Re-Evaluating Replay


Pathfinder Society

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4/5 *** Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston

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So, for context, I've been playing PFS regularly for 3 years now. Generally, I game every Sunday at my local gaming shop. Occasionally I'll pick up other games, and occasionally I miss some.

I'm worried, generally, about the policy regarding replay. I'm personally at the point where I've played 50-75% of the scenarios that exist. I've GMed a fair portion of those that I enjoyed as well, and I commonly find that any given Sunday, there are literally no options in the 2-3 scenarios being offered.

I realize we've tried to do a bit to help this, such as GM star replays (which doesn't do much, you save these for the scenarios you *really* like) and Core Campaign (but we all want to use the new materials!/these are rarely scheduled locally). But at the same time, we've made this a lot harder recently. It used to be you could replay with no credit, now you can only do that to meet a minimum table size.

I realize we want rules to prevent people from abusing the system, but we also don't want these rules to punish long-time honest players, and they feel like they do this a bit now.

I don't know what the solution is, but I know I'm not the only one locally who has similar issues. I know some of our own have had similar issues. Even Rogue Eidolon, before moving and working for Paizo, was having these problems.

Some thoughts:
1. Remove minimum table requirements for playing for no credit. As it is, we're playing for 0 rewards, and any penalties we receive still apply to our character. Let people have fun.
2. Change replay policy, perhaps every GM star allows replay of *all* scenarios one additional time? Or at least more than one...

Others ideas? Who else is experiencing something similar?

5/5 5/55/55/5

There's good reasons for not letting people replay for no credit. Experimentally, hey were a problem in other campaigns.

What i would like to see is some sort of a bus exception: that is if your options are to replay or go home you can replay.

Grand Lodge 5/5

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I dont know who the organizer of your area is, but around here we keep a relatively up-to-date list of everything everybody has played and GMed for credit. Its in a Dropbox file that is linked on our Facebook page, so everyone has easy access to it. This does a couple things for us:

1. Helps in the scheduling of game days, as we can plan scenarios to do our best to make sure all/most regularly attending people will have something they can play during the day.

2. Gives everyone an easily accessable record of everything played so if they dont remember if theyve played something before its only a few clicks away on their smartphone.

Im not saying its a necessary thing to do, but it has seriously helped the scheduling around here. If you are not the only person having this kind of problem locally, you might want to suggest it to your organizer, though it will take a lot of help from your community, as you dont want to put all the effort of figuring out who played what onto the organizer (if I were in their shoes and someone didnt want to make the effort to put their stuff on it, I wouldnt go out of my way to schedule stuff they can play).

Another option is just talking to your group and/or organizer about what scenarios you would be interested in playing. I started a thread on my groups FB page where people should comment with scenario names they wanted to play. Anybody else who wanted that one shoul Like the comment, so we knew which ones were most popular at the time, so we could schedule things people actively wanted to play at the time.

A third option is to see about having modules or AP chapters being added into the rotation. If you havent played many of those, it can seriously boost the number of options available.

A fourth is to GM more often. If you are currently playing 4 sessions a month and are able to knock that down to 3 (or even 2) by helping out with GMing more often(not knocking the effort youve made so far. youve obviously done at least 30 tables, which is great!), then you will slow your march towards having nothing to play at any given time.

I hope you find some of those helpful, because I strongly oppose mass replay and oppose it being opened up further than what it is, sorry.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 *

Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Agree something needs to be done to help this out a bit. We're starting to get to a point locally as well that we're being routed into AP and Module play, which is not conductive to having an evening around a table group.

I understand the past issues with replay for no credit, but even if it were GM stars equal number of times we can replay anything at least once per star would help out a ton for those who enjoy playing.

We even added in Rise of the Drow and taking out time at it (and a PFS break) but still, have issues regarding ability to play, unless we start to bow out of PFS except when something new and shiny is released, play it twice and done. -- given that most of our group enjoys the few Charity PFS things that go one, it makes it harder to attend when you look and played everything.

Another thought is are we ever going to get chronicle sheets for Wrath of the Righteous, Legacy of Fire, Kingmaker, Serpent's Skull, Council of Thieves, Second Darkness, or Curse of the Crimson Throne?? (and I'm probably missing some). That may at least be a temporary fix for some groups.

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5 RPG Superstar 2013 Top 8

Incendiaeternus wrote:
Another thought is are we ever going to get chronicle sheets for Wrath of the Righteous, Legacy of Fire, Kingmaker, Serpent's Skull, Council of Thieves, Second Darkness, or Curse of the Crimson Throne?? (and I'm probably missing some). That may at least be a temporary fix for some groups.

Unless they get updated to PFRPG I seriously doubt that we'll get sanctioning for Curse of the Crimson Throne, Second Darkness, and Legacy of Fire.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

CORE does exist as a replay option.

Liberty's Edge 4/5 5/55/5 **

Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Another option is to contact your event organized if there's a time when there's no other game being offered. A lot of these details sound like my region/scheduling option (2-3 years, Sunday games, recent expansion to modules - more due to popular demand than anything else) and I'm often struggling to sudoku what people want to play. If I get a request, I'll switch up the schedule for it. I personally, in my game days, stopped scheduling Core games when we stopped having tables make. I'm willing to revisit this, of course. If you are from my region, let me know and I'll see what I can do about the July schedule that I just posted.

However, a thing to know is that playing 1/week is not a viable option long-term, unless you start pulling in CORE or GMing quite a bit. This is something that's a struggle to work around, I admit. However, I don't want to open up replay due to a number of bad experiences I've had as a GM with people who were replaying under the current replay rules. I've seen twist endings given away and puzzles remembered by replayers rather than solved. Have you ever been at a Confirmation table where someone's already played it 5+ times? Even with the randomized factor, it still isn't ideal, as they either have to sit out the game essentially or make an effort not to use previous knowledge, which is hilarwkward to say the least.

Shadow Lodge 4/5 5/5 RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8

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I'd advise reading though this previous thread, Replaying Scenarios (Without Stars). A lot of the discussion points being made here where made in that thread, and you can see the responses to them.

Personally, our area had a group of a half-dozen hardcore (3x/week) PFS participants that would replay for no credit on a regular basis. We did it because we just wanted to play Pathfinder. It wasn't until we realized that what we had been doing was illegal, per the Guide, that we needed to find another solution. For us, a combination of Core games and APs have been that solution. In fact, some of us now participate in Pathfinder games 4x/week.

Now, you've stated that this kind of solution isn't really a fit for your play area. Initially, I felt the same way, as Core wasn't yet released. My previous posts indicate as such. However, since your situation is similar to ours--a small group of veteran participants that are being forced to go home rather than play, I'd like to advise attempting something similar to what has worked for us: a floating AP group. Here's what I mean by that.

This is where you have an AP that you open to any players that are hitting their limit of available scenarios. Given the amount of play happening, you likely have a couple of folks that are happy with GMing on a weekly basis. Make one of them the GM for this AP (I did it for our area). Have everyone involved make characters and keep those characters at the same level. This means that whenever the party would level up, you announce to your play group that the AP characters are now level X, and everyone should level up by the next game day. Whenever you get a group of folks that cannot play the scheduled scenarios that night for credit, you run this AP instead. The group of players might change from night to night, but since all the characters participating are kept to the same level, there's no real issue. Loot found by the party is kept on a sheet that the GM carries. Whenever an AP session starts, the players participating borrow the loot for the game, and return it at the end of the session. We were able to get through Wrath of the Righteous last summer using this system. We had a total of about 10 participants throughout the course of the game, with an average of 4-5 players at any given session.

With the implementation of Core, we haven't needed to have another "floating" AP group, but if interest spiked, I would likely start up another given the success we had last year.

I'd recommend presenting the idea of a floating AP group as a solution to your veteran PFS participants and see if they are interested. If they are keen on getting chronicle sheets, simply run an AP that provides them. Another option for credit is to also schedule modules for participants that show up for multiple game days in a row. We have also done this in the past and it is a good way to get to play your PFS characters when there are no scenarios left to play for credit.

3/5

We should only turn people away as a last resort. "Nope, you can't play today, go catch a bus home" is a crappy result we should work hard to avoid.

Why not let people replay scenarios for no credit? Spoilers? That's already an issue. I play scenarios I've previously GM'ed. The fix is easy, you mention it to the GM and you work hard to keep your in-game and out-of-game knowledge separate.

Replay isn't *ideal*, but it sure beats driving away people who have made the trip out and want to play.

4/5 *** Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston

@LazarX/others: I do address Core. The issue is that a majority of our players are new players who want to have all of the options open to them. Core tables in our area don't get traction, so we don't host a lot.

@Walter: Thanks, I didn't find that thread on an initial search. I'll be sure to take a look over it. I'm not sure how viable AP is, as the time constraints/scoping on those are different than for scenarios. Note, I've also played a fair number of Modules, though far less of those than of Scenarios.

@Rigby: I'm from the Boston Lodge. We run 3 or more tables weekly (typically 2 scenarios) and have ~30-50ish semi-regular players (guessing). That's *a lot* for any VC or VL to keep track of.

I understand, things can be done to help this problem, but why do we care if people want to "cheat the system"? We have rules in place if people are spoiling things for a table, we can ask them to leave and not come back. There's no reward for having 10 12th level characters, so shouldn't, in general, we have rules that promote the most fun for the honest players, and not rules that try to weed out the smaller number of cheaters (who don't actually profit...)?

Dark Archive 5/5

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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps Subscriber

If you have players who have a lot of /played, and you're not announcing ahead of time what scenarios are being offered such that they can tell whether they SHOULD come out or not for a session...

I would suggest that the problem isn't the campaign, it's the event organizer failing to be organized enough.

Sovereign Court 1/5

I'm really, really new to GMing PFS, but it would be nice if I could let my friends legally replay for no credit. I have a pretty small group of players, so if one of them misses a game, we can't field enough folks to put together a legal table for the person who missed out to play. I've ended up just running a them again without it being an official PFS game if the player really wanted to try it, but I feel bad those players won't be able to get credit for that scenario.

I get the spoilers issue, but frankly, I'd rather let people play and deal personally with disruptive players, than have someone miss out on the off chance someone /might/ spoil things.

Sovereign Court 4/5

Unlimited replay has killed off previous OP campaigns. You will not see it in PFS.

It has nothing to do with cheating, or avoiding fun, or anything else like that.

It has to do with getting new players involved in PFS. New players are new customers for Paizo. Old players, though loyal, have already bought everything. By allowing unlimited replay, you keep the same butts taking up seats at your FLGS. They too, wish to sell books to new players. They cannot do so if old butts are taking up those seats. The best sales tactic for a game is to have the new customer sit down and play it.

Mike Brock has learned from the past and is determined not to make those same mistakes (those mistakes that doomed other OP campaigns) again.

As well, TetsujinOni made a great point about organization.

5/5 5/55/55/5

TetsujinOni wrote:

If you have players who have a lot of /played, and you're not announcing ahead of time what scenarios are being offered such that they can tell whether they SHOULD come out or not for a session...

I would suggest that the problem isn't the campaign, it's the event organizer failing to be organized enough.

Stuff happens. Sometimes people don't show and a table falls through. Running a different scenario coldish is sometmes a possibility, but not usually an optimal one.

Dark Archive 5/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps Subscriber
BigNorseWolf wrote:
TetsujinOni wrote:

If you have players who have a lot of /played, and you're not announcing ahead of time what scenarios are being offered such that they can tell whether they SHOULD come out or not for a session...

I would suggest that the problem isn't the campaign, it's the event organizer failing to be organized enough.

Stuff happens. Sometimes people don't show and a table falls through. Running a different scenario coldish is sometmes a possibility, but not usually an optimal one.

Adventure Card Guild

Replayables
Bull Sessions

All are better than policy that embraces unlimited replay. It *DESTROYED* community growth in LFR. Utterly awful results.

Liberty's Edge 4/5 RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

LazarX wrote:
CORE does exist as a replay option.

When core was introduced as the replay option that PFS was going with, we unfortunately had a number of our long time players move on to other games in our area. Hurt our GM pool quite a bit. Core has been a tough sell in general. I love it, but I'm about the only one.

4/5 *** Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston

I'm not suggesting unlimited replay, just a better means of keeping people/customers who have already played a large number of scenarios. If you want to take the "we don't care about existing customers, only new customers matter" stance, I think you'll see how well-loved companies like Comcast who also take that approach are.

Another option would be "you cannot play a scenario (implied for credit) you have already played in the last two years."

Surely things like this have to have been thought of/on the board...

5/5 5/55/55/5

TetsujinOni wrote:


Adventure Card Guild
Replayables
Bull Sessions

Not everyone plays/likes the card game.

Theres only so many times you can run a scenario before going crazier
and the last requires an entire table to forgo credit as well.

Quote:

All are better than policy that embraces unlimited replay. It *DESTROYED* community growth in LFR. Utterly awful results.

I'm not advocating unlimited replay. Its not a binary thing. You wouldn't be able to just fill in the seats as a veteran just to fill in the seats.

5/5

The solution, as always, is to pressure Paizo to release more scenarios.

Guide 6.1 (2014) wrote:
Reporting has a cascading effect. Pathfinder Society campaign management needs accurate records to correctly gauge how many people are playing Pathfinder Society each month in order to track growth and properly budget resources to meet the campaign’s needs. The more people who play, the more money and time are dedicated to the Pathfinder Society program.
Guide 2.0 (2009) wrote:
We need accurate records so that we know how many people are playing Pathfinder Society each month so that we can track growth so that we can properly budget the Society. The more people that play, the more money we dedicate to the Society.

I hope that the release schedule can reflect player growth between 2009 and now.

4/5 *** Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston

Mekkis wrote:

The solution, as always, is to pressure Paizo to release more scenarios.

Guide 6.1 (2014) wrote:
Reporting has a cascading effect. Pathfinder Society campaign management needs accurate records to correctly gauge how many people are playing Pathfinder Society each month in order to track growth and properly budget resources to meet the campaign’s needs. The more people who play, the more money and time are dedicated to the Pathfinder Society program.
Guide 2.0 (2009) wrote:
We need accurate records so that we know how many people are playing Pathfinder Society each month so that we can track growth so that we can properly budget the Society. The more people that play, the more money we dedicate to the Society.

I hope that the release schedule can reflect player growth between 2009 and now.

Paizo, not the Society, releases scenarios. I'd love to see an uptick in this, because, as you point out, we clearly have a lot more players than we did 6 years ago, or even 3, and the release schedule has been pretty much fixed. However, I don't expect this to actually happen. They're dedicating more time to other new materials. So us old players who don't buy any of their product continue to buy their product :).

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

I believe that Paizo has already indicated that they will be producing more scenario for Season 7. If I understood the message correctly, there will likely be 6 more scenarios released in the next season.

1/5

tivadar27 wrote:

@LazarX/others: I do address Core. The issue is that a majority of our players are new players who want to have all of the options open to them. Core tables in our area don't get traction, so we don't host a lot.

Have you tried running the tables a few times? We were very skeptical here and now we can get at least 3 core tables any time we schedule them and that includes a bunch of new players.

Silver Crusade 3/5

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OP: you said that there are several of you in your area who are in the same boat as you, running out of scenarios to play.

Ask the organizer of your events to throw in a table of NO CREDIT. Run a scenario that you have all played or GMed before and nobody take credit. (Just make sure that EVERYONE at the table has played that scenario before.)

The only part of replaying a scenario that is illegal is when it is played for credit by one or more of the players. If nobody is taking credit for it, there really is no big deal.

2/5 *

We have had only one table of core go off here in my area and even when we have scheduled them not even the people that asked for them show up.

4/5 *** Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston

The Fox wrote:

OP: you said that there are several of you in your area who are in the same boat as you, running out of scenarios to play.

Ask the organizer of your events to throw in a table of NO CREDIT. Run a scenario that you have all played or GMed before and nobody take credit. (Just make sure that EVERYONE at the table has played that scenario before.)

The only part of replaying a scenario that is illegal is when it is played for credit by one or more of the players. If nobody is taking credit for it, there really is no big deal.

So you're saying I can get together an homebrew and game like that? I've known this for a while. I do a bit of it as well. I'd like to play PFS, and continue to play it, including with some of the new players that join.

Sorry, I realize I'm being a bit trite, but I know there are solutions/ways this work, but my point is it's very much not easy/accommodating, like PFS is to new players, and requires a lot of planning/coordinating. I'm suggesting that PFS should make Society play as accessible to long-time players as it does to new players.

Dark Archive 5/5

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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps Subscriber

The observations we have counter to your position are:

* Based on past experience with unlimited replay campaigns, on the scale of our thousands of players, broader replay rules lead to even more cliquish play groups which makes the experience for new players worse, not better.

* The lead time to increase production of PFS scenarios is gigantic, because we want Season 6 quality, not Season 0. There's only so many people who can competently assemble a complex PDF and have it render right most of the time. Paizo's PFS pdf's are actually fairly complicated specimens, but it contributes to why they're pleasant to run and play.

* Core is precisely intended to double your play opportunities for circumstances like this. Dropping to "run in core play mode" for the veterans who'd get no credit otherwise is one of its intended uses.

* Rules which are simple to apply are preferred. Mike is coordinating thousands of us and when people are confused, his inbox is the one that's gonna get stuffed. Yes, despite the prominence of the VO program.

Now, all of those things said, if you have a concrete proposal of a new rule for replay to consider for Season 8 that is both different than current, easy to apply, and evaluatable as a concrete proposal, let's talk about it.

I'm not against the potential for fillings seats 5 and 6 of a table with no credit replayers returning as an option, for one... The no-credit, costs-and-risks option makes it just unattractive enough that it's "want to play to enjoy the game" rather than "running instances for drops" behavior that I find generally tolerable. Mileage may vary, and Mike may have seen more problems from the seat 5 and 6 players to warrant the "only enough to make up the table to legal count".

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 *

Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I think one thing that people are missing in this is your not going to recruit 'new' players in some areas. We're lucky we have enough pathfinder players in this area to make up a full table without driving usually 1-2 hours away and taking up seats in games that are normally full anyway.

To say some of us live in the middle of a corn field is not far from the truth in some places. Which means unless you want to be sucked into video games, rpgs are a good source of entertainment.

"Hey, why don't you GM?"...
We already rotate GMs a lot, even added in home games, Core games, ect. When you have a limited amount of people and everyone but the GM has now run it, that's not a replay option. Because suddenly only one person has not played it, so we can't host a legal table.

"This is why we have Core."
Yes it is, but its a stop gap filler. When you only have so many repeatable scenarios that can get you to level 2, what happens to get to 2, to those few gaps at 5-9 you haven't played yet? Because you can't replay them unless you burn stars, and like someone mentioned, your going to do that on things with benefits not random scenarios.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

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Starfinder Superscriber
Walter Sheppard wrote:
a floating AP group.

...so, Skull & Shackles. That one is mostly floating.

(Also, it probably works pretty well. You can go all Star Trek; everybody is on the ship, it's just the players who are present whose characters are actively participating in whatever's going on right now.)

Grand Lodge 4/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento

tivadar27 wrote:
The Fox wrote:


Ask the organizer of your events to throw in a table of NO CREDIT. Run a scenario that you have all played or GMed before and nobody take credit. (Just make sure that EVERYONE at the table has played that scenario before.)

So you're saying I can get together an homebrew and game like that? I've known this for a while. I do a bit of it as well. I'd like to play PFS, and continue to play it, including with some of the new players that join.

You can play PFS with new players.

You just can't play PFS every week for 3 years and not start to run out of scenarios. The resources are simply not there to make that possible. And frankly if your goal is to play with new players, then replay is not the way to do it, because you are ruining the experience for them, and you are going to drive them off. I've had people replay to make a table go off, and it is a lousy experience for the new players.

So the answer is going to have to be, start playing every other week, and find something to do on the days you don't play.

Actually, if you have enough players in this boat, a better solution than the Fox's is to start writing your own PFS style scenarios. If you have a week when enough people are there who can't play for credit, run one of your scenarios for no credit. If people like it, save it up, and next time there is a scenario open call, submit it to PFS.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

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Robert Thomson wrote:
LazarX wrote:
CORE does exist as a replay option.
When core was introduced as the replay option that PFS was going with, we unfortunately had a number of our long time players move on to other games in our area. Hurt our GM pool quite a bit. Core has been a tough sell in general. I love it, but I'm about the only one.

Core is ok, but it also doesn't help out in a lot of the cases that people site for opening up Replay more, and in some cases actually makes the problems worse. It's actually better to consider the Core option it's own thing and not a Replay method.

For smaller groups, for example, where there may only be one or two tables at a time/week, every time a new player joins, (which is common here in my military town), there is a growing divide, especially as each new player levels out of the 1-5 tier. At a few points, where some players just have no interest in making yet another new character, it really puts us in an odd position where no one can play together, which is really worsened by the fact that the players that have been there the longest are also really hurting for what scenarios they can play. It also gets to a certain point where replaying for no credit or as a 5th wheel just isn't fun. Some of them also do not like to or are not good at DMing, and because most of us are military, it's difficult to get the same crowd each weak, making running Modules and APs pretty undesirable an option, at least some times.

I typically DM, and the DM Star Replays where nice, but we where all under the assumption from the start they would reset annually, so kind of wasted them before finding out that they in fact did not reset.

Finding more DM's is not really a practical option, and in all honesty wouldn't really help the core issue in that it's very hard to find scenarios that everyone can partake in, or at least most can, for credit.

Something that might be really cool is to allow a sort of universal replay system, where if you are replaying the scenario, you automatically receive GP, XP, and PP for the lowest Tier as if playing on Slow Progression, or default minimum to 250 gp, 0.5 XP, and 1PP if it would be lower, (unless it was the same character, which would be 0's across the board).

This seems pretty simple, and like it would really help in cases where there is a small DM and player pool, or where the player pool often changes. The other issue is that new scenarios just can't seem to keep up, (which is perfectly understandable).

Silver Crusade 3/5

FLite wrote:
Actually, if you have enough players in this boat, a better solution than the Fox's is to start writing your own PFS style scenarios. If you have a week when enough people are there who can't play for credit, run one of your scenarios for no credit. If people like it, save it up, and next time there is a scenario open call, submit it to PFS.

+1

Silver Crusade 3/5

Another couple of ideas:

  • Kobold Quarterly has a few quest in some of their later issues.
  • Get PDFs of old issues of Dungeon Magazine. Run them for no credit using your PFS characters (with the other people in your area who are out of scenarios to play). There are some real gems in there. You will need to convert them from 3.5 to PFS, but that isn't very hard to do.

4/5 *** Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston

TetsujinOni wrote:
Now, all of those things said, if you have a concrete proposal of a new rule for replay to consider for Season 8 that is both different than current, easy to apply, and evaluatable as a concrete proposal, let's talk about it.

Concrete proposal: You may replay a scenario for credit if it's been 2 (?) years since the last time you've played it.

I think that gets around any potential for large-scale abuse and lets things stay fresh for long-term players without putting a burden on Paizo.

Are there any issues surrounding this? Are you worried that it's more difficult to track? In fairness, replay rules for GM replays aren't really any better, but then again, they're not tracked (online) very well now anyways. Currently the reporting interface is able to determine and report the date you've played a scenario previously when using replay, so comparing that to the current date reported should be trivial.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

tivadar27 wrote:
Concrete proposal: You may replay a scenario for credit if it's been 2 (?) years since the last time you've played it.

I like it in theory, but honestly, it seems like it could be a nightmare to keep track of. Personally, I have no sense of time. Basically three categories. "Nowish", "not too long ago" (a few months to a few years) and "a while ago/back in the day", (more than a few months ago).

4/5 *** Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston

DM Beckett wrote:
tivadar27 wrote:
Concrete proposal: You may replay a scenario for credit if it's been 2 (?) years since the last time you've played it.
I like it in theory, but honestly, it seems like it could be a nightmare to keep track of. Personally, I have no sense of time. Basically three categories. "Nowish", "not too long ago" (a few months to a few years) and "a while ago/back in the day", (more than a few months ago).

Honestly, I have enough trouble remembering what I've played in general. Sometimes the descriptions aren't adequate. I ended up creating a spreadsheet, but I'm ambitious. Before I did that, I just looked on the paizo site prior to showing up to figure if I'd played it. You're right, it's more book-keeping on the player end, but that's a price, I, as a player, am more than happy to pay... but it also takes the burden off local GMs/coordinators. It's only a small burden on the Paizo website.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 *

Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
tivadar27 wrote:
DM Beckett wrote:
tivadar27 wrote:
Concrete proposal: You may replay a scenario for credit if it's been 2 (?) years since the last time you've played it.
I like it in theory, but honestly, it seems like it could be a nightmare to keep track of. Personally, I have no sense of time. Basically three categories. "Nowish", "not too long ago" (a few months to a few years) and "a while ago/back in the day", (more than a few months ago).
Honestly, I have enough trouble remembering what I've played in general. Sometimes the descriptions aren't adequate. I ended up creating a spreadsheet, but I'm ambitious. Before I did that, I just looked on the paizo site prior to showing up to figure if I'd played it. You're right, it's more book-keeping on the player end, but that's a price, I, as a player, am more than happy to pay... but it also takes the burden off local GMs/coordinators. It's only a small burden on the Paizo website.

Indeed, most of us have the sheets sitting around, and spread sheets already due to playing most things and needing a chart to know what have I played and what have I run. It won't be hard to plug dates into those, or even make them auto updating, of two years has past.

I had to fill in a table for something that I played about a year ago and couldn't remember anything about it. So it seems like a good time gap.

This has an advantage, we've had at times with Cons just either horrible table composition or really off GMing, there is one or two I would love to replay and do so correctly! Without going have I just burnt a star to replay the same nightmare. [And yes we have people willing to sit down and run and play it with a balanced group, just waiting one everyone to pick up the star to do it.]

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tivadar27 wrote:
TetsujinOni wrote:
Now, all of those things said, if you have a concrete proposal of a new rule for replay to consider for Season 8 that is both different than current, easy to apply, and evaluatable as a concrete proposal, let's talk about it.

Concrete proposal: You may replay a scenario for credit if it's been 2 (?) years since the last time you've played it.

I think that gets around any potential for large-scale abuse and lets things stay fresh for long-term players without putting a burden on Paizo.

Are there any issues surrounding this? Are you worried that it's more difficult to track? In fairness, replay rules for GM replays aren't really any better, but then again, they're not tracked (online) very well now anyways. Currently the reporting interface is able to determine and report the date you've played a scenario previously when using replay, so comparing that to the current date reported should be trivial.

Finding out at reporting time is not helpful for finding out you shouldn't have seated someone, eh?

4/5 *** Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston

TetsujinOni wrote:
Finding out at reporting time is not helpful for finding out you shouldn't have seated someone, eh?

I don't understand your point. As it is now, you can forget you've played something and you still figure this out at reporting time...

I was merely looking at the bureaucratic overhead, which should be minimal. If a player messes up, which can happen today as is, then of course it places an additional burden on the GM. If a player does this repeatedly, presumably they get banned from playing. Nothing changes in that respect.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

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Lets say I go to a local game store and plan to run The Frozen Fingers of Midnight, a scenario where the Pathfinder Society gets called in to help out a friend suffering from a foul curse.

Everyone shows up, and we can check through each characters Chronicle Sheets to see that they don't have this one. But, and this is something that I do have happen with some of my long term players, once we get going, someone says, "hey this sounds really familiar. I do not recognize the name, but I kind of remember this briefing." Ther is also the "Did I play this or did I run it" aspect.

Now we have to stop as someone tries to log on to their account on their phone to check for the scenario and find the date.

It adds another level of complexity if the date it was reported was also not the date it was played.

This may or may not be a big issue. Because I normally DM, it's hard to say, but I know that having such spread sheets is not common. I have a few players that have practically played everything up to the 7-11 range and have been playing since the start, when originally there was no replaying, and that sort of accounting wasn't needed, so they never did.

I also DM a lot of PbP games, where it is not really possible for me to check, (I have to take peoples word for it), and a set back like I mentioned above, which again I have seen happen as an honest mistake, but it could set a game back a week or more.

I'm just saying. It's an interesting idea, and I like ideas. It's just not one that I personally would want. In theory, I'm not certain it would help in my case, or it might help minimally for a lot of extra work or risk. Again, in theory, only.

It might be cool to slightly change it, so that instead of saying after two years since last playing it, maybe open up the entire Season 0 and/or Season 1 scenarios for a replay.

4/5 *** Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston

DM Beckett wrote:

Lets say I go to a local game store and plan to run The Frozen Fingers of Midnight, a scenario where the Pathfinder Society gets called in to help out a friend suffering from a foul curse.

Everyone shows up, and we can check through each characters Chronicle Sheets to see that they don't have this one. But, and this is something that I do have happen with some of my long term players, once we get going, someone says, "hey this sounds really familiar. I do not recognize the name, but I kind of remember this briefing." Ther is also the "Did I play this or did I run it" aspect.

Now we have to stop as someone tries to log on to their account on their phone to check for the scenario and find the date.

It adds another level of complexity if the date it was reported was also not the date it was played.

Everything up until the last paragraph happens as things stand, so where's the "extra" work? The last piece is irrelevant, the date reported should be the date it's considered for purposes of replay.

Grand Lodge 4/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento

DM Beckett wrote:

Lets say I go to a local game store and plan to run The Frozen Fingers of Midnight, a scenario where the Pathfinder Society gets called in to help out a friend suffering from a foul curse.

Everyone shows up, and we can check through each characters Chronicle Sheets to see that they don't have this one. But, and this is something that I do have happen with some of my long term players, once we get going, someone says, "hey this sounds really familiar. I do not recognize the name, but I kind of remember this briefing." Ther is also the "Did I play this or did I run it" aspect.

Now we have to stop as someone tries to log on to their account on their phone to check for the scenario and find the date.

Why? The date should be on the chronicle sheet.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

FLite wrote:
Why? The date should be on the chronicle sheet.
tivadar27 wrote:
Everything up until the last paragraph happens as things stand, so where's the "extra" work? The last piece is irrelevant, the date reported should be the date it's considered for purposes of replay.

I don't generally carry all of their Characters and Chronicle Sheets around if they don't plan on playing them. The extra work was in having to have everyone try to look up their accounts, likely from their phones at the game store, and as I pointed out, it does already happen, but this would I think amplify it more.

As presented, I just don't really dig it. That's just my opinion/preference. I'd rather look for routes that take less book keeping than more.

I'm also not entirely sure I want such a blanket rule for opening Replay.

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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I track my scenarios here and have a hardcopy sheet I can use to travel with here.

FLite wrote:
You just can't play PFS every week for 3 years and not start to run out of scenarios.

Pirate Rob actually proved otherwise.

5/5 5/55/55/5

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Steven Schopmeyer wrote:


Pirate Rob actually proved otherwise.

The problem is you don't hit critical mass when you run out of scenarios. You hit critical mass when you run out of scenarios you can reasonably schedule to play with other people.

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Tell me something I don't know.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

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TOZ wrote:
Tell me something I don't know.

If you gather five, 5 Star GM's, running an non-Evergreen scenario under a 0 Star GM, without anyone Replaying, not only can you unlock a 6th Star (1:255 chance), but you can also, with your powers combined. . .

4/5 *** Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston

DM Beckett wrote:

The extra work was in having to have everyone try to look up their accounts, likely from their phones at the game store, and as I pointed out, it does already happen, but this would I think amplify it more.

As presented, I just don't really dig it. That's just my opinion/preference. I'd rather look for routes that take less book keeping than more.

I'm also not entirely sure I want such a blanket rule for opening Replay.

So, I'd say put the extra burden on the player who wants to *use* the replay. "If you are replaying a scenario for credit, you must have a copy of the chronicle sheet from your most recent playing of that scenario ready to present to the GM at the start of the adventure, or you may not replay it."

If they don't realize they've played before, then there's no difference in how things worked before. If they planned in advance, then it's a quick comparison of the date listed on the chronicle sheet to the current date. It's a burden on the player, but the other option would be telling them to go home.

Also, as a player, would you just not want to *use* this? If so, then ignore it. Are you concerned from the perspective of a GM (that's what I'm assuming).

Finally, I would think opening this on a trial basis (only for players with X stars or more) would be a good idea earlier, then think about opening it up wider than that if things go smoothly.

Sovereign Court 5/5 Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds

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Must....resist...

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Drogon wrote:
Must....resist...

Think about baseball.

Silver Crusade 2/5

Drogon wrote:
Must....resist...

You don't need to resist. I've been on these boards for 3 years, and I've only heard you explain once how replay of scenarios tore previous organized campaigns apart. Yours is a voice of awareness and reason, considering your position as the owner of a store that hosts organized play and your own participation and encouragement of it.

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