BretI Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis |
As a GM in PFS, I am still trying to understand the balance between keeping to a scenario as written and providing a fun time.
While the goal of the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild is to provide an even, balanced experience to all players, doing so would require all PCs to be exactly the same and all GMs to be restricted to a stiflingly oppressive script. We understand that sometimes a Game Master has to make rules adjudications on the fly, deal with unexpected player choices, or even cope with extremely unlucky (or lucky) dice on both sides of the screen.
Scenarios are meant to be run as written, with no addition or subtraction to the number of monsters (unless indicated in the scenario), or changes to armor, feats, items, skills, spells, statistics, traits, or weapons.
GMs may use other Pathfinder RPG sources to add flavor to the scenario, but may not change the mechanics of encounters. Specifically, the mechanics of an encounter are the creatures presented, the number of opponents in the encounter, and the information written into the stat blocks for those opponents.
So let's say there is a scenario with a secret BBEG. The players have seen evidence of them but don't know who they are.
Assume that the scenario doesn't do a reveal until the last combat.
If the players come up with ideas for investigation that might lead to the BBEG, but the scenario has nothing in it for investigation, are we allowed to go off the tracks for an investigation?
I know we can't subtract encounters.
Can we add things where the scenario doesn't provide any details which would allow adjudicating them? Going that direction means that the play experience is going to be vastly different than if they had kept to the expected script.
In a home game or a module being played in campaign mode, as a GM I would give them the investigation. In the past, I've avoided doing that for PFS because of the section about run as written.
Put more simply, am I being too rigid?
Fromper |
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If you can squeeze in the investigation without going too far off the rails and skipping the mandatory encounters, then go for it. I'd be mostly worried about running out of time.
The worst I've ever personally had to deal with as a GM was my very first time GMing for strangers in a public venue.
The PCs had to track down a bad guy who had left town. The adventure assumes that they'd either get a useful clue from an NPC before leaving town to know what direction he'd gone, or else successfully follow his tracks in the wilderness. My group thought the NPC was lying to them, and failed the survival check to track the bad guy.
So they followed the wrong road and went to a completely different town that wasn't supposed to be part of the adventure at all. And since there was no way anyone in the new town might know where the bad guy might be, there was no good excuse to let them gather information for what they needed to know. So I improvised the NPC they didn't believe showing up in town not long after them, for his own reasons, and laughing at them for not taking his advice and getting lost. They eventually decided to go back and follow the other road.
Woran Venture-Captain, Netherlands |
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I once had players misinterpret information and they went looking for a qlue where there was none.
I had their search lead to a hermit in the woods who was hard of hearing. Having them need to explain what they were doing in loud and clear voice made them realise they were wrong. It was a better solution then giving them dead ends. (Which they might have interpreted as not having been thorough enough)
outshyn |
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One thing I know, as a player, is how bad it feels when the module gives you plenty of time to do a thing, and you come up with 5 ways to do it, and the GM is like, "None of those work." Why? Because the module didn't list them.
We had a full day. Some players were like, "I'm going to a library to research this." Others did gather information (diplomacy) checks around town -- spent hours doing it, took multiple checks, because we had time. Other players were trying other things. And the answer? Nothing. The module gives you a task, expects you to be in stasis until the time comes, and then jump into action with only a 5 line player handout. No extras exist.
I think what bothered me about that whole thing was that circumstance bonuses have never been outlawed by Pathfinder Society leadership. They're still in PFS. A GM can give out a +2 (or even -2!) for your character's behavior and/or approach to a problem. But if the module expressly has nothing about what the players are doing, it's not just going off the rails, it's possibly getting an advantage that other tables don't get, and GMs are scared about that. They do not want to have to say, "Oops, the players found a perfect solution that nobody thought of before, and they aced their way through the module in 2 hours while everyone else slogged through and eventually TPK'd."
I mean, that situation is always cool for the victors, but it engenders animosity from the other teams who are like, "That feels unfair that they got to do that."
The more I play and get upset by things like this, the more I want to be a more lenient and encouraging GM. Unfortunately, I don't feel like the PFS books back me up very much. They were burned by GMs beefing up monsters, so now they're like, "Knock that off." Yeah, there may be some openings to improvise, but mostly, knock it off.
Slothsy |
If you read what the guide says, it mostly says you can't adjust encounters. It allows for creative solutions. It's your discretion as a GM to determine how far those creative solutions can go. Myself, as a gm? I tend to let creative solutions get as creative as possible, especially if it allows me to reveal the background information from the scenario to the players.
There are also some scenarios that are more forgiving to creative solutions than your average scenario. Scars of the Third Crusade is particularly forgiving, in my experience.
I'd probably hesitate from going too far off of what's reasonable, but if people want to do research in a library or try to find information about the boss, I'd let them - but I'd also make sure that what they find also points its way back to the meat of the game.
Wei Ji the Learner |
There have been several Scenarios I've had the privilege of playing in where the entire party wholeheartedly jumped onto the 'Creative Solutions Express'.
As a result, some of those Scenarios went a fair bit more swiftly, especially when the 'CSE' was much, much, much better than the rails the scenario were expected to go on.
As a GM, if the players at my table have come up with a situation that hasn't been covered in my reading of the scenario, that's my opportunity to *shine* as a GM and give the players what they need, while maintaining cohesion to the scenario and keeping in mind what the scenario has in mind.
"This is a result of your unorthodox actions" is almost always better, imo, than "Oh, um, yeah, so... nothing in the scenario so I dare not rule on that."
Now, if it looks like the 'CSE' is about to crash the scenario in a way the scenario is ABSOLUTELY NOT designed to support--say, for example, the party comes up with an idea to shoot EVERYONE with silver in a town where they suspect a lycanthrope is at when they are trying to earn local favor--at that point a gentle indication that it's beyond the scope of the scenario might be in order.
Ascalaphus Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden |
If you want to reward creative efforts by the players without taking the scenario off the rails entirely, an option is to invoke the fiat rule:
One handy rule to keep under your belt is the Fiat Rule—simply grant a player a +2 or a –2 bonus or penalty to a die roll if no one at the table is precisely sure how a situation might be handled by the rules. For example, a character who attempts to trip an iron golem in a room where the floor is magnetized could gain a +2 bonus on his attempt at your discretion, since the magnetic pull exerted by the floor helps pull the golem down.
This is an official rule in the CRB so you're not violating any PFS principles for applying it. For example, in the Wayang adventure mentioned above, if the players spent a lot of time researching their roles, you could invoke the fiat rule to grant the players a bonus on their "in-character" checks to reflect their increased understanding of who they're portraying.
(The lack of actual background in that scenario is another problem; the GM could make up some stuff to fill the gaps, but be careful not to accidentally lead the PCs astray with a red herring.)
outshyn |
I'm confused. I wrote that there is a rule to allow a +2, and you replied that there is a rule to allow a +2.
I feel like you're trying to be helpful, but I'm not grasping it.
My point about the wayang module (as you mentioned) was not "Do any rules exist?" Instead, my point was "These rules exist, GMs could have more open-ended & responsive games, but they don't."
I am certain there must be more to your post and my reading comprehension is just failing me.
Ascalaphus Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden |
I gave the page reference for the rule as well. Weirdly enough it's not on the PRD (that whole chapter is considerably shortened compared to the printed version).
You're correct that a GM can give out a +2, but it's helpful to know just what rule it is that allows them to. To cover your behind against people saying you're not supposed to alter any numbers in a scenario.
GinoA |
Now, if it looks like the 'CSE' is about to crash the scenario in a way the scenario is ABSOLUTELY NOT designed to support--say, for example, the party comes up with an idea to shoot EVERYONE with silver in a town where they suspect a lycanthrope is at when they are trying to earn local favor--at that point a gentle indication that it's beyond the scope of the scenario might be in order.
I'd absolutely allow the party succeed from that tactic. I'd also report all the PCs as dead from going evil.
Wei Ji the Learner |
rknop wrote:That was my first experience with that scenario; I had no idea it wasn't *supposed* to go that way. We were serious lack-of-murder hobos.who buys property vanities...
No, this was 'lack of murder' hobos.
ie