The NPC gallery from the legacy GMG wasn’t reprinted in GMC. No more generic “bandit” “mad scientist”, “assassin”, “priest”, “necromancer”, “gang leader”
These had a lot of value for telling the sort of stories I like to tell in my games, which are less about killing unequivocally evil “monsters” and more about regular people who may be morally complex and provoke more interaction from the players.
I’m well aware one can simply use legacy content, but that ignores that some of these had mechanics that have been revised in the remaster, and they were an important part of the toolkit provided to GMs in the GMG. Right now, the GM Core feels very lacking in terms of providing support for creating a cast of NPCs in adventures. There’s literally a half a page dedicated to NPCs and it basically just says “make 'em up”. Saying “You can use legacy content” is not a valid point when these new books are supposed to serve as a foundation for the system standing on their own.
Additionally, the official Paizo FoundryVTT bestiary portraits module, which I paid good money for, appears to have removed the portraits for these generic NPCs when the remaster content was added to the system. The realization of that was actually the thing that prompted this post. I was setting up an encounter for my players and was confused as to why the “Antipaladin” art was this instead of this. I am almost certain that before the remaster it used the art from the GMG for those tokens.
I highly recommend picking up the Abomination Vaults Expanded as well to help flesh out both Otari and the Vaults themselves. A lot of good material in the 80+ pages, as well as how to integrate AV with both the Beginner’s Box and Troubles in Otari. I’ve been running a group for about 1.5 years and they’ve just hit level 7 and are on the sixth floor of the vaults. We’ve had a TPK as well as several partial ones, but it’s been a lot of fun. Second on the official Foundry module as it makes prep so much easier.
Yeah I have AV expanded, as well as Ron Lundeen’s GM guide to the AP. I’m not using all of the stuff in either of them, but they were great jumping off points. I also came up with a lot of the same stuff people have suggested adding to the adventure on my own. For example, the party just finished the fourth floor, and the next major task on their to do list is to go to Absalom to meet a collector who is in possession of the spellbook they need to proceed. Also, when the party hit level 2, I integrated the adventure from Troubles in Otari that gives them a home base near the town.
I’m curious how you handled a TPK. I personally have come up with this idea for a party of rival adventurers who can get the PCs out of a sticky situation before that happens (see my post history to see what I mean, my last post was about the rival party)
The party actually came up with their own reasons why their follow up characters had come. One was the sister, another was a bounty hunter, the third was an apprentice, etc. Made my job easy. I had considered trying to prevent the TPK, but it happened earlier enough that the party weren’t too attached to their characters. It also helped reinforce the deadliness of both AV as well as 2E in general.
Thank you for the recommendation! I will certainly be checking that out as we are about to wrap up the beginner box soon. I’ve told my players it is a dangerous adventure in a dangerous system so I’ll be interested to see if I’m the first GM in our group to get a TPK.