I just got the book.

It has some really helpful material in it. I like their charts.

I'm just shocked at the amount of cheating and subterfuge they recommend game masters participate in.

Personally I think it is worth every penny if you run Pathfinder games. It isn't a necessary resource, but it is useful.
If you don't want to spend the money for the hardcover and you don't mind reading on a computer screen or have the ability to print the book, just buy the pdf. I always get both that way I can print off any useful information (npc's, charts, etc) and have a portable(digital) copy to carry with me all the time on my flashdrive.

Yeah. There's lots of (pro-narrative/story) stuff in there that I don't necessarily agree with, or would debate with guys on the Paizo team (James Jacobs, I'm looking at you), but all in all, the book's worth the money. It'll be a useful tool for DMs.

It's helped me when I have to get some pre-gen generic NPCs.

I'm not a big fan of "how to be a GM" chapters and a majority of the book seemed useless to me.

The chapter with pre-statted NPCs looked like it was worth it's weight in gold.

Quote from: Cranewings;402872I'm just shocked at the amount of cheating and subterfuge they recommend game masters participate in.

Oh, that's just standard fare. It's the messageboard drivel they never tire of, as in, story comes first, player choices don't matter as long as the players don't realize, and so on. Fortunately, huge swaths of the book survive intact even if you block these lines out.

Still, I lost most interest in Paizo's RPG output when they switched to their own "spin" on 3.5 and switched the full "remade this" and "reconceptualized that" supplement tread mill into full gear. Consisting, mind you, of material which either copy-pastes WotC stuff (like feats from Complete Arcane) or so shoddily produced stuff of their own as to require its own FAQ (e.g. Dazzling Display in the Core Rulebook).

I didn't even pick up Kingmaker, even though I've been wanting that for years. I understand the awesome production values, but why, say, not use Necromancer Games' Wilderlands box instead?

Quote from: Windjammer;403441I didn't even pick up Kingmaker, even though I've been wanting that for years. I understand the awesome production values, but why, say, not use Necromancer Games' Wilderlands box instead?

By the time I found about Necromancer's version of Wilderlands, it was already difficult to find.  It got lost in the d20 glut.