We role-played the entire session

March 14, 2010 By shent_lodge

This last Thursday I played Pathfinder RPG again. The best part about the session was that we pretty much role-played the whole thing. I told the DM afterwards it had been nearly 5 years since I had played a game where the whole session was spent role-playing and no one got bored. The group I normally game with is totally different from this Pathfinder group, they are all game mechanics and RPGA-a-holics. A normal session with them starts off with the DM reading a blurb, followed by a quick paraphrase of what we did to get into the combat, if there is role-play, it is ignored and never influences anything in the game. The RPGA-a-holics I game with all go right to the encounter, in a rush to get to the end of the dungeon. Other horrors frequented in these RPGA style games are things like the DM saying “ok that was encounter two, now for encounter three with the ghouls, but you don’t know they are ghouls yet. Role initiative. The ghouls got a 15 and they all have monk levels.”

I like the pace so far in the Council of Thieves Adventure Path, which is basically six adventure books and a free downloadable players guide PDF. I have only read the Council of Thieves Players Guide, well, because I am playing it, not GMing it, so that is all I get to read. The guide gives enough background to help folks like me get accustomed to the game world and did I mention it is free from Paizo.

The dungeons in Council of Thieves seem to be fun too, at least from what I am experiencing as a player. From the way our GM is running us, there appears to be some degree of freedom written into the modules to make it feel more like a sandbox adventure than a clear cut, hook and line game which it definitely is not. Last Thursday was a perfect example we pretty much role-played the whole session; we bribed guards and merchants, met ladies of the night and even attended a play, we walked away at the end of the session with plenty of intrigue and more plot hooks than I can remember. We did have one short combat with a ghoul, basically, it was a random encounter for a couple people in the party who where off feeding their Otyugh pet in the sewers. This little side trek adventure had nothing to do with the Council of Thieves, but it ended up being fun for all none the less.