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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Starfinder RPG

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Chapter 10: Game Mastering

Game Mastering

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When you take on the role of Game Master, you’ll have the rewarding job of crafting fun experiences for a group of your friends. Your responsibilities include...
  • Telling the story of the group’s adventures in a compelling and consistent way.
  • Fleshing out the world in which the game takes place, emphasizing the fantastical while grounding it enough in the real world to feel believable.
  • Entertaining the players and yourself with novel concepts, and rewarding creative ideas with interesting outcomes.
  • Preparing for game sessions by building or studying adventures and creating characters and plots.
  • Improvising the reactions of nonplayer characters and other forces in the world as the players do unexpected things.
  • Making rules decisions to ensure fairness and keep the game moving forward.
This chapter provides the tools you need to shoulder those responsibilities. The following sections break down the various components of a campaign, discuss the different modes of play and how to set DCs for the tasks the PCs attempt, provide different ways of rewarding player characters, and describe aspects of the environment that might affect an adventuring party.

Planning a Campaign

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A Pathfinder game is typically structured as a campaign—a serialized story that focuses on a single party of characters. A campaign is subdivided into multiple adventures, smaller stories that involve exploration and interaction with nonplayer characters. A single adventure represents a complete story that might be connected to the larger arc of a campaign. Playing an adventure spans one or more game sessions—gatherings where the group plays a part of the adventure over the course of several hours.

A campaign provides the overall structure for your Pathfinder game. As you prepare for your campaign, you’ll establish its scope and themes, which you’ll then reinforce in the adventures and scenes that take place within it.

Campaign Length

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The length of a campaign can range from a few sessions to many years. Two main factors determine campaign length: how much time you need to complete the story, and how much time players want to devote to the game.

A single session, or a “one-shot,” is great if your group is trying out Pathfinder or wants to play a specific short adventure. This requires a smaller time commitment but requires the GM to present the events of the game in a way that is immediately engaging, since there’s less opportunity for the players to become invested in the story or setting.

If you want to play through a longer campaign, you’ll need to add some story elements that speak directly to the characters in your game rather than just to the events of the adventure. In other words, the characters should have individual goals in addition to the group’s overall goals.

You can estimate how long a campaign will take by looking at the amount of time you actually have to play, or the number of character levels you intend the characters to advance. It typically takes three to four sessions for a group to level up. Since you’ll probably cancel sessions on occasion, playing once a week for a year results in roughly a 14-level campaign, playing every 2 weeks for a year gives you an 8-level campaign, and playing monthly allows for a 5-level campaign. If you play only once a month, you might consider holding longer sessions and using fast advancement (page 509).

It’s entirely okay to have a campaign with an indefinite length. Many groups play through one adventure and then decide to take on another. If you run an indefinite campaign, however, avoid ongoing plots that you can’t satisfactorily end if the campaign comes to a close after the next adventure. If you introduce an overwhelmingly powerful villain who’s crucial to the story but can’t be stopped until the player characters are 15th level, ending the campaign at 8th level will feel anticlimactic.

It pays to be conservative when estimating your campaign length and scope. It’s always tempting to run a 20-level epic campaign with complex, interwoven plots, but such games can fall apart long before the end if your group can play only once a month and the players have other responsibilities.

Expected Duration

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Not every campaign ends at the same point. Some campaigns go all the way to 20th level, ending after the player characters attain the height of power and confront the greatest threats any mortal could face. Others end at a lower level, after the group takes down a major villain or solves a crucial problem. And still other campaigns end when players become unable to attend or decide its a good time to stop playing.

You should have an end point in mind when you start a campaign. Still, you have to be flexible, since you’re telling the story alongside other players, and your initial expectations for the campaign may be proven incorrect. When you think you’re heading toward a satisfying conclusion, it’s useful to check in with the other players. You might say, “I think we have about two sessions left. Does that work for everyone? Is there any unfinished business you want to take care of?” This lets you gauge whether your assumptions match up with the rest of the group—and make any necessary adjustments.

Themes

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The themes you choose for your campaign are what distinguish it from other campaigns. They include the major dramatic questions of your story and the repeated use of certain environments or creatures, and they can also include embracing a genre beyond traditional high fantasy. The themes you choose for your campaign also suggest storyline elements you might use.

A storyline’s themes usually relate to the backstories, motivations, and flaws of the player characters and villains. For example, if you’ve chosen revenge as one of the themes of your game, you might introduce a villain whose quest for revenge tears his life apart and causes tragic harm to those around him. If one of the player characters is a chaotic good believer in liberty and freedom, you might engage that character by pitting the group against slavers. Or, you might choose a theme of love, leading to nonplayer characters involved in doomed romances, seeking to regain lovers they have lost, or courting the player characters.

Using similar locations and related creatures helps you form connections between disparate adventures. The players feel like their characters are becoming experts negotiating with giants, navigating seaways, battling devils, exploring the planes, or dealing with whatever the recurring elements are. For example, you might have the players explore a frozen tundra early on, then later travel to an icy plane filled with more difficult challenges that can be overcome using knowledge they’ve previously developed. Likewise, hobgoblin soldiers may be tough enemies for your group at low levels, but as the PCs attain higher levels and the hobgoblins become mere minions of another creature, the players feel a sense of progression.

Pathfinder is a fantasy adventure game, but you can shift your campaign to include elements of other fictional genres. You might want to infuse your game a with a sense of horror, reduce the amount of magic and use slow advancement (page 509) to make it a tale of sword and sorcery, or turn magic into technology for a steampunk setting.

Tools for Responsible Play

Consent and comfort are important topics for roleplaying games, and many designers have created techniques to help facilitate responsible play. Some methods you can use are lines and veils, developed by Ron Edwards, and the X-Card, developed by John Stavropoulos.

Lines and Veils

The terms “line” and “veil” can give your table a common vocabulary for the concepts described in this section. A line is a hard limit to the actions players might take, such as “We’re drawing a line at torture.” The group agrees not to cross a line and omits that content from the game.

A veil indicates something that shouldn’t be described in detail. The scene fades to black for a veil, or the group moves on to discuss a different topic, though whatever the veil is drawn across still happens. For example, you might say, “We’ll draw a veil across the scene as those characters head into the bedroom.”

You might come up with some lines and veils in advance, but then find more as play continues.

The X-Card

Draw an “X” on a card, and you’ve got an X-Card. Place it on the table at the start of the session and describe its use to the players: any player can silently reject content they find upsetting by tapping the X-Card; whoever’s speaking then rewinds a bit and continues on, excising the objectionable content. As with setting the basic guidelines for your campaign, there are no questions asked, no judgment, and no argument when someone invokes the X-Card. You can, however, ask for clarification if you need it, such as “How far back should I rewind this?” Some groups instead make an X with their hands, say “Let’s X that out,” or use some other method. Either way, follow up with the player privately, after the game, to see if the guidelines need to be revised. You can find more details at tinyurl.com/x-card-rpg.

A Welcoming Environment

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The role of Game Master comes with the responsibility of ensuring you and the rest of the players have a rewarding, fun time during the game. Games can deal with difficult subjects and have stressful moments, but fundamentally Pathfinder is a leisure activity. It can remain so only if the players follow the social contract and respect one another.

Players with physical or mental disabilities might find themselves more challenged than abled players. Work with your players to ensure they have the resources and support they need. Additionally, be on the lookout for behavior that’s inappropriate, whether intentional or inadvertent, and pay careful attention to players’ body language during the game. If you notice a player becoming uncomfortable, you are empowered to pause the game, take it in a new direction, privately check in with your players during or after the session, or take any other action you think is appropriate.

If a player tells you they’re uncomfortable with something in the game, whether it’s content you’ve presented as the GM or another player’s or PC’s actions, listen carefully to that player and take steps to ensure they can once again have fun during your game. If you’re preparing prewritten material and you find a character or a situation inappropriate, you are fully empowered to change any details as you see fit. You also have the authority (and responsibility) to ask players to change their behavior—or even leave the table—if what they’re doing is unacceptable or makes others feel uncomfortable. It’s never appropriate to make the person who is uncomfortable responsible for resolving a problem. It’s okay if mistakes happen. What’s important is how you respond and move forward.

Gaming is for everyone. Never let those acting in bad faith undermine your game or exclude other players. Your efforts are part of the long-term process of making games and game culture welcoming to all. Working together, we can build a community where players of all identities and experiences feel safe.

Objectionable Content

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Before a campaign begins, check in with your players—as a group or individually—to find out what types of content they want to allow in the game, and which topics they would prefer to avoid. Because the story unfolds in real time, it’s essential that you discuss these topics before the game starts. These discussions are intended to keep players safe, and so it’s not okay to ask why someone wants a type of content banned. If someone wants it banned, ban it—no questions asked.

It can help to start with a rating, like those used for movies or video games. Pathfinder games often include violence and cruelty. What’s the limit on how graphically these concepts should be described? Can players swear at the table? Does anyone have phobias they don’t want to appear in the game, such as spiders or body horror?

After you figure out the limits on objectionable content, you have four important tasks:
  • Clearly convey these limits to the other players.
  • Ensure you and the players abide by the boundaries.
  • Act immediately if someone becomes uncomfortable about content during a session, even if it wasn’t already banned in a prior discussion. Once the issue is resolved, move on.
  • Resolve the issue if any player deliberately pushes these boundaries, tries to find loopholes, tries to renegotiate the limits, or belittles people for having a different tolerance to objectionable content.

The Pathfinder Baseline

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You might find that your players don’t have much to say on the topic of objectionable content, and just assume that general societal mores will keep the most uncomfortable topics out of the game. That’s not always enough, as that approach relies on shared assumptions that aren’t always accurate. The following is a set of basic assumptions that works for many groups, which you can modify to fit your preferences and those of the other players.
  • Bloodshed, injuries, and even dismemberment might be described. However, excessive descriptions of gore and cruelty should be avoided.
  • Romantic and sexual relationships can happen in the game, but players should avoid being overly suggestive. Sex always happens “off-screen.” Because attempts at initiating a relationship between player characters can be uncomfortably similar to one player hitting on another, this should generally be avoided (and is entirely inappropriate when playing with strangers).
  • Avoid excessively gross or scatological descriptions.
The following acts should never be performed by player characters:
  • Torture
  • Rape, nonconsensual sexual contact, or sexual threats
  • Harm to children, including sexual abuse
  • Owning slaves or profiting from the slave trade
  • Reprehensible uses of mind-control magic
Villains might engage in such acts, but they won’t happen “on-screen” or won’t be described in detail. Many groups choose to not have villains engage in these activities at all, keeping these reprehensible acts out of mind entirely.

Social Splash Damage

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As important as it is to take care of yourself and the other players in your game, be mindful of your group’s impact on the other people around you. If you’re playing in a space that’s not your own, respect your hosts. If you’re playing in public, consider the comfort of the people around you, not just what your group is comfortable with. It’s easy to get caught up in a game, as we get sucked into the microcosm of an imagined world, but don’t ignore the real world around you. Be aware when you’re making too much noise, leaving a mess, alarming passersby with graphic descriptions of violence, or even just giving the cold shoulder to curious spectators witnessing RPG play for the first time.

Characters with Disabilities

A player might want to create a character with a disability, or their character might end up with a disability over the course of play. Work with the player to find ways to respectfully represent the disability. Conditions such as blinded and deafened aren’t a good fit for a character who has been living with a disability long-term. Here are suggestions for rules you might use for PCs with disabilities.

Blindness or Impaired Vision

A blind character can’t detect anything using vision, critically fails Perception checks requiring sight, is immune to visual effects, and can’t be blinded or dazzled. You might give this character the Blind-Fight feat for free.

A character with impaired vision might take a –2 to –4 penalty to vision-based Perception checks. Spectacles or other corrective devices might reduce or remove this.

Deafness or Being Hard of Hearing

A deaf character can’t detect anything using hearing, critically fails Perception checks that require hearing, and is immune to auditory effects. They have enough practice to supply verbal components for casting spells and command components for activating magic items, but if they perform an action they’re not accustomed to that involves auditory elements, they must succeed at a DC 5 flat check or the action is lost. It’s best to give them the Sign Language feat for free, and you might give them Read Lips as well (page 266 and 265). You might give one or more other characters in the group Sign Language for free as well.

A hard-of-hearing character might take a –2 to –4 penalty to Perception checks that are hearing-based. Corrective devices for hearing are less common than spectacles are in a typical Pathfinder world.

Missing Limb

Some magic items require certain limbs or other body parts. It’s fine to allow an alternative form of the item, turning boots into bracers for a character without legs, for example.

A character with a missing hand or arm might need to spend 2 actions to Interact with an item that requires two hands, or otherwise compensate. Using a two-handed weapon is not possible. A character can acquire a prosthetic hand or arm to compensate.

Someone missing a foot or leg might take a small penalty to Speed, but can typically acquire a prosthetic to compensate. If they have no legs, they might use a wheelchair, a dependable mount, or levitation or flight magic.

Mental Illness and Chronic Illness

Some disabilities, such as mental illness and chronic illnesses, are best left to the player to roleplay. Mental illness is an especially fraught topic, with a history of insensitive portrayal. Be careful about the intentions of the player and the impact the presentation might have on other players.

Character Creation

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At the outset of a new campaign, the players will create new player characters. Part of that process involves you introducing what the campaign will be about and what types of characters are most appropriate. Work with the players to determine which rule options are available. The safest options are the common choices from the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. If players want to use common options from other books or uncommon or rare options, through play, review those options to see if any of them conflict with the style of campaign you have in mind or might present strange surprises down the road. It’s usually best to allow new options, but there’s no obligation to do so. Be as open as you’re comfortable with.

Preparing an Adventure

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An adventure is a self-contained collection of story elements, characters, and settings that become the basis for the story you and the other players tell. Think of the adventure as an outline for your own story. You’ll have major beats you want to include, some consistent characters, and themes you want to convey, but all sorts of things can change during the process of turning the outline into a completed story.

You might use a published adventure from Paizo or another company, or you might construct your own adventure as you prepare for your game sessions.

Paizo's Published Adventures

You can purchase the following types of adventures at paizo.com, your local game store, or many book stores. If you want to acquire all the adventures in a given line, you can purchase a subscription at paizo.com.

Pathfinder Adventure Paths

Each monthly volume of a Pathfinder Adventure Path leads into the next as part of a greater story spanning multiple volumes. The first volume of each Adventure Path typically starts at 1st level, and each volume has a self-contained story that eventually leads to a big climax at the end of the final volume. Each volume also typically includes new monsters, rules, and details about the world. Each Adventure Path has a different theme, and their settings range across the Inner Sea region and beyond.

Pathfinder Adventures

Pathfinder Adventures are standalone adventures that cover several levels of play. They’re self-contained and typically have a unique structure or theme. You can play through a Pathfinder Adventure on its own or as part of your ongoing campaign—some make ideal side adventures for Adventure Paths that have similar themes.

Pathfinder Society Scenarios

Scenarios are the adventures used by the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild; you can play them as part of the Pathfinder Society or on your own. Each takes about 4 to 5 hours to run, so you can tell a whole story in a short amount of time, but they’re also part of a larger continuity and can be combined together to form the basis of a longer campaign.

Published Adventures

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Prewritten adventures include background information and nonplayer characters needed for the story, plus all the locations, maps, and monster groups necessary for both exploration and encounters. Prewritten adventures can speed up your preparation, since you can simply read the relevant sections of the adventure before a game, and you don’t have to create everything from scratch. A published adventure already includes the expected amount of encounters and treasure, and you can find adventures built for different character levels to match your group. Reading a published adventure or running one as your first game can help you see how adventures are structured, which makes it easier to write one later if you choose.

Though a published adventure is prewritten, it’s not set in stone. Changing the details of an adventure to suit your group isn’t just acceptable, it’s preferred! Use the backstories and predilections of the player characters to inform how you change the adventure. This can mean altering adversaries so they’re linked to the player characters, changing the setting to a place some of the player characters are from, or excising particular scenes if you know they won’t appeal to your players.

Using Rarity and Access

The rarity system has two purposes: to convey how common or rare certain spells, creatures, or items are in the game world, and to give you an easy tool to control the complexity of your game. Uncommon and rare options aren’t more powerful than other options of their level, but they introduce complications for certain types of stories, or are less common in the world. For instance, it might be more challenging to run a mystery adventure when a player can cast an uncommon spell such as detect evil.

At the start of the campaign, communicate your preferred expectations on rarity to the players. Unless you decide otherwise, the players can choose from any common options they qualify for, plus any uncommon options granted by their character choices—primarily their ancestry and class. By default, a character who tries hard enough might eventually find an uncommon option, whereas a rare option is always a special reward. Beyond that baseline, you can grant access as freely as you want; some GMs open up all uncommon and rare options universally. If you’re not sure, just look over any uncommon or rare elements before you include them as rewards or otherwise allow a player to acquire them.

Rewards

You can use uncommon and rare rules elements to reward characters. These still have the same value and approximate power as any other treasure of the same Price, but they’re just a bit more special because they hail from distant lands or have unusual or surprising abilities. Items are the most likely candidates for uncommon or rare rewards, but an NPC might teach an uncommon or rare spell to a PC in gratitude or to help the party prepare for a certain adversary. You can also improvise extra benefits based around uncommon or rare items. For instance, if a PC gains a rare plant with occult uses, you might also decide that the PC should temporarily get more money if they use it while Earning Income using Herbalism Lore, because it enables them to produce novel poultices.

Different Locations

The rarities in this book assume you’re playing in the Inner Sea region of Golarion, where most Pathfinder games are set. These rarities are also suitable for most western medieval fantasy games. However, you might want to alter the rarities for a campaign set in another location on Golarion (detailed in Chapter 8), to emphasize a non-human culture, or to play in a fantasy setting with different roots, like a wuxia game based on Chinese culture. These changes most often affect basic items. If you start your campaign in a dwarven stronghold, for example, you might make all the weapons with the dwarf trait common. You should feel free to adjust rarities to suit your campaign’s theme, but if you do, you should share your changes with your group.

Creating Adventures

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Building your own adventure is much more challenging than using a published one, but it lets you express yourself, be even more creative, and tailor the game directly to the players and their characters. Later sections in this chapter include guidelines for building and running encounters, placing treasure, and setting appropriately difficult challenges, all to help you construct your own adventures.

Adventure plotting can start at many different points. You might begin with a particular antagonist, then construct an adventure that fits that villain’s theme and leads the group to them. Alternatively, you could start with an interesting location for exploration, then populate it with adversaries and challenges appropriate to the setting.

Locations

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Memorable settings that include mysterious and fantastical locations for players to visit can elicit the players’ curiosity. Exploring each location should be a treat in itself, not just a chore the players must complete to get from one fight to the next. As you create a locale, picture it in your mind’s eye and write down minor details you can include as you narrate the game. Describing decorations, natural landmarks, wildlife, peculiar smells, and even temperature changes make a place feel more real.

Beyond monsters and loot, your locations can include environment-based challenges, from environmental conditions like blizzards to puzzles, traps, or other hazards. These challenges should suit your adventure’s location: walls of brambles in a castle ruin overrun with vegetation, pools of acid in a cursed swamp, or magical traps in the tomb of a paranoid wizard. Rules for environments appear on page 512, and those for hazards start on page 520.

Encounters

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A robust set of encounters forms the backbone of your adventure. Encounters often feature combat with other creatures, but they can also include hazards, or you might create social encounters in which characters duel only with words. The rules for building encounters appropriate to your group’s level begin below.

Some adventures have a clear and direct progression, with encounters occurring at specific times or in a specific order. Others, such as a dungeon filled with interconnected rooms the group can investigate in any order, are nonlinear, and the group can face encounters in any order—or even avoid them entirely. Most adventures are somewhere in between, with some keystone encounters you know the characters will need to contend with, but others that are optional.

Treasure

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Your adventure should give out an amount of treasure that’s appropriate to the characters’ level. The guidelines for assigning treasure are on page 508. You can dole out treasure in all kinds of ways. Treasure could be items carried by an adversary, rewards from a patron for completing a mission, or a classic pile of coins and items inside a wooden chest guarded by a monster. It’s best to spread treasure throughout an adventure rather than stockpiled in a single hoard. This gives the players incremental rewards, letting their characters advance in frequent small steps rather than giant leaps separated by many hours of play.

Building Encounters

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The most common type of encounter is a combat encounter, where the PCs face other creatures. Combat encounters are strictly governed by rules; the guidelines that follow will help you build combat encounters that pose appropriate challenges for your group. Building hazard encounters works the same way. Social encounters are more free-form, and are up to you as the GM to design.

To build a combat encounter, first decide how the encounter fits in the adventure as a whole. Then, estimate how much of a threat you want the encounter to pose, using one of five categories below.

Trivial-threat encounters are so easy that the characters have essentially no chance of losing; they shouldn’t even need to spend significant resources unless they are particularly wasteful. These encounters work best as warm-ups, palate cleansers, or reminders of how awesome the characters are. A trivial-threat encounter can still be fun to play, so don’t ignore them just because of the lack of threat.

Low-threat encounters present a veneer of difficulty and typically use some of the party’s resources. However, it would be rare or the result of very poor tactics for the entire party to be seriously threatened.

Moderate-threat encounters are a serious challenge to the characters, though unlikely to overpower them completely. Characters usually need to use sound tactics and manage their resources wisely to come out of a moderate-threat encounter ready to continue on and face a harder challenge without resting.

Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters can consistently defeat. These encounters are most appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a lack of resources due to prior encounters can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open.

Extreme-threat encounters are so dangerous that they are likely to be an even match for the characters, particularly if the characters are low on resources. This makes them too challenging for most uses. An extreme-threat encounter might be appropriate for a fully rested group of characters that can go all-out, for the climactic encounter at the end of an entire campaign, or for a group of veteran players using advanced tactics and teamwork.

XP Budget

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Once you’ve selected a threat level, it’s time to build the encounter. You have an XP budget based on the threat, and each creature costs some of that budget. Start with the monsters or NPCs that are most important to the encounter, then decide how you want to use the rest of your XP budget. Many encounters won’t match the XP budget exactly, but they should come close. The XP budget is based on a group of four characters. If your group is larger or smaller, see Different Party Sizes below.

Table 10-1: Encounter Budget

ThreatXP BudgetCharacter Adjustment
Trivial40 or less10 or less
Low6015
Moderate8020
Severe12030
Extreme16040

Choosing Creatures

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In all but the most unusual circumstances, you’ll select creatures for your encounter that range from 4 levels lower than the PCs’ level to 4 levels higher (see Table 10–2: Creature XP and Role). Each creature has a part to play in your encounter, from a lowly lackey to a boss so mighty it could defeat the entire party single-handedly.

Each creature costs some of the XP from your XP budget for the encounter, based on its level compared to the levels of the characters in your party. For instance, if the PCs are 5th level, a 2nd-level creature is a “party level – 3” creature, a lackey appropriate for a low- to-moderate-threat encounter, and it costs 15 XP in an encounter’s XP budget. Party level is explained in detail on page 508.

Table 10-2: Creature XP and Role

Creature LevelXPSuggested Role
Party Level -410Low-threat lackey
Party Level -315Low- or moderate-threat lackey
Party Level -220Any lackey or standard creature
Party Level -130Any standard creature
Party Level40Any standard creature or low-threat boss
Party Level +160Low- or moderate-threat boss
Party Level +280Moderate- or severe-threat boss
Party Level +3120Severe- or extreme-threat boss
Party Level +4160Extreme-threat solo boss

Different Party Sizes

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For each additional character in the party beyond the fourth, increase your XP budget by the amount shown in the Character Adjustment value for your encounter in Table 10–1: Encounter Budget. If you have fewer than four characters, use the same process in reverse: for each missing character, remove that amount of XP from your XP budget. Note that if you adjust your XP budget to account for party size, the XP awards for the encounter don’t change—you’ll always award the amount of XP listed for a group of four characters.

It’s best to use the XP increase from more characters to add more enemies or hazards, and the XP decrease from fewer characters to subtract enemies and hazards, rather than making one enemy tougher or weaker. Encounters are typically more satisfying if the number of enemy creatures is fairly close to the number of player characters.

Sharing Responsibility

Just because you’re the GM and ostensibly in charge doesn’t mean you have to do all the extra work to make the campaign run. Some of the tasks described here, like scheduling games, taking notes, and giving recaps, can be delegated to other players. You might also have someone track initiative or the Hit Points of the PCs’ foes for you in encounters, or even run those foes if you have a large group and someone would rather do that than control a character of their own. It’s also great when someone else can host a session, provide snacks for the group, or take on other responsibilities that aren’t directly related to the game.

It’s best to figure out a schedule of responsibilities when you’re first setting up a game. Ask the players what they’re willing to take on. If you start to feel overwhelmed partway through a campaign, you can revisit the topic and try out new options until you find a setup that’s comfortable.

Running a Game Session

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A campaign happens over a series of sessions. Each session is usually several hours long, with multiple encounters, some exploration, and possibly downtime. Your session can be compared to an episode of a TV show; it should include some twists, turns, and changes, and end leaving people excited about what comes next.

Planning a Session

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One of the greatest challenges in gaming is scheduling a time for everyone to get together and play. Often, this responsibility falls on you as the GM, since you're the one who has to prepare your game between sessions. Many games have a set schedule, such as once per week, once every 2 weeks, or once per month. The less frequently your group meets, the better notes and recaps you'll need to keep everyone on the same page.

Plan a time for everybody to arrive, and also try to set a time when playing the game will begin. This can make it easier for everyone to finish chatting, catching up, and eating in a timely fashion so you can start playing the game. Having an end time in mind is also fairly important. A typical game session lasts about 4 hours, though some groups hold 2-hour sessions or play marathon games. Less than 2 hours usually isn't enough time to get much done in most Pathfinder campaigns. If your session will be longer than 2 hours, plan out some 15-minute breaks (in addition to bathroom and beverage breaks, which players can take as needed).

Starting a Session

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Once everyone is ready, get everyone's attention and cover the following topics. These are in a rough order that you can change based on your group's style or a session's needs.
  • Recap what happened during the previous sessions.
  • Establish where the characters are at the beginning of this session. Have they been resting since their last challenge? Are they in a hallway, preparing to raid the next room of a dungeon? Tell players whether their characters had time to rest or recover since the last session.
  • Remind players that they each have 1 Hero Point at the start of the session.
  • Establish goals. The players should have an idea of what they want to do next. Reestablish any goals the group already had, then let the players weigh in on whether these goals still apply, and on whether there's anything else they hope to accomplish in this session.
  • Commence adventuring! Decide which mode of play you're going to start in, then lead off with a verbal prompt to get the action started. You might ask a question related to a particular character, have everyone immediately roll initiative as a monster attacks, or briefly describe the environment and sensations that surround the player characters, allowing them to react.

Off-Session Gaming

Session play with a full group isn’t the only way to play Pathfinder. Finding opportunities to expand on the game outside of its regular schedule can keep your group engaged between sessions.

You can get together with a single player to run a mini-session for their character, covering a mission that’s important to their story but doesn’t concern the rest of the group. You and the players can work out what their characters do during solid stretches of downtime via e-mail or chat messages. You can also give players opportunities to collaborate on details of the story, like having a player design a heraldic symbol for the adventuring group or map out their home base. You might even decide to award a Hero Point at the next session to a player for events that happened outside a session.

Some events aren’t suitable for handling outside of sessions. Any event that strongly affects a character whose player isn’t present should be handled at the table when everyone can attend. It’s also helpful to recap events that took place outside of the session for all characters so no one feels excluded or lost.

Running a Session

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During a session, you’re in charge of keeping the game’s action moving, managing the different modes of play, fielding questions, and making rules decisions. You’ll also want to keep a rough eye on the time, so you can end when most convenient for the group.

You’re the interface between the rules and the imagined world you and the other players share. They will ask you questions, and they’ll act based on their own assumptions. It’s up to you to establish what’s true in the world, but you don’t do this unilaterally. You’re informed by the setting’s backstory, your preparations, and the suggestions and assumptions the other players bring to the table. Keep in mind that until you announce something, your own plans are subject to change. For example, if you originally intended the owner of a tavern to be kindly and well-intentioned, but a player misreads her and invents an interesting conspiracy theory regarding her intentions that sounds fun, you might convert the tavern owner into an agent of evil after all.

You’ll also determine when PCs and foes need to attempt checks, as well as the consequences of those rolls. This comes up most often outside of encounters, as encounters are more regimented about when checks happen and how they are resolved. In an encounter, a player can usually determine their own character’s turn, with you chiming in only to say whether an attack hits or if something in the environment requires a character to attempt a check.

The Spotlight

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As you run the game, keep track of who has the spotlight. It can be easy to keep attention on the most outgoing player or character, but you need to check in with all the players. If a player hasn’t contributed in some time, stop and ask, “What’s your character doing at this point?” If the player’s not sure, add a detail or nonplayer character to the scene that the player might find interesting.

Distractions and Interrupting

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Maintaining the players’ attention keeps a game moving and leads to memorable moments when everyone’s in the same zone. Too many interruptions break the flow. This is fine in moderation. Distractions become a problem if they’re too frequent, as they cause people to miss things and make misinformed decisions as the session becomes disconnected. Yet every game includes breaks—sometimes intentional, sometimes not—and digressions. Finding the right balance of diversions for your group is essential.

A game is a social gathering, so there’s definitely a place for conversation that’s not directly related to playing the game. These interruptions become a problem if they’re too frequent, or if people are talking over others. If a player repeatedly interrupts you or other people or undercuts every crucial moment of the game with a joke, talk to them about limiting their comments to appropriate times. Often, all you need to do is hold up your hand or otherwise indicate that the player is talking out of turn to delay them until after you or another speaker finishes talking.

Phones and other mobile devices are another major source of distraction. Banning them entirely is often impractical—many players use apps to roll dice or manage their character sheets, or they need to answer texts from their partner, check in on a work project, or otherwise stay connected with people who rely on them. However, you can set ground rules against using a device for anything that’s not time-sensitive or game-related, such as refreshing social media, checking the score of a hockey game, playing a mobile game, or answering a non-urgent text. You can relax these rules for players when their characters are “offstage.” If a player’s character isn’t in a scene, that might be a good time for the player to use a mobile device.

Adjudicating the Rules

Source Core Rulebook pg. 491 4.0
As the GM, you are responsible for solving any rules disputes. Remember that keeping your game moving is more important than being 100% correct. Looking up rules at the table can slow the game down, so in many cases it's better to make your best guess rather than scour the book for the exact rule. (It can be instructive to look those rules up during a break or after the session, though!) To make calls on the fly, use the following guidelines, which are the same principles the game rules are based on. You might want to keep printouts of these guidelines and the DC guidelines for quick reference.
  • If you don't know how long a quick task takes, go with 1 action, or 2 actions if a character shouldn't be able to perform it three times per round.
  • If you're not sure what action a task uses, look for the most similar basic action. If you don't find one, make up an undefined action and add any necessary traits (usually attack, concentrate, manipulate, or move).
  • When two sides are opposed, have one roll against the other's DC. Don't have both sides roll (initiative is the exception to this rule). The character who rolls is usually the one acting (except in the case of saving throws).
  • If an effect raises or lowers chances of success, grant a +1 circumstance bonus or a –1 circumstance penalty.
  • If you're not sure how difficult a significant challenge should be, use the DC for the party's level.
  • If you're making up an effect, creatures should be incapacitated or killed on only a critical success (or for a saving throw, on a critical failure).
  • If you don't know what check to use, pick the most appropriate skill. If no other skill applies to a check to Recall Knowledge, use an appropriate Lore skill (usually at an untrained proficiency rank).
  • Use the characters' daily preparations as the time to reset anything that lasts roughly a day.
  • When a character accomplishes something noteworthy that doesn't have rules for XP, award them XP for an accomplishment (10 to 30 XP).
  • When the PCs fail at a task, look for a way they might fail forward, meaning the story moves forward with a negative consequence rather than the failure halting progress entirely.

Special Circumstances

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The player characters in your group will at times attempt tasks that should be easier or harder than the rules or adventure would otherwise lead you to expect, such as a PC Gathering Information in their hometown. In these cases, you can just apply a circumstance bonus or penalty. Usually, this is +1 or –1 for a minor but significant circumstance, but you can adjust this bonus or penalty to +2 or –2 for a major circumstance. The maximum bonus or penalty, +4 or –4, should apply only if someone has an overwhelming advantage or is trying something extremely unlikely but not quite impossible.

You can also add traits to actions. Let’s say that during a fight, Seelah dips her sword into a brazier of hot coals before swinging it at an enemy with a weakness to fire. You could add the fire trait to this attack. A PC getting an advantage in this way should usually have to use an action to do so, so Seelah would get the benefit for one attack, but to do it again she’d need to bury her sword in the coals once more.

Incorporating Additional Options

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You might grant players access to additional rule or character options. If you feel confident that allowing a character to take a particular option will be a good addition to your game, then go for it! If you’re uncertain or worried about a request, you don’t have to allow it, and it’s your call to make. However, try to meet players halfway or suggest alternatives. If you want to allow an option on a trial basis but are worried it might become a problem later, talk to the player beforehand and explain that you are tentatively allowing the option, but might change your mind later, after you see how the option can be used during play.

Pathfinder Society

Source Core Rulebook pg. 492 4.0
Organized play campaigns allow you to play in and run games all over the world with persistent characters. If you want to play Pathfinder this way, you can do so through the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild! Once you go online to PathfinderSociety.club to make an account, you can organize games yourself with your friends or join an existing event.

Pathfinder Society primarily uses 4- to 5-hour adventures called scenarios. At the start of a session when you’re running a scenario, you’ll collect your players’ information. At the end of the adventure, you’ll record the rewards their characters earn for completing the scenario, all of which are detailed in the adventure. Once you report the session’s results online, the rewards become a persistent part of these characters, even if they play in other games with other groups. These scenarios include important choices, and you can report what your group chose—decisions that will guide the future of the campaign!