AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Anyone else picked up Edge of the Empire? I snagged the Beginner Box on Black Friday, seems interesting. Little complicated maybe, but once I start actually going through the rules I don't think it'll end up being that bad....

My grippli druid was knighted by the Queen of Mendev and accepted into the Fifth Crusade against the Worldwound (hole in reality where demons are pouring out of).

The attending generals cried out: "Hail Fen! The Tiniest Crusader!"

Totally taking that as my epithet for the rest of the campaign.

A friend of mine got me the Pathfinder beginner DM box thing for Christmas and we've successfully run a Scrooge holiday themed run, but I'm looking for advice on how to actually DM, specifically how to decide NPC actions (mainly in combat) and how to properly nudge the party towards the goal
Also how do you keep track of what all these things MEAN

Incoming longpost is long.



There's not enough room here to go on and on about it, but the key for NPC actions in combat is: don't be afraid to play enemies as smart as they are. Animals are going to rush into melee, maybe use minimal pack tactics. Orcs are militaristic and might know several battlefield tactics like flanking, but ultimately default to their innate strengths, which are... Strength, as in brute force. But the evil wizard? Int 18 is like genius level. That guy is going to have contingency plans. What to do to fight melee guys. How to fight other mages. Figuring out who the healer is, and targeting that guy. A smart enemy with plans is a challenging enemy, and a more memorable encounter overall.

Playing enemies in ways that match their intelligence makes fights more interesting. If every enemy just runs in close to melee your party, then your party will adapt tactics that only cover that situation in battle. If you're afraid they won't react/know how to react properly to a situation you're setting up later, give them a small scale version first. Like, if you think they aren't ready to face the long-range wizard, give them a fight against a low-level elf sniper up in a tree. If they struggle, they'll learn from it and hopefully adapt. If they ace it, then they're fine.

As for nudging toward goals, most players are keen enough to understand the DM's hints that "the story is over this way." If not, just make everything Schrodinger's plot. If the dungeon you planned is in a castle, and the party wants to explore the woods, surprise: they just found an abandoned castle in the woods. If you do this all the time, players might become dissatisfied, but using this tactic as you're learning how to DM is fine.



If you mean game terms, then it's nice to have a player or two who knows the game and can help you adjudicate as you play. Most people are nice enough to want to help out (and not be jerks about it, either). If neither you nor your players know the terms, you can learn them all together. The DM has more responsibility to know the rules basics but not so much that everyone else can't help out.

Here is a good resource for learning some of the game terms: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/basics-ability-scores/glossary

That makes sense, I'll keep that in mind thanks

Any day I get to cause the party's annoying Lawful Anal Monk to have a near breakdown over something he inadvertently did is a good day.

Long story short, we got jumped by some robbers and proceeded to wipe them out. One of them got caught in between three of us and the DM ruled our attacks happened at the same time. So the wolf missed, my mech froze him, and the Nightmare (a flaming steed) the monk was riding kicked the partially-frozen man so he pretty much exploded away from us in a blast of icy gore.

I proceeded to have my Hexblade congratulate the monk on the glorious finishing move and praise him for the artistic spray pattern.

Well, it happened.

I finally had a group encounter a Deck of Many Things.

Two out of five people drew the wish card.

One of them was me, so no complaints here, but the rogue wished for at-will invisibility. So we have that now.

Mine was getting my druid the ability to wild shape into dragons.

One time I had a deck of many things I was like a level 19 wizard so I had 27 INT so I pulled a few cards and one of them was the card that boosts your INT by 3 but then I pulled the one that decreases your best stat by 4

man I just watched a couple of battle reports now I want to get back into 40k

I haven't played 40k for awhile but I'm really just waiting for the Ork update

come on gw give us some more dakka

Right now I"m working with a friend to make a BPRD campaign
half way through he decided to make it steam punk
:I


I'm also playing around with making a campaign take place during the stone age. That would be kinda' fun!

Started finally getting into DnD
Im a Level 14 Human Druid sorcer with a pet Fleshreiker named Steve.
It's wonderful.

I did end up joining int he middle of the campaign, but the DM was cool with is considering we lost our cleric.

All of our campaigns (Pathfinder, and some 3.5 stuff we did beforehand) are all tied together into a single timeline.
By tied-together, I mean forcefully patched together by me out of boredom Zelda-timeline style.

My most recent character died in a stupid way at level 1. I really want to use her again, and it's pretty easy to do at lv1.
I did the 'math' and realized that whatever campaign I use her in would result in a split timeline.
SO IT BEGINS.

I've been having steady weekly meet-ups with one of my coworkers (call 'im D) and a bunch of his friends (plus one of my roomies occassionally) for the past three weeks. So far we've played standard Settlers of Catan, "Everyone is John", and Betrayal at House on the Hill. I was SO STOKED to play House on the Hill; I'd seen Wheaton and Co. play it on Tabletop a few months back and been yearnin' to play it ever since, and a friend of my coworker ended up having it, so she brought it with her tonight. It was such a blast. The game went by pretty quickly too - about two hours, which is a little longer than average for that game but several of us had never played before.

We also fill the nights with Magic when we're waiting for others to arrive and/or are done for the night with games. One of my other coworkers (Z) that joins us is begging to do a Pathfinder campaign, but idk. Coworker D thinks that our manager is purposely giving us all Tuesday nights off together, because every single week we've all coincidentally had that day off and it's no secret that we've been trying to arrange these nights, but even so, I don't know how well a continuous campaign would go. I've also personally been having way more fun with board games than with RPGs - my RPG experiences have been kind of lackluster. On the one hand I've always had stuff that's gotten interrupted, and I'm not used to verbally RPing so I can be really awkward and stunted, on the otherrrrr hand more experience is never bad and maybe it'll work out??

We'll see, I suppose.

I'm hyper excited, over the summer I'm going to be running a 3.5 campaign with Scoot and our friends. A lot of it is going to be based off of the rules in Sandstorm because deserts are cool.