e, and the other games that have popped up are mostly 2e.

Benefits of playing a ‘complete’ system

When 2e came out, I had some people wonder if they should even bother with 1e. I encouraged them to give it at least a look, especially given that all of the rules are online. Here are some of the reasons I gave them:

It’s a content wonderland. A system that’s complete has an incredible amount of content: Classes, feats, spells, items, lore, and even adventures! Third parties have added to the pile for years, giving you incredible depths to plumb. For any idea you have, there’ll be enough material to bring it to life.

Time also has the benefit of answering all the questions. Find a rule that seems vaguely worded? Chances are good that someone had the same question five years ago, posted about it, and the matter was settled, sometimes by a Paizo dev. While playing PF1, it was rare for us to find an issue that hadn’t been settled several times, sometimes even in an errata.

And those questions? They’re asked and answered by a stable community. Even if you’re not someone who dips your toes into the social side of your hobby, there are benefits to a system with a robust group of people supporting it. They answer questions and create content for the games, like redrawn maps, character art, web-based tools, and many shared spreadsheets. And hey, if you want to be social, there will always be people looking for games, so you have a ready population of people who are already down to roll.

There are also stable tools for older systems. The roughest time with a new tool is when changes are fast and furious in the first few months. With a complete system, most bugs have been ironed out, and no new content is coming down the pike to throw the codebase into disarray.

Finally, this one is timely, but the Humble Bundles that come out will be so good during the transition. If you want to grab the books (and it’s not like books go bad), the next year or so will be the best time to grab them. There were at least two PF1 bundles during the 2e transition, and it was a wild amount of content for under $50. I know Starfinder has already had one bundle, and I expect there to be more.

Benefits of playing an ’emerging’ system

There are a lot of upsides to playing a complete system, but what about a new one? Should you bother jumping on the bandwagon early or wait? I don’t regret playing PF2 from the second the Core Rulebook dropped, and I’ll probably play SF2e as it comes out as well.

The most obvious benefit? It’s new! New things are exciting, and getting caught up in the hype train is fun. There’ll be tons of streams and videos combing over every arcane detail, and it’s fun to chill with your friends and go over the freshly-dropped PDFs. Excitement, for it’s own sake, can be a good thing!

Also, excitement means a new crop of players coming in. There’s nothing like a fresh start to a system to pull in a player who was getting bored with their current TTRPG. I’m always looking for new people to game with, and it’s fun to get people who aren’t in my current bubbles.

It’s also less to take in all at once. I’ve been in a game where I was dumped into a huge system, and I spent most of it floundering unless I had someone experienced to hold my hand. It takes time for me to get my head around how a system works, and I know I’m not alone in that. Only one book means you can dive in deeply without the ever-present worry of the OTHER twenty books you need to look through.

Also, because releases are staggered, you have time to get used to all the options! Those of us who were there at the start of Pathfinder 2e had six months between the first two books (the Core Rulebook and the first Bestiary) and the Advanced Player’s Guide. That is a LOT of time to get familiar with the base rules, understand how feats interact, and figure out which spells work best with which styles. This gave us a solid knowledge base to work off of with later releases.

But wait!

Won’t I get confused?! Look, I won’t lie: Getting rules mixed up happens. It happens less often than you’d think, though. I run both PF1 and PF2 every month with players in both games, and we might see someone get tripped up once every other session. Even then, it’s easy to shrug off, fix whatever plan they had, and move on with the game.

How do I choose?! I mean, I just kept playing both, but I get that not everyone has free time or a large pool of people to pull from. If I had any suggestion, it would be to look at the APs that interest you and play that system since conversion can be a lot of work. If you’re not playing an Adventure Path and not leaning one way or another, I’d veer toward the older system. A system that’s been around for a while has so much history. That history saved my first AP-based campaign! It’s also helped answer off-the-cuff questions during a session in seconds because someone else posted about that exact thing five years ago.

Whichever way you go, though, you’re sure to have a good time, and I can’t wait to see more people diving into Starfinder 1e and 2e, myself included.

Council of Thieves: Stripping it for Parts

Council of Thieves was the first Paizo Adventure Path to be released fully under PF1 (the ones before were for 3.5), and it holds a special place for me as the first AP I ever ran. I ran it for my home game over nearly two years, and the campaign is one we still talk about today.

While the AP has its faults, it also has some great elements that could work at any table. In fact, I’ve stripped it down for parts several times, and I’ve broken out some scenarios multiple times. Hell, I ran one scenario multiple times for the same people because they wanted a chance to run through it again.

If you strip CoT for parts, what should you grab?

Book One: The Bastards of Erebus

One of the biggest things to steal? The town of Westcrown. It’s a city of decaying glory, run by thieves with noble titles, kowtowing to a demon lord they think they control, filled with citizens who are scared to challenge the status quo. It’s made for a group of adventurers to come in and set things right… somehow.

Also, there’s this fantastic table for randomizing tiefling features! I still break this out when I need to generate a description for a tiefling on the fly. It has random cosmetic features and random abilities that could be ported over to PF2 reasonably easily.

Finally, there’s a dungeon just the right size for some low-level characters. If your players need to break into a hideout, the Bastard’s lair is just big enough to be a challenge but small enough not to run on empty by the end.

Book Two: The Sixfold Trial

THERE’S A PLAY! Y’all, this is the reason I wrote this post in the first place. The freaking play is fantastic. The premise is that a director wants the action on stage to feel ‘real,’ so he hires people to fight against real challenges rather than actors fighting against special effects. There’s even a real play with lines to read out!

Cover for The Sixfold Trial, featuring an opera diva in the foreground and a fight on a stage in the background.

If you run the play, I highly recommend running through the audition because you can end up with some hilarious castings when the fighter whiffs and ends up as the romantic lead or the druid accidentally crits and ends up as the seductress. Also, audition for the succubus part rather than having it played by an NPC since you don’t need that NPC going forward.

There’s also a dinner party, which can be a terrific set piece if you need your players to hobnob and get some plot hooks. There’s a system for impressing various NPCs, and you can easily change out the AP-specific clues for your own.

Finally, the Asmodeon Knot is a bizarre dungeon built in the Ethereal Plane that can be put anywhere since it’s built in the plane between planes. It has lots of unique challenges that are better solved by brain than brawn, but also some things that just need to be punched in the face.

Book Three: What Lies in Dust

Cover for What Lies in Dust. Shows a woman holding some sort of magic dagger. In the background, an adventuring party fights big cats.

This book has another terrific set-piece: The Devildrome. A famous (think WWE) summoner accepts all challengers and has been undefeated… until now. The prize can be whatever suits your plot best, from a MacGuffin to a meeting with someone important yet out of reach.

Also, another favorite that I’ve used several times: DELVEHAVEN! An abandoned Pathfinder lodge filled with haunts, mysteries, and traps just begging for a group of idiots to run in and check it out. I got several sessions out of this, and completing it felt like a real accomplishment. Also, at the end, the players had a fabulous lodge all to themselves!

Book Four: The Infernal Syndrome

As you get further into an AP, there’s less to grab since many scenarios are heavily intertwined with the plot. This book, though, has a vast dungeon that’s a bunch of fun and would be easy enough to put under any questionable individual’s house. There’s a mix of straight-up fights, social encounters, and traps to give everyone in the party something to do.

Book 5: Mother of Flies

Walcourt is a big ol’ abandoned mansion where several vampires have settled in. It’s well worth reading over their motivations because they all have interesting backgrounds and motivations, and it’s possible to do more than just stab your way through the mansion.

Book 6: The Twice Damned Prince

This is a good book, but I couldn’t find anything to grab from it since it’s very much caught up in resolving all plot threads. This is fairly normal when pulling apart APs for content: The further in you go, the less there is to grab.

Final Caveats

The maps… hoo-boy. These were made before VTTs were omnipresent, and people either printed them or drew them on flip maps. The baked-in gridlines don’t always line up, and the quality if you extract them isn’t great. You’ll want to upscale them (my handy guide here) or see if someone else did updates. You’ll also need to edit some of the images to remove references to secret doors, which are baked into the image.

As for conversion, don’t stress out about 1:1. Take a step back, look at the theme and level for each encounter, and grab your Bestiaries for something close enough. Even the “special” creatures only need a half-assed paint job to get by. The most important thing is that the fight is reasonable and fun.

And that they befriend the wee constructs living in Delvehaven. Just LOOK at them! How could you not adopt them into your party?!

A collection of creepy poppets: A dragon, a teddy that looks rough, a creepy doll, a tiki statue, and a scarecrow with a noose around his neck.

How I Run It: Rolling in the Open

The same conversation will pop up in the TTRPG community every few months: Do you roll in the open? Some people are against it, doing everything they can to keep players from seeing what they’re doing, down to doing fake rolls to keep them paranoid. Others do a mix, with players rolling in one box, while the GM keeps most rolls a secret. Me? I’m with the group where everything is rolled openly due to an accidental experiment I stumbled into a few years ago.

The long, long ago

In the past, our table was one of 100% secret rolls, because when everyone has aging eyes, no one can see what’s on a physical die that’s not right in their face. Even the GM couldn’t see what the players rolled and had to take called-out numbers in good faith. Eventually, we moved to a VTT, but the players kept their physical dice. On the other hand, I had to switch to the online roller because I was simply out of table space. Still, I turned on GM-only rolls, which was the same situation.

That is until a scenario came up where some of my rolls HAD to be public. I was annoyed with switching back and forth, so I said, screw it, I’m rolling everything in the open. The reaction from my players was fascinating.

Players, when you roll in the open

I would never accuse my players of metagaming, but they’re still human beings with expectations. One of their unspoken expectations had been that if my dice were rolling hot, I would save them. With everything in the open, there was no way for me to do that quietly. Their tactics tightened up, and they took being low on hit points more seriously.

Also, they could see the bonuses for creatures targeting them, which wasn’t bad. If something popped off with a hit way higher than they were used to, they immediately used different tactics. Some people cry ‘metagaming’ when this happens, but I don’t think it is. Sure, if you treat that non-descript halfling like he’s going to rip your head off because you saw a spoiler that he’s a level 20 monk, that’s no good. But you can generally tell how skilled someone is if you’re in a fight. Trust me, if you’re squaring off with me and with a professional boxer, even if we both whiff, you’ll quickly realize that they’re dangerous and I have useless noodles for arms.

Long-term changes

While some changes were easy to spot immediately, some took a while to shake out.

More egalitarian rolls. Oh boy, I’m going to get some hate over this one. People love their shiny number rocks and hate being accused of anything underhanded. And I’m not saying people cheat, but we cull our dice, right? If a set is pretty but rolls like crap, we never reach for it. If it rolls hot, we reach for it more often. The longer you’ve been around, the more chances you’ve had to cull the herd. A digital roller, however, can’t be culled. You get the roll you get. In the years since we went all digital, I’ve watched people who always “rolled hot” start to roll normally and people with “bad luck” roll perfectly fine.

Less drama. Turns move faster because there’s no drama over dice. Yes, some theatrics can be fun if you’re “firing” a die or taking time to pick out the perfect one for an important roll, but multiply that by five players and four rounds. It starts to add up.

Tiny maths suck. It’s not as much of a problem at lower levels, but when you start rolling 10d6, it takes time to add up the result, which causes delays for everyone and stress for some (seriously, some of us hate doing tiny maths on the fly). Even if it’s just small whole numbers, it’s still a big string of them.

What I do today

Today, I insist on digital rollers. This generally isn’t a problem since all of my games are virtual now, but I have had a few people ask if they can just set up a second camera pointed at their dice tray. The answer is, and always will be, no, with a touch of side-eye.

I’ll still sometimes roll in secret, but only for things where it’s necessary. Most of the time, though, it’s unnecessary for MY players. They love hamming up a low roll, so they want to play it up if they critically fail a task.

I won’t say there’s no drama, but it is now reduced to people sometimes typing “potato” to reset the seed or accusing me of paying off Roll20, which is perfectly fine since the drama happens AFTER their turn, not during. And we can all share in being mad at the dice roller together when it’s not going our way, which I think I prefer to getting mad on my own at my own set of pretty number rocks.

Gatewalkers: Book 1 Chapter 2 Done!

Over on D20Saves, I’m running Gatewalkers, one of the latest APs from Paizo! From the official website:

After they walked through that glowing gateway, nothing was ever the same. A band of characters become paranormal investigators to determine the cause of a global amnesic episode. Their quest takes them to lands near, far, and outside this reality altogether. Along the way, the characters meet fellow “gatewalkers,” defeat alien monsters, and explore strange realms touched by the Missing Moment. And when it comes time to learn the grim truth of what happened to them on that fated summer night, what then?

Warning: The first part of this blog will cover what happened in the stream, so there are spoilers for Book One. Part two will include my thoughts as a GM, so there are major spoilers.

Check out the playlist here if you want to watch the previous episodes!

Chapter Two recap: Through the first Portal

Chapter 2 picks up after capturing the rogue druid Bolan and his followers. The crew now had a name: Kaneepo the Slim.

Since Bolan was interested in only boasting and wasting their time, the crew set out to investigate the surrounding area to see if they could track down this mysterious figure causing so much trouble and who had made off with a valuable artifact called the Shadewither Key. This eventually leads them to a portal into the Thinlands (think First World but Drab), and they fight their way through various flunkies to take out the strange being themselves.

They release a prisoner (an uplifted hedgehog named Hubert), and together, they make their way to a set of Elven Gates that mirror the ones they saw back in the Material Plane. One reacts, and because caution is for losers, they jump through, landing them in a dense, colorful jungle. Progress!

The crew sees a city in the distance and opts to go there, arguing whether they’re in the Mwangi or a more colorful part of the First World. En route, they fight weird slugs, ford blood rivers, dismantle mining equipment, and avoid perfectly harmless mushrooms, finally making it to the city covered in telescopes.

A gaggle of elves greets them, curious if wary, and they find out they are all wrong: They’re not in the First World OR the Mwangi, but on a completely different planet: Castrovel!

SPOILER ALERT! 

After this point, there are major spoilers for players… INCLUDING MINE. So, James, Jorge, Ricardo, Don, and Daton: STOP READING. 

I MEAN IT. 

👿👿👿

The Good

The investigations early in the chapter were outstanding. They gave the players a chance to roleplay and flex their non-combat muscles. I also liked the system in the AP: As players earned “points,” specific facts came to light, making levels of success important. In theory, the rolls should have been secret, but I got lazy at the last minute and had players roll in the open. This isn’t for every group, but it worked for me since I love committing to a wretched failure.

The “dungeon” of this chapter was also a solid challenge for experienced players. There are many varied creatures and traps, and not every encounter has to end in death. The players get more out of the scenario if they resolve things peacefully.

They also latched onto Hubert, an anthropomorphic hedgehog, immediately, making him a party member right after rescuing him.

Some warnings

One thing about Kaneepo’s Lair: It’s meant to be done in one day, which can be challenging for rest-happy players. I didn’t realize this until the end, but the players assumed Kaneepo was “somewhere else,” so they happily burned resources. They were running on dry as they approached the last room, so I removed one encounter and neutralized another so they wouldn’t tempt death. The design isn’t bad, but it’s something to consider with your group. If they’re gung-ho, maybe drop a hint that Kaneepo is home or that they’ll likely have to finish once they start.

If your players are low on acrobatics, Castrovel might be a struggle. Not everyone needs it, but at least one or two people should be okay. I honestly think this is one of the reasons they put Hubert in the crew: He has a surprisingly good bonus.

Some of the moderate encounters felt severe due to the terrain. The players struggled a LOT with a stupid snail because it was in a rushing river, and the cliffhunters brought a lot of pain with the fight being in the air on a small platform. I’m not sure that I’d make them easier, though, because the whole vibe of Castrovel is “you’re in danger.”

GM thoughts

This is such a long chapter. It felt like two chapters if we’re being honest. If you wanted to bump up the end level of Gatewalkers, I feel like there are a few chapters so far that can be split into two with a milestone between them. Later chapters would have to be updated, but adding a level to encounters is generally pretty easy.

I also cut out several encounters. Since I stream this game, I try to keep things tight, which means anything that doesn’t add to the plot or the setting might get removed. If you’re looking to do the same, here’s what I took out of Chapter 2:

Shadow Guards Trap: The players were already low on resources and had already gotten enough information about what went on with Kaneepo.
The Looksee Man: They met him, but I went out of my way to make him non-aggressive. I knew the Big Bad was in the next room, and they were down to one heal.
Death from the Trees: They saw the creature since I felt like that added to the setting, but they left it alone.
Hilltop Ambush: The snail WRECKED the party, so I decided to skip this and move straight to the next plot-nudging encounter.

If you want to keep these, do so! I only remove them because I need less filler as a stream than if I were at a table with way more time.

One regret: I wish I had made more notes about Kaneepo’s motivations because I didn’t expect my players to grill everyone they met about what this dude was doing. Silly, I know, since their whole deal was taking him out, but I completely forgot to make some bullet points for myself.

As for the twist, the players LOVED it, and I do think they were genuinely surprised. Excellent work, Paizo!

As for Hubert, I’m trying to figure out what the heck to do with him. The books don’t offer a graceful place for him to jump off unless you count the unforgiving embrace of death. I’m talking to the players about making him an actual character with a martial class they level and control. Elite levels will only take you so far. Maybe a Beastkin Ranger?

Next Chapters

I’ve prepped half of book two, and… there’s a surprising lack of portals and plane jumping. I’m seriously considering moving one of the major areas (Skywatch) to the Ethereal Plane to add variety.

The “escape” that’s key to the chapter could be getting to and activating a portal that will take them to the material plane.
This could also explain the wonky nature of Skywatch. They’re in a reflection of it!
It could also be why the “call” from the major NPC of that book was cut off. The whole place left the material plane!

I’m still considering it (I have some time), but the more I think about it, the more I like the idea. It also gives me some leeway in the third book to add another plane or two!

How I run it: Respecs

One awesome thing about playing in newer systems is that you always have new stuff to try out! This is also one of the terrible things.

When Pathfinder 2e only had one book, I co-ran a West Marches. It felt like every other month, we had a new supplement that added so many cool classes and ancestries and heritages. At first, allowing players to have more than one PC let people play around, but even that became an issue as players ran out of slots or didn’t want to manage yet another character sheet.

The GMs hesitated to let players retire characters left and right, because part of what makes game dynamics work is shared history. We didn’t want to lose half the town every time a new book came out. Sure, retraining exists, but it only goes so far and takes time. What could we do to make everyone happy?

Enter the Respec

What if there was a way to keep PC history and let people play something new? We didn’t want players changing things willy-nilly (so no swapping out every feat right before a game because you heard there’d be a red dragon), but surely once every few months wouldn’t be too unmanageable.

We started brainstorming. Here were some things we considered that were rejected:

Only allowing changes from the new book. This leads to too much accounting.
Only allowing a certain number of changes. Again, accounting. We would have to audit character sheets.
Only allowing one per player. When we came to our final system, this felt unnecessary.
Reset on gold and gear. PCs had a wide range of wealth, so this felt like it would punish our most active players.

I’m not saying that these were wrong decisions, only that they were wrong for us and our set-up.

Finally, we came up with what respecs would look like for us:

Your history stays the same. All your old experiences and relationships are a part of your character.
Your gear doesn’t change. If you need to buy new stuff, sell what you have and use your existing cash reserves.
You can change anything else on your sheet. Ancestry. Heritage. Background. Class. Feats. Spells. ANYTHING.
It’s up to the player to come up with the story. GMs can help but aren’t responsible for coming up with the idea themselves.
No downtime is necessary. It just happens. If you want to roleplay it taking a while, that’s perfectly fine, but the timeline is up to you.
Every PC gets one respec per book that includes significant changes. So, a Lost Omens book without a new class or ancestry might not count, but a book like Rage of Elements does.
You can’t stockpile respec points. It’s one or none.
You also don’t have to spend it right away. Feel free to hold onto it until the time is right.

The reaction was almost unanimously positive. Players got to try out new stuff, GMs weren’t overwhelmed, and town history stayed intact.

Metaplot

The biggest sticking point was explaining why these changes were happening. Some of the options we ended up using:

A Big Event. We put together a big event a few times that helped explain the sudden changes. Fey BS was a popular reason, but we also used disasters or other major events to explain the sudden shifts.

Reincarnate. The Reincarnate ritual was another option open for players, though with no rolling or money spent. They ‘die’ and are brought back in a weird new body with new ideas in their head.

A Clever Retcon. A few players opted for a clever retcon of their own story, like an Elf who realized he was an Android with implanted memories.

Fallout

Whenever I tell other GMs about this policy, they’re skeptical. It sounds like it would utterly wreck games and the immersion, so I must have dealt with a ton of fallout each time a new book came out. Except… I didn’t.

I won’t say it was a non-event, but players were game to accept the new reality around their fellow PCs and even enjoyed playing it up. Also, since major books aren’t realized too often, players were careful about spending that respec point. They would be stuck with it if they didn’t like what they ended up with.

What I did notice

Re-engagement. In a West Marches game, big releases meant more people logging on and joining games so they could play with new toys.

Growing pains. Right after a new release, if players used respecs, you have to GM with a lighter hand. Players are getting used to new feats and abilities, so the first game might have a lot of long turns.

Changed tactics. If respecs are done to a dedicated group, they might take a session to readjust their tactics to new play styles.

Happy players. Not to sound too dorky, but a GM is always happy to see happy players, and players with new toys are generally happy.

Investment in personal arcs. This was an interesting one, but some players didn’t respec for the new books, but to update their story.

So, all around a win, and worth a little chaos!

Katie’s RPG Toolkit

This is going to be a very unsexy post about the tools I use or created to help me prep, run, and play in games.

Storage

Dropbox is a must. And it’s not just for storage! You can also create file-request forms for things like updated character sheets or backstories. And being able to share out links to content is huge.
Google Drive, especially Sheets. My groups live and die by loot sheets in Google Sheets. It’s also where we keep shared notes if someone is going to play note-taker.

Character creation

Hero Lab – I use this so much as a GM. It’s spendy, but it’s awesome for being able to create characters quickly. I can also create campaigns that share my content with my players, which helps us get on the same page since I can restrict certain books or check certain settings.
Pathbuilder – While I don’t use it, I recommend it for players who don’t want to use Hero Lab or if I’m not creating a HL campaign for that game.

PDF extraction

TokenTool – Sometimes, it’s tricky to get maps out of Paizo PDFs. This is my ‘always works’ solution.
Python – I found this blog post while trying to DIY a solution for getting images out of PDFs and ended up using their script as is. It works great! It has problems with maps for reasons I keep meaning to look in to but never quite find the time for.
PDF-XChange – If I just need one image, this program gives me the option to right-click and save the image. Why don’t more readers do this?!
Script for cleaning text – Sometimes, my AP isn’t in my VTT of choice, so I have to create the NPC sheets myself. This script removes line breaks AND puts brackets around the dice rolls. Simple, but saves me a surprising amount of labor.

Tabletop

My VTT of choice is Roll20 – I run many systems, and it covers them all. Also, I don’t want to worry about hosting, especially since players poke their heads in randomly to set up their sheets.
Discord for video and audio – It just works. I pop out the video call and arrange my windows so it’s always up.
Watch2gthr for music on YouTube – I only use this when the music I want to use isn’t royalty-free. Otherwise, Roll20’s jukebox works fine for my purposes.

A shot from the Dhampirs game, where I was the backup recorder.

Image editing

Gimp – Free and it can probably do everything most people need. I know it works for me.
Token Stamp – I could use Token Tool but I prefer the controls here. Also, TokenTool isn’t on every machine in my house.
Icons8 Smart Upscaler – An amazing tool for making your maps look better when zoomed in. I use this mostly with older APs.
Icons8 for icons – I originally subscribed to Icons8 for professional work, but I quickly found them super convenient for tokens and markers! You can recolor them, give them borders, and they’re super clear even when you’re zoomed out.

A collection of player tokens on a grid. — From our Extra Life game. I didn’t have time to set up bespoke tokens for everyone, so each class had a generic icon.

Music

I keep an eye on Humble Bundle when it comes to music. Every few months, they have bundles of royalty-free music that are made for games. These are great for when I’m going for a specific feel for a game. You’ll find them under the “Software” section, but make sure that you’re not buying a bundle for loops and sound effects (unless that’s what you really want).
When I don’t need super specific vibes, the music that comes with Roll20’s jukebox works perfectly well. Rat Battle and Baba Yaga will forever be a vibe.

Maps

CzePeku offers amazing maps that can fit so many scenarios. I’ve often come up with scenarios to use a particular map. Also, each map has variants, which can be super helpful in games for showing a change in location. So, the farm can go from day to night or from normal to bloody.
2-Minute Tabletop is the other map-maker I patronize, but for the opposite reason: The maps are more module and generic (but still so pretty!) so I can build what I need.

Note taking

Microsoft OneNote – I don’t use this as much anymore, but back when I first started GMing, this was my ride or die. I still break it out when I need flexibility more than structure. In fact, writing this post made me realize it’s perfect for an upcoming project…
Cambridge Quad Wirebound Notebook – The absolute gold standard for graph paper for me. The pages are off-white, so they’re easy on the eyes, and the grid is the perfect amount of contrast. I buy these in bulk.
Google Docs – Easy to use, if you have a browser you have access to it, and you can share the doc for collaboration. What more do you need?

So, that’s my toolkit. It’s a lot, but I’ve been building it up over 20 years, so the list was always going to be long. If you use something you think I’ve missed, drop it in the comments!

In praise of the monthly game

If you go on any forum or look up any RPG pundits videos, eventually, you’ll see someone ask how often a group should game. Some take a hardline stance, insisting that weekly is the only way forward. Other groups (generally those who are a bit older with more demanding calendars) will land on every other week. Today, I want to try to sell at least a few people on the least popular option:

The monthly game.

My calendar is a mix of bi-weekly and monthly games, and I love it. I have a large group of people I want to play with, and a ton of material and systems I want to run, and adding a few monthly slots has helped me get more of what I want. Right now I’m in / GMing six monthly games, something that would be impossible if I stuck to games that happened more often.

Pros

One thing that will always stun me is how casually people will ask for a weekly game. That feels like such a huge ask when you have a family, a job, and other hobbies. Unless I have a legal obligation to you, you’ll probably not get a chunk of my time every week.

Once a month, though? That’s a much smaller ask. That’s easy to schedule around. I can clear my evening one Sunday afternoon a month, but it’d be a rough sell, saying I can’t go out ANY Sundays from now until whenever.

There’s also more wiggle room. While I tend to keep games on the same day of the week, the date we play can shift to fit everyone’s schedules. As long as I get in early, I can get a quorum. I consider three players enough, since my groups are okay with adding a GMPC to the party for a session or two.

Finally, you can fit in more games! A monthly slot takes up way fewer evenings that a bi-weekly or weekly, so you end up having more room to run different systems or adventures! This has been one of the only ways for me to work through the Paizo Firehose of Content and satisfy my cravings for different systems.

Cons

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, of course. There’s some downsides to running a monthly game.

First, people can lose track of where they were after a long pause. This even applies to the GM, who may have forgotten exactly what rooms were cleared or who the players met or what hooks had been tossed out. A month can feel like a lifetime between sessions.

You also build less familiarity with a sheet you touch less often. Even if you have an aide, like Hero Lab, many players will struggle to remember how certain feats slot together or what they have rattling around in their bag.

In the same vein, missing a session hurts a lot more when the game is only once a month. Two months between sessions can lead to a loss of momentum, and more than that can lead to people assuming the game is dead. It can be difficult to recover from long gaps without being extremely proactive, and that’s not a trait everyone has.

Also, unless you plan for it, games can feel like they drag. Every campaign has a session or two where not a lot gets done, but these don’t hit as hard when you play more often. There’s a need to keep the game going at a decent clip when it doesn’t happen very often.

And… some people just don’t want to do a monthly game. Even if that’s the only thing that works, even if that means they’ll have no game at all, they just don’t want to bother. So, you might have to cull some players from your roster at the outset.

Suggestions

Even with all of those cons, there’s ways to work around them! Well, except for the last one, but that’s the case for pretty much any choice in the TTRPG landscape: Some people just don’t wanna.

Over-recruit. If an AP suggests four players, I recruit six. If we have three who can make it, we have a quorum. This keeps us from missing sessions and losing momentum, and it doesn’t kill the game if one or two decide they really don’t like the format.

Cull beforehand. This kind of game requires communication, because you’ll be setting up dates every month that aren’t regular. If you have a friend who is the kind who says they’ll get back to you and then never does, this isn’t going to be a fit for them. I’m sure they’re lovely, but stick to regular games with them.

Consider speedrunning! I’m currently doing this with my Frozen Flame group, and it’s working quite well! Players can get through a ton in one session, but are still challenged at the end of the book.

Cut out the fluff. Unless you think your players will really love an extra encounter or a side plot, cut it. Time is precious in a monthly campaign, so spend it wisely.

Focus is key! Start sessions on time, and watch the banter. Use every second you have to move the plot forward and have fun in game. If you know a friend is almost always late, either consider culling them, or have an in-game explanation for why they always wander into the action late.

Reset between sessions. At the end of the session, everyone gets a chance to rest and reset. Keeping track of sheets can get rough with larger gaps, so it keeps things simple if you always know that you can reset everything at the start of every session. Also, it gives you a chance to shift the party if you need to pull someone different in, or let someone else stay at the inn because life got hectic.

Finally, record your sessions. You will 100% forget small details after a month, and if you have a recording, it’s easy to go back and check to see if the players triggered a certain hook or found that important piece of treasure. There’s dozens of apps for screen recording, but I use OBS, since I already have it set up for when I stream. If you do this, though, make sure players know ahead of time that you’re recording sessions, and what your policy is on uploading the videos later. Some groups, I’ll make an unlisted YouTube playlist, others get a link to the files in my Dropbox account, and some I don’t share at all because a player requested it.

Final thoughts

Look, I know the monthly game isn’t going to be everyone’s bag, but I do think everyone should try it at least once. It can be a great way to play with people who have busy schedules, get through material you otherwise wouldn’t have time with, and maybe mess around with some systems you don’t want to dedicate a ton of time to otherwise.

Prepping APs 15 minutes at a time: An obsessive guide

I run a lot of games. Like… a lot. I have a bi-weekly home game where we swap around who’s GMing, a bi-weekly stream, and a whole slew of monthly games. This wouldn’t be possible without three things:

Pre-written adventures
The ability to do remote games
Lots of organization

Because I get asked, I figured there’s no harm in documenting how I prep Adventure Paths. Heck, maybe it’ll inspire someone who wants to GM but says they have no time to pick up an AP.

Caveats

I’ll say this up front: I am an over-prepper. I know my self too well. Improv-heavy games wreck havoc with my anxiety, and I find myself unable to really enjoy the act of GMing if I’m doing too much on the fly. I would much rather prepare for a fight that never happens than have to throw one at the last second. Not everyone needs this level of prep in their life! Take what works for you!

Also, I prefer this to homebrew campaigns. I’ve done several, and while fun, they require a LOT more work on my end to come together the way I want. I still do run homebrew, but the vast majority of what I’ll run is going to be pre-packaged.

Why do all this?

As I said before, I get super stressed if I feel under-prepared. I can generally hide it, but that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant to live through. If I’m prepared, I can chill out during the game, drinking my tea, secure in the knowledge that I’ve planned for most of the zigs and zags.

I also have small chunks of downtime in my day-to-day life, but a lack of large chunks of open time. I can sneak in 15 minute activities with no shuffling around, but one “Oh, by the way”, and my four hours of free-time on a Saturday morning are gone.

Finally, I love maps with walls and doors and lighting and music. I like a pretty VTT experience. You can’t really get that if you’re cramming.

Before prep!

I’m in the market for a new AP. What do I do before I start getting into it?

I read the summaries for the chapters. I want to make sure the vibe matches what my group is looking for.
I check the Paizo forums for that specific AP. They can be a treasure-trove of lessons-learned, suggestions, warnings, and re-drawn assets.
I read the Player’s Guide. It’s tempting to skip this step, but there’s details in the guide that aren’t in the AP.
I brow-beat my players into reading the Player’s Guide. Seriously, players who skip this often end up screwed over later because they selected a class that won’t work, or didn’t invest in a skill that comes up all the time.

Let’s talk prep!

I prep in three cycles: Reading, monsters, maps.

Reading

I don’t read the whole AP at once! I know some people do this, and good for them, but I prefer to work one chapter at a time. I would rather start playing sooner than put it off for a few months while I get through a whole slew of reading. I’ve found that as long as I’m two chapters ahead of the players, I generally have enough buffer to work with.

I also highlight a LOT. I use three colors: one for plot bits I don’t want to miss, one for DCs that aren’t already in a monster/hazard block, and one for treasure. My goal is to be able to find important details at a quick glance without turning my whole document yellow.

An example of my highlighting. Yes, my pdfs are very colorful by the time I’m done with them.

Now, if my chosen VTT has my adventure pre-loaded, awesome! I’m mostly done! This is 80% awesome, but it can lead to me being less familiar with the creatures than when I have to craft them by hand. Still, I’m not turning down the time saver.

Creatures and Hazards

After I read a chapter, I’ll go ahead and create all the creatures. How long this takes varies quite a bit. Some books, I can grab almost everything out of a bestiary. Others, nearly every creature is custom for that AP, so I have to create it by hand.

I could just roll everything by hand, but again, I like to actually relax during games. So, I fill out the NPC sheets for pretty much everything in the book. Because I’m working with 15 minute blocks of time, I try to focus on doing the same task over and over. So, I might work on filling out sheets during one session, while another, I work on getting the tokens set up (like I said, I love a pretty token).

For making tokens, I use Token Stamp. There are other tools, of course, but this one being browser based means it doesn’t matter which computer I’m on when I’m doing prep.

Part of my token creation page. Top/Green: All done! Yellow/Middle: Needs a token. Pink/Bottom: I’ve only made a stub.

Maps!

Maps are the last vital thing I set up. I have a blog post on extracting maps without giving yourself a stomach ache, and I still stand by that method. This is especially true since the automated tools I’ve used don’t seem to like grabbing maps from the interactive PDFs.

To be honest, this part of prep goes the fastest for me. Even with fancy lighting, I can get a map walled up in ten minutes, and since my creatures are made already, it takes only a few more minutes to populate them.

The other stuff

If I have F’s left to give, I’ll pick out some music for ambiance and fights, and maybe make a few handouts. If you like music, I strongly suggest making a few playlists that you can put on randomize and forget about until the situation changes. I like having one for fights, one for general ambience, and one for town.

When running my non-modern games, I use my VTT’s jukebox, which works perfectly fine. For modern games, though, I’m usually leaning on music that isn’t royalty-free, so I used Watch2Gether. And before you ask, no, those games aren’t streamed or uploaded. If they were, they’d get a strike before I had a chance to share a link out.

How long does this take?

I know that “It depends” isn’t a very satisfying answer, but… it depends. A chapter with lots of maps and custom creatures can take way more time than one that’s mostly roleplay and theater of the mind. Also, careful reading takes more time than quick reading.

Looking back over my notes, it looks like two weeks per chapter is a fair average. This seems like a lot of prep, but keep in mind that a chapter is three or four sessions for me, minimum. Since these games are monthly or, at worst, bi-weekly, that level of prep keeps me ahead of the game.

Because this is only 15 minutes at a time, I can generally prep two chapters every day without having to block out huge chunks of time. Because I stop once I’m well-enough ahead, I’ve found I can have around six games going at once without burning out. Really, the hard part is finding time to play!

What am I thinking about changing?

My day job involves coding in Python, so I’ve been diving more deeply about extracting text and images more quickly. I also want to learn more about talking to the Roll20 API (my VTT of choice) so I can create creatures and handouts more quickly. I will always pay for an AP if I’m running it, but Roll20 tends to pick and choose which they’ll import. I know other VTTs keep on top of this, but I’m not interested in switching platforms for reasons that could fill a whole other blog post.

This seems like… a lot.

I mean, it is. And it’s not necessary. I’m describing how I do it, but it’s hardly how everyone preps an AP. It’s not even how I did it when I first started running them.

With my first AP on a VTT, I didn’t use the system’s character sheets. I typed in every roll by hand, as did the players. I have friends who will skim over just enough to get the idea of what the story is and then vibe off of that. I have other friends who won’t put down a map until the players ask, and only toss down a token when it comes time to fight the thing. Heck, I have a GM where all the tokens are circles with letters in them.

While it’s a lot of work, this is the level of effort that lets me have the GMing experience I want to have: Chilling out with my coffee rather than frantically trying to understand what a block of text means, because this is the first time I’ve seen it.

At the end of the day, you do you, boo, as long as it gets us more games.