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This is the discussion thread for the Pathfinder Society Community Survey.
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First of all, thanks Painlord for taking the initiative for making the survey. While the survey might not 100% accurately represent the PFS community (which I don't even think would be possible/realistic anyway), it will represent the active forum communities opinion, and shed light on what we want in PFS in general. So thank you.
How important is it to you that the Pathfinder Society Organized Play have a strong, interesting, immersive storyline told through the scenarios?
That question is a bit ambiguous. Do you mean strong storylines WITHIN a scenario, or strong meta storylines that occur over an entire season or campaign arc? I interpreted it as meaning #2.
Do you wish your characters had more involvement/impact in the overall storyline?
The impact your PC has on the "overall storyline" is meaningless unless there are meaningful decisions to be made. For example, your party captures a main leader of the Shadow Lodge (or the PC killer in Dalsine Affair). Does the party:
1) Kill him.2) Bring him to justice for his crimes (in Absalom).
3) Bring him to the Decemvirate for interogation and for other unknown reasons.
4) Take a bribe from him and release him, for increased scenario gold. (Probably a popular choice, which is hilarious).
5) Let him escape for various reasons (Shadow Lodge agent, feel pity for him, hate Decemvirate, understand his plight, TPK, mistakes, etc).
You see, those are meaningful decisions! And each decision might have a dramatically different impact on the world or further scenarios. Decisions like these might even DRIVE further scenarios to be created.
Right now, how do we really affect the world? Sure, we all play the scenario, but we basically do the same thing. So Paizo knows that 10 groups completed scenario X and 1000 groups played scenario Y. How does that affect the storyline? It doesn't, even if we captured information, because there are no meaningful decisions being made.
The only thing we know right now, are how many PCs of a certain faction have played a certain scenario and their success in that scenario. While that's moderately interesting, I don't think it's interesting enough to change the campaign metaplot. Paizo probably agrees because the winner of the faction race wasn't even revealed until season 3. And even then, the winner of the faction race was kind of meaningless anyway (and no real statistics or interesting demographics were given either (although we know by word of mouth that a lot of Finnish players choose Cheliax and most US players choose Andoran.).
If Paizo does decide to track meaningful decisions or events in their metaplot, these decisions would need to be captured via survey, from a GM. Ideally it would happen when reporting a scenario, but that system is already complex enough (it would be difficult to code, maintain and customize), it would cost Paizo too much money and time. It just doesn't make time/money sense. But surveys make sense, especially if you can only key in Pathfinder IDs a single time and track who is actually performing the data entry.
So my answer is "yes", I would like to make an impact on Golarion, but the only way to have it drive the storyline is that the decisions the PCs make is meaningful.
Also, please note that the season 3 overall campaign storyline is being driven by their product releases.
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Q: How many registered PFS characters do you have?
Exactly 5*. I can't answer "3-4" and I can't answer "More than 5" so the only available RAW answer is "No Answer"
Q: Opinion of GM Benefits (Chronicles/Stars)?
I have different answers for chronicles and stars so I have to give a middling answer or No Answer
*Hmm, I also have access to at least 5 IP addresses that I can immediately think of. Maybe that should be a question? ;-)
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If Paizo does decide to track meaningful decisions or events in their metaplot[...] it would cost Paizo too much money and time. It just doesn't make time/money sense.
Living Greyhawk managed it.
It would be nice to see a shift towards choice-driven scenarios. Maybe then we can look for a choice-driven campaign storyline.
-Matt
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One thing that really annoyed me is that, like a few people mentioned, there are a lot of times either none of the answers really applied, but no answer wasnt the right way either, or that i really flt I should clarify something. Can I suggest that all questions have a way to type something in?
I am both deployed, and play primarily PFS PbP, so that influenced a lot of my answers, but there wasn't a way to mention that.
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I just wanted to clarify the question where it asks you to rank a number of options 1 to 5.
I literally looked at all the options and ranked one of them as number 1, one of them as number 2 etc until I had given five of the options a ranking. I then left the remaining options with "No Answer".
Have I completely misinterpreted how that section was supposed to be answered? Was I actually supposed to Rate (not Rank) each of the options on an individual basis?
If I have got it wrong I will do it again.
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Wish there was a place where I comment about GM rewards.
I suspect Mr Brock will point you in the right direction - as he was seeking suggestions on a recent thread.
For most GMs, running a scenario more than once makes it more enjoyable for everyone involved. In my experience (perhaps because I am a novice), after one or two sessions, a GM will be able to get the scenario and can react better to odd ball decisions by players not covered by writer.
I also prefer to run the fun scenarios multiple times for the same reasons.
Looking at the new 5 star GM retention policy - 40+% of scenarios run should be different new season scenarios - to maintain freshness. So even at the highest tier they are expecting significant reruns. But like you say no rewards for rerun unless you value stars.
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I just wanted to clarify the question where it asks you to rank a number of options 1 to 5.
I literally looked at all the options and ranked one of them as number 1, one of them as number 2 etc until I had given five of the options a ranking. I then left the remaining options with "No Answer".
Have I completely misinterpreted how that section was supposed to be answered? Was I actually supposed to Rate (not Rank) each of the options on an individual basis?
If I have got it wrong I will do it again.
They were relative priority questions with 1 high and all could be the same level.
email the author.
you wont be able to do it again (and the results register) unless you find another ip address to do it from (and you flush cookies)
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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2.It becomes expensive for GM to collect enough scenarios so he doesn't run out of stuff to play given he has no control of who joins the table. A GM with a limited inventory of scenarios, will most likely encounter someone who has played the ones he has. So he either turns the player away, or is forced to buy and play something he was totally unprepared for. I've been enough games to know, most of the time, this isn't fun for everyone involved.
One thought I had would be that Paizo could offer a discount on newly purchased PFS scenarios based on the customer's GM Star rating. Say, 10% off for each star. That way, people who run games frequently would be encouraged to purchase lots of different scenarios, and people who want to buy the scenarios would be encouraged to run and report PFS events. It probably wouldn't cost that much on Paizo's part, since there are undoubtedly fewer people with many stars than there are without.