Some groups prefer to have everyone create their characters in advance and show up ready to play. However, getting the group together to make characters can be fun, and can benefit your game down the line. A session for building characters is commonly called “session zero.” Session zero is typically shorter than other game sessions, so you might plan a short introductory scene for after everyone’s finished building their characters, or just hang out and do something else after you’ve planned your characters.

Having a session zero lets players share character details, making it easier for their characters to have links and relationships with one another before the adventure starts, and gives players the chance to become invested in each other’s characters by organically learning what decisions other players made. These sessions also give veterans the chance to help less experienced players through character creation. Lastly, session zero can give you a better understanding of the characters and help the players integrate them into the adventure in interesting ways.

Chapter 10 of the Core Rulebook explains how to structure, start, and run a game session. This is all part of pacing your game. Most sessions should have lulls in the action punctuated by challenges such as intense encounters, puzzle-based exploration, and investigation. Presenting players with a variety of such obstacles can help them feel more engaged at the table. Information flow matters, too. If the group meets a large number of NPCs in short order, that can make it harder for them to remember individuals. It helps to break things up into smaller scenes and memorable moments.

Knowing when to end a session takes practice. About 20 minutes before a play session is scheduled to conclude, it can be beneficial to figure out how you’d like to end. It can be memorable to end with a cliffhanger—a moment so curious and abrupt it raises questions about what happens next. Examples include ending play before combat, when the PCs find vital information, or as they discover treasure. Doing so can inspire the PCs to discuss the game between sessions. Note anything that could be satisfying to resolve over media, such as email. This could include divvying up treasure, leveling up, or completing downtime tasks.

A GM should always convey a clear picture of the stakes and consequences of the PCs’ actions or inaction. What horrible things will happen if the PCs fail? What can they achieve if they go beyond what’s expected of them? A well-constructed adventure conveys the stakes at the outset, but it’s also important to remind the players of those stakes throughout play. The Core Rulebook summarizes the scale of the stakes for each mode of play, and these are varied on purpose. A game where the stakes are extremely high all the time cuts out the opportunity for low-key scenes, and can be overwhelming or even monotonous. In most games, players enjoy having some scenes where their characters can relax and socialize with low stakes as well.

Consequences should be specific and evocative. Don’t just tell the players what happened after their characters’ success or failure; let their characters witness it in the world. Are they greeted as heroes by townsfolk? Does the bastion of evil crack and shudder, falling apart as the PCs escape? Does a failure lead to the death of an ally and a somber funeral? It’s usually best if the PCs can foresee the consequences, at least in a general sense. If a villain demonstrates their intention to conquer a city, and the PCs don’t stop them, then the city gets conquered. It’s OK if you have an idea for an interesting subversion occasionally, but keep those to a minimum or the chain of cause and effect will become too muddy.

You can emphasize consequences by awarding PCs accomplishment XP. It serves as a good reminder to the players, reinforcing their success.

As a GM, you often make things up on the fly. You can find tips for improvising rules on page 491 of the Core Rulebook and within the Adjudicating Rules section of this book. When an issue seems to pertains to the story instead of the rules, ask yourself the following questions.

• Does something already established in our story so far tell me what should happen here?
• If an NPC is involved, what would their personality lead them to do?
• What does the player expect to happen?
• What would best fit the themes of our story?

You might not have a good answer for every question, but asking them can inspire useful solutions. If what you need to invent is significant in the storyline or world, there’s nothing wrong with asking the group to take a little break while you fill in the gap. If it’s not particularly significant and you can’t come up with anything more compelling, it’s also okay to say, “Nothing happens,” and move on.

Often, a player will ask, “What happens when I do that?” This is a good indicator that the player expects that what they’ve done will draw a reaction from an NPC or the environment. Unless the player is way off base, provide an in-game response, even if it’s minor. The player has telegraphed what matters to them, and the perceived importance of their action can draw them into the game.

During play, you roll some checks in secret instead of allowing the player to do so, as explained in the Secret Checks section of the Core Rulebook. This rule helps ensure that a player remains uncertain at times when their character is unsure of how a situation may resolve, immersing the player in their character’s perspective. It can be handy to keep a list of the PCs’ modifiers on hand to help you roll secret checks more quickly. At least, you should record each player’s Perception modifier, their saving throw modifiers (especially Will), and the skill modifiers of any skills they often use to Recall Knowledge. Check in anytime the PCs level up, and consider asking the players to update you when any of these modifiers change.

You can still have the players roll the checks even if an action has the secret trait. This is usually best done when the results are going to be immediate or when stakes are low, like when the PC is trying to recall something during downtime that they’ll see is false through the course of their research. You can instead have the players handle all their rolls, secret or otherwise. This works best when the group is interested in leaning into the dramatic irony of knowing a PC is wrong and playing up their characters’ mistakes.

Page 507 of the Core Rulebook offers guidelines for determining how many Hero Points to award and when to do so. These recommendations are flexible. Consider Hero Points a way to reinforce your personal style of Game Mastering and to reward what you value during play. The toughest part of awarding Hero Points can be remembering to do it! Keeping a Hero Point token on hand in front of you can provide a visual and tactile reminder. You can also solicit help from your players by asking them to remind you when they think a PC’s action merits a Hero Point.

Knowledge the players have that their characters don’t is called “metagame knowledge,” and using it to influence characters’ decisions is called “metagaming.” Some metagaming results naturally from play and is wise to disregard. The wizard aiming a fireball precisely enough to include three enemies in the very edge of the spell’s area is probably unrealistic, but isn’t that disruptive to play. Things get more questionable if the player says, “That’s a rakshasa, so don’t use divine spells against it,” regardless of whether their character has encountered a rakshasa before or identified the creature. Each group is different, and the assumption of what the characters know varies. If metagaming starts to get out of hand, you might just use some gentle reminders, like, “I’m not sure your character’s aware of that,” or, “Can you explain your character’s thinking when they do that?” If the problem persists, see the guidelines mentioned in the Problematic Players section.

Although the PCs are the stars of the game, NPCs make the world around the PCs vibrant. They can become a part of the story, sometimes for years, weaving into the story right alongside the PCs. Portray NPCs however it works for you. Some GMs keep it simple, describing the NPCs simply by their looks, or their hook (see below). Others go into more detail, using accents, mannerisms, or acting.

Because NPCs have smaller roles than PCs, imparting enough information to convey their identities while they interact with the party can be challenging. When you create an NPC, start by integrating a single “hook” into their concept: a widowed merchant, a refugee from a distant realm, or a child who constantly asks awkward questions. Each hints at a backstory but is easily described in a synopsis. If the NPC continues to interact with the party, you can then add to their backstory later.

Encounters should move quickly, giving the PCs just enough time to savor successes and lament failures. This requires effort from everyone, but you can make it easier by running creatures and NPCs efficiently. First off, don’t worry too much about little mistakes you make when running encounters. If you forgot to apply a creature’s special bonus or didn’t take an action that would have prevented the creature from taking damage, it’s not a big deal. Keep an eye on what you emphasize during the adventure, as well. Be quick when describing a normal attack, but spend a little more time on a critical hit or a big spell. This all boils down to significance. It’s fine to slow down the game for something important, but it’s best to move briskly through anything less important. As you run the game, you’ll quickly develop a sense for what’s significant and what’s not.

The rules for rolling initiative can be found on page 468 of the Core Rulebook, and the GM guidelines on 498. Below you’ll find specifics on how to run certain types of initiative or deal with problems. These are guidelines, and you might prefer to execute initiative in a different way at your table.

When do you ask players to roll initiative? In most cases, it’s pretty simple: you call for the roll as soon as one participant intends to attack (or issue a challenge, draw a weapon, cast a preparatory spell, start a social encounter such as a debate, or otherwise begin to use an action that their foes can’t help but notice). A player will tell you if their character intends to start a conflict, and you’ll determine when the actions of NPCs and other creatures initiate combat. Occasionally, two sides might stumble across one another. In this case, there’s not much time to decide, but you should still ask if anyone intends to attack. If the PCs and NPCs alike just want to talk or negotiate, there is no reason to roll initiative only to drop out of combat immediately!

This section covers a few ground rules for how to best respond to PC tactics, when to apply ad hoc bonuses and penalties, and when to use certain tactics for NPCs. When PCs put effort into getting advantages against their foes, there should be some payoff provided their tactics make sense in the narrative. Ad hoc bonuses and penalties give you some mechanical tools to emphasize that. Also keep in mind that you can change the flow of the story to respond to tactics as well. Changing an enemy’s behavior can be a more satisfying consequence than just getting a bonus. When you’re determining whether to grant a special bonus that’s not defined in the rules, including when a player asks you whether they get a bonus for doing something, ask yourself the following questions.

• Is this the result of an interesting, surprising, or novel strategy by the character?
• Did this take effort or smart thinking to set up?
• Is this easy to replicate in pretty much every battle?

If you answered yes to any of the first two, it’s more likely you should assign a bonus—typically a +1 or +2 circumstance bonus. However, if you answered yes to the third, you probably shouldn’t unless you really do want to see that tactic used over and over again. Try to use ad hoc bonuses a little more often than ad hoc penalties. If you do think a penalty might be appropriate, ask yourself the following.

• Does the environment or terrain create any applicable disadvantages for the character?
• Should the character have expected this would be more difficult based on what they already knew?
• Was this circumstance caused by a bad decision on the part of the one taking the penalty?
• Is this negative circumstance easy to replicate in pretty much every battle?

Once again, answering yes to most of these questions means it is more likely you should apply a penalty, and answering yes to the final question means it less likely you should do so.

Some of the basic actions of the game require you to interpret how a rule should apply. Here, you’ll find advice the types of rules calls that can occur frequently. For rules decisions that are either/or (such as whether a creature can Aid or Take Cover), a PC can usually determine before they take the action whether doing so is viable; if it isn’t viable for some reason, alert them that it won’t work before they spend time, actions or resources trying. There are some exceptions, especially if the reason an action wouldn’t work is something a character wouldn’t know. For example, if a character tries to Take Cover behind a wall, not realizing it’s illusory, you shouldn’t reveal the deception prematurely.

A grid and miniatures can make it easier to visualize combat for players and give a visual centerpiece for the players to focus on. Some advice for drawing maps appears on pages 52–53. A setup can range from a basic grid with some hasty marker lines and coins for miniatures to a full-color Flip- Mat with official prepainted minis or cardboard pawns, all the way to a set of 3-D dungeon terrain and hand-painted minis for each character. Many online tabletops have preset maps, token packs, and built-in functions for movement and line of sight. All these are fun to play on! Your setup should match your time commitment, budget, and the aesthetics you want.

You can also bring the setting alive by describing sensory details like sounds, smells, temperature, and 3-D elements that aren’t represented on your map. Including the echoing ring of a sword striking a shield, an errant ray of frost freezing solid an apple in a bowl of fruit on the table, and the like makes the game feel more alive.

Placing miniatures on a grid can make it feel like you need to be exacting with the rules, but there’s still room for improvisation! You might give another 5 feet of movement to someone running downhill if it will make their turn more dramatic. You’re empowered to give players minor boosts that fit the story you want to tell, and to fill in nuances of the location beyond the elements covered in the Core Rulebook.

The Core Rulebook covers the essential rules for mounted, aerial, and aquatic combat on page 478, but more complex battles can require specialized rules.

What do you do when an encounter ends up being far more or less challenging than you anticipated? If the encounter is unlikely to kill all the characters, it might be best to roll with it, unless the fight is so frustrating that no one really wants to continue it. If it is likely to kill everyone, strongly consider ways to end the encounter differently. The villain might offer the PCs the chance to surrender, consider their task complete and leave, or use their advantage to get something else they want. If the worst does happen, suggestions for dealing with a total party kill can be found on page 30.

If a battle is too easy, it’s often best to let the players enjoy their dominance. However, if you intended this to be a centerpiece battle, that might feel anticlimactic. Look for ways the enemy might escape or bring in reinforcements, but the PCs’ success should still matter. Make sure the PCs feel the enemy’s desperation—possibly have the enemy sacrifice something important to them to secure their escape.

In both these cases, consider whether the discrepancy from your expectations is due to luck. One side benefiting from extreme luck is to be expected from time to time. However, if the challenge comes down to a factor you had control over as a GM—like unfavorable terrain making things hard for the PCs or a monster with an overpowered ability—it’s more likely you should make adjustments.

Sometimes you’ll want to run a social conflict in encounter mode. The basic guidelines on how to do so appear on page 494 of the Core Rulebook, and this section expands on them with additional advice and examples. Social encounters still require opposition—typically an adversary arguing against you, but sometimes institutional opposition or strongly held beliefs. It’s important to note that some NPCs are much more adept at certain types of social encounters than at combat. You can find guidelines on creating such NPCs, and some examples in the NPC Gallery chapter. The Core Rulebook suggests a few means of measuring success and progress in social encounters. If you want something more detailed, look at Victory Points, or the more specific rules for Influence.

As noted in the Core Rulebook, social encounters don’t usually use 6-second rounds. The time scale you use can be flexible. Usually, you’ll want a participant to go on just long enough to make one salient point and attempt one check before moving to the next character in the initiative order. Be flexible and encouraging as you run a social encounter, and don’t worry about nitty-gritty details like character movement except in extreme cases. Allow the PCs to share information about as freely as the players can around the table. If one character is watching the opponent for signs they’re lying, assume they can easily convey that to other characters subtly. It’s good to remind players of things their characters might know or be likely to notice even if the players, in the moment, don’t have them in mind. Describe NPCs’ mental states and ask for clarification about the PCs’ attitudes when needed. The following list describes various types of social encounters that PCs may find themselves in.

• Besting a rival bard in a battle of wits
• Brokering peace between warring groups
• Convincing a dragon not to eat the party
• Convincing a monarch to defend against an invasion
• Disproving a rival’s scientific theories before an alchemists’ guild assembly
• Ending a tense standoff
• Exposing a slippery villain’s deception before a court of nobles
• Getting a desperate criminal to free a hostage
• Persuading a clan to trust their ancient rivals
• Petitioning for admittance to a magical academy
• Proving someone’s innocence in front of a judge
• Securing a major contract over a rival
• Quelling an angry mob
• Swaying a fallen priest to return to the faith
• Tricking a charlatan into contradicting their past lies
• Turning a leader against their corrupted advisor
• Turning a low-ranking cultists against their leader
• Urging a lawmaker to grant clemency or a stay of execution
• Wining a debate about a contentious topic

As the PCs explore, convey their surroundings by appealing to the players’ senses. This sets the scene, gives them a better sense of their environment, and can be used to foreshadow what they might find ahead. When determining which details to cover, think about what’s familiar versus novel. A new dungeon might have similar architecture to previous ones but feature ancient structures that set it apart. You can use the PCs’ familiarity as a tool to single out what’s new. When preparing for a game, imagine yourself in the environment and jot down a few notes about what you would sense. Conveying these details keeps the players on the same page about what they sense, even if each character responds to it differently.

Keep in mind that the more you explain something, the more important it seems. This is valuable for you to drive interest, but can also be a mixed blessing, since describing something inconsequential to set the mood can lead players off on a tangent. Sometimes, the best solution is to find a way to make that unimportant thing as important as the players think it is!

As noted in the Core Rulebook, you rarely measure exploration down to the second or minute. If someone asks how long something takes, the nearest 10-minute increment typically does the job. (For long voyages, the nearest hour might be more appropriate.) You convey the passage of time through your descriptions, but not just by addressing it outright. In a roleplaying game, information and time are linked. Time will seem to slow down the more detail you give. Think cinematically! A long voyage through a series of tunnels works well as a montage, whereas progress searching a statue for traps could be a relayed as a series of distressing details in quick succession, and would feel more tense due to that precision.

With that in mind, when is it best to speed up or slow down the passage of game time? Usually, you’ll slow down and give more description when you’re establishing something or progressing the story. When the PCs enter a dungeon or a new area, describe how it feels, slowing down to give the players a sense of what’s ahead. When a PC stops to do something important or makes a key decision, and slowing down gives that moment its desired weight. You can also adjust the flow of time to reflect PCs’ mental states. As a PC returns home after decades away, you might pause to ask the player what their PC is feeling, matching time to the rush of memories and emotions filling that PC’s thoughts.

As described starting on page 479 of the Core Rulebook, PCs will undertake exploration activities while they explore. The purpose of these activities within the game is to clarify what a PC focuses on as they explore rather than being able to unrealistically do all things simultaneously. This adds variety within the group’s behavior and can show you where players want the story to go. For example, a player whose PC is Investigating carvings on the walls shows you that the player wants those to be informative.

Exploration activities that happen continually as the group explores are meant to be narrative first and foremost, with the player describing to you what they’re doing, and then you determining which an activity applies, plus any details or alterations for the situation. If a player says, “I’m Avoiding Notice,” add more detail by asking what precautions they’re taking or by telling them which passages they think are least guarded. Likewise, if a player says they’re looking for traps and keeping their shield raised and covering the group’s tracks, ask them which is most important to narrow down the activity. Consider the advantages and disadvantages of an activity given current circumstances. For instance, someone Scouting might encounter thin ice and fall through before their group can reach them, or someone Investigating ancient hieroglyphs might critically fail and lead the party in the wrong direction. This does not apply for exploration activities that are discrete and occur when the group is taking a pause or zooming in on a particular action, such as Treat Wounds. Characters can always drop out of a continual exploration activity to perform a discrete one (even if they are fatigued and can’t sustain an exploration activity as they travel), and they can change activities at any time. The Core Rulebook covers how to adjudicate specific activities—Detect Magic, Follow the Expert, Investigate, and Search.

It can help you to think of exploration as a series of scenes, with encounters not just breaking up exploration, but functioning as subsections within it. Many of these are based on geography, for example, with exploring a series of dungeon corridors as one scene and entering the dungeon’s great hall another. Other times, you’ll break out of a scene at a point of interest. If the PCs decide to stop their travels and investigate a statue, think of that as a new scene.

This gives you a good point to describe the transition between scenes. Describe what was happening to reinforce where the group was, then describe what they now face to show the change. For example, “You’ve been making your way through this long hallway, but after a moment of debate, you stop, your footsteps and voices still echoing down the hall. The stone statue before you is seven feet high, adorned with rubies. It represents... maybe a god? Its face is damaged and broken. What do you do?”

When playing out a scene, your initial description should set the expectation of what level of detail the scene might go into, with you and the players adjusting as needed as you play. Also, it can be useful to go from PC to PC to avoid everybody talking at once. Start with someone who instigated the scene change, if possible, or perhaps the PC using the most relevant exploration activity, like a PC Investigating artwork or Searching for secrets in the example above.

When PCs are exploring the wilderness or twisting dungeon corridors, they might get lost. This is most likely if they fail to Sense their Direction using Survival but can also happen based on the story, such as if they drop out of a portal in some strange land or come up from an underground passageway into a forest. Playing through the process of wandering in the wilderness and trying to find their way can be fun for a party, provided it’s a fairly short interval. If a party is lost at the start of a session, they should usually have found their way and reached a significant destination by the end.

The Sense Direction activity uses Survival to find north. You can combine this with Recalling Knowledge about the area—typically using Nature or Society—for the PCs to get their initial bearings. The DCs for these checks are normally trained or expert if the group is still fairly close to settlements or established nations but might be higher in deep wilderness. As the PCs try to find their way, think of ways to include notable landmarks they can seek out or stumble upon. Some of these might be useful, such as a great tree off in the distance they can climb to get a better vantage point or a mountain slope where multiple plumes of smoke billow up, indicating a settlement. Others might be mysterious or dangerous, such as haunted glades or animal hunting grounds. When the PCs first look around or scout, pick two or three landmarks to point out. Let the group decide on their course from there.

If the trek takes multiple days, you can move through each day pretty quickly. You might need to have the group Subsist if they run out of food, and you might want to include some encounters if they’re in a dangerous area. For these encounters, choose creatures that live in that type of environment. Remember that not all creatures attack on sight. Friendly or cautious creatures might approach, resulting in more interactive scenes that might even help the PCs.

If the PCs get unlucky or are just awful at Survival, you might end up stuck with no way for them to reorient themselves. In these cases, have someone come to them! They might get captured by local humanoids or monsters or stumble upon a dangerous location. They’ve figured out where they are, even if it’s not where they wanted to be!

Page 499 of the Core Rulebook covers the mechanics of how surprise attacks occur while PCs rest. Such surprise attacks should be used sparingly, even in dangerous areas. The fact that PCs are in a group scares away most animals and setting a watch can deter even more attackers. Surprise attacks are most likely if the PCs did something in advance that would lead to the ambush. For instance, they might be ambushed by bandits if they were flaunting their wealth or showing off expensive items earlier in the session, or they might be counterattacked by enemies if they attack the enemies first, only to retreat to rest. If the PCs set up camp hastily and decide not to set a watch, they might be in trouble if they’re attacked. This should happen only in cases of extreme sloppiness, since if you take advantage of minor lapses, you might end up with a group that repeatedly spends an inordinate amount of time describing all their camping preparation to keep it from happening again. It’s usually better to ask the PCs if they’re setting up watches, rather than assume that their silence on the issue means they aren’t.

Determine how involved your group wants downtime to be at the start of the game. If your players vary greatly in preference, you might need to find a middle ground, or some way to give the players least interested in downtime something they would find compelling. You can adjust downtime depth as the game goes along, and you might find it becomes more important to the players as their connection to the setting grows stronger.

Pay attention to the amount of real-world time you spend in downtime and the level of detail. Downtime should rarely last a whole session. Usually, a half hour between significant adventures is about right, and 15 minutes for shorter lulls in the action, such as when PCs return to a town briefly in the middle of an adventure. You can extend this as needed for more detailed roleplaying scenes.

For the level of detail, it’s important to give more than just an overview, but often the basics will do. “A fleet of merchant ships arrives in the port, and an officer puts you to work unloading cargo” might do for using Sailing Lore to Earn Income, and “Your shipment of iron arrives late, but you’re able to complete the armor” could be enough for Crafting. Go deeper if the player sets out to do something specific or asks questions you think have potential for an interesting story, but be careful with too much detail, as you run the risk of boring most of the table with minutiae.

Downtime’s more satisfying when the PCs work toward long-term goals rather than perform disconnected tasks. You can ask players what their PCs’ goals are, and also look for storylines they’re interested in that you can use as seeds for long-term goals. Long-term goals might include running a business, creating a guild, establishing an arcane school, returning a despoiled land to its natural splendor, reforming local politics, or rebuilding a ruin. Goals involving organizations are a good opportunity to use the leadership subsystem. If players don’t have clear ideas for their goals, look at their backgrounds, NPCs they know, and things they’ve expressed interest in during adventures to develop some suggestions. Remember that you’re not trying to get them to accept your exact suggestions, but to pick a goal they really like.

Long-term goals should shape the game, and reinforcing their progress is key. Show changes, good and bad, that result from the PCs’ efforts, both in downtime and on their adventures if applicable. This doesn’t have to be subtle! You can directly say, “You’ve been trying to get the magistrate to allow you to buy this plot of land, but the fact that you entered the wizard’s tower illegally seems to have soured him toward you.”

Think ahead in stages. For instance, if a PC wants to run a business, you might have them...

• Start with a simple stand to sell their wares.
• Show they’re drawing big crowds and need to expand.
• Build a storefront.
• Open to modest success.
• Get a small but loyal following.
• Hire employees to keep up with demand.
• Deal with supply issues or competition.
• Get enough interest in a nearby settlement that they might want to expand their business.

And so on. You can deliver each of these details through a little vignette. For example, if you use the second bullet point, you might describe the throng of people crowded around the PCs’ stand, and say they sold out of goods before half the people were served. Downtime goals are a great way to weave the PCs’ agency into the story.

The game leaves it up to you to determine what items the PCs can and can’t purchase, and the final market Price for them. Settlements the size of a town or bigger typically have at least one vendor for basic, common gear, and even magic and alchemical items of 1st level. Beyond that, it all depends on how much you want to allow the players to determine their abilities and how much verisimilitude you want in your game. You can set the specifics where you need, but let’s look at three possibilities.

PCs can buy what they want where they want. You gloss over the details of markets. PCs can sell whatever they want for half the Price and buy any item to which they have access at full Price. This approach is focused on expediency over verisimilitude and is likely to reduce the number of unusual or distinctive items the PCs have, as many players seek out the ones that most directly support their characters’ strengths. This still means there’s a limit on purchasing uncommon or rarer items, but you could even do away with rarity if your group wants, or add a surcharge instead (depending on your group’s play style, that could be anywhere from 10% to 100% for uncommon items, and 25% to 500% if you also want to open up all rare items).

PCs can buy what they want but must put in additional effort. If they want to sell or buy items, PCs must be in a location where the markets can support that. They can usually sell a single item for half its Price, but the Price for something already plentiful on the market could drop lower, typically to 25% or 10%, or be refused entirely if there’s a glut. Buying an item usually costs the full Price; buying higher-level items (or uncommon items if they’re available at all) requires seeking out a special vendor or NPC and can take extra time, representing a real investment by the PCs. They might be unable to find the item at all even after their time investment, based on the settlement’s parameters. This approach allows PCs to determine some of their items, but forces them to really work to get more powerful items and discourages looting every enemy to sell off fairly ordinary armor. This can be the most work for you but can make the world feel diverse and complex.

Magical markets are rare or nonexistent. PCs get what they find in adventures and can Craft their own items, if you allow them to get formulas in some way. If you have magical marketplaces at all, their selections are small. They sell items at full Price and have difficulty attaining the funds to buy more items. They might purchase items for half of the Price but are far more selective about what they take. If you use this approach, PCs are far more likely to use strange items they find but might be dissatisfied or even underpowered depending on what items you give them. Even in this style of game, you might want to allow them to get weapons and armor with fundamental runes fairly easily, or make sure you award those on a regular basis.

Players will often look to you for tasks they might take on during downtime, especially if they’re looking to Earn Income. You should also interject special events to surprise your players and add interesting scenes. If you need some quick ideas for tasks characters might offer a PC, look at the tables below for inspiration. The Earn Income tasks are arranged with tasks appropriate for low-level PCs first, but most can be adapted to the level you need. For the events, you might need to “zoom out” to focus on a special scene or even a short encounter or adventure.

Table 1-1: Earn Income Tasks

Academia, Library, Other Educational Lore

Work at a school or library

Compile information on a distant land for an expedition

Serve as administrator for a school or library

Acquire a rare book on dragons for a local noble

Crafting

Make tools for local farmers

Brew a crate of healing potions for a local church or hospital

Sew a dress for a noble’s debutante ball

Supply magical weapons for the palace guard corps

Engineering Lore

Assess the fortifications built to protect a town

Plan the mechanism for a drawbridge

Create schematics for a new mill

Food or Drink Lore

Brew simple ale or cook an ordinary dish for the local inn

Identify a dozen bottles of wine

Create a showpiece dish for an upcoming festival

Create a nine-course meal for a noble banquet

Genealogy Lore

Compile a family tree for a minor noble family

Determine next of kin to settle an inheritance dispute

Map the web of intermarriages of a sprawling royal family

Determine the lineages of an ancient civilization

Trace the lost heir of an ancient empire

Guild Lore

Recruit initiates for a guild

Identify symbols of an ancient guild in a tome

Consult on rearranging a guild’s hierarchy

Oversee the merger of two guilds or one guild splitting into two

Herbalism Lore

Supply poultices to a physician

Prepare herbs for a small restaurant

Identify the poisonous plant eaten by a local lord

Legal Lore

Clear some minor red tape

Defend someone charged with theft

Bring a corrupt noble to justice through the legal system

Find loopholes in a contract made with a devil

Mercantile Lore

Price a crate of imported textiles

Find the best trade route for a pirate crew to raid

Set exchange rates for a trade consortium

Mining Lore

Work a shift in a coal mine

Determine where a raw ingot was mined

Prospect to find a site for a new mine

Performance

Busk for townsfolk at a street fair

Play in the orchestra at an opera

Attend a society figure’s salon

Perform for visiting nobles

Impress a visiting maestro to bring glory to your hometown

Put on a performance for a patron from another plane

Politics Lore

Lobby for a vote or decision to go a certain way

Smear a noble to lower their station

Sailing Lore

Crew a ship on a short voyage

Render a ship in dry-dock seaworthy

Pilot a ship through monster-infested waters

Underworld Lore

Find out where a stolen item ended up

Get someone an audience with the head of a thieves’ guild

Smuggle a shipment of valuables out of the city

Warfare Lore

Teach a spear fighting class at a dojo

Instruct an officer in various military stratagems

Advise a general in planning a battlefield offensive

Table 1-2: Downtime Events

Craft or Earn Income (Crafting)

A shipment of important materials is delayed, and the PC must find out why.

The PC creates a superlative work, which draws the attention of a collector or museum.

The PC discovers a more efficient technique to work a material and must decide to share it or keep it secret.

Create a Forgery (Society)

The format for paperwork the PC is attempting to mimic gets changed, and they must adjust.

The paperwork is spoiled by a freak accident, such as a leaky roof above the workshop or a clumsy assistant knocking over beakers of chemicals.

A mysterious benefactor provides the PC with special tools or a source document they didn’t have, but suggests they’ll ask for a favor later to reciprocate.

Earn Income (General)

A fussy client demands multiple rounds of changes throughout the process.

An accident at a work site puts someone in danger.

Something the PC is working on becomes a fad or hit— demand skyrockets!

A visitor is impressed with the PC’s work and offers them a more lucrative task in a distant location.

Conditions on the job site are abysmal, and other workers ask the PC to join them in confronting the bosses.

The bosses or guildmasters are doing something illegal and attempt to bribe the PC to look the other way.

The PC returns to their work one day to find someone has tampered with what they’ve done.

Earn Income (Performance)

Due to the performance’s success, more shows are added, running the PC ragged.

A competing show across town draws away customers.

A powerful noble finances a special performance but demands some changes to the contents.

One of the PC’s fellow performers doesn’t show up, but the show must go on!

Subsist (Survival)

Over a long time subsisting in a single area, the PC finds an unknown berry or herb that could be useful for making a new medicine.

The PC finds signs indicating some large creature has been foraging as well—possibly a monster.

Buy and Sell Items

The PC sells an item of interest to members of a particular group, who pursue the PC.

A merchant sells the PC a fraudulent item.

A shop the PCs frequent is in trouble and about to go out of business without help.

Someone else offers a higher bid for an item a PC wants, resulting in a negotiation or in the NPC offering a job the PC must perform to claim the item.

Retrain

The PC sustains an injury in physical training.

Tapping into new magical powers inflicts a magical curse or creates an odd phenomenon.

A retraining instructor falls ill or goes missing.

Someone witnesses the PC retraining and asks to join them as they study or practice.

The PC’s training comes to a halt, and they need to acquire a rare book or something similar to continue.

While the amount of money the PCs can earn during short periods of downtime is significantly less than the value of the loot they gain adventuring, it can still serve as a satisfying bonus. The PCs might use their money to outfit themselves better, donate it toward a good cause, or pool it together to save for a major purchase. If you find that a PC tends to forget about their money or save it up more cautiously than they really need to, offer them rewarding opportunities to spend it. For instance, they might be approached to contribute to a charity in desperate need or sponsor an artist looking for a patron.

The downtime system includes a guide for calculating the cost of living, using the values found in the Core Rulebook. Tracking cost of living is usually best reserved for months or years of downtime since that’s when someone might earn a substantial amount of money from downtime activities and find that costs really add up. You can usually ignore it if there are only a few days of downtime, though if a PC is roleplaying a fine or extravagant lifestyle, you might charge them during even short periods of downtime to reinforce the story they’re telling.

The rules and suggestions for retraining are covered thoroughly in the Core Rulebook. Your primary responsibility here is to determine the time, instruction, and costs of retraining, as well as adjusting details to align cohesively with the story and world. Consider what effort each PC puts forth as they retrain, so you can describe how they feel their abilities change. What kind of research and practice do they do? If they have a teacher, what advice does that teacher give?

You can run a campaign without retraining if you want the PCs to be more bound by their decisions or are running a game without downtime. However, if your campaign doesn’t use downtime rules but a player really regrets a decision made while building or leveling up their character, you might make an exception for them.

These are the most important things to keep in mind.

• Remember the basics of the rules.
• Be consistent with your past rulings.
• Don’t worry if you don’t have a specific rule memorized; it’s OK to look it up!
• Listen to concise opinions from the other players.
• Make a call and get on with play.
• Review your decision after the session is over, if necessary.

Some of the most memorable moments come from situations that inherently call for a rules interpretation, like when a player wants to do something creative using the environment. The variety of these situations is limited only by the imagination of your players. It’s usually better to say “yes” than “no,” within reason. For example, imagine a player wants to do something borderline nonsensical like grabbing a spider and squeezing it to force it to use its web attack. But what about a player who wants to use a fire spell to deliberately ignite a barrel of oil? Surely that should have some effect!

This is where you can use a variant of the well-known improv “Yes, and,” technique: you can say “Yes, but.” With “Yes, but,” you allow the player’s creative idea, but tie it into the world and the game rules via some sort of additional consequences, potentially adding the uncertainty of an additional roll.

Here are some simple ways you might implement this tool. Almost all of these require an action or are part of another action.

• Get a fleeting benefit without a roll. Example: dip a sword into a burning brazier to add 1 fire damage on the next attack against a troll.
• Require a check, then apply a circumstance bonus to the PC’s action. Example: swing from a chandelier above a foe.
• Require a check, then apply a circumstance penalty or condition to a foe. Example: throw a barrel over a monster’s head.
• Require an attack roll or skill check to deal minor damage and gain another benefit. Examples: jump from a higher elevation down onto a foe for a small amount of damage, potentially knocking the foe prone; throw sand in an opponent’s eyes.
• Require a directed attack against an object, then allow foes to attempt saving throws against the object’s effect at a DC you choose. Example: cast a produce flame spell at a barrel of explosives.

Another powerful tool you can use to help you say “Yes, but” when you’re unsure of the game impact is to allow the idea to work just this once, letting your players know that this is part of your decision. For instance, maybe you think a PCs attempt to Grapple a spider to aim its web attack at another foe is so fun you have to let them do it, but you’re worried that the effect would be so powerful that the PCs would just carry around a spider to shoot webs for the rest of the campaign. By making it a one-time effect, you can have fun but don’t have to worry about whether you’re setting a disruptive precedent for later on.

You and your players will inevitably come across a rule you disagree with, or that runs counter to the theme of your game. You might even decide to add a specific rule to an area not covered by the written rules. Collectively, these rulings, changes, and additions are known as house rules. It’s a good idea to record them in a place where the group can easily access and refer to them, and where a potential new player could find them. Such record-keeping is a great thing to delegate to a player!

The best rule of thumb in these situations is to be slow to change the written rules and quick to revert a problematic ruling or house rule. The simple reason for this is that sticking to the written rules is the easiest way to remain fair and consistent. However, the more you learn your group’s play style, the more often you’ll find times where you and your group feel it’s correct to institute a house rule of some sort. You might take a look at Chapter 4: Variant Rules to get started!

Perhaps the most feared of any outcome of a gaming session, a total party kill (TPK) can spell the end of an adventure or campaign. In a TPK, every member of the party dies. Think in advance about how comfortable you are with TPKs and discuss them with the other players. This can provide valuable insights into not only how you should handle one but also the implied level of lethality the players expect.

TPKs are rarely unavoidable. Usually it becomes evident at some point during the session, whether to everyone or only to you, that disaster looms. What the players do with this insight is up to them, but you have more control and can take steps to avoid the TPK. For example, perhaps the PCs’ foe gets distracted by something, an ally arrives to help the heroes, or the villain captures them instead of slaying them outright. The simplest path is to just allow a clear escape route the PCs can take—perhaps with a few characters still falling along the way. It’s not entirely your responsibility to defuse the TPK, but offering such opportunities gives players more say in their characters’ fates.

Should a TPK occur anyway, the kind of game you’re running should influence your approach to the situation. For example, in a campaign centered around dungeon crawling, a TPK is less of a problem—the players simply form a new adventuring party and take up where the dead ones left off. If you are running a story-intensive game in which each PC has a personal stake in defeating the villain, saving the town, or the like, a TPK could demolish multiple plot threads. Here, you might use the story you have in place, having the NPCs take up arms to find or avenge the slain group—or raise them from the dead.

Note that the game should continue only if the players want it to. The premature end of an adventure or campaign isn’t always a bad thing. If the group is interested in moving on, there’s nothing wrong with ending the campaign and starting something different.

Most players who cause problems do so unintentionally— perhaps bringing out-of-game issues and stresses to the table. You shouldn’t immediately jump on every instance of problematic play—everyone has a bad night on occasion. However, if someone disrupts the game on an ongoing basis, you owe it to all the players to deal with the problem. If you don’t, bad feelings, grudges, and even ruined friendships could result.

Handling a problematic player requires tact: making demands in front of the rest of the group is rarely the best way to resolve the problem. Attempt to handle the problem privately away from the game, or call a break to have a private conversation if the situation is really urgent. As with all emotionally charged conversations, email, text messages and the like can lose the subtlety of speech—it’s better to meet the player face to face, if possible. Here are some problematic behaviors that often come up and might require you to intervene.

• Obsessing over the letter of the rules.
• Constantly “helping” other players make the optimal choice on their turn.
• Making their character the center of attention, without allowing space for other players.

Other behaviors are unacceptable and must be dealt with firmly and decisively. These can be severe enough to pause the game in progress. Such actions speak to a deeper problem and require more drastic action to solve.

• Repeatedly arguing with decisions made by other players or the GM.
• Ignoring other players’ opinions.
• Deliberately derailing the adventure’s plot.
• Being deliberately rude or cruel to other players— especially if it’s on the basis of their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, political or religious affiliation, the color of their skin, or the like.

You might end up with one PC who outshines everyone else. Perhaps the player is a rules expert with a powerful character, other players are less experienced or more focused on the story of their characters, or there’s just a rules combination or item that’s stronger than you expected. In any case, this imbalance might mean you have other players who feel ineffective, or the overpowered character’s player becomes bored because they aren’t challenged during gameplay.

Talk to the player between sessions, and make it clear that no one at the table is to blame in this situation. Most players have no problem making some concessions for the happiness of the group. If the problem results from rules options, offer an easy way to retrain. If the imbalance resulted from an item, come up with a way that item might need to be lost or sacrificed, but in a satisfying way that furthers the narrative.

If you meet resistance from the player, listen to their counterpoints. If you’re still convinced they need to change, you might need to be more firm.

It’s worth stating that players might still have fun, or even enjoy an instance of power imbalance. You don’t have to do anything to address it unless it limits fun at your table.

Coming up with ideas for a campaign can sometimes feel overwhelming. This is where your players come in handy! You can solicit direct feedback from them and implement their ideas into the game. This style of narrative control preserve your authority over the game while giving players the chance to incorporate elements into the game you know they want to see. It doesn’t venture beyond the traditional structure of a fantasy roleplaying game.

Plan for a few checkpoints throughout the campaign where you touch base with your players to get their ideas. The most crucial comes at the start of the game. It’s best to take this step before you even set to work on crafting the world or plot, so that player input can define what’s important in the game world. Later, checkpoints can coincide with major story milestones. For example, if the players set off across the sea, you might ask where they want their voyage to end and what sites, if any, they’d like to explore along the way.

You might have players develop the stories of some of the regions or NPCs, while your contributions serve as the glue that makes it all work together. This breaks somewhat with traditional RPG structures, in that you might not be the expert on all areas of the setting and plot.

Your collaboration will depend on the interests of you and the other players. Maybe one draws a city map, another makes the stats and personality for an NPC, another controls some monsters in combat, and a fourth doesn’t want to do anything beyond playing their character. There’s a trade-off here, because while you’ll be off-loading some of your work, you’ll also need to ensure consistency across these multiple sources of ideas. It can really help to keep a log of which player is in charge of each part of your setting. If you expect one of a player’s specialties to appear in an upcoming session, let them know ahead of time so they can prepare or discuss their ideas in advance with you.

So what if you want to go all the way and completely break down the walls between the GM and other players? What if you want to preside over a game in which anyone can speak for any of the NPCs, and when someone tries to determine what’s down the next hallway, it’s just as likely to come from another player as from you? Now we’re talking about decentralized storytelling, the least traditional approach we’ll cover here.

In this approach, one of your biggest jobs is asking questions or giving prompts. “When you open the door, what’s beyond?” “How does the king react to Lem’s taunt?” You can direct your questions to individual players, leave them open to all, and put forth your own suggestions.

This approach works best when players are comfortable with one another and willing to both take responsibility in building the story and accept that some of their ideas will go unused. It’s well suited for shorter campaigns, or ones in which players take turns in the GM’s seat.

The largest risk of putting narrative control in multiple people’s hands is losing a cohesive story. When multiple people have conflicting ideas about the tone of the game or particulars of the setting, you can end up with something that doesn’t satisfy anyone. One of your tasks as GM is to recap events to clarify and reinforce the shared narrative.

Shared narrative control also complicates planning ahead. The group might need to improvise an encounter, take a break while you (and maybe other players) prep to go in a new direction, or even revise their plans. It helps to limit yourself to creatures that you can quickly find stats for in a Bestiary volume or in the NPC Gallery of this book to avoid spending hours of work on creatures you won’t use.

Also, don’t lose sight of your own enjoyment! You shouldn’t sacrifice how much fun you have for others.

If you prefer, you can give players a number of Story Points at the start of each session (typically 2 or 3). They can cash these in to determine what happens next in the story. Having a currency like this means you can keep your steady hand on the tiller while allowing other players to interject when it’s important to them. For most groups, a Story Point should allow the player to suggest a plot twist that can be resolved quickly, or to establish a relevant fact or NPC attitude. It can’t determine the outcome of an entire scene or vastly alter the reality of the setting.

The Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign is a thriving, worldwide organization of players and GMs. While most home campaigns provide long-running stories with a consistent group, Pathfinder Society provides adventures designed to be completed in a single game session, so that players can continue their characters’ stories whenever and wherever works best for them. To allow this flexibility while maintaining a fair experience, the Pathfinder Society campaign handles some tasks that are normally in the GM’s purview, such as selecting which rules options are available to PCs. Pathfinder Society GMs are expected to stay true to the adventure as it is written but are encouraged to allow players to apply creative solutions to the situations they face. For example, PCs may be able to use illusions, bribery, or social skills to bypass a challenge that is presented in the scenario as a combat encounter. You can decide for yourself which alternative solutions seem reasonable based on the context of the adventure, consulting the Difficulty Classes section on page 503 of the Core Rulebook to set appropriate DCs for challenges. For more about playing, running, and organizing games for Pathfinder Society Organized Play, visit PathfinderSociety.club.

The standard group size for Pathfinder assumes four players and a GM. Page 489 of the Core Rulebook gives instructions for how to adjust for other group sizes, but additional changes may be helpful.

Sometimes, making your game accessible and fun for everyone at the table requires making some adjustments to your typical GMing style or setup. The first step is open communication so you can learn what the players need, what accommodations would be helpful, and what type of assistance players do and don’t want to receive.

Let’s first review the default usage for the four rarities in the game and how these already start to tell a story about your world.

• Common elements are prevalent enough, at least among adventurers, that a player is assumed to be able to access them provided they meet the prerequisites (if any).
• Uncommon elements are difficult to access, but a PC can usually find them eventually with enough effort, potentially by choosing a specific character option or spending substantial downtime tracking them down.
• Rare elements are lost secrets, ancient magic, and other options that PCs can access only if you specifically make them available.
• Unique elements are one of a kind. You have full control over whether PCs can access them. Named NPCs are unique creatures, though that doesn’t mean their base creature type is unique. For instance, an orc named Graytusk is unique, but that doesn’t mean it would be any harder for a PC encountering her to tell she’s an orc—just to discern specific information about her.

Just because something is common or uncommon in one context doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the same in others. This is specifically true when comparing the commonality of a creature and an ancestry. For instance, while hobgoblins are a relatively common monster for adventurers to encounter and are a common creature, in most settings they are still far less prevalent than humans or elves and would be an uncommon ancestry.

Because uncommon elements are available in certain circumstances, it often varies by locale, even within the same setting. For instance, a katana is uncommon in the Core Rulebook and in the Inner Sea region of Golarion, but in Asian fantasy–inspired Tian Xia, a katana would be common and some western weapons might be uncommon. Similarly, in an elven kingdom, uncommon elven weapons like the elven curve blade might be common.

Elements like ancestries, backgrounds, classes, and heritages that a character must select at character creation can still be uncommon or rare. Obviously, there’s no opportunity for the character to search for them during play, but these rarities still indicate the prevalence of adventurers with those elements in the world. You can decide to allow them on a case-by-case basis depending on the campaign and the story your group wants to tell. For instance, a game set in the lizardfolk empire of Droon might have lizardfolk (normally uncommon) as a common ancestry while the typical common ancestries are less common. An official player’s guide for a Pathfinder Adventure Path might have uncommon backgrounds that you can access by playing the Adventure Path.

You might craft a quest involving an uncommon or rare subject. For instance, players might encounter a door that requires a rare spell to open, and need to travel to an academy to learn it. If a player has their heart set on an option that’s not common, look for ways to build a story in which their character acquires that option.

With the rarities at your fingertips, you and your group can start building a unique world using rarity as a tool. Imagine a world where one or more of the core classes are rare. Maybe the gods rarely answer the call of the faithful and a PC cleric is one of the only clerics in the world. Perhaps sorcerers are rare and feared by wizards’ guilds, which have a stranglehold on spell access. For a grittier feel, you could make abilities that can remove afflictions uncommon or rare. You could even create a low‑magic setting where all magic and magic items are uncommon or rare.

You can add, remove, or alter Access entries to fit your world. For instance, if in your world the goddess of death guards the secrets of resurrection, you might add an Access entry to raise dead and resurrection for characters who worship that goddess.

These are just a few ideas to help get you started. The number of ways you can vary rarities to adjust your setting, story, and game are nearly unlimited.

When building your campaign, you can use these structures as a starting point. The Adventure Design section explains various styles of adventures on pages 41–43 that, after creating your basic campaign structure, can be used to inspire the creation of the adventures in your campaign.

In a campaign that includes multiple adventures, a smooth transition from one adventure to the next ties the story together. You might use NPCs who could appear in both adventures, a treasure or clue found in one adventure that becomes important in a later one, or even fallout from one adventure that causes the next adventure to take place. Related locations can help, too. Adventures that take place in neighboring regions, or both in the same region, have an inherent link. If they take place in two different places, you’ll need a reason the PCs should travel between the two, and you can use this journey as a short, interstitial adventure.

Ask what you and the other players enjoy and would like to see in the game. You can use these ideas as touchstones to build off of. When you get into the campaign itself, the PCs’ goals come to the forefront. Find out what each character wants to achieve and look for opportunities you can place in the game world and adventures. Consider which part of the game most closely ties to each goal. A PC who wants to build an institution will need money and interpersonal connections, so you can use treasure and NPC interactions to give them the resources they need. For a character whose purpose is to help people in danger, build some encounters that include people who need to be rescued.

Look for good times to recap the state of a character’s goals and remind the player how their character has progressed, particularly when something changes in relation to their goals. The Long-Term Goals section gives you more details on how you can use goals in downtime.

As the group moves through the campaign, the events of their adventures and downtime should change the world around them. Show this through the responses the characters get from other people, the scenery they see around them, and their environment. You might be able to anticipate some changes, but most will come up in play and require you to make adjustments later on.

Consider including villains who can appear multiple times over the course of several adventures. They don’t necessarily need to be masterminds. Imagine an unscrupulous mercenary who works for major villain after major villain. When you create a recurring villain, it’s best not to make them too integral to the story, since the PCs might take them down earlier than you expect! Have some contingency plans in place.

The advice about Portraying NPCs applies especially to these recurring villains. As they reappear throughout the campaign, they should change in some of the same ways PCs do. Think about how previous run-ins with the PCs have shaped the recurring villain’s emotions and plans. Which PC do they have the biggest grudge against and why? Do they bear scars from previous battles? Have they developed a countermeasure against a PC’s spells or tactics?

The Core Rulebook explains (Rewards) three types of concrete rewards covered by the rules: Hero Points, Experience Points, and treasure. Experience Points and treasure are the bedrock of progress in a campaign, since attaining a higher level and acquiring magic items let PCs take on more challenging adventures.

Before your first session begins, communicate back and forth with the players about the following details to make sure you’ve planned your campaign to fit their preferences, then recap and communicate your final decisions.

• Establish the expected schedule and generally how long you expect the campaign to last. It’s okay if you don’t know the total length for sure, but you should still give an estimate.
• Inform the players when and where the first session will take place, what they should prepare in advance, and what materials to bring. If you’re running a session zero to create characters first, let them know. You might also need to tell them whether to bring food, drinks, and other supplies beyond what they’ll use for the game itself.
• Let the players know any restrictions or extra options for character building. Even if you plan to run a session zero, give them a heads-up before the session starts.
• Tell the players where in the game world the first session will take place.
• Give the players a basic idea of the genre or theme.

A campaign might have a well-planned, emotionally resonant ending that executes perfectly, or the group might die in a ridiculous fashion at the worst time possible. It’s important that the ending follow the story, wherever it has gone, even if it doesn’t match the idea you had in your head at the start. Check in with your group, especially when you’re getting close to the end of each adventure, to see how long they want the campaign to go on. Check in with yourself, too, and express your opinion to the other players. Ideally, you know at least a session in advance that the end is coming, allowing you to prepare for a thrilling conclusion. You might plan for the final session’s gameplay to be a bit shorter—possibly just one big showdown—to allow time for an epilogue and for the group to reminisce and decompress at the end.

An epilogue can make the end of a campaign more fulfilling. First, let the group finish out their roleplaying in the final moments of the adventure until they’re content. Then tell the group the results of what they accomplished in broad terms, with concrete details of what happens to certain places or allied NPCs. Ask the players what their characters do after the adventure. You might want to narrate a few short scenes, such as a PC tracking down an escaped villain and bringing them to justice. When your epilogue is done, thank everyone for playing. If the campaign ended in success for the PCs, give yourselves a round of applause. A victorious ending warrants celebration!

One of your most important and rewarding tasks is getting to know your players and what makes them tick, then implementing plot hooks that speak to their motivations. If your players all like similar things (maybe they all like epic storylines, or all prefer tactical combat), your job will be a bit easier. But for most groups there’s a mix, and you’ll want to put in a detailed NPC who appeals to one player’s love of social scenes, a powerful villain to engage a player who loves stories of winning against overwhelming odds, and exotic animals that attract a player who’s into having animal friends. If you’re not sure what your players enjoy, ask them in advance what they’d like to see in the game!

Considering player motivations doesn’t mean assuming you know what the players or their characters will do! It can be risky to expect PCs to react in certain ways or take certain paths. Knowing their motivations gives you a way to put in elements you expect will appeal to your players, but their decisions will still take the adventure in unexpected directions. The important thing is getting the players engaged, not predicting the future.

You can give players variety through the types of challenges the group faces (combat, social, problem-solving, and so on), the locations they explore, the NPCs they meet, the monsters they face, and the treasure they acquire. Even if you’re building an enclosed dungeon, you don’t want to place a combat in every room, or exploration will quickly become stale.

Think in terms of sessions. If your group gets through five scenes per session, how do you make one game session feel different from another? Maybe two of the scenes in each are fairly basic combat encounters, but if you make the other scenes significantly different, or even if you set the encounters in different environments, the sessions won’t feel repetitive. Also think about the tools used to solve each situation. Maybe one requires complex negotiations, another brute force, and a third sneaking about. Aim to give everybody something compelling, and ideally targeted at their motivations. This translates to mechanical details, too. Inching across a balance beam requires different skills than rebuilding a broken key.

Think about the emotional and thematic touchstones you want to hit during play. Good games elicit strong emotions, and planning for them can give an emotional arc to an adventure in addition to the narrative arc. Consider what you want players to feel as they play. Is it triumph? Dread? Sadness? Optimism? None of these will be the only emotions to come out, but they will inform how you build the settings and NPCs. Adventure Recipes gives steps to effectively implement theme and feeling.

These procedures help you build an adventure skeleton or outline. You'll then go through and flesh out the details of the adventure, including adversaries and locations. As you play, you'll keep adjusting to fit the events of the game. Anything you haven't already introduced can be changed as needed. Just like with any recipe, you're meant to adjust the details to fit your group's preferences. You might stray far from your starting point, and that's OK! These recipes use six steps. You might want to look ahead to your future steps and make choices out of order based on what's most important for you to convey. The catch-all term “opposition” refers to the various adversaries and obstacles the PCs will face. The opposition should be thematically consistent, but not necessarily monolithic. It might contain multiple individuals or groups, who might not get along with one another.

• Styles: The overall vibe of your game, such as a gritty game, dungeon crawl, or high adventure. These frameworks offer guidelines for the number of sessions and types of encounters that work best.
• Threats: Thematic dangers to incorporate into your game, and ways to evoke them as you play. The style and threat are the core parts of your recipe.
• Motivations: Determine more specifically what the opposition's goals and motivations are.
• Story Arcs: This section gives you guidance on how to construct story arcs that will play out over your adventure and maybe beyond.
• NPCs and Organizations: The characters and factions you include should fit the theme.
• Mechanics: Your last step is adding in the individual creatures, hazards, treasure, and so on.

Variety in encounters is essential to let players try new tactics and give different PCs chances to shine as they face foes with weak points they're uniquely suited to exploiting. Consider the following forms of encounter variety.

• Theme: Look for ways to include varied creatures and locations. Even if the PCs delve into a dungeon inhabited by drow, they should encounter other creatures, too! All creatures should have a justification for fitting in, but no place needs to be uniform.
• Difficulty: A string of moderate-threat encounters can feel flat. Use low- and even trivial-threat encounters to give PCs chances to really dominate, and severe-threat encounters for especially powerful enemies. Extreme-threat encounters should be used sparingly, for enemies who match the threat posed by the PCs and have a solid chance of beating them!
• Complexity: Use high complexity judiciously, saving it for important or memorable fights.
• Encounter Composition: The number of creatures per encounter and their levels should vary. Higher-level single enemies, squads of enemies, and large numbers of lackeys all feel different.
• Setup: Not all encounters should start and end the same way. PCs might sneak up on unprepared enemies, get ambushed by foes hunting them, enter into a formal duel, or find a diplomatic overture fails and turns into a fight. On the other side, enemies might all be taken out, retreat, beg for mercy, or even shift the encounter to a chase or other phase.
• Information: Uncertainty can increase the tension and sense of danger the players feel. Ambushes, fights against unknown foes or foes behind battlements, and other scenarios can create this basic uncertainty.

Choose compelling settings for your encounters. When encounters take place in a building or lair, the most significant environmental features originate from the occupants, both past and present. Think about their tastes, biology, or wealth. These features could be natural, such as the sickening reek of decay in the lair of a great predator. They could also be alchemical, such as a cloud of poisonous gas, or magical, such as a strange electric current that arcs through the walls and occasionally leaps out at passersby.

In some cases, you’ll have a location in which an enemy always appears, and you can design your location to suit that specific creature. Other times, an encounter might appear in a variety of places, such as a guard patrol or wandering monster. In these cases, you’ll need several terrain and structure options so there’s something interesting about the environment no matter where the battle takes place.

Every encounter should happen for a reason. Consider a creature’s motivation to fight. Is it defending its lair? Robbing to enrich itself? Following sadistic impulses? Simply being paid to fight? You may realize a creature doesn’t have a compelling motivation, or that the PCs have done something that eliminates the impetus to fight. In that case, the encounter doesn’t need to happen! Your game might be more satisfying if the PCs’ clever actions avoid the fight—provided you award them XP accordingly.

While you can certainly create enjoyable encounters by placing a group of opponents in a square room with little else, you have numerous tools to create encounters that are more interactive and dynamic. These tools can challenge your players to invent new strategies, inspire interesting character decisions, and make your setting richer.

No encounter needs to use all of the elements presented here, and not all encounters need more than one or two. The more complex a dynamic encounter is, the longer it takes to run and the more demanding it is. In general, these tools are perfectly suited for boss encounters, for memorable foes, and as a spice to add throughout your campaign however often works best for you and your players.

The setup for a social encounter tends to be less detailed. For the NPCs involved, you’ll just need statistics for their social skills, Perception, and Will. If you’re making your own, you can find guidelines under Non-Combat Level on page 72. You also need to decide the objective or consequences of the social encounter—what the PCs can achieve and what happens if they fail—and the form of the challenge. It might be a public debate, a private audience with a powerful person, or some kind of contest. Just like with combat encounters, think about the environment, with a particular eye toward the other people around. Is there a crowd the PCs can sway? Are they in an imposing, luxurious throne room or at a city gate? Is the atmosphere oppressive? Hopeful?

You might find the PCs’ goal ends up being quite different from what you initially thought they would be. Fortunately, social encounters can be pretty adaptable. Thinking of their likely objective helps you construct the scene in your mind more easily but shouldn’t limit you.

The basics of social encounters are on Core Rulebook page 494, and page 16 of this book has more advice.

The standard rules count treasure over the course of a level, rather than dividing it up by encounter. If you need to select treasure for a single encounter, such as in a sandbox game, you can use the table below. It takes the treasure budget for each level from Table 10–9 on page 509 of the Core Rulebook and breaks that down per encounter based on the encounter threat, similar to how XP varies by threat. The final column shows extra treasure you should award if you build an entire level this way. Unlike the standard table, this doesn’t include items by item level, as the value doesn’t cleanly break down for most single encounters. It’s recommended you still give out those permanent items, but you’ll need to borrow from other encounters’ treasure to account for their value. Include encounters against creatures without treasure to account for this.

Table 1-3: Treasure by Encounter

Level	Total Treasure per Level	Low	Moderate	Severe	Extreme	Extra Treasure
1	175 gp	13 gp	18 gp	26 gp	35 gp	35 gp
2	300 gp	23 gp	30 gp	45 gp	60 gp	60 gp
3	500 gp	38 gp	50 gp	75 gp	100 gp	100 gp
4	850 gp	65 gp	85 gp	130 gp	170 gp	170 gp
5	1,350 gp	100 gp	135 gp	200 gp	270 gp	270 gp
6	2,000 gp	150 gp	200 gp	300 gp	400 gp	400 gp
7	2,900 gp	220 gp	290 gp	440 gp	580 gp	580 gp
8	4,000 gp	300 gp	400 gp	600 gp	800 gp	800 gp
9	5,700 gp	430 gp	570 gp	860 gp	1,140 gp	1,140 gp
10	8,000 gp	600 gp	800 gp	1,200 gp	1,600 gp	1,600 gp
11	11,500 gp	865 gp	1,150 gp	1,725 gp	2,300 gp	2,300 gp
12	16,500 gp	1,250 gp	1,650 gp	2,475 gp	3,300 gp	3,300 gp
13	25,000 gp	1,875 gp	2,500 gp	3,750 gp	5,000 gp	5,000 gp
14	36,500 gp	2,750 gp	3,650 gp	5,500 gp	7,300 gp	7,300 gp
15	54,500 gp	4,100 gp	5,450 gp	8,200 gp	10,900 gp	10,900 gp
16	82,500 gp	6,200 gp	8,250 gp	12,400 gp	16,500 gp	16,500 gp
17	128,000 gp	9,600 gp	12,800 gp	19,200 gp	25,600 gp	25,600 gp
18	208,000 gp	15,600 gp	20,800 gp	31,200 gp	41,600 gp	41,600 gp
19	355,000 gp	26,600 gp	35,500 gp	53,250 gp	71,000 gp	71,000 gp
20	490,000 gp	36,800 gp	49,000 gp	73,500 gp	98,000 gp	98,000 gp

Begin by making a list of the features your adventure site should contain—from geographic features to the types of rooms in a building to the monsters and traps the PC will face—and deciding the map’s scale and orientation. The scale, orientation, and a key for any symbols you use to indicate features will go in the map’s legend.

The scale for your adventure maps is usually the easiest to decide. If the map is meant to be usable for combat on a grid, where 1 inch equals 5 feet, you can assume each square of your graph paper equals 5 feet. If you are mapping a larger area, you could use each square to represent 10 feet or even more.

For the orientation, draw an arrow toward the north, write an “N” above the arrow’s point, and you’re done. The key of the various details your map depicts is less predictable. Once you’ve decided what features your map should include—such as monsters, secret doors, and traps for a dungeon, or settlements and ruins for a regional map—think of a symbol to represent each feature on the map. You can also use the symbols in the sample map.

Now that you have your legend, it’s time to start the map. Grab a pencil and begin sketching your adventure site.

If you’re drawing a dungeon complex, start by detailing the corridors and rooms. If you’re creating an outdoor area, begin with any bodies of water, rivers, and topography. No matter what you are drawing, do so with soft lines so you can easily erase—you might make mistakes, or you might have better ideas later in the process. As your map starts to take shape, start populating it with features matching the symbols you’ve designated in your map key.

Try not to overcomplicate your maps. Keeping your map as simple as possible will make sure important details stand out and aids in the map’s legibility.

When sketching your maps—especially when drawing areas of wilderness or buildings—pull inspiration from the real world. An internet search will turn up reference images that can help when you’re deciding the placement of trees and shapes of canyons and streams, or when you’re replicating ancient, medieval, renaissance, or fantasy architecture. Basing your terrain and buildings on these references will help your creation seem more natural and believable.

When you draw dungeons and similar adventure sites, remember the size of the creatures that live in your complex, and give them enough room to live and move around. In other words, make sure the ancient black dragon fits through the entrance to its lair! Second, avoid empty rooms, and don’t put rooms in just to have them. Each room should have a purpose. Maybe it’s an abandoned purpose, but each time you create a chamber, ask yourself, “Why was this room built?” Lastly, avoid symmetrical or just plain dull structures. Part of the fun of exploring is being surprised by what you find, and needless symmetry and repetitive layouts can ruin that surprise.

The next step is to number the encounter areas. You can then use that numbering system in your encounter notes. If you are designing multiple sites, or many levels of a massive dungeon, consider adding a letter designation before your numbering. The first area of your first site can be A1, while the first area of your next site can be B1, and so on.

With your map sketched and keyed, you can solidify your sketches with either darker pencil strokes or ink. This allows you to preserve your map so you can rerun the adventure or reuse the map for a different adventure. If you’re feeling artistically inspired, you can color your map with colored pencils, marker, or paint.