GMing Style Choices

Before you run your first session, there are a number of decisions you need to make regarding the nature of your game. Is your table a serious roleplaying experience, with players staying in character at all times? Is it an immersive experience with painted miniatures, three-dimensional terrain, soundtracks, and mood lighting? Is it a zany get-together with friends, where half the fun is the in-game banter? Or is it some combination of those, or perhaps something else altogether? There’s no best answer, but such decisions have a vast impact on the experience you and your players have. Noted here are a few of the more common decisions a GM needs to make when running a game.

Miniatures vs. Freeform: The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game presumes you’re playing with miniatures and using a gridded mat to keep track of character locations during combat. This isn’t the only method, though—you can also try charting things out on graph paper or drawing it on a white board, or utilize paper minis and combat tokens that can be printed out and discarded as needed. Yet you may decide that focusing on where everybody is and how far they can move in a round ruins the cinematic drama that you wish to create. In this case, you might prefer a more freeform style of play, where the GM keeps track of the action in his head, players describe the actions they wish to take, and the GM adjudicates the results. In this type of game, many rules take a backseat to flavorful flourishes and cinematic descriptions from both players and GM.

In Character vs. Out of Character: Do your players need to remain in character during the game, or can they speak as themselves, strategizing and giving advice to other players? Some GMs allow the latter only if there’s a mechanism for determining when someone’s in character (see page 15), while others allow a casual blurring of the lines.

GM Tracking vs. Players Tracking: There’s a large amount of information to keep track of during a game. The Pathfinder RPG rules imply that this work should be split, with the players keeping track of their characters, hit points, abilities, ongoing effects, and so forth, and GMs tracking the same information for the NPCs. Yet some GMs prefer to keep everything a secret from their players, tracking even their experience points, hit points, spell durations, and other information, only giving the players vague, lifelike information—such as telling them that they feel weak from blood loss rather than how many hit points they have left. While this can help enhance both the game’s mystery and its sense of danger, the sheer amount of bookkeeping required on the part of the GM makes it easy for such games to bog down and overwhelm the GM. Taking Back Mistakes: Almost every game session, a player does something they didn’t mean to do, whether it’s stepping on the wrong square or forgetting to add a bonus that means the difference between success and failure. Some GMs have a rule that once it’s left your mouth or you’ve moved your miniature on the mat, you’re committed, even if the end result isn’t what you would have normally done. Other GMs allow players to retroactively add bonuses to rolls, or take back poorly planned spells and other mistakes, letting them make the best moves possible for their character. This is a difficult balance— too much leeway and there’s no risk, but being too strict can ruin the fun for your players. Remember, though, that the standard used for your players should apply to you as well, and such “rewind” moments can be anything from a misplaced miniature to letting a clue slip out too early.