Am I doing something wrong or are my GM's just slow.


Pathfinder Society

Grand Lodge

I've played in two PFS scenarios, and had a great time. I've gotten Chronicle sheets, but looking at either my account or my characters on this site I still see nothing under sessions played.

Is this something I'm supposed to do to update this information, or is it something that is filled out by the GMs that ran it? If it helps this was not at a convention but rather the weekly game at a local games shop I hit this weekend.

Thanks!

Scarab Sages 3/5

The GMs have to fill it in. It's not uncommon for GMs to let them pile up and enter them once every month or two, but easiest thing to do is just politely ask them if they've entered them yet. That'll give them a nudge if they haven't, and alert them something's wrong if they have.

Silver Crusade 5/5 5/55/5 **** Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria

The GM or the organizer are supposed to report their tables, but since we are all pretty busy reporting can take some time.

In any case, you have your chronicles, they are a sufficient record for your character.

Grand Lodge

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Thanks!

Also I want to be clear that I'm not trying to come down on GMs. I had two different guys run the games and they both were great for different reasons. I hope to get into GMing soon and expect that paperwork can be annoying.

I just wanted to make sure it wasn't something I was doing. While the thread title is a bit baiting, I have nothing but respect and appreciation for the people willing to run games for me to play.

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/5 *** Regional Venture-Coordinator, Great Plains

The important thing is that you have your chronicle sheet. That is the primary source of records for your characters.

You really don't want to rely on it being entered into the Paizo database because all sorts of things can go wrong... (The GM could lose the reporting sheet, the GM could enter your character number incorrectly, etc.)

1/5 **

GMs (or event organizers) should be reporting sessions in a timely fashion. Our goal in AZ is to report everything within 7 days.

That said, you can help make it easier by ensuring that the character(s) in question are registered. Sometimes that name auto-populating is an important confirmation (or clue that something isn't quite correct) when reporting. :-)

Grand Lodge

Aaron Motta wrote:

GMs (or event organizers) should be reporting sessions in a timely fashion. Our goal in AZ is to report everything within 7 days.

That said, you can help make it easier by ensuring that the character(s) in question are registered. Sometimes that name auto-populating is an important confirmation (or clue that something isn't quite correct) when reporting. :-)

They're good by AZ standards too then. I played Saturday, so it's only been two days, but since I'm still new to the application of credit and chronicle sheets side of things I wanted to make sure there wasn't something I didn't do right. They have my PFS character number, I have a chronicle sheet. I feel better now :)

Liberty's Edge 5/5

It takes about one to two minutes to report a single table.

With the advent of the reporting notes, A, B, C, & D, it really behooves the reporters to report in a timely fashion, so that choices are part of John's tabulations when he needs to write a result in a future scenario. I'd say at most 2 months from scenario release.

I personally never understood letting them sit for several game days. That's an easy way to lose the sheets, forget information if it isn't all on the sheets correctly, etc.

Grand Lodge 4/5

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

My standard is within 12 hours. It greatly helps when the players have registered their characters and I don't have to spend time testing to see if the information is correct.

Dark Archive 1/5

My regional VO has a tendency to delay several hours before reporting. But then he has to travel several hours too if he's heading home. Or he might be heading to another city where he has to check into a hotel for the convention he's going to be GMing or organizing for. So the delay is understandable.

Personally, I would never wait a month. Once I finish the game, the first thing I do when I get home is open up Hero Lab and enter anything bought, sold, used, xp gained, and prestige gained/spent. Then as a GM I'd pull out the info and report the game. This way I don't forget about it.

Silver Crusade 5/5 5/5 **

Andrew Christian wrote:


I personally never understood letting them sit for several game days. That's an easy way to lose the sheets, forget information if it isn't all on the sheets correctly, etc.

Reporting is a time consuming, error prone, unpleasant chore (the absolutely absurdly atrocious interface contributes a great deal to this).

I'm not the tiny bit surprised that people take time to report scenarios, nor am I surprised that some scenarios end up never being reported.

Personally, when the interface decides to drop my connection and I lose a few minutes of my time I tend to not get around to trying again for awhile.

Dark Archive 1/5

Does it help to set up the event in advance? For example, if you KNOW you'll be running a specific scenario at a specific regular event on X day, you set up the event in advance, then merely have to report it after the game?

For example I'm going to be running We Be Goblins as a play by post. I already have the event listed in my My Pathfinder Society. So when it concludes and I hand out chronicles all I have to do is report it. All the hunting down the specific scenario/module I'm running, entering the venue, and what not is already taken care of.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

pauljathome wrote:
Andrew Christian wrote:


I personally never understood letting them sit for several game days. That's an easy way to lose the sheets, forget information if it isn't all on the sheets correctly, etc.

Reporting is a time consuming, error prone, unpleasant chore (the absolutely absurdly atrocious interface contributes a great deal to this).

I'm not the tiny bit surprised that people take time to report scenarios, nor am I surprised that some scenarios end up never being reported.

Personally, when the interface decides to drop my connection and I lose a few minutes of my time I tend to not get around to trying again for awhile.

In over 1,400 days of organizing at least 96 sessions a year, not including our 42 sessions at Con of the North 2013, I have not experienced any of the things you describe.

It takes at most 5 minutes per session sheet, unless you really need to do research because players put illegible or faulty info. That is not time consuming.

If I waited even a full month to report, I may have more research to do if the scenario isn't on the sheet, or if I don't remember the GM or players assuming illegible or faulty info.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

Daniel Myhre wrote:

Does it help to set up the event in advance? For example, if you KNOW you'll be running a specific scenario at a specific regular event on X day, you set up the event in advance, then merely have to report it after the game?

For example I'm going to be running We Be Goblins as a play by post. I already have the event listed in my My Pathfinder Society. So when it concludes and I hand out chronicles all I have to do is report it. All the hunting down the specific scenario/module I'm running, entering the venue, and what not is already taken care of.

Yes. If you wait to create the event until you get home to report, what event number gets recorded on the chronicles?

Grand Lodge 4/5

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

The only times I have allowed the system to timeout on me are when I got distracted by another shiny website or forum argument. And the easy way to solve that is to hit the save session button before looking at another tab. For the most part, there is nothing wrong with putting incomplete information into a session and returning later to fix it.

3/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Varies by region and by how the reporting is set up.

For venues that use the same reporting #, but different GMs there may be a delay in both the time the GM gets the reporting information to the person who owns the reporting # and the time it takes them to enter that information in the system. If there is something that the reporting person can't make out or kicks out of the system, there is again another step in lag between the reporting person contacting the GM and them attempting to contact a player who may themselves be slow in responding.

The reporting system itself also has a tendency to knock you out and if you choose the "save and exit option" it will actually look just like it would if you reported the scenario correctly rather than populating an error message advising that you've timed out. This can cause the person doing the reporting to think that they've reported something which the system actually doesn't have (I've had this happen several times). If the person reporting isn't the owner, GM, or one of the players they have effectively no visibility on the scenario reported once it is in the system to verify that it made it in correctly.

Concur with TOZ, if you are reporting always, always use save to force the system to update before you leave the screen. It will save you headaches.

-TimD

Grand Lodge 4/5

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

If you are only a reporter and need to get back to a table that you are not a part of, there is a roundabout method to do so. Open a new session for reporting, and then use the Go to Session box to step through session numbers until you find the one you need.

4/5

Some of the MN organizers report tables before leaving the store from the same laptop/tablet they were using during the scenario.

Dark Archive 1/5

Also a good idea, now if only the local venue owner hadn't forgotten his store's wifi password. He claims it's one thing, but no variation of what he claimed works. Not even the bajillion l33t sp33k versions.

Lantern Lodge 5/5

If I'm reporting, people don't leave the table until it's reported.

It's always so foreign to me when I go to conventions/other people's game days.

The Exchange 5/5

Jayson MF Kip wrote:

If I'm reporting, people don't leave the table until it's reported.

It's always so foreign to me when I go to conventions/other people's game days.

What do you do when Piazo is down?

Grand Lodge 4/5

Actually, I am having a reporting issue, sort of, in that I seem to have hit some sort of limits in the reporting system, and I am not sure if the more recent sessions I have reported have been registered in the system or not.

Partly what I get for using the same event since I originally created it, in 2010, I think.

It won't let me set the number of sessions higher than 64, which it reverts to when I go back in.

It doesn't show all the session dates I have added.

So it is difficult to tell if they are all reported or not.

And difficult to go back through and make sure that the module/AP reporting issue from a while back has been fixed for my reported stuff. I tried to fix the ones I could, but it is hard to validate back-and-forth for the sessions I didn't get GM PC credit for, when they aren't as visible as the ones linked to my own PCs.

Edit: I think it is showing the correct number of tables credit, 124, but I am not 100% sure that is the "real" total...

Lantern Lodge 5/5

nosig wrote:
Jayson MF Kip wrote:

If I'm reporting, people don't leave the table until it's reported.

It's always so foreign to me when I go to conventions/other people's game days.

What do you do when Piazo is down?

Wait 5 minutes for it to be fixed.

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

A bigger issue for us is that we are usually gaming right up to when the store kicks us out (and finishing chronicle sheets in the parking lot.) Which usually involves one of the players doing a quick scoop and dump of all my pages into my backpack, which means chronicle sheets have to wait till I get a chance to go through my back pack and sort everything.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

kinevon wrote:

Actually, I am having a reporting issue, sort of, in that I seem to have hit some sort of limits in the reporting system, and I am not sure if the more recent sessions I have reported have been registered in the system or not.

Partly what I get for using the same event since I originally created it, in 2010, I think.

It won't let me set the number of sessions higher than 64, which it reverts to when I go back in.

It doesn't show all the session dates I have added.

So it is difficult to tell if they are all reported or not.

And difficult to go back through and make sure that the module/AP reporting issue from a while back has been fixed for my reported stuff. I tried to fix the ones I could, but it is hard to validate back-and-forth for the sessions I didn't get GM PC credit for, when they aren't as visible as the ones linked to my own PCs.

Edit: I think it is showing the correct number of tables credit, 124, but I am not 100% sure that is the "real" total...

events that are that huge bog the system down so much, that it crashes it. Gen Con was crashing the system when lots of people were trying to access it.

My suggestion is to change your event number once a year at least.

I also noticed that on one of my events, there must have been a recent change, as they've paged it now. It has 2 pages and only lists 25 sessions per page. Each session also only lists the scenario and GM rather than each player under that.

This must be the fix to bloated events.

Community / Forums / Organized Play / Pathfinder Society / Am I doing something wrong or are my GM's just slow. All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Pathfinder Society