Introduction

Welcome to the Northern Reaches Gamemaster’s Guide. The intent of this document is to give guidelines and suggestions for creating and running Pathfinder 2e adventures in our shared game-world. While the vast majority of GM duties will remain fairly standard, this campaign is also a unique case for most GMs to collaborate in a shared world and to deal with a rotating cast of different players and player characters. These two factors require that we spend some time discussing how the way we build and run our games need to change in order to maximize the benefit that the shared-world of the Northern Reaches has to offer.

This guide is split up into a few key sections:

• Mechanical Beginner’s Guide: This section gives all of the actual ‘mechanical’ pieces on how to use the software and general games set-up. Experienced NR GMs can skip this, but if you have any questions on getting set-up as a GM before you run a session, this is where you should look. 

• GM Rewards and GMP Perks: This section provides guidance on the GM Perk system used in Northern Reachers. All GMs must read this.

• Player Loot and Rewards Guide: This section provides guidelines on how to set-up rewards for players. All GMs must read this.

• Epic Slot System: This section provides information about the Epic Slot system which can be used to manage the overall power of Epic Items and Features in your games.

• Appendices: These sections are optional and designed to be distinct appendices with advice on how to run the game. The idea is that you can slowly read these sections when you have questions about key areas in how to improve your sessions in the Northern Reaches. You can find them here: Northern Reaches Gamemaster's Guide S4 Appendices
  
  We do heavily recommend reading the ‘Adventure Design in a Shared World and Collaboration’ appendix.

Mechanical Beginner’s Guide - Optional

Getting Set-up

In order to sign up as a GM, you will want to go to the #onboarding-request forum and create a new post. Make sure you tag the post with the "GM" tag to indicate that you would like to run sessions. You can also tag the post with the "Player" tag to request both at the same time if you also intend to play. An Overlord will follow-up with a survey link that you will need to fill out and click all of the relevant links inside to be granted access to manage the KoLC Forge servers that are used to run sessions.

After completion, you should have the following access:

• You will be a GM in Forge. This will give you elevated permissions in the KoLC Forge servers that you can use as a GM in in order to build and run your games. These servers are provided by KoLC and managed to ensure consistent player access, modules, and configuration. 

• You will be granted access to the #gm-chat and #gm-forum channels in Discord. These are GM-only channels that allow you to discuss with your fellow GMs, including planning, getting help, and collaborating on ideas.

Preparing for a Game

See First Sessions in the Northern Reaches Gamemaster's Guide S4 Appendices for tips on the content within your first few sessions. The below is the mechanical aspects only.

In order to prepare for your first game, you have three options:

•  Building within the GM Build Server server in Forge - The benefit here is you can build here at anytime without needing to be scared of other games being run. However, you will need to export everything you design to your actual zone’s forge server before play.

• Building within your zone’s server in Forge - The benefit here is that you will not have to deal with exporting/importing between servers, however you will be restricted in that if another game is being run, you should not be working on prep for your session until it is completed.

• Building within your own instance of Foundry - The benefit here is that you will not have to deal with much lag or load times, and will not have to worry about other people using the Forge server.
  
  If running your own instance of Foundry, you must follow these rules:

  • Your server must be on the same Foundry version as the NR servers

  • Your server must use the same Pathfinder Module version as NR servers

  • It must have the list of required modules detailed at the end of this section that mirror the required list for NR servers, but may have additional modules that would help you run your games

  • You are responsible for all troubleshooting of your server and must make it seamless for the players, such that from a player’s perspective, it is the same amount of work as using the NR servers

If you need help on using the Pathfinder 2e system in Foundry VTT itself, please simply ask for help in #gm-chat, as this guide will assume you are familiar.

There are two available methods for moving any needed items between the forge servers:

• Shared Compendiums - In the Manage Module settings within the ‘Settings’ panel of Forge, you should see a module with the following format: [your forge name] (Shared Compendium). You will need to enable this module on the build server and the target zone server. Once enabled, you can go to the Compendium tab and update your compendiums as needed. Add your objects to these compendiums based on their specified object types (e.g. actors in the actors compendium).

  • If you do not see the module, you can ping @nr-overlords in #gm-chat to request one be set-up for you. Please note to only request this if you plan to use this method, as each these shared compendiums contribute to lag on the Forge servers slightly.

  • Once the objects are loaded, you will have to wait for the server to update. This might take up to 24 hours. If you are in a rush for a game, ping @nr-overlords in #gm-chat and they may be able to force an update as a last resort

  • After your compendium module is enabled on the target zone server, you should see all of the same compendiums with the data uploaded from the GM Build Server that you can then drag and drop into their respective sections to set up ahead of play. It is recommended that you create folders for yourself on the server to drop your files into. Do note that this may break actor data placed in scenes, so you likely will need to replace any actor tokens once they are also loaded onto the sever.

• Import/Export - For any object in Foundry (e.g. an actor), you can right click the object and click ‘Export Data’ which will save the object to a .JSON file which can be uploaded on another server.

  • To import, first create a placeholder object in the section that matches its object type. Then right-click the placeholder object and select 'Import Data'. A window will appear where you can upload the .JSON file that you exported before.

Forge Key

By default, you will only have access to a very small amount of space for any uploads. In order to remedy this, you can go to ‘Configure Settings’ -> ‘The Forge’ on one of the Forge servers.

In the API Secret Key field, paste the key found HERE. If this link does not work for you, you may need to request appropriate permissions from @NR-Overlords in #gm-chat.

Game Signups

After getting setup, you are ready to plan a date and create a signup for your session in the #signups channel. Here you will need to create a post, with the title of your session as the name. The description of the post should have all the information you want players to know before starting the game.

You should consider including the following information:

• Tag the post with the Zone your session will take place in

• Duration

• Desired number of players for the session and the method you'll use to select them if there are too many signups. 

• Active GM Perks

• The amount of Epic Slots you want to allow (for your first session, just use the default of 1 and you can learn the system later)

• The style of play (e.g. a dungeon crawl, a string of fights, a focus on social encounters, a small adventure/site, overland exploration, hexploration, etc.)

• The level of expected danger, difficulty of encounters

• Any other useful information you think people might want to know such as alternative rules that apply to your games such as limitations around healing. You have free reign to apply any alternative rules to your game as desired as long as it is clearly advertised in the sign-up post.

Remember, there is no ‘session 0’ in this style of game, so it helps to ensure the players know all the relevant information they might need to know about your style and the session.

You will then need to create a signup event. We use Sesh Bot to manage signing up for games. See below for instructions on using Sesh Bot.

Sesh Bot

There are two ways to create an event in Sesh Bot:

• Within the thread, use the command '/create'. You can use the syntax there to create the event, or fill out only the required fields. You can then click the settings cog to edit your post further if needed, which will take you to the dashboard for your event.

• Navigate directly to https://sesh.fyi/dashboard/. It will ask you to link your discord account, which you will need to authorize. Afterwards, you can click the 'Knights of Last Call' server, and then 'Create Event'.

Important note: Do not create a separate reaction that is a waitlist or something similar. If you set the maximum number of attendees, sesh bot will automatically handle the waitlist for you.

Running the Session

Before the session, you might want to check with players to see if any of them need characters created in the zone. To create a character, navigate to the Actors tab where you can create a new Player Character actor. Once created, you will need to right-click and "Assign" the Owner role to the player's forge account.

You, as the Gamemaster, have the final say on any unclear rules or rulings during your session. You can direct players to the GM Council after the session if they have any concerns and you are welcome to seek guidance from the GM Council if you have any questions or feel as though you made any errors during the session.

After that, you are ready to run the session! You have a lot of freedom in how to run the session, but please see the rest of this guide for additional tips and tricks. 

After the Session

Make sure the players know what rewards they received for the session, and make sure to record your own rewarded GMP and XP for the session in your #player-log.

After the session, you have to create what we call an ‘AAR’ (After Action Report). This provides critical information to other GMs and the Council on what transpired during the session. To do so, head over to the GM Session Log.

You will need to fill out a new row with the following information:

• Date, session hours, the GM, the zone, and the players. Any columns colored in grey should auto-populate once these details are filled in.

• Select whether it is a "Choice-Driven" session and/or a "Quest Board" session with the available dropdowns.

• In order for a session to qualify as 'Choice-Driven', a session must satisfy all of the following:

• Players need to have agency to make informed choices outside of combat which can impact the session, site, and campaign world at large

• Players need in principle to be able to interact with the world in ways you haven't anticipated or prepared

• Players set their own goals and are allowed to change them during the session as they come across alternative ones

• "Quest Board" sessions are those taken from the #quest-board channel in Discord that have been requested by a player in the Reaches for a session that they would like to have run on topics or themes interesting to them or their characters.

• Summary of the Game. This can be point-form or short, it does not need to be very long. Give a 2-3 sentence description of what happened during the session. You can give a longer summary if you would like, but anything past about 1 sentence every 1-2 hours is not required.

• Impacting Events. Put a maximum of three events that happened that would have large-reaching consequences to other sessions. If nothing happened, you can put nothing here (but see the advice later in this guide if you find yourself leaving it blank every session).

• Deaths & Ailments. Put any long-lasting deaths, curses, or other effects that befell the players, with which character/player was afflicted.

Remember that the AAR is a very important tool in order to maximize the benefit of having a shared world. For the health of the game, this is the second most important thing of NR, after what actually happens in a session. Loot, rewards, etc. are all tertiary and you should heavily focus mostly on having engaging sessions filled with decisions and then marking those decisions in the AAR.

Loot and Rewards Guide - Required

Overview

There are a few things to consider when considering rewards

• Narrative Rewards

• Treasure and gold

• Experience

The following section will only go through the rules we have in Northern Reaches related to rewards. Additional advice can be found in the Northern Reaches Gamemaster's Guide S4 Appendices.

Treasure and Gold

How much treasure and gold you award will be based on the difficulty of your site, as well as the expected exploration of your site.

Base Treasure Calculation:

To obtain the base, you can use the Treasure by Encounter Table for Pf2e. Take the expected gold per the table for the number of encounters (remember to include social and exploration encounters as well) you have, divide it by 4, then multiply it by the number of players you expect to run (you can also use a modifier if you are not sure, say 4.5 if you will be taking a mix of 4 and 5 person parties). Ignore the ‘bonus’ column. This calculated amount will be the base gold you can distribute as treasure during the session (remember to multiply by 50% or so depending on how much you expect to be unexplored).

Your treasure awards should stay in a range of around 80-120% of the gp value calculated above, but you should only go above 100% if there is a very realistic chance to go an equal amount below. If every session you have gold approaching the 120%, change it back to 100% as you are not appropriately valuing the probability/difficulty of obtaining more. 

If you are giving items that you expect players are going to sell, you can value it at 50% of its value for your budget. However, you are better off instead giving more interesting items. This should only be used for items that are almost guaranteed to be sold.

The Council will investigate if we notice a large amount of value of treasure being given by a GM. If in doubt, just use the baseline. We may force the purchase of certain GMP Consumables if the gp values given are consistently too high.

Picking Treasure

You will want to assign consumables and permanents within a range of the character's PL (Player Level). You should stick with items between PL-1 and PL+1.

You CANNOT give items of PL+2 or higher except for the following circumstances:

• Consumable PL+2 items can be handed out rarely if they are thematic or appropriate

• Permanent PL+2 items may only be handed out after purchasing the appropriate GMP Perks.

Consider giving custom items as well. There is a range of what a custom item means, between a ‘reskin’, a custom item made within the item creation guidelines, and a custom item made to be slightly stronger than guidelines.

Feel free to give out ‘reskins’ as much as you want, just make sure to label somewhere what the item is a reskin of to help out future GMs (an easy way is to either put it in the first line of the description of the item, or in the name within brackets after the reskin name).

Custom items within item creation guidelines must be approved by Council (make a post in #council-hall), however feel free to give these out for special events and occasions in your sites after purchase of the appropriate GMP Perks. These custom items are a good way to make the party remember the bigger deeds they accomplished in your site, and will help make the adventures you run to be more memorable.

Experience

Games that you run typically award a standard rate of  120 xp/hour to players.

If you are running a 'Choice Driven' game, then you can choose to instead award the players with their total earned XP during the session (including bonus XP awards for accomplishing tasks). You should only choose to award XP in this manner if the players would have an equal chance to earn above or below the base rate. If you do not regularly go below the base rate, then you should review how you are calculating XP and ask for help in the #gm-chat channel.

Be sure to let players know how you will award XP in your session post, and also what they earned afterwards from the session.

Some GMP Perks may increase the hourly rate of earned Player XP while active. These bonuses are calculated and added on top of either the standard rate or total XP earned. GMs do not receive these bonuses to their earned GMP or Player XP amounts.

Finally, remember XP is a reward, not a requirement. If players earn less than 120XP/hour, and they knew the xp triggers, it is on them. Do not round up the XP – they get what they earned.

Epic Slot System - Required

Overview

Powerful feats, abilities, perks, and items (referred to as ‘features’) will take up a certain amount of Epic Slots, these have the Epic trait. See the Player's Guide for more information on Epic Items.

As a GM, your job surrounding this system is two-fold:

• Setting the Epic Slot limit for your sessions

• If you choose to award custom items from GMP perks, the Council may assign it an Epic Slot cost. If you want to make an item that has no Cost, it must be created within the standard item creation guidelines of PF2e.

Setting Slot Limit

The default slot limit is 1, however you have the ability to set the slot limit to whatever best fits the session that you would like to run.

Here are the guidelines to what these slot costs mean based on rough power level:

• 0: PCs can reach the power level of roughly 1-2 free archetypes

• 1 (default): expect that PCs can push the boundaries of PF2e math in a limited amount, but will otherwise be a baseline of roughly 1-2 free archetypes

• 2: expect that PCs can push the boundaries of PF2e math often 

• 3: expect that PCs can push the boundaries consistently and/or have some higher power items that can break some of the math of the game 

• Unlimited: expect PCs will be able to break the underlying math of the game with the accumulation of multiple rewards throughout the season