Pathfinder Society Scenario #5–02: The Wardstone Patrol (PFRPG) PDF

Announced for GenCon 2013!

On one such wardstone patrol, however, the party may find itself facing an enemy of an entirely different nature.

Dalsine returns! :)

Quote:

On one such wardstone patrol, however, the party may find itself facing an enemy of an entirely different nature.

Dalsine returns! :)

Oh, hell no!

Just curious, how does it handle the major issue the faithful of Iomedae have with the PFS? I kind of doubt even the Mendev Crusaders needing almost any warm body they can get would somehow sweep the Thorncrown of Iomedae under the rug as far as the PFS is concerned.

Quite an interesting adventure.

At one point the party was split on which order to follow and it came down to a dice roll

Never has that happened to me before.

Played this scenario yesterday at PFS. The sidekick NPC was so unsympathetic, I voted to not bother risking our lives near the end. Turns out that our good deed early on was not only useless but triggered worse things happening later, so I came away feeling that our work had been pointless. Apparently you can finish this scenario very quickly just by making the easiest decisions: "Yep, that's a nice stone. We're going home now."

Good story but GARBAGE editorial work. How exactly are the PCs supposed to know what their mission is, I mean for the FACTIONS? Yeah, its written for the GM on a side note but I can't give it to them.

If you are a Cheliax or a Sczarni or Silver Crusade faction member you'll never succeed in this mission, unless I actually TELL you what your mission is in front of everyone AT THE TABLE.

Who edited this? Was any thought process put into how this scenario is supposed to be run at a table in a store? Anyone? McFly?

Eric, allow me to direct you to the blog post made several weeks ago, shortly before the beginning of Season 5. In it, Mark and I linked to every one of the faction head letters, which now behave like large-scale faction missions. These letters live in the Faction Talk subforum, where players respond to and discuss the faction heads' announcements with some regularity. The forum community has also done an admirable job of linking others to these faction head letters, ensuring that we are as clear as possible about how faction missions will work in Season 5.

I have had the pleasure of meeting a large number of players at several conventions over the past several weeks, and I hear yet more from the many participants on the Pathfinder Society messageboards. Through these people I understand GMs are making a great effort to help explain the new process to players and fellow GMs who might not otherwise a) read email, b) read the Pathfinder Society blog, or c) frequent the forum. Some are even printing out the faction head letters to hand out to players in Season 5 scenarios so that everyone has a fair shot at understanding and accomplishing the missions.

That said, I don't condone your treatment of the hardworking editors who had little to nothing to do with the particular point you are complaining about. Disseminating information about how the new season's faction missions work is the job of Mike and me. The editors work tirelessly (often with considerable deadlines) to ensure that the final product you enjoy is as clear, readable, and typo-free as possible, and I think it's an understatement to say that they do an excellent job. If you have a complaint about how a Pathfinder Society-specific mechanic works, please address those to Mike or me.

These scenarios have been out for less than a month, and I'm sure there are ways that we can improve the presentation and execution of the faction missions. Perhaps that involves a sidebar or paragraph in the scenarios noting where a GM can find the faction head letters. I'm open to well-intentioned suggestions.

Mr. Compton, I had the pleasure of attending a con with you this very weekend and at said convention, I ran 4 tables of 5-02. Of those tables, I never saw a Sczarni, I saw two Cheliax, and TONS of Silver Crusade. Not a single SC person had any issues completing their mission without hesitation. I didn't have to poke or prod them. While mustering was going on, I would talk with my players and explain the changes of season 5 and let them know which factions had special things to do in the scenario (as it has been detailed in several places already, I didn't feel this was out of line) and for the Cheliax, I wrote a letter from the Paracountess for them to have an intro to the season. I could see how a Sczarni could fail their mission even IF they knew what their faction's goal was, but not if they have one of the two almost required faction skills as a Sczarni. That said, I had a blast running this and my only complaint is that after running 5 tables of it, I don't think I should run it (I had run it in preparation of DragonCon).

Long story short, I LOVE season five, I feel that the changes make the Society as a whole more cohesive and make the factions' goals more of a bonus and less of the requirement they felt like before. I also appreciate the secondary PA boons available. Bravo to you and Mike for the changes.

I'm sure there are ways that we can improve the presentation and execution of the faction missions. Perhaps that involves a sidebar or paragraph in the scenarios noting where a GM can find the faction head letters. I'm open to well-intentioned suggestions.

It would be useful to have an official PDF of the faction letters, maybe two to a page, that could be printed and handed out at the start of a session. Some players are oblivious to the blog and forums, so this would help increase awareness of what their faction is aiming to do, especially in the first part of the season while this change to faction missions is sinking in.

When I ran 'the Glass River Rescue' last weekend I made my own handouts in LibreOffice, but unless I'm mistaken, this isn't 'open content' that I can post online for other GMs. In the session I ran, less than half of the players had seen and read the relevant faction letter before the game session. I think some are still coming to the session expecting to get a slip of paper from their faction leader.

I think the new way that faction objectives work is much more interesting and elegant than the old way, and look forward to seeing more over the coming months.

It would be useful to have an official PDF of the faction letters, maybe two to a page, that could be printed and handed out at the start of a session. Some players are oblivious to the blog and forums, so this would help increase awareness of what their faction is aiming to do, especially in the first part of the season while this change to faction missions is sinking in.

Go here. The document titled "Season 5 Faction Missions" is exactly what you're looking for.

Paz wrote:

It would be useful to have an official PDF of the faction letters, maybe two to a page, that could be printed and handed out at the start of a session. Some players are oblivious to the blog and forums, so this would help increase awareness of what their faction is aiming to do, especially in the first part of the season while this change to faction missions is sinking in.

Go here. The document titled "Season 5 Faction Missions" is exactly what you're looking for.

TY Drogon.

In regards to John's question. A good way would be to make available a PDF version of what the goals for S5 are for each faction, so that the GM can hit print and lend them out to his players, at the beginning of a session. If I can print it and take it with me, I won't hear complaints of, 'What the heck am I supposed to do?'

And a note in the beginning of all the scenarios telling us that there is a change and that such a document exists would put most of us in a drivers seat again, as to how to prepare our players for S5.

Expectations of GMs reading blogs are unrealistic when most of us are unaware of their existence. Most GMs pick up a scenario and print it and have no knowledge where the faction missions or faction 'prime directives' might be located or even knowledge of their existence.

So, now I'm informed, however this is not an issue until the next GM has the same response because he picks up a new scenario and has no clue as to where to look.

Expectations of GMs reading blogs are unrealistic when most of us are unaware of their existence. Most GMs pick up a scenario and print it and have no knowledge where the faction missions or faction 'prime directives' might be located or even knowledge of their existence.

It is the assumption of the campaign (and a reasonable one, as far as I'm concerned) that GMs and players are all familiar with the contents of the current Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play. Whenever this document is updated, everyone who has the PDF in his or her downloads receives an email notification that the document has changed. This email is considered a transactional email by Paizo's email system and cannot be turned off like marketing emails (including the original email notification that faction mission posts had gone live on the messageboards) can be in a user's privacy settings. As such, only a player who has never played Pathfinder Society before, or who has started so recently as to not have had the chance to download the guide for himself (such as earlier in a weekend-long convention) can reasonably use the excuse that he didn't know about the current rules of the campaign, nor the season's faction goals.

In general, if someone is unaware of the current faction goals, I suggest GMs urge those players to check their privacy settings on Paizo.com to allow emails regarding the Pathfinder Society campaign, as we now use these emails to disseminate just such information, as well as bonus Chronicle sheets and so forth. We rarely send out such emails without also posting the contents of the emails on the Paizo Blog, which folks can follow manually throughout the week, or with any number of news aggregators using the blog's RSS feed.

At this point, I feel (and I believe John and Mike agree with me on this) that the creation of another PDF stating what we've already put in the Core Assumption via the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play, in the email inboxes of tens of thousands of campaign participants, and on the Paizo Blog, would do little to inform those who missed the many places we've already presented this information.

I played Glass River this weekend and NO ONE AT THE TABLE knew anything about the faction missions. If the GM did, he didn't say anything about it.

I just tried looking for the Taldor faction info and I can't find squat for season 5 other than "Assist Lady Gloriana Morilla in gathering forces to march to Mendev" and some silly story about a kid and a stick for a sword. No where do I see "Dear agent, bla bla bla, please do/get/find/kill bla bla bla, thank you".

I completely forgot why I came to this thread.

I completely forgot why I came to this thread. If the PCs earn 2 empathy points and DON'T want to look for the soldiers, how does that proceed?

I'd like to know that too! Almost a year and no response? I'm running this tomorrow, so I hope it doesn't come up.

You deal with it how you would normally deal with the PCs not wanting to take the hook - you give them one last shot, imply it's a bad idea, and then cut to the end of the mod. They don't get any rewards for that encounter.

DonKeebals wrote:

I completely forgot why I came to this thread. If the PCs earn 2 empathy points and DON'T want to look for the soldiers, how does that proceed?

I'd like to know that too! Almost a year and no response? I'm running this tomorrow, so I hope it doesn't come up.

You do what the scenario clearly says to do:

Just played through this on Sunday. Our GM was woefully unprepared, which was a shame, since the ex-Sczarni Exchange character at the table couldn't possibly succeed at his faction mission with the GM paying no regard to Sir Ilivan, and in fact without that the scenario doesn't even work at all - which is the GM's fault, not the writer's. I read through the module after and I'm going to run it myself in the near future so I can at least see if it works when done properly.

Just played through this on Sunday. Our GM was woefully unprepared, which was a shame, since the ex-Sczarni Exchange character at the table couldn't possibly succeed at his faction mission with the GM paying no regard to Sir Ilivan, and in fact without that the scenario doesn't even work at all - which is the GM's fault, not the writer's. I read through the module after and I'm going to run it myself in the near future so I can at least see if it works when done properly.

The scenario suffers a lot when run by an unprepared GM, sadly; it's one of its weaknesses.

Just curious, how does it handle the major issue the faithful of Iomedae have with the PFS? I kind of doubt even the Mendev Crusaders needing almost any warm body they can get would somehow sweep the Thorncrown of Iomedae under the rug as far as the PFS is concerned.

It doesn't handle it at all; in fact your post here was the first I'd heard of it. And my -1 is a paladin of Iomedae.