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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

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

Rules Index | GM Screen | Player's Guide
GM Core

Introduction

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The focus of every Pathfinder game is the player characters—they’re the stars of the show and appear in every scene that plays out in-game. But what about those scenes? What stories are being told? What old legends are being discovered, and what new ones are being forged? Who are the villains, the allies, the traitors, the lovers, the monsters, and the gods? Who runs the world? When you’re the Game Master, that’s all up to you!

The Game Master

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In Pathfinder, the Game Master (often abbreviated as GM) is the player in charge of the story and the world the other players are exploring. When you're the GM, you take on the rewarding role 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 (NPCs) and other forces in the world as the players do unexpected things.
  • Making rules decisions to ensure fairness and keep the game moving forward.

Though the word “master” is in the GM's title, it's not a role that requires—or even benefits from—absolutism. Pathfinder is a collaborative experience, and while your role as the Game Master is one of adjudicator or moderator, it doesn't mean you control everything at the table, especially not the players and their characters. Nor does the role require mastery, either of the rules or the setting. You'll need to understand the game, but you don't need to have every rule memorized. When everyone shares the goal of having fun and telling a story together, the details will fall into place.

How to Use This Book

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GM Core is one of the central rule books for Pathfinder, and it provides guidance on building and running whatever fantastic stories you wish to tell. The book also gives information on the Age of Lost Omens—the setting of Pathfinder—as well as rules variants and tools you can use to customize the game. Lastly, the book contains the magical items and other treasure that you can place throughout your adventure to reward your PCs for their victories. Tips and advice for running a smooth game are included as well!

Pathfinder as a game is all about customization, and this book provides you as the Game Master ways to customize your game just as a player customizes their character. The toolbox nature of GM Core makes it easy to select whatever parts you need for the game you're running at any time, especially in the Building Games and Subsystems chapters. As with any toolbox, you won't need to use everything at once!

Choosing Your Tools

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No two Game Masters are the same. Perhaps you’re a veteran GM who’s looking for new ways to tailor your game to suit your interests and those of your players. Or perhaps you’re a brand-new GM looking for guidance to feel comfortable leading a game of your own. Maybe you’ve been a GM for years, but this is your first time running a Pathfinder game. No matter where you are as a Game Master, this book is a valuable tool that can help you tell the stories you want to tell with your players.

I’m a New Game Master

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You’ll find a wealth of information to help you feel confident in running your games. Chapter 1: Running Games can help you better understand how to run a game in different modes of play, set DCs, give out rewards, adjudicate the rules quickly and fairly, and adapt when special circumstances or problems crop up at your table. This chapter also contains advice on using and determining rarity in your game, working with your players to create a collaborative story, and adapting your game to meet the needs of the players at your table.

I’m Running a Published Adventure

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You’ll find guidance in Chapter 1 specifically for running published adventures, and most of the advice in that chapter about running a game applies to published adventures. The information in Chapter 3 gives you a primer on the Age of Lost Omens setting, introducing the world and its nations, peoples, and history that you’ll find featured in Pathfinder’s published stories. A number of adventures—especially scenarios in the Pathfinder Society Organized Play program and Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes—use the subsystems in Chapter 4. The Victory Points subsystem is the most fundamental of these, but many adventures also use the other subsystems found there for things like vehicles, chases, and influence.

Remember the First Rule

The first rule of Pathfinder is that this game is yours. The rest of the rules exist for you to use to tell the stories you want to tell and share exciting adventures with your friends. There are plenty of rules in this book, but none of them override that first rule. Take the rules that help you make the game you want, change those that don't do quite what you need them to, and leave the ones that aren't helping. It's your game. There's no right or wrong way to GM so long as everyone is having fun—and that includes you!

Campaigns, Adventures, and Encounters

The rules and advice in this book frequently refer to three main structures of a game. A campaign is your group's game as a whole, a serialized story consisting of one or more adventures. Each adventure tells a single story arc with a beginning, middle, and end; it includes many interactions, challenges, and encounters. An encounter is a single showdown or contest between the player characters and their foes or other nonplayer characters.

Paizo's Published Adventures

You can purchase the following types of adventures at paizo.com, your local game store, or many bookstores. 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 Organized Play program; 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.

I’m Making My Own Adventure

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If you are looking to create your own Pathfinder adventures, Chapter 2 provides you design guidance ranging from the broad strokes of building an entire campaign, to individual adventures, to the particular considerations of any given encounter. This chapter also provides a toolbox you can use to build the creatures, hazards, items, and other elements you want to use in your adventures.

If you plan to set your adventures in a world of your own design, the world-building section of Chapter 2 can guide that process and help you establish the details you'll need to ensure your setting is a vibrant backdrop for fantastic stories. You can also use the information on nations, settlements, and planes in Chapter 3 to detail those parts of your world.

I Need Items!

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New and experienced GMs alike will find the treasures in Chapter 5 of great interest, whether you're looking up what a reward in a published Pathfinder adventure might be or searching for just the right piece of magical gear to give your players after a quest. Persistent items like magical weapons and armor can serve as longstanding parts of a player's kit, and consumable items like potions or talismans can inject fun one-off effects into your party. Lastly, the chapter contains highly narrative items that can play a role in campaigns all on their own, from artifacts and cursed items to powerful relics that grow alongside your players.

In many campaigns, you can let players freely peruse this chapter to find items they like. This is especially true when players craft magic items or have broad access to magic item shops in Absalom or a similar location.