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In short, if other folks have instilled a sense of "we can skirt the rules" in their players, then you're just reaping what you've sewn.
For me it boils down to I just don't care if a player has the book or not unless the FEAT, Trait, Item, ect. hinders game play. If it sounds too good to be true I will check the source if the player can produce it and allow/disallow accordingly.
No matter what the guide says I doubt I am ever going to audit players just because. This is a game and if someone wants to cheat it's on them. I am not the Paizo Police.
Same goes for the item worksheet if it is placed in front of me I will sign it
Sorry Mr Brock I really think you are going to far and PFS is quickly becoming more trouble than it is worth
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Without going into some edge cases, there's nothing in the law that says its illegal to have the same electronic data on two systems at the same time. ^_^ The copyright-related activities which led to that state are generally what might be infringement, and that's almost certainly not the case in the example of sharing material with other members of your own household. (And is much more likely the case in other circumstances.)
To the responses so far, based on my understanding of copyright law, like I said, the likelihood of such an action being copyright infringement is approaching 0. I use that terminology because copyright law is both vague and circumstance-dependent at the same time, with ultimate authority belonging to the courts in a given circumstance. But this particular activity- sharing an electronic file with a member of your own household- is really not likely to be infringing.
I hesitate to talk about copyright law too much on forums for a variety of reasons. I'll mention that I've been formally studying copyright for about 15 years; I've taken classes on it, I've been trained in it, I write about it, I've taught classes on it, I teach undergrads at the University of Texas about it, I lecture in graduate classes about it, I've given workshops about it, and it's the subject of my ongoing dissertation (although to be fair, a lot more than I expected is also about Argentinian copyright law :P). And of course, in all of that, what I've learned is that I could be completely wrong. :P There's always something weird out there. And it's entirely likely I'm overthinking it. :P
I totally get that it's a PFS rule, and abide by it as a PFS rule. I was just wondering.
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Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator
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In short, if other folks have instilled a sense of "we can skirt the rules" in their players, then you're just reaping what you've sewn.For me it boils down to I just don't care if a player has the book or not unless the FEAT, Trait, Item, ect. hinders game play. If it sounds too good to be true I will check the source if the player can produce it and allow/disallow accordingly.
No matter what the guide says I doubt I am ever going to audit players just because. This is a game and if someone wants to cheat it's on them. I am not the Paizo Police.
Same goes for the item worksheet if it is placed in front of me I will sign it
Sorry Mr Brock I really think you are going to far and PFS is quickly becoming more trouble than it is worth
You don't have to sign (or initial) the Inventory Tracking Sheet....ever. Stated 12 times now.
I am not sure how to make it any clearer that there is no extra onus on the GM. Here are some links:
As another person mentioned earlier, all we did was move the Items purchased box from the bottom of the Chronicle sheet to its own one page document so there was more rooms for cool stuff on Chronicles, as well as more room to record purchases.
As for the sharing of PDFs and the like, that isn't a PFS rule. That is a Paizo rule that was made long before I moved to Washington.
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we have retraining now ... but not for traits ... if a player comes to a table .. says ---
"I have X Trait ... from Y book .. I don't Own said book is it cool if I just don't use X Trait"
do you hand him a pre-gen (or other measures) or is the old method ok where they just don't use Said Trait ?
I'm only mentioning Traits because they cant be retrained ..
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we have retraining now ... but not for traits ... if a player comes to a table .. says ---
"I have X Trait ... from Y book .. I don't Own said book is it cool if I just don't use X Trait"
do you hand him a pre-gen (or other measures) or is the old method ok where they just don't use Said Trait ?
I'm only mentioning Traits because they cant be retrained ..
I would probably thank them for their honesty, and tell them they don't have access to the benefits of the trait until they purchase the book. I would not, ever, give them the BENEFIT of being able to change traits. A BENEFIT that no other PFS character has.
If, after a reasonable time, they never made the effort to purchase the book, then I would gladly hand them the pregen. I wouldn't even make it a good pregen.
Edit: And even if it wasn't a trait. I'm not going to let someone retrain out of a feat, spell, etc. without owning the book and paying the prestige and gold cost. Not following the rules should never give you an advantage over someone who does.
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oh I was never suggesting retraining a trait - was the only example that has any possible questions tied to it
Other measures were some of the more extreme ones I have seen mentioned ... report death .. report to staff etc.
It's cool. I misread your post as allowing a character to use a different trait instead of the one they don't have access to. I wouldn't do anything stupid like report a character dead over a book that they might buy that night.
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oh I was never suggesting retraining a trait - was the only example that has any possible questions tied to it
Other measures were some of the more extreme ones I have seen mentioned ... report death .. report to staff etc.
The PFS OP guide answers your question directly.
When you are looking over the character record sheets
and Chronicle sheets of your players at the start of an event
slot, if you notice anything that seems amiss, you may ask
the player to justify the math. If you believe a player to be
cheating, please call over a coordinator to make a ruling.
If you are both the coordinator and the GM, it’s your call
how to proceed, though we recommend that you proceed
calmly, nicely, and with an open mind. The player may have
simply made a mistake, or you might have made a mistake
in your understanding of her Chronicle sheet and character
record sheet. Remember that the game is supposed to
be fun, so waste as little time as possible on drama and
spend as much time as possible providing an exciting,
action-packed scenario for your players. If you believe the
player to be cheating, ask her to leave your table and then
send an email to the Pathfinder Society campaign staff
(pathfindersociety@paizo.com), detailing as much as you
can remember about the sheet—most importantly, get the
Pathfinder Society Number of the player in question.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston
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In general, I've not been policing my tables stringently… but if someone has something that I'm not familiar with I'll ask to see the source. I'm glad to say it hasn't been much of an issue…
but when its an issue, it can do bad things to a table. For example (I wasn't GMing the table, but I was a fellow player): one player's lack of source material (I think he used d20pfdsrd to build the character… he didn't even know that his tiefling variety is only nicknamed "the Motherless") dragged out the first 30-40 minutes of the game while other players, including myself, pulled up references to show the GM of the 3 weird combo things he had going on just in the first encounter. (the GM was being *very* patient because it was a table of Waking Rune and kicking the character off the table could have been even more painful for the rest of us.)
Then again, we didn't have to deal with it for long in that session...
eta: the spoiler
So how does this work in Online PFS when my internet service won't support upload of video camera streaming? I have all the books I'm using physically and they are at my location...
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Ick. This thread again.
With play by post (or I supposed even Roll20 and the like), there is a level of trust that must be upheld between the GM and the Player because some things just can't be verified. I'm not able to come to your house to see your copy of Adventurer's Armory. I'm not going to take the time to search your character's name on all the PbP websites to make sure you're not in multiple scenarios simultaneously. It just isn't feasible. Don't do something silly like calling a Dawnflower Dervish a "Dervish of Dawn" and I won't have any reason to suspect that you might not have Inner Sea Magic. Know the rules for the abilities you are using, and I won't have to wonder if you've even read the book.
The rules are what they are, and the onus is on you to follow them.
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I use d20pfsrd.com (gee that's a shock) and I own almost every single Paizo book made. For that matter, so do most of the guys I play with personally. Of course your experience may be different but virtually everyone I know or have seen using d20pfsrd.com are very strong supporters of Paizo. Perhaps things are different in your neck of the woods though.
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I use d20pfsrd.com (gee that's a shock) and I own almost every single Paizo book made. For that matter, so do most of the guys I play with personally. Of course your experience may be different but virtually everyone I know or have seen using d20pfsrd.com are very strong supporters of Paizo. Perhaps things are different in your neck of the woods though.
jreyst, your site became absolutely useless to me once you where not able to use the Community use anymore, and I am sorry to say in general I always advice not to use your site for PFS play due to the problems with rules with PFS and owning the books.
It makes it difficult to actually track down the actual referenced stuff in the books since you can't use the real names. There are sites that can do it much better since they are using Community Use.
Since most of my play is PFS that kind of makes it difficult to use your site and recommend it to others.
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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If I hadn't invested quite a bit in hero lab and lots of addons to it, I would definitely use d20pfsrd.com to create my characters, it is just that much easier, than using 7+ books.
And as a GM it is literally my preferred way to find and use monster stats.
Of as someone who often buys the pdfs, books and hero lab files separately (living in Germany... subscriptions are expensive), I have no real advice on how to handle players adamantly unwilling to purchase at least the pdfs (a pdf on a phone might be unwieldy, but legal).
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I think half of my paizo purchases are for pfs after seeing something i wanted to use on d20 pfsrd. Theres a ridiculous amount of items spread out all over the place, and seeing them all in one place lets me shop for something thats just right.
I can understand that, but I fall on Dragnmoon's side of things. D20PFSRD is a nice site, but has moved away from my preferred reference site, except at work, where Archives of Nethys is blocked, for some reason, but d20pfsrd is not.
Archives includes the PFS logo, uses the actual name, and is trying to not only reference which book the item is in, but what page in the book it is on.
And, yes, for my home game, I have a player who was using the d20pfsrd names instead of the actual Paizo names for some stuff, and, yes, that makes me suspicious. YMMV.
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Its thanks to sites like d20pfsrd and Archives of Nethys, that I'm able to plan ahead what books/pdfs I should get for my PFS characters.
I do prefer d20pfsrd for checking the rules/game terms and Archives of Nethys for checking of what is PFS legal and which sources they come from.
I picked up pathfinder from d20pfsrd, back in my newbie days, and while I still love it, the switch out of names on d20pfsrd can be very confusing to both GMs and players, hence its rules only.
And yes kinevon, if a player pops up on your table with a d20pfsrd name for stuff, there is a good chance they don't actually own the actual book.
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Venture-Agent, Florida–Altamonte Springs
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My problem with d20pfsrd is when someone will grab something that is not pathfinder. The following was my first experience with d20pfsrd.
Player: I cast Magic Mace
GM (me): What?
Player: I cast Magic Mace
Me: No really what are you doing.
Player: there's my damage from Magic Mace.
Me: That's not a pathfinder spell
Player: But I got it from d20pfsrd
Me: if you want you can change it to magic missile
Player then rage quits because I nerfed his character.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I think the d20pfsrd has the most convenient search engine, and it's also nicer for just browsing classes, races etc.
Nethys is nice because it is more accurate (prestige class names and such), and because it's got book/page references and information about PFS legality. It's my standard reference site for non-core things. I don't like the search function though.
The official PRD is nice because it's official, and because if you know where the thing you're looking for is located, it's pretty fast.
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My problem with d20pfsrd is when someone will grab something that is not pathfinder.
Everything on d20pfsrd.com IS Pathfinder. Some stuff was not released by Paizo (the Publisher of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game) but was in fact written by the very same people (i.e. Owen K. Stephens) who works for Paizo (and is the creator of Magic Mace you linked to.)
Some people are religiously attached to the Publisher name regardless of who wrote something (even if it's the same exact person) and that's fine. I however, celebrate 3rd Party Publishers and can accept that sometimes they do it better than Paizo (and sometimes not). JUST LIKE Paizo... sometimes they're better than others, and sometimes not. I, as a GM, just tell my players ahead of time "You can use stuff from publishers X, Y, and Z, but stay away from stuff from publishers A, B, or C." I even say "This feat from Paizo is not allowed because it's broke as all hell." etc.
As an aside, 3rd Party Publisher content is clearly indicated as such on d20pfsrd.com. In the case of Magic Mace, it's under "Magic > Spells (3rd Party) > Super Genius Games" and has a big warning sign on the page making sure it's clear. As for the spell itself, it seems fine to me. It does more damage but unlike Magic Missile, which auto hits AT RANGE, this spell requires a touch attack (i.e. an attack roll) so it has a chance to miss.
Some people are religiously attached to the Publisher name regardless of who wrote something (even if it's the same exact person) and that's fine.
You do realize that this thread is in the Pathfinder Society part of the forum, right?
Where only Paizo products are listed in the additional resources (and not everything is PFS legal)?
I have no problem with 3rd party product for my home game (as long as it is GM approved).
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My problem with d20pfsrd is when someone will grab something that is not pathfinder.Everything on d20pfsrd.com IS Pathfinder. Some stuff was not released by Paizo (the Publisher of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game) but was in fact written by the very same people (i.e. Owen K. Stephens) who works for Paizo (and is the creator of Magic Mace you linked to.)
Some people are religiously attached to the Publisher name regardless of who wrote something (even if it's the same exact person) and that's fine. I however, celebrate 3rd Party Publishers and can accept that sometimes they do it better than Paizo (and sometimes not). JUST LIKE Paizo... sometimes they're better than others, and sometimes not. I, as a GM, just tell my players ahead of time "You can use stuff from publishers X, Y, and Z, but stay away from stuff from publishers A, B, or C." I even say "This feat from Paizo is not allowed because it's broke as all hell." etc.
As an aside, 3rd Party Publisher content is clearly indicated as such on d20pfsrd.com. In the case of Magic Mace, it's under "Magic > Spells (3rd Party) > Super Genius Games" and has a big warning sign on the page making sure it's clear. As for the spell itself, it seems fine to me. It does more damage but unlike Magic Missile, which auto hits AT RANGE, this spell requires a touch attack (i.e. an attack roll) so it has a chance to miss.
Since this is the Pathfinder Society section, when Tamec wrote "not pathfinder" I think he meant not published by Paizo, which in the context of PFS, is not legal for PFS gameplay.
The issue Tamec has stems from, when new players see websites like d20pfsrd or Archives of Nethys, is that they think EVERYTHING is PFS Legal. EVERYTHING! And they start building their characters with sources that experienced GMs/players know are not legal.
Hence the magic mace issue...
Which for a PFS GM can be quite frustrating, as on 1 hand you are trying to get new players to enjoy a game, on the other hand you end up spending game time trying to help these new players discover WHERE did they find such content, only realize its a 3rd party content or its a renamed paizo / not legal for PFS content.
And it always sucks to tell a new player that the character he or she has spend time making is not legal for PFS.
For homebrew games, I'm sure this would be much less of an issue and 3rd party content would be much more accessible to a player.
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In response to OP:
I think you're going to lose loads of players. If you require every player at your table to own every book they use then you're probably going to lose 50-70% of the people playing society at your store.People don't have the disposable income. Hell I know of a number of people selling their blood just to eat every week.
Think about that:
SELLING THEIR BLOOD JUST TO EAT.No one doing that is going to waste money on a book when a basic need isn't met.
Maybe you should run some of the games as non-society *GASP* and let people play whatever they want. I'm thinking you might have more fun, even if you don't sell as many books.
Unless you're just all about the selling books. Then I guess keep doing what you're doing.
The rules were made to make Paizo money not necessarily the store owner. You can make quite powerful PFS characters with core only. Imagine how someone who follows the rules and only uses books they own to make characters feel when they see people saying it's okay to cheat.
Make no mistake about it, it is cheating. No other way to justify it. Rules say you gotta own it, period, not you gotta own it if you can afford it. Not you can borrow your friends copy.
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I think half of my paizo purchases are for pfs after seeing something i wanted to use on d20 pfsrd. Theres a ridiculous amount of items spread out all over the place, and seeing them all in one place lets me shop for something thats just right.
Same, it shows the source at the bottom of everything. Then you go to FLGS and buy the book or buy a PDF online. I have to agree, probably half my purchases are to get resources for PFS.
People can pretty easily read if something is third party or not, and then check the additional resources if its from Paizo, I don't really see why this is an issue. If its legal, you can then make the purchase. I love D20PFSRD, and would probably play less Pathfinder if it wasn't for that site because I hate navigating the books. I mean, I truly despise it. Sometimes I may be cycling through 2 or 3 classes, multiple feats, traits, spells and equipment, perhaps from 10 different books. I would NEVER be able to do that with books, and I'd probably have like 3 PFS PC's instead of the 16 I currently have.
The only time I open the book is to finish up the character and make sure its legit. Does that mean sometimes I get into a complex build and some part or another needs tweaking, or I need to buy a book, yeah. I've had one build fall apart completely because one of its features wasn't legal for play. Doesn't change how awesome a resource it is.
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Didn't mean to start everyone on a tirade against d20pfsrd.com I use it as my primary rules reference, even before my pdfs or my hardcover books. Many of the arguments here against the site also apply to Hero Lab, another invaluable tool that isn't a "PFS legal" rules reference.
I only mention the name change because it's a red flag that a player might not have the primary source. I'm not going to go out of my way to pester all of my players about owning the sources they use, but if one presents red flags that I can't ignore, I dig a little deeper. I want to support Paizo, and I want everyone playing by the same rules (both meta and in-game).
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Alright, been thinking about this a little more and took a nap. Assuming the society is there for a few reasons:
1) To get a group of people together to bring them into PFS (and PF in general) to have a fun, safe time.
2) To bring new players into the fold.
3) And (most importantly really) to help make Paizo money.
So, how to best deal with the situation? If your looking at 50-70% loss(not sure this is the exact number, just saw it in another post) then its a pretty widespread problem. The fact of the matter is if you drop 100's of dollars of purchases on someone tomorrow their gonna laugh in your face. If they had that kind of disposable money they'd probably be playing mini-games:)
Since that fails to accomplish and of the proposed goals of PFS (as set above, I could be way off base with those) that is obviously a poor way to deal with it. Telling them they can't play their PC's is also likely to have a similar effect. Not only does it affect those players, it may affect other potential players who they will talk badly about.
So, what I would propose is you have a shindig with the players that don't have their source materials and let them know the situation. Tell them these are the rules, and they need to start buying these books. Depending on the general socioeconomic situation where you live once every 2 weeks to once a month seems reasonable. Tell them they need to make one purchase within that time. Point out that most the PDF's are the cost of a movie ticket, and how much more entertainment value you get from a 10 dollar PDF than from a movie ticket (the time:dollar ratio for RPG's can be incredible). Encourage them to buy faster if they can, but empathize with them on the point that they may not.
That gives the people who didn't know time to get things together. 10 dollars a month for 30 months is a lot more reasonable for most people than 300 dollars at once. Don't believe me, there's an entire industry built around it, and they charge phatty interest! That should go miles to not make any individual feel called out and give them the chance to correct the situation at a reasonable and cost effective pace.
Anyway, that is my thought on how to deal with it. It should make it a win for everyone.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I've been calling PFS a three legged stool for a while.
I see it as
A) Getting players together, and new players a place they can standardize rules.
B) Getting people to game stores, who are willing to host us. (and yes, buying product there.)
C) Moving product for Paizo.
All three stools are important. No players, no PFS. No place to play and people to buy from, no PFS, no product and support from Paizo, no PFS.
Likewise, if someone is using, say, an alchemist with tanglebombs, I'm going to want to see the raw text, not d20 PFSD (Had this happen at Origins. It's not funny to have my own trick (entangling spam) thrown back at me.)
Is your Core Rulebook wizard going to be as powerful/flexible as one I can make since I'm a subscriber? Likely not. Is he still functional and enjoyable as mine? Yeah, he is. Maybe someways he's a better society character since he's not going to have a trait to know UMD, or to have it function off of intelligence, so he has to rely on someone else to heal since he doesn't have as many options to self heal.
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The players who aren't going to contribute... aren't really a loss if they go away.
Thats not entirely true. What if they bring someone who loves pathfinder, buys all the source books and runs AP's bringing in even more gamers?
What if someone tells them they heard of PFS and wanted to try it and he talks them out of going to the store?
We don't live in a vacuum which is why I suggested handling the situation with tact.
If you live in a community thats very very depressed, is it worth it for PFS, Paizo, and the community to chase off a wide range of the population there? Maybe the area recovers, new jobs are formed, people move to find work and pick up PF there. But you insisted on kicking them out of the community because they didn't (or possibly couldn't) follow the rules, so they all turn to D&D Next.
I'm not saying necessarily that your wrong, I just think theres a lot to consider besides "they aren't going to contribute and its not a loss to loose them."
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I think you're going to lose loads of players. If you require every player at your table to own every book they use then you're probably going to lose 50-70% of the people playing society at your store.
Since PFS has been the largest, fastest growing organized play campaign for the past 5+ years, and has ALWAYS had the expectation that players own the books their character draw material from, I seriously doubt your estimate of 50-70% is anywhere near accurate.
People don't have the disposable income. Hell I know of a number of people selling their blood just to eat every week.
I sympathize, and no offense intended, but maybe PFS is not the best choice of game for them, nor would be Warhammer 40K, or Magic the Gathering. Some games just have a higher level of monetary commitment.
Maybe you should run some of the games as non-society *GASP* and let people play whatever they want.
Maybe he's not interested in running non-society games. Maybe those players who cannot afford to buy all the books should stick to using material from the books they already own. There are plenty of players that do this and have no complaints. Or maybe those players should organize their own non-society game. I'm sure there are other players who would be happy to join them. There are plenty of RPG players who don't like some of the restrictions of organized play or wish they could use non-society approved material. This would be an opportunity to meet the needs of all the above. I'm sorry, but the rules for PFS require players to own their materials. If you want to play in the campaign, you have to follow the rules.