Suggestions for 2013 - errata & expanded content for old seasons?

[Rycaut]

A suggestion, though I suspect it won't happen, but I think if it did it would improve PFS.

Many PFS scenarios have errors that have been caught after they have been published (and frequently, though not always, discussed in detail here on the messageboards). Many others have important plot points/sections which were cut during editing but which help clarify what was going on in the scenario (and in at least a few cases help make faction missions achievable)

Further with older scenarios there are updates and changes to PFS play, such as the doubling of the number of factions, which might usefully be noted if older scenario PDFs were ever updated.

So here is what I would suggest at least be considered for PFS in 2013.

Every scenario from Season 1-3 be published in an updated format with at a minimum the following changes:

a) insert guidance for DMs running older seasons re which factions missions to assign as well as the rules on awarding Prestige for that scenario. Ideally including updating the Chronicle sheets to the new format w/space for Day Jobs, Fame etc

b) correct known typos and outright errors in the scenarios - stuff like tactics that suggest illegal actions, incorrect stat blocks/references, or other known errors in the encounters

c) INSERT advice/guidance/corrections/suggestions based on play experience - i.e. reminders that maps were drawn at a different than normal scale or return some flavor text to the scenario if doing so makes some faction missions achievable etc. To keep page references easy I suggest doing this as an appendix not via reflowing every page.

d) correct known errors on Chronicle sheets (there is precedent for this happening as it has been done in the past) - things like incorrect prices. Potentially the tier rewards for some older scenarios might be raised to be closer to those of newer seasons especially where off by a lot (some older scenarios may offer half or even less than the rewards of s similar tier scenario from season 3 or 4)

I realize this would take both a lot of work and make a degree of changes - but I think the end result would be a better PFS with lessened table variation - and with potentially a renewed interest by players and DMs (and event organizers) in older scenarios. There still would be plot changes over time that mean it makes somewhat more sense to play newer scenarios after old ones - but many classic scenarios are fantastic but flawed (with well known flaws in many cases) - I think rolling those changes into the published documents would help everyone.

[YogoZuno]

Correcting references to non-Pathfinder rulebooks, and recreating non-Pathfinder NPC stat blocks would be hgh on my priority list...

[Katie Gonzalez]

In a perfect world I would love to see this. But if they haven't updated Season 0 to Pathfinder rules, I doubt they will have the time for to update other seasons...

[Paz]

Presumably you think this should be done instead of releasing any new season 4 / 5 scenarios? Because I'm fairly sure Paizo don't have time to do both.

Personally I'd prefer them to release new scenarios, based on the latest metaplot, plus the learnings of the last 4 years.

[Rycaut]

Well I was suggesting they do this for Seasons 1-3 (and 4 if there are typos/errors that have been found) not Season 0 which is the season that has 3.5 rules so would require a lot of work.

What I would be proposing is not at all in place of new scenarios - it is just taking advantage fully of a PDF only product - to correct those PDFs especially where there are known errors - and perhaps to update them to standards where those have changed (i.e. update the format of the chronicle sheets potentially - and perhaps inserting the same block of text into every older scenario referencing what to do with faction missions - yes most DM's can find this by looking at the guide to PFS but why not also include that one chart in the older PDFs to assist everyone?

I wouldn't be surprised at all if a bunch of players and DM's could assist Paizo in making these changes - in most cases there are already extensive message board posts with many of the errors already noted - though frequently they are scattered across multiple threads and many posts (and in some cases are subject to debates).

Season 0 could take a very long time as in many scenarios entirely new stat blocks have to be created for creatures and NPCs built using 3.5 rules that changed in Pathfinder. But the later seasons that are Pathfinder should require far fewer major changes - and if all they did were to fix outright errors, add some standard updates/notes and perhaps include an appendix or two for scenarios with missing content or errors in maps/handouts that would be huge and shouldn't require as much work as doing full rewrites would (especially if those rewrites changed page layouts)

[Belafon]

July Version of this thread (it happens about every 6 months):

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2ohz0?Season-0-Revision-and-Release-Questions

Mark Moreland wrote:

TetsujinOni wrote:

Unfortunately, it's not the 'work-doers' that are the bottleneck, it's the Paizo development crew that need to touch the adventure again post-update to make sure it hits current quality minima.

TetsujinOni is correct. We're always looking for ways to put out more content for the campaign, but until we expand our development, artistic, and editing resources internally, we're pretty much at maximum capacity. Work has been done on updating several scenarios but none except Mists of Mwangi ever made it all the way through to release. We don't have an estimate of when the rest will do the same.

This was asked specifically about season 0 but Mark has given a similar response when asked about other seasons. The holdup is the Paizo quality process, which can't be "short-circuited" even for a pdf only product.