My apologies for having taken so long to reply. Life has been kind of full for a few weeks.<br/><br/>So first of all, let me say that FallenDabus has been doing a very good job of running a Pathfinder game. When Erich mentioned that we'd been going for a year I didn't believe it, but lo and behold this easily verifiable fact turns out to be true. So that's an accomplishment of sorts right there. I believe the vast majority of Elliquiy group games don't last nearly that long, and I would suspect that the average length for system-based games is even shorter. I can proudly point to the two system games I've tried to run on here, neither of which has lasted more than two months, as I recall.<br/><br/>I can also respect the idea of wanting to take a published Adventure Path, which are by all accounts generally well-written and interesting, and using that as the backbone of the online game. There's a wealth of material to draw from, and it relieves the GM of a lot of potential work in balancing encounters, granting wealth and experience, etc.<br/><br/>However...<br/><br/>It's almost impossible to overstate how incredibly glacial forum-based system games can be. On a macro scale, it looks to me that the published adventure path is intended to take characters from level 1 through level 20. Now we've been going for a year here, and we're second level now. Round up, and say that we're actually 3rd. That would mean that proceeding at this pace, it would be reasonable to assume that we'd get to the end of this campaign by... 2020? Holy crap. I've only been on Elliquiy for five years! And here we're talking about another six?<br/><br/>Now I think that FallenDabus is doing a lot of things right, pacing wise. The simple initiative system for combats is brilliant, and I'm going to steal that for the next time I unsuccessfully run a system game. (This is the system where the GM just flat out says: X, Y or Z can go now.) It eliminates an awful lot of "I forgot which round we were on. Can I go yet? Has my guy gotten across the field?" etc.<br/><br/>But the more I think of it, the more that I think that the translation of an adventure written for in-person play to forum play is a lot like translating a book to a movie script. You have to try to grab the essence of the book and then make that into something that will play well on the screen. And that means cutting out vast amounts of material. Now with a book->movie you can sometimes count on people having read the book first, so you can do the little trick of hinting at things as a nod toward those in the know. You don't have that luxury in gaming, unless maybe you're playing one of those classic adventures that "everyone knows". (Tomb Of Horrors represent, amirite? Fellas? Anyone?)<br/><br/>And doing that conversion takes work. When you're writing a movie script, maybe you merge three of the supporting characters from the book together. Maybe you axe another four of them. Maybe you skip the entire side trip to Budapest. Maybe you change the ending dramatically. Maybe you take the hero's giant monologue about the nature of heroism and turn it into a catch phrase he yells in the middle of the car chase scene. But you do what you have to do to fit the hour-and-twenty, and you try to make the kind of movie that people who liked the book will also like. You try to keep the spine, the heart and the brain even if they're hooked up to a life support system.<br/><br/>So essentially what I think I'm saying is that the desire to run a full Pathfinder adventure path is a good one, and it's a decent goal. But I don't think you can do it literally. I think you want to try to preserve the fun parts of running an extended Pathfinder game -- the leveling up, the interesting set-piece battles, the memorable interactions with NPCs and other PCs. But just like you cut the hero's internal monologue when you go from paper to film (or you do a horrible voiceover), you need to drop other elements that some players would find just as characteristic of a tabletop game. Into that category I would put resource management (hp, gold, mundane equipment), non-climactic battles, interactions with minor NPCs, most of the maps, standard trap encounters, identifying magic items... well, there's a long list.<br/><br/>The rub, though, is that everyone's list of "what's optional" and "what's core" is going to be different, and so you're going to have problems. For instance, earlier we had a discussion where I was kind of pushing for ignoring all mundane equipment and tracking of money, and Blinkin pointed out that this was one of the aspects that made the game fun for him. Fair enough -- if everyone's taste was the same then there wouldn't be enough haggis to go around. But I do think you have to trim something, and in fact I think you have to trim quite a lot. Perhaps 80% of what takes place when you sit around a table.<br/><br/>Because when I go over to a friend's house to game, maybe there's one or two exciting hours out of the six spent there. The rest of the time isn't exactly wasted, per se, because I'm hanging out with friends. But if you really wanted to compress things, you could. Now although I'm sure you're all fine folks, we don't really have the same "hanging out" side benefit going on here. And because it's on a forum instead of live, then replace the word "hours" with "weeks". And perhaps you begin to see where I'm coming from.<br/><br/><br/>So here's Ebb's quick-and-dirty guide to running a Pathfinder adventure on the forums. This has not been tested or even thought out that well, but I didn't want to delay writing this post any longer. So feel free to shoot holes in it.<br/><br/>- Only keep the good stuff<br/>- Which means making a list of what the "good stuff" is. I gave my list above; others will have different lists.<br/>- Whenever something starts to bog down, handwave it forward. (For instance, the 'crossing the chasm' scene.)<br/>- Figure out what character level range you're planning to cover. (e.g. Start at 1st level, advance to 20th with 10 mythic levels).<br/>- Pick out a number of interesting break points along that range. (Maybe it's 1st, 5th, 9th, 13th, 17th, 20th)<br/>- For each break point, pick out 2 or 3 interesting scenes. Because this is Pathfinder, that generally means combats. But maybe it's a little bigger. (Sneak into the castle and off the lord. Meet the dragon and bluff or bully him into joining your army. Enter the Dread Portal and close it from the other side.)<br/>- Play out those scenes. Between scenes, just have the GM narrate what happens. This could cover weeks, months or years of real time. Ideally how the last scene played out will affect the narration. (If you got the dragon on your side, the rest of the Goblin War ends quickly. If not then it's a long slow nightmare of a war that ends with half the human cities devastated.)<br/>- Narration is brutal and unforgiving. The PC's don't get to make all of the decisions. They are manhandled like puppets in order to set the stage for the next big encounter. Maybe they do dumb things. Maybe they have bad luck. Maybe they're betrayed by a friend with no chance of detecting the treachery. Tough rations. The GM should probably aspire to not make the PC's look like a bunch of doofuses, but in fantasy literature bad things happen to competent people all of the time. Such is pretend-life.<br/>- When it's time to level up, have the PC's rebuild their characters at the new level. Allow some modification of previous choices if desired.<br/>- For magic items, have the PC's give the GM a wish list, which can be either specific or general. The GM will award magic items directly to PCs during the narration periods, so it's assumed that by the time the next scene rolls around everybody is familiar with their stuff.<br/>- Lather, rinse, repeat.<br/>- If PCs want to roleplay out scenes or conversations, they can do so in a separate thread. They can do it for any time period that's already past. Maybe two people want a scene right after the defeat of the beholder? Go for it. But meanwhile time marches on.<br/><br/>Do I know that that would all work? No sir, I do not. But I have my suspicions. Do I think that this style would alienate a lot of players? Yes I do. I can imagine a lot of folks hating this style of play. But balance that against the possibility of actually running and completing an epic-scale Pathfinder game on a forum... Well, I think it's worth a shot.<br/><br/><br/><br/>