The Gardens Of Ynn Is A Point-crawl Adventure Set In An Ever-shifting Extradimensional Garden. Each Expedition

Pathfinder 2e New Player Resource Masterpost

Hey there! Looking to get into PF2e? You’re making a great decision, but you may not know where to start! I’ve put together a handy list of resources you can consult while getting into the game. As always, if you ever have questions about PF2e, please don’t hesitate to reach out! I love this system, and I love helping new players!

Official Resources

The Archives of Nethys are the official host for the PFSRD. You can find ALL of the rules of the game for free there. Literally everything that is not Golarian specific is on the Archives, and all of it is laid out incredibly well. It may not look quite as flashy as beyond, but its search functions and layout are superior. 

If you buy one product from Paizo as you get started, I HAVE to recommend to BEGINNER BOX. This thing is fantastic. It simplifies the rules, gives you GORGEOUS character sheets that highlight all of your abilities, and have a fun little adventure that dovetails nicely into either their Troubles in Otari or Abomination Vaults modules. (As someone who has run both of those now, they’re both fantastic as well and I highly recommend them.) 

Beyond the Beginner Box, I would also suggest picking up a Core Rulebook. It is true that all of the rules information is already laid out in the Archives, but having a CRB on handd is nice for the art, plus the book is laid out incredibly well. If you can’t afford a CRB at this time, though, you’ll still be good! You might also watch for Humble Bundles, as they often have great Pathfinder packs on there, and sometimes it includes Physical CRBs, in addition to a load of other great PDFs. 

When looking to GM, I recommend the following pages in the CRB first. I’ve also linked the corresponding Archive pages: 

Introduction, Pages 7-31. This will give you the rundown on key terms, how characters are created, the base flow of the game, and the action system (the best part of pf2e!)

Playing the Game, Pages 443-481. This is the longest section of the rulebook to read, but there’s a lot of great stuff in here. This will give you the rules for checks, combat, conditions, resolving actions, and the differences between encounter, exploration, and downtime mode. The most important is encounter and exploration mode, so you can feel free to only skim the downtime mode section of this part. 

The Gamemastering section has a lot of great stuff, but for a GM, your two most important sections will be the following:

Encounter Building, pages 488 and 489. The rules for building encounters work in this system, and they work WELL. Obviously, environment, terrain, and how a specific groups strengths and weaknesses compare to a monster affect things, but if you budget a moderate encounter, it can be expected to be moderate. Just be sure you recognize that Moderate encounters are still meant to be challenging in this system, and Severe encounters are potentially deadly. Extreme encounters should be used incredibly sparingly. Maybe 1 or 2 times per campaign.

DC Charts and Adjusting DCs. Pages 503 and 504.  If you ever need a quick DC, these charts are your friend. You don’t need to memorize them, but you’ll want to have them in an easy-to-reference spot.

Youtubers

There are a lot of great youtubers for PF2e. I’ll only be highlighting a few of my favorites here!

How It’s Played  is probably the best resource for a new player, and helped me a ton with all of the rules when I started GMing. They do close looks at different subsystems, and clearly break down how the rules apply. You don’t need to watch all of their content before you jump in and play, but if you watch a few of their main series on PF2e between each session, you’ll be a rules master in no time! 

I also really enjoy The Rules Lawyer. He always has well-reasoned takes on things going on in the hobby, and and has an enjoyable calm/measured tone. I highly recommend his “Combat Tactics” videos, as he highlights some of the major differences with 5e and what things are now expected to survive. A lot of common 5e tactics are a way to a quick death in PF2e, but you do have the tools to survive!

The final Youtuber I’ll be highlighting is Nonat1s. He’s puts out quite a variety of videos, including skits and other fun things, but is also a wonderful ambassador for the game and gives great character advice as well. I want to highlight his “Welcome to Pathfinder Second Edition” video, which is just perfect!

Other Resources

I can’t create a list of resources without calling out Pathbuilder! It is hands down the best character builder, and its available on desktop and mobile. It’s mostly free, with a small donation being required to unlock premium features. At this time, there is no crossover between the web app and desktop besides being able to save and access characters from google drive.

The Pathfinder 2e Subreddit  is a wonderful community of people, and it’s a great place for discussion. There’s weekly question megathreads, discussions about releases, people highlighting great builds and fun things in the system, and it’s probably the quickest place to keep track of announcements. There’s also a lot of love for 3pp there!

Speaking of 3pps, I LOVE the Battlezoo line! One of my players is OBSESSED with dragons, and they have a whole book that was tailor-made for him, and it’s incredibly balanced and fun. They’ve also got a whole bunch of other cool stuff that’s been kickstarted and will be releasing soon. 

What VTT should you use if you’re playing online? My hat is thrown into the ring for Foundry VTT. It’s my VTT of choice. It’s wildly powerful with the Pathfinder 2e system, and a wonderful community of devs have gotten the system almost entirely automated so you can focus on RP! It’s a breeze as a GM as well, and the only difficulty is in self-hosting, but even that isn’t too bad. Their site has a great set of guides, starting HERE with the ways you can host. If you choose to self-host, you only need to make a 1-time payment of 50 dollars for the software, and only one person needs to actually do the hosting. Split between a group? That’s incredibly affordable, especially considering there is no subscription!

I’m gonna shout MYSELF out here. I put together a List of Actions you can take in combat that isn’t just moving or attacking. Coming from 5e, it can be easy to get stuck in the loop of move and attack, but there are so many more options, and those options are very crucial. This isn’t comprehensive, but covers the basics characters can have access to with only minor skill investment.

Drawings from The Cursed Catacombs, a solo role-playing game where you play as the last living apprentice to a legendary wizard, sent out on a final deadly errand.

If pick-your-path novels and fantasy RPGs are you thing, the book will be on shelves this summer, and you can preorder now (preferably at your local bookstore)!

Fantasy Names Bank

These are just regular human-ish girl and boy names but a bunch of them could be unisex. The lists came pre-alphabetized and girl-boy sorted from my old writing blog so that’s how they got copy/pasted here. There are about 50 names for each.

Also, I didn’t even come up with all of these. I got some from other places that I can’t remember, doctored some from names I read in book, and had my friends and family help with others (back when I was neck deep in a high fantasy world-building extravaganza)

Tell me if you use one so I can feel like 17 year-old me didn’t waste my time (I totally did) and also have new stories to follow!

Keep reading

Ally: Dru’ugo the Shoalworm

An adventurer’s desire to explore isn’t the sole province of those born to the land, as the seas contain just as many if not more secrets waiting to be explored.

A naturally curious creature, Dru’ugo has always been fascinated with artifacts left behind by ‘bovers, those mysterious folk who live beyond the scintillating surface of his watery world, and has spent his youthful decades exploring wrecks, salvaging from ruins, and collecting whatever ( often erroneous) gossip the merfolk see fit to trade him. Fittingly, this makes him one of the best contacts the party can ally with when trying to explore the sea, as the shoalworm is happy to share his findings and provide water-taxi services if the party will explain to him things like agriculture or share the stories of the places they explore together.

Adventure Hooks:

A sea beast has been menacing ships throughout a high-trafic trade channel, forcing them to veer widely off course in order to avoid a confrontation. Tired of profits lost after shipments are delayed by days, the local commerce commission offers an open bounty on the beast’s head after a reputable crew of leviathan hunters very publicly turned the job down. As it turns out this “beast” is just Dru’ugo, excited at having found a reliable place to try and make contact with ‘bovers and ask them questions, rearing up before their ship and trying to mime out what he needs with fins and tail.

Due to a tragedy of anatomy and never having attended a non-fish based school, Dru’ugo is incapable of speaking the common tongue, and his chances to learn to understand it are sparse. This has forced him to be reliant on a friendly mermaid by the name of “Opportunity-bubbles-up-from-below” ( or Ublup for short) to serve has his translator. For her part, Ublup gets figity when her friend makes her play mouthpiece for too long, as she’d much rather be out manta racing with the other deepsea layabouts.  If the party could somehow find some means of breaching the language barrier, whether by using telepathy or devising some enchantment, they’ll earn themselves a friend for all time, provided they can handle the ensuing barrage of the shoalworm’s questions.

Some time after their first excursion with the shoalworm, Dru’ugo gets word to the party that he’s found another ruin, and would love to explore it together in order to hang out with them once again. Drawn in by the prospect of looting a sunken city in good company, the group and their sea-noodle ally don’t notice that the place they’ve exploring are occupied by a cult of marrow dedicated to a terrible goddess of the deep ocean. Angered above all at Dru’ugo for helping these land-dwellers to trespass into the goddess’s domain, the high priest of this cult calls down a curse that transforms the mostly harmless shoalworm into a rampaging leviathan. While Dru’ugo struggles in vain against the curse in order to give them time to escape, the party must break for land and devise some means of subverting the goddess’s wrath, before they’re forced to slay their transmogrified buddy as he mindlessly rampages along the coast.

I wish more people used Magic the Gathering's Color Pie instead of D&D's alignment all of the time.

Like, saying a character embodies the selfishness and impulsivenes of Red Black offers more depth than Chaotic Evil

Pistol Dust

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/393309/Pistol-Dust

Pistol Dust is a Weird West meets High Fantasy Tabletop RPG with heavy emphasis on customizability. Pistol Dust forgoes class limitations in exchange for using experience to directly influence Talents, Abilities, and Skills.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/393309/Pistol-Dust

The Pantheon Domain - A 5E Cleric Subclass Homebrew. For the cleric whose faith is as fickle as the gods themselves. Great for roguelite lovers. You’ll have to figure out what you can do with the tools at your disposal every day. Links in reblog!

Hi - we're on Tumblr now!

I’m sorry, who are you?

We’re @sashasienna​ and @jonnywaistcoat​, and we make tabletop RPGs as MacGuffin & Co.!

Tabletop what-nows?

Immersive storytelling games where you and your friends can dive into weird worlds, play fascinating characters and have harrowing adventures!

What, like Dungeons & Dragons?

*sigh* Yeah. Like Dungeons & Dragons

Ok, so what have you made?

Well, we’ve got a collection of system neutral micro-settings called Odd Jobs - it’s eleven small and fascinating worlds to play games in, each with a campaign you can play through in a month. They’re not designed for any particular system, so you can play them with whatever game you like!

Oh, and it won the 2022 UK Games Expo award for Best Adventure and was nominated for Ennie Product of the Year. Just sayin’.

We’ve just released a tarot-themed magical river game called Upriver, Downriver with our dear friend Ella Watts, in which you play the crew of a ship sailing the Great River, either travelling upriver to the mythical Source with it’s magic and revelation; or downriver towards the unending Sea with it’s freedom and horizon.

We have KER-SPLAT! - a high-chaos, full nonsense cartoon RPG we wrote with Ross Barlow, where the players can’t die and the GM can’t stop them in a hilarious cascade of silly jokes. Also, not to brag, but this is the funniest RPG rulebook you’ll ever read.

We also have smaller games, such as Zero Void - a no-prep one-shot zine game, where you play a bunch of desperate space criminals trying to escape a space station before the law arrives.

Is there any way to keep up with what you do?

Well, following our Tumblr is a great start. We also have a monthly mailing list you can sign up to from our website that will keep you updated on what we do.

We also have a Patreon.

What was that? You’re mumbling!

Yeah, like all creators trying to eke out a living, we have a Patreon. If you sign up you get behind -the-scenes updates, small or prototype games, RPG resources, new micro-settings and our monthly TTRPG Gamesmasterclass, where we use our 35(!) combined years of GMing experience to help you run the best games ever.

But what if I want to see your faces?

Then I have great news! We stream boardgames and RPGs every Sunday at twitch.tv/macguffinandco! Jonny also streams videogames every Friday at twitch.tv/jonnywaistcoat, and Sasha steams their Jane Austen Bookclub every Monday at twitch.tv/sashasienna

Sounds cool - where can I find out more?

macguffinandcompany.com, baby!

Wait, so why are you on Tumblr?

Because social media is a nightmare hellscape and it’s weirdly the chillest one left. We are on other social sites as well - you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook - but this is our favourite.

Deity: The Walker of the Wheel

“ Traveler! Why don’t you pull up a stone and rest your weary self, Come share a tale, join me in a song.  Between us there are as many miles to go as there are stars uncounted, but maybe we can number a few of them before we’re through”. 

Setup: There are some gods that demand the worship of all, who seek to spread their gospals to the four corners of the earth. Then there are the small gods, the humble guardians who preside over their little corner of reality and ensure those who journey through it are well taken care of. 

The Walker of the Wheel is one of the latter, a guardian god of roads, travelers, and the infinite horizon who protects those who venture far from home. Appearing as a broken down tramp, a traveling mapmaker, or an adventurous youth, the Walker eschews a concrete identity or even a name, preferring to intercede in the guise of a fellow wanderer rather than act through miracles or celestial agents. 

Holding no temples save for the small roadside shrines erected by fellow travelers, the existence of the Walker is lore held only by those who live their lives on the road, cobbled together out of scraps of road-lore and tales of secondhand encounters. 

Astral travelers are also known to draw the attention of the Walker, who holds stewardship over forgotten gateways between the realms. 

Adventure Hooks: 

Exhausted and woefully lost with darkness closing in, the party hears the plucking of an old guitar drifting across the landscape, leading them to a small campsite and the hermit who presides over it. The old codger offers them hospitality and a drag off his jug of barleywine, in exchange for their tales of adventure and woe.   When the party awakes in the morning, they’ll find the Walker gone and themselves a stonesthrow from their destination, having crossed valleys and rivers in the span of a single night. 

Those that impress the Walker are likely to be rewarded with good luck charms touched by a bit of his divine grace. Dented compasses that point the way home, guitar picks that conjure visions of the past when used to strum a nostalgic song, well worn walking sticks that allow for tireless travel over harsh terrain. These items all show evidence of having many owners in the past, as well as handetched patterns of stars and constellations. 

While generally a god of good spirits, the Walker cannot stand those who prey upon travelers, and woe to any robber or highwayman who draw his attention.  The party bears witness to this wrath when bandits attack their inn, hoping to kidnap and ransom a merchant who also happens to be staying there for the night. The Walker appears partway through this standoff, and with a strike of his stick dissolves the bandit’s leader into a pile of road dust. 

Titles: Our Old friend, Master Dust, The Starry Hermit, Wornboot Bill, The Roadwarden

Signs: Whirling Stars and Nebulas, music on the edge of exhaustion, dreamlike landscapes.  

Symbols:  Hobo Marks, Migratory birds, A long road beyond a gateway. 

Web Spinner Conclave: Ranger

Time to become your local neighbourhood, web-swinging hero.

[G Drive Link]