Making boons usable?

[Rycaut]

Has anyone taken an inventory of the boons available via various scenarios taken any steps to make sure that at least a few other PFS scenarios make those boons usable? (I'm talking about the many boons that have specific city or regional limitations)

In almost every case I've seen so far as a player I've yet to see one of these regionally specific boons to be usable in any future scenarios I've played.

[Jiggy]

Most of the region-specific boons I've seen have been for Absalom, where a lot of scenarios take place. I'm guessing this doesn't match your experience?

[Cpt_kirstov]

Jiggy wrote:

Most of the region-specific boons I've seen have been for Absalom, where a lot of scenarios take place. I'm guessing this doesn't match your experience?

Many of the season 1 boons were only in this chelish city, or solis... and the map of the mountains you can buy that never appear in another scenario....

[Rycaut]

I'll see if I can post (with appropriate spoiler tags) some of the boons I've gotten in the past but yes, very very few of them have been in Absalom rather they have all been in outher countries, cities and regions of Golarion where I've yet to return on any other PFS scenarios I've been on.

I've played scenarios from most seasons though more season 0 or 1 than any other season so perhaps this has been fixed in later seasons but it is a bit frustrating as a player to get these very circumstantial (and usually fairly minor and highly specific) boons which then never seem able to come into play.

[JP Chapleau]

This is one that's close to my heart... This is something that I want to see and that Overlord Mike has said they were working on (repeatedly). Now I'm don't know all that's coming down the pipe, but I trust Mike (who quickly corrected me when I did a few quips about this fact). Many of the boons are SO specific to be unusable outside the scenario at hand, that's true.

So you guys ARE right that boons and bonuses have not been taken into account much thus far, but M&M are looking into it.

Now for the boring part (which led to the above-mentioned quip). Writing and designing adventures for a campaign like PFS take. A LONG TIME. Really... A LOT! Then as a editor/lord you must go with the adventure ideas and plots proposed to you. we'd be whining (okay I'd be screaming and b*&+#ing about things) if adventures required boons to complete, if the boons were overused or if the boons' link were very tedious or far-fetched. They're moving in the right direction so far, IMO. So stay tuned.

And they (or their minions) do read these boards!

JP
(running to report to his overlords)

[Rycaut]

I don't want to see adventures that "require boons" to complete.

But I would like to see the following:

- scenarios that in their descriptions/summaries call back to past season's scenarios and perhaps even specific boons that were awarded (something like "this is a great adventure to play if your characters have already played xxxxx from season 1")

- scenarios that let some of the very specific but relatively small boons come into play - but which are fun for any character whether or not you have that past boon (i.e. if you have a boon that gives you a 10% discount in a given city or a +1 on diplomacy vs dwarves from a specific hall that's great and fun to call back on your character's past exploits but groups without those past boons can still have great roleplaying opportunities to buy goods/talk with them as often.

- scenarios that take advantage of "flavor" boons of the past to add roleplaying and flavor to future adventures (the boons that do the Golarion equivalent of giving you the "key to city" etc where if you have that boon and return to that city perhaps you get a slightly different mission briefing (and in mechanical terms perhaps folks are slightly more friendly/DC's for information gathering might be slightly lower)

Across my two active characters I have a bunch of these somewhat random boons that mostly haven't ever had an opportunity to be used - and which I've nearly forgotten about. It would be really awesome to have a reason to call back to them (even if the mechanical benefits were minor) - not least of which as a good reminder to review all my past chronicle sheets.

I'd strongly suggest two minor changes to future scenarios.

1. Call out specifically somewhere scenarios that this scenario might build upon (this might be as simple as noting the primary locations and cross-referencing other scenarios set in the same region/location - i.e. all the Blakros Museum scenarios) (this might be more on the Paizo website than in the individual scenarios PDF.

2. In the PDF itself have some intro text for the GM that might highlight key past scenarios with relevant boons - i.e. so that a GM might schedule those scenarios before this scenario (assuming that the tiers are handled logically - i.e. don't have a boon from a higher tier scenario impact a low tier scenario - but the reverse would be great. This would also give the GM a good reason to ask the players around the table to review their chronicle sheets for possibly relevant boons.