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One of the biggest barriers for new players is finding games.
The current system where you look for a venturecritter and then look nearby only works if you have local venturecritters. In all likelihood if someone sees that the nearest person is 3 hours away you stop looking.
Even if the new person asks, the ventire captain needs to find the persons location on a map (Where the heck IS Bnajomusic Upstate new york anyway?) then find where the nearby games are, possibly directing them into the next state.
The game recorder already gets a location. If that information was used, people could see where PFS was played in the last few months to know where to look for a game.
Alternatively, people could just give me a list of where and when its played and i could put something up on scribblemaps or something.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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I am reluctant to suggest further fragmenting the event advertising system. If people are not setting locations when they create events, I don't see how creating a separate event reporting system will improve that.
It would be nice if the current system could output events to google map in bulk, rather than one at a time.
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I am reluctant to suggest further fragmenting the event advertising system. If people are not setting locations when they create events, I don't see how creating a separate event reporting system will improve that.
It would be nice if the current system could output events to google map in bulk, rather than one at a time.
At the most jurry rigged of levels You'd only have to report an event once rather than once every week/twice a month. "PFS takes place here" sometimes, on occasion, call here and figure out when.
At a more refined level when you reported an even it would show up on a map, PFS was here at this time, so you could see where it was and when.
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Look at the current system
United States
California San Diego Pathfinders At Ease
At Ease Games
Georgia Athens Athens After Dark
Little Kings Shuffle Club
Kennesaw HobbyTown USA PFS
HobbyTown USA
Idaho Meridian PACG at Phoenix Fire in Meridian, ID
Phoenix Fire - Meridian
Thats all you can find. In the entire USA. For a month. I can't see a concern for breaking up a system that is getting MAYBE 1% of all games?
People have told me they either create the event as they report it, or have one event ID that they continually reuse for a game store. even when I've put a game up in advance i can't find my own game on the current system.
If the map looked into the past events that were already reported, or heck, was just a picture with dots it would be more useful.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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There is a bug (I just reported it) in the engine. If you leave all the filters off, the first page breaks. (The first clue is that it says those 9 events are events 1-100 and lists 6 more pages... )
Try again, and select USA.
California, in February
California Lake Forest Comic Quest PFS
Comic Quest Sun, Feb 07
Los Angeles Pathfinder Society at Orccon 2016
Los Angeles Airport Hilton Fri, Feb 12
Fri, Feb 12
Sat, Feb 13
Sat, Feb 13
Sat, Feb 13
Sun, Feb 14
Sun, Feb 14
Sun, Feb 14
Mon, Feb 15
Mon, Feb 15
Oakland Pathfinder Society @ Endgame in Oakland
EndGame Mon, Feb 01
Pathfinder Society @ Endgame in Oakland
EndGame Mon, Feb 08
Oakland CORE Feast of Ravenmoor (Tier 2-4)
Its Your Move Games & Hobbies Wed, Feb 03
Wed, Feb 10
Wed, Feb 17
Sacramento February @ Great Escape
Great Escape Games Thu, Feb 04
Thu, Feb 11
Thu, Feb 18
Thu, Feb 25
Sacramento SacPFS Game Day
Randy's House of Games Sat, Feb 27
San Diego Pathfinders At Ease
At Ease Games Sat, Feb 06
San diego Condor 2016
Town and Country Resort Fri, Feb 26
Sat, Feb 27
Sun, Feb 28
Santa Clara GK B1 2016
Game Kastle Mon, Feb 01
GK B2 2016
Game Kastle Mon, Feb 08
GK B4 2016
Game Kastle Mon, Feb 22
GK B5 2016
Game Kastle Mon, Feb 29
Santa Clara Isle of Gamers PFS February 2016
Isle of Gamers Thu, Feb 04
Thu, Feb 18
Thu, Feb 25
torrance Long Beach Pathfinder Society
South Bay LGBT Center Sat, Feb 06
Sat, Feb 13
Sat, Feb 20
Sat, Feb 27
The point is that that system gets *its* data from those same events.
So like I said, I agree that it would be nice if that system would output as a map, but I don't really think that is viable until they fix the existing system.
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Can't help but interject; if you would consider a 3rd party solution, I'm actually working on something similar.
TG provides the means to create player groups, and a hierarchy is also available so that player groups can assign other groups as their 'children'. My general thought is that it would be neat if we could create at least city based Pathfinder Society groups like this one, which is set up for Los Angeles.
If you click that link, you'll see that it lists two children groups, The Guild House and The War House. A new player based in Los Angeles can easily find the LA group buy just typing 'Los Angeles' in the group search, and the children groups signify the individual playing locations.
Also, the calendars do "roll-up". If an admin of The Guild House creates an event - that event will show up on its own calendar as well as on the calendar of its parent group, the Los Angeles Grand Lodge. This allows players to see the games in the whole city, then drill down to see the games in individual playing locations.
All three groups are pretty darn empty - we've only been open for a week or so :) But, I am hoping that can get some to try this event planning system and once I get feedback I will make it even better.
Down the line, after we finish the full character manager, I plan to upgrade this to use Google Maps API. A player would enter their location in some format that Google Maps understands, and then it would show them the playing groups near them. That way players can see games right on a map, and find new locations just by scrolling a map around, similar to finding restaurants on Yelp or other apps.
What I would love (love love love) is if Paizo could externalize their event planning API so that an admin creating an event on TG would automatically create an event in their own DB. I would love to work with them on doing something like that.
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Check the next pageWith the filters on it still truncates out around Illinois and then moves to the next month.
Ok... that is just WEIRD. It goes to the next month before finishing all of the states?
Yeah. No new person is using this thing. It also doesn't solve the problem of needing to hunt down the location of towns you may not be aware of if you're in between states.
Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
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I do wish they'd go back to the old way to find events. It was much better to be able to enter a zip code to find close games. I used to tell lots of new players who to contact and what games were around them using it. Now I don't even bother because the event finder doesn't work for me as is.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Check the next pageWith the filters on it still truncates out around Illinois and then moves to the next month.
Ok... that is just WEIRD. It goes to the next month before finishing all of the states?
Yeah. No new person is using this thing. It also doesn't solve the problem of needing to hunt down the location of towns you may not be aware of if you're in between states.
I think the idea is to keep all of the events for a given area on one page, but I agree it is not a well designed system.
But until we get them to fix that, I think that asking for a map output is a bad idea.
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I'd like to second BNW's call for some kind of map-based interface. I travel frequently, and when I have extended time off, I look for local games. I've played in several states and even in the Netherlands while on trips. I play Society almost exclusively primarily for its portability.
But when I'm on a layover in some city, I don't know what the local suburbs or nearby towns are. For example, in the listings for Florida, there's sessions in both Plantation and Sunrise, but most people wouldn't know that those are just suburbs of Ft. Lauderdale. Sure, I could Google map each city listed in the state and any nearby neighbouring states one at a time to see what's close, but it sure would make finding games much easier for travelers if there were a map interface.
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I think the idea is to keep all of the events for a given area on one page, but I agree it is not a well designed system.
By state is a bad approximation of area. Its an 8 our trip for me to buffalo but New jersey and connecticut both have venues that are not insanely unreasonable driving distances away.
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One of the biggest barriers for new players is finding games.
The current system where you look for a venturecritter and then look nearby only works if you have local venturecritters. In all likelihood if someone sees that the nearest person is 3 hours away you stop looking.
Even if the new person asks, the ventire captain needs to find the persons location on a map (Where the heck IS Bnajomusic Upstate new york anyway?) then find where the nearby games are, possibly directing them into the next state.
The game recorder already gets a location. If that information was used, people could see where PFS was played in the last few months to know where to look for a game.
Alternatively, people could just give me a list of where and when its played and i could put something up on scribblemaps or something.
warhorn.com is great for both standard and core sessions. Just type in the relevant information and it will show you upcoming games in your area. You can even request specific ones.
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warhorn.com is great for both standard and core sessions. Just type in the relevant information and it will show you upcoming games in your area. You can even request specific ones.
They just recently updated the search function so i don't know how well it works now, but before it was impossible to find a game on there- New york would turn up new zealand because of the word new. I was playing around with it a bit today and I still couldn't get results any better than by state.
People looking around also wouldn't necessarily know about war horn in the first place
Venture-Captain, New Zealand—Auckland
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Happy to have players from the Big Apple! We're running online PFS scenarios as well! I am still teaching my VAs the glory that is known as "planning a month ahead"
Not sure if this is the right place to post but, I have a hard time finding any PFS play on roll20. Joined a group once, months ago, never heard a word since. Would like to get some regular play going at some point. [plz move/remove this post if it's in the wrong location] - pfs newbie
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Not sure if this is the right place to post but, I have a hard time finding any PFS play on roll20. Joined a group once, months ago, never heard a word since. Would like to get some regular play going at some point. [plz move/remove this post if it's in the wrong location] - pfs newbie
have you tried the PFS online collective? Most of them use roll do but they're not on roll d20s site
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Happy to have players from the Big Apple! We're running online PFS scenarios as well! I am still teaching my VAs the glory that is known as "planning a month ahead"
I'm lucky if i can manage a week...