Cottonseed PFS PbP (2E)

Game Master Redelia

It's always heartening to see good transitions. I'm sad to see you no longer be our official VC, but I'm happy that you'll still be around playing. Thanks, Tyranius!

Thank you for your time and effort, Tyranius!

Announcement!

As of today, the orc ancestry/species is now always available for both Pathfinder and Starfinder Society!

Blog Post

Hi, as a total newbie here, I'm not familiar with RPGChronicles.net. What's it about, and why are all the PFS2e games registered over there?

Hi, as a total newbie here, I'm not familiar with RPGChronicles.net. What's it about, and why are all the PFS2e games registered over there?

It is an easier way to do electronic chronicles.

As a player, you don’t need an account.

As a GM, it is pretty convenient way to fill out the PDF chronicle sheet. If you are willing to pay the modest subscription fee the web app will even e-mail out the chronicles. If not, you need to download them and send them yourself.

It can be a huge time saver for the GM.

Beginner's Box can now be played with normal characters!

Blog Post

Hi, everyone. I have an important announcement and request for all our GMs.

Campaign Leadership has asked us to give them numbers regularly about how many games are being played in our lodges. It’s important these numbers be as accurate as possible. As a way to gather this information, we are requesting that all GMs of games recruited from this lodge, unless they are convention games, fill out our brief form at the same time as they report the game to Paizo.

The form can be found here.

A few important points:
-If you post to this lodge looking for players, your game counts as from this lodge. A game counts as recruited from this lodge if it’s a continuation of a game that originally recruited here. Thus, groups playing through a series of scenarios or a long module do count.
-Convention games should not fill out this form. Instead, they should be reported as convention organizers instruct.
-This form is in addition to reporting to Paizo, not instead of it.
-Please be prompt about filling out this form. It needs to be done at the same time you report to Paizo. Don’t make us do more than ask nicely, please!

We need our data to start with January 1 of this year, so please do fill out our form for any games from this lodge you’ve already reported to Paizo this year! Please fill out the form for any previous games within the next week.

Hi, everyone. I have an important announcement and request for all our GMs.

Campaign Leadership has asked us to give them numbers regularly about how many games are being played in our lodges. It’s important these numbers be as accurate as possible. As a way to gather this information, we are requesting that all GMs of games recruited from this lodge, unless they are convention games, fill out our brief form at the same time as they report the game to Paizo.

-This form is in addition to reporting to Paizo, not instead of it.

Why not convert the lodge to one event code? Then you have everything under one big event and no one needs to do extra paperwork.

-If you post to this lodge looking for players, your game counts as from this lodge. A game counts as recruited from this lodge if it’s a continuation of a game that originally recruited here. Thus, groups playing through a series of scenarios or a long module do count.

When I was a VO I allowed people to recruit for other games at all the region's FLGSs, including PFS at other locations (event codes). Most FLGS's I've been to welcome this.

Why should Cottonseed be any different? Isn't this all about building community and getting people together to enjoy Pathfinder, regardless of what venue they're in or which event gets the credit?

-Please be prompt about filling out this form. It needs to be done at the same time you report to Paizo. Don’t make us do more than ask nicely, please!

We need our data to start with January 1 of this year, so please do fill out our form for any games from this lodge you’ve already reported to Paizo this year! Please fill out the form for any previous games within the next week.

This seems a bit… aggressive. Maybe that's not the perfect word, but the tone of this post seems demanding — especially as people here may not have time to go fill out more forms in 1 week. Maybe they're busy at work, on vacation, etc. Cottonseed is asking GMs who did everything correctly the first time around to take time out of their busy days to help remediate the lodge's own records, right?

Why take this tone with people from whom you are asking for help retroactively fixing paperwork? Why take this tone when asking people to complete an extra step going forward?

Finally, what exactly does "Don’t make us do more than ask nicely, please" mean? It seems like a vague threat to me. What, exactly, will happen beyond "asking nicely"?

______

Honestly, adding another form on top of reporting (which is already frustrating because the web interface is so awful) demotivates me from running games for Cottonseed. On top of that, having onerous — and frankly unenforceable — rules about how and where GMs are allowed to recruit/run games seems over the top.

Perhaps others feel differently; I am but one Doug. Taken together these new policies (along with the tone of how they are being presented) will prevent me from GMing for non-convention Cottonseed games.

I'm guessing that since you'd need to delegate reporters for a single Cottonseed event code--and I've heard several people grumble through the years about the twitchiness of delegating in the system--that this is why we can't simply have one common event code, but that would have been the simplest method.

Even assuming delegation works as intended, every new GM would need to "apply" to be a GM so they could be added to the event as a delegate.

A continually running event form would address that complexity, but then you have the VOs doing the actual reporting and a lag between reported tables and the actual act of reporting, though that's how it has worked at my FLGS anyhow.

More importantly than an alternative: how are you going to get anyone to see this announcement in a month?

Numbers are good and can help get out community better recognized by the OPF, but the strategy for gathering those numbers might need some more time in the workshop.

I'm guessing that since you'd need to delegate reporters for a single Cottonseed event code--and I've heard several people grumble through the years about the twitchiness of delegating in the system--that this is why we can't simply have one common event code, but that would have been the simplest method.

I suspected something like that. In that case, this seems like a Paizo problem more than anything else. If Paizo wants perfect accuracy, Paizo can develop better reporting tools to capture what Paizo wants. For example, put a "THIS IS A COTTONSEED GAME" button on the reporting form.

Perhaps the lodge leadership can do nothing about it and need to adopt a policy like this. In which case that is a shame.

That said, I believe the tone of this policy should be workshopped before any major announcement on a blog, etc.

Well, I have only reported one game this year and have since filled out the Lodge paperwork. I guess it's a requirement from On High that Lodges need to count their games and, this seems to be the easiest way to do it. All they want to know really is, who ran, what they ran, and when they ran it. Only took me few minutes to fill out.

My recollection is there used to be an event that people filled out reporting for like we do for pbp cons but it frequently got a few months behind since only Jesse had access to the data which made folks grumpy etc.

My memory may be faulty here though.

Could you please add the link to the Play by Post Lodges and Guides slide deck and the campaign information?

That way it would be much easier to find.

Could you please add the link to the Play by Post Lodges and Guides slide deck and the campaign information?

That way it would be much easier to find.

Done.

I agree that MORE forms is Kafka-esque, and I think more hoops may dissuade people from recruiting here. Maybe this is only temporary until there's an update to the reporting site itself? Just a drop down menu, yes?

My recollection is there used to be an event that people filled out reporting for like we do for pbp cons but it frequently got a few months behind since only Jesse had access to the data which made folks grumpy etc.

My memory may be faulty here though.

It existed for Online Play Support in PFS1 and SFS and came with boons. PFS2 never had one.

OK, trying to answer all the questions that have been asked:

We have been instructed by Campaign Leadership that online lodges now need to report the number of games at those lodges.

We were able to come up with the following ways to do this:
1. Count recruitment posts. This is not good enough, because we don't know if games finished, and it only gets the first game of any series of games.

2. Use one shared event. We would either have to add all our GMs as reporters to one event, which I highly doubt the Paizo website could tolerate, or have all games reported to us. The latter would mean a delay in games getting reported, and also burn out our VOs really fast. A shared event would also mean that GMs would be required to only use our event for all games that are recruited at our lodges. This is a huge infringement on GM freedom that we are used to, and we would have at least a few, maybe many, GMs quit. We know how unpopular this policy would be because of how few GMs participated in the OSP and stated it was for this reason.

3. Require every GM who is part of this lodge to add a PbF VO as a reporter to their events. I don't know that the Paizo website could handle one person being a reporter on this number of events, this would be not great for GM privacy since some GMs use the same event for other games, and the effort to comb through every one of these events for games to include in our numbers would be enormous.

4. Set up a form for GMs to tell us about their games. This is what we have chosen to do for now. The form is as short as possible, to keep it from being any more of a pain than can be helped.

If anyone can think of any other ways to get the number of all games played from our lodges, and in a timely manner, I would love to hear about them. I have made the decision that I think is the least burden to everyone and respects the freedom and independence of our GMs the most.

If anyone is unhappy about the situation, the need to gather numbers in some way came from Campaign Leadership. I am to blame for the choice how to meed the requirement. Those above me approved this way, and the VAs were asked for their input, but the blame is mine.

I wish this were temporary, but there is no indicator that Paizo is working on anything that would remove the need for this form anytime soon.

We will try to get the form added to the campaign headers at all three lodges in the next few days.

I apologize if the tone is hurtful to anyone. Text is not a great medium for some sorts of communication.

What I meant by 'please don't make us do more than ask nicely' is that we have not developed a list of what we will do to ensure that people fill out the form, and I'd really prefer not to have to do so. I want this to be the sort of community where people do what is needed because it is needed.

Out of curiosity, do we know what percentage of the OSP load was from forum PbP? Would a version of that (sharing an event code and submitting games for VOs to report) be more tenable if it were just for forum PFS PbP (maybe with an extra VA to help out)?

As a follow-up, would doing the above allow PbP tables to be eligible for extra AcP on a rotating basis? Is there any other path to enabling that?

In terms of some other questions, I'm trying to help people have a way of judging if a game is part of this lodge or not. Not every game on Paizo's forums is part of our lodges. All the examples I'm providing are trying to give some clarity to something that is murky.

If you've posted here to find some of your players, it's a game that's part of this lodge. If you have a game that is run on the Paizo forums but where none of the players come from this lodge, that's certainly fine, but it's not part of this lodge. These are the clear, easy cases.

Then there are the cases that are less clear.
-if you have the same group who you recruited to play from here continuing to play together, it's still a lodge game.
-if some of your players are from here and some are not, it's still a lodge game.
-If you're running an AP in campaign mode (i.e. giving out chronicle sheets to those who want them), it's a lodge game if you posted here looking for any of your players.

When I was a VO I allowed people to recruit for other games at all the region's FLGSs, including PFS at other locations (event codes). Most FLGS's I've been to welcome this.

Why should Cottonseed be any different? Isn't this all about building community and getting people together to enjoy Pathfinder, regardless of what venue they're in or which event gets the credit?

...

On top of that, having onerous — and frankly unenforceable — rules about how and where GMs are allowed to recruit/run games seems over the top.

Perhaps others feel differently; I am but one Doug. Taken together these new policies (along with the tone of how they are being presented) will prevent me from GMing for non-convention Cottonseed games.

Honestly, this seems more hostile to me.

Especially this part. There's nothing here about any rules for what you're allowed to do, only what counts for tallying purposes.

And it's just one policy? The form is the only new thing. It's just a few lines.
Retroactive is annoying, agreed, but retroactive to January 1st isn't that much.

I apologize if the tone is hurtful to anyone. Text is not a great medium for some sorts of communication.

What I meant by 'please don't make us do more than ask nicely' is that we have not developed a list of what we will do to ensure that people fill out the form, and I'd really prefer not to have to do so. I want this to be the sort of community where people do what is needed because it is needed.

...although I do also have to say that this isn't less threatening. Heh.

The form is retroactive because we are assigned the intervals we need to tally numbers for.

We could not announce this right at January 1 because we were taking our time to try to come up with the best way we could to meet the requirement without burdening the community more than absolutely necessary. We did not have as much notice as we would like that this was going to be required.

Could you--not that everyone would like this solution--request we who GM use a new, unique event code for games recruited here and curate those for Leadership to draw numbers from?

Could you--not that everyone would like this solution--request we who GM use a new, unique event code for games recruited here and curate those for Leadership to draw numbers from?

We can't get access to your events unless we are reporters for those events. And I really doubt Paizo's website could handle one GM being reporter to that many active events.

I apologize if the tone is hurtful to anyone. Text is not a great medium for some sorts of communication.

No one here is hurt. The tone of the post reads "You must report all the things or else" and it just doesn't seem productive.

Text is not a great medium which is why I mentioned workshopping the announcement.

What I meant by 'please don't make us do more than ask nicely' is that we have not developed a list of what we will do to ensure that people fill out the form, and I'd really prefer not to have to do so. I want this to be the sort of community where people do what is needed because it is needed.

Perhaps some words like this: "Hey everyone we need your help filling out this form, it's an extra step but we appreciate it and it will help the campaign. As always we appreciate our GMs."

Would produce more community motivation and goodwill than outlining rules that cannot be enforced, and continuing to hint at penalties that might happen if people don't follow the new rule.

I dunno, maybe I'm a fly who likes honey and not vinegar.

Mostly for clarity, what do we get out of reporting as Cottonseed?

The ability to hold conventions? To host games as part of GenCon Online and/or PaizoCon Online? The ability to have VOs?

Don't get me wrong, I have great fondness for my online gaming community on these boards.

However, I'm not seeing in the message the why any given GM should want to help track PbP numbers.

Your suggested language, although friendly, would lead some GMs to believe that this form is optional, and it is not. It is a requirement to recruit players from this lodge.

I don't know what you mean about 'rules that cannot be enforced.' There is only one rule in the original post, and it is that all games recruited from the lodges here on Paizo's forums need to fill out the tracking form. The rest of it is answering questions, such as clarifying what counts as recruited from this lodge. A GM can still run any game they could before the announcement. If it's recruited from the lodge, (and it needed to be clarified what that means), then you fill out the form. If it's not recruited from the lodge, have fun, and the form does not apply to you.

Our GMs are indeed wonderful, and work very hard to bring fun to their players.

Then there are the cases that are less clear.
-if you have the same group who you recruited to play from here continuing to play together, it's still a lodge game.
-if some of your players are from here and some are not, it's still a lodge game.
-If you're running an AP in campaign mode (i.e. giving out chronicle sheets to those who want them), it's a lodge game if you posted here looking for any of your players.

So, any game counts as a Cottenseed lodge game if any player or GM in the game has posted in the Cottenseed forum?

.... Cottenseed lodge you can check out, but never leave .....

While it is an effort to modify the game reporting form, it might be more accurate to add a Lodge credit field to game reporting in the future.

Your suggested language, although friendly, would lead some GMs to believe that this form is optional, and it is not. It is a requirement to recruit players from this lodge.

How is this going to be enforced? Are the VOs going to audit games that were recruited here three months later to see what had a corresponding form filled out? If so, is that really more workload than doing an OSP-style shared number? If not, then I think Doug's point stands about trying to encourage people to get on board, rather than demand they do so.

EDIT TO ADD: I'm not saying I'm not on board. I'll fill out the form for any games I run recruited on this forum. But I think Doug has a point about how this was presented, which I think you are dismissing unfairly.

Out of curiosity, do we know what percentage of the OSP load was from forum PbP? Would a version of that (sharing an event code and submitting games for VOs to report) be more tenable if it were just for forum PFS PbP (maybe with an extra VA to help out)?

As a follow-up, would doing the above allow PbP tables to be eligible for extra AcP on a rotating basis? Is there any other path to enabling that?

We had different people handling the OSP PbP games from the VTT games, and it was enough work that it created a delay that people regularly complained about. And that was when OSP was optional, and only a small part of lodge games participated.

If we did RSP, then yes, there would be the extra AcP, or at least the possibility.

The other issue is that we do have GMs who did not participate in the OSP because they wanted their own event. These GMs would leave the lodge entirely if they were required to use a shared event.

3. Require every GM who is part of this lodge to add a PbF VO as a reporter to their events. I don't know that the Paizo website could handle one person being a reporter on this number of events, this would be not great for GM privacy since some GMs use the same event for other games, and the effort to comb through every one of these events for games to include in our numbers would be enormous.

Would that even work?

I thought reporters were only allowed to see games they reported. I know they can only change games they reported.

——

I think that I can answer what we get out of compliance.

A voice within OPF.

Every VA hosting in person games and everyone hosting conventions / special events has to collect data on the games played and submit it as part of their regular quarterly reporting or after action report. I’ve been doing it for quite a while.

This gives the people at the top levels a view into how the program is going. The data is collected on a quarterly basis, funneled up through the venture officers, and aggregated to send up higher.

Without the data, I suspect we would go back to the bad old days where online was considered a niche, uncontrolled and probably not worthy of any attention. It is especially important our numbers show up because we do need to run certain things differently.

GM Redelia wrote:

Your suggested language, although friendly, would lead some GMs to believe that this form is optional, and it is not. It is a requirement to recruit players from this lodge.

How is this going to be enforced? Are the VOs going to audit games that were recruited here three months later to see what had a corresponding form filled out? If so, is that really more workload than doing an OSP-style shared number? If not, then I think Doug's point stands about trying to encourage people to get on board, rather than demand they do so.

EDIT TO ADD: I'm not saying I'm not on board. I'll fill out the form for any games I run recruited on this forum. But I think Doug has a point about how this was presented, which I think you are dismissing unfairly.

No, we will not be searching for games that did not fill out the form, unless the number reported is unbelievably low. However, it is possible that we may find out naturally about games that did not report.

I'm not dismissing his concern, but I am saying that for the sake of clarity I will not pretend that something is optional that is not. I was seeking for words that encouraged everyone to participate, while not pretending that this is optional. If that was not achieved, I apologize.

GM Redelia wrote:

Then there are the cases that are less clear.
-if you have the same group who you recruited to play from here continuing to play together, it's still a lodge game.
-if some of your players are from here and some are not, it's still a lodge game.
-If you're running an AP in campaign mode (i.e. giving out chronicle sheets to those who want them), it's a lodge game if you posted here looking for any of your players.

So, any game counts as a Cottenseed lodge game if any player or GM in the game has posted in the Cottenseed forum?

.... Cottenseed lodge you can check out, but never leave .....

While it is an effort to modify the game reporting form, it might be more accurate to add a Lodge credit field to game reporting in the future.

I think you're misunderstanding some of the examples, which is exactly why I have tried to explain in detail. A GM may certainly have some lodge games and some non-lodge games. Their games that they asked for players here are lodge games. Games for which they did not, or are not continuations of lodge games, are not lodge games.

We (Castamir/Cottonseed/Flaxseed leadership) have no control over the reporting form. That is set by Paizo to apply to all org play games. That is why we need our own form.

GM Redelia wrote:

3. Require every GM who is part of this lodge to add a PbF VO as a reporter to their events. I don't know that the Paizo website could handle one person being a reporter on this number of events, this would be not great for GM privacy since some GMs use the same event for other games, and the effort to comb through every one of these events for games to include in our numbers would be enormous.

Would that even work?

I thought reporters were only allowed to see games they reported. I know they can only change games they reported.

If so, that is a change that they made within the last few months, because I have recently been able to see our online conventions, even if I didn't create the event.

But yes, this is why it's so helpful to have our own form that we have control of.

Mostly for clarity, what do we get out of reporting as Cottonseed?

The ability to hold conventions? To host games as part of GenCon Online and/or PaizoCon Online? The ability to have VOs?

Don't get me wrong, I have great fondness for my online gaming community on these boards.

However, I'm not seeing in the message the why any given GM should want to help track PbP numbers.

I think what you are asking could be rephrased in the following way: "What happens if we as a community don't report our numbers?"

To answer this, we would cease being an organized play lodge. Our groups would not have any VOs. There would not be any games that are part of any conventions on the Paizo forums. Gameday and OutPost would stop entirely, and PaizoCon would not allow games on the Paizo forums.

If you are asking what happens if some GMs don't report and we report numbers but they are lower than the actual number of games, GM Bret's response above is a good one.

Every VA hosting in person games and everyone hosting conventions / special events has to collect data on the games played and submit it as part of their regular quarterly reporting or after action report. I’ve been doing it for quite a while.

So have I. I don't think it's entirely analogous, though. For in-person games, the VA/VO is doing the reporting, managing the warhorn, etc., and can collect stats that way. None of the onus of collecting those numbers is on the GMs. I bet it would be a struggle to get your local GMs to fill out a form after every table, too; I know it would be for mine.

I understand why it's more challenging to have that onus entirely on venture-folks here, but we should be understanding that this will take a little convincing for folks, and why people might not be thrilled about it.

Thank you so much to the GMs who have already filled out the form for their past games! I know not everyone has been able to do so, but it's really encouraging to see those who have had a chance.

Would everyone here be interested in the numbers being shared when we calculate and submit them?

Would everyone here be interested in the numbers being shared when we calculate and submit them?

I would!

GM Bret wrote:

Every VA hosting in person games and everyone hosting conventions / special events has to collect data on the games played and submit it as part of their regular quarterly reporting or after action report. I’ve been doing it for quite a while.

So have I. I don't think it's entirely analogous, though. For in-person games, the VA/VO is doing the reporting, managing the warhorn, etc., and can collect stats that way. None of the onus of collecting those numbers is on the GMs. I bet it would be a struggle to get your local GMs to fill out a form after every table, too; I know it would be for mine.

I understand why it's more challenging to have that onus entirely on venture-folks here, but we should be understanding that this will take a little convincing for folks, and why people might not be thrilled about it.

GMs for in person are collecting the data required.

Sign in sheets is how I used to collect the data and I still accept those. Many of my GMs have switched to using RPGChronicles so they just send the data from the reporting page.

I admit that since I do not have any PbP games to report I haven’t followed the link to see what the form asks for. I am guessing it is very close to what a sign in sheet requests.

I admit that since I do not have any PbP games to report I haven’t followed the link to see what the form asks for. I am guessing it is very close to what a sign in sheet requests.

Actually, it's much shorter than a sign-in sheet. We are not asking for any information about players, just who is the GM (name and number), what adventure (campaign, name, and number), and what date did you put on the chronicle sheets. It's truly the minimum we need for tracking, to minimize the burden on the GM.

So have I. I don't think it's entirely analogous, though. For in-person games, the VA/VO is doing the reporting, managing the warhorn, etc., and can collect stats that way. None of the onus of collecting those numbers is on the GMs. I bet it would be a struggle to get your local GMs to fill out a form after every table, too; I know it would be for mine.

I understand why it's more challenging to have that onus entirely on venture-folks here, but we should be understanding that this will take a little convincing for folks, and why people might not be thrilled about it.

I've only done it one time so far, so maybe I'm just not accustomed to how they make it easier rather than just different, but I found making sure I had the right information in the format the Venture Person wanted and making sure it was delivered (and then verifying it was reported, because it was out of my hands but sill kind of my responsibility so I couldn't consider the job done until I knew it was complete [...some of this may just be me]) more troublesome than just reporting it myself.

This form was simpler and quicker to finish than Chronicles or a reporting form, which they'd have to fill out anyway. And this time I had to look up dates and verify how many games I reported this calendar year (I thought it was one, but it was two--a game I ran in December didn't technically finish until the beginning of January). Next time it will be easier.

...the only challenge will be remembering to do it. Definitely post that link somewhere more prominent than one comment in the middle of this thread, yeah.

Whether the form is easy for a few people here is moot (the target audience is probably not reading this thread, and I suspect the much larger online audience will have a huge array of opinions and abilities).

It's so difficult recruiting — and keeping! — good online GMs who also fill chronicles quickly and get paperwork to the VO in a jiff. Adding steps — no matter how small — makes it just that little bit more difficult. Death by a thousand cuts.

This policy doesn't look in any way enforceable, however the VOs here believe it is required for the lodge to survive. Taking this at face value, the Cottonseed Lodge might at least consider a bit more influencing/persuasion/empathy in broadcasting these new policies.

I only skimmed through the discussion, but I would just like to add my displeasure of having to jump through more redundant hoops just because Paizo's website parties like it's 1999.

If we, collectively, as a player group, get some sort of benefit for having games being labeled as "Cottonseed," I'm willing to put in a commensurate amount of effort to gain that benefit.

Is Cottonseed lobbying for AcP multipliers or something? Sure, I'd do something to make that happen. The form seems OK, but whenever data is gathered two ways, there's going to be discrepancies that need to be ironed out. Maybe we could all create separate events and Cottonseed can claim multiple event numbers. I have "Watery Soup PbP" that's all Cottonseed, I could even create a new event called "Watery Soup PbP, brought to you by the Cottonseed Lodge." That work sounds proportional to the benefit.

Is someone threatening to de-Lodge Cottonseed? Sure, I'll report to make sure that doesn't happen. I'll even go through and report all my grey-ly recruited games, too - the ones organized over PMs, but from people I met at Cottonseed; the games where some were from Cottonseed and some were from elsewhere; etc.

On the other hand, is Paizo asking their customers to hand over data because corporate overlords have someone doing due diligence on a potential acquisition? In return for our diligent accounting, we give some private equity bean counter the ammunition to declare that Pathfinder is "undermonetized" and uses the data we generated to creatively exploit us? F&@! that.

not sure how readily the reporting form can be modified, but it might be easier to have a drop down or a checkbox to indicate where the game was played.

not sure how readily the reporting form can be modified, but it might be easier to have a drop down or a checkbox to indicate where the game was played.

Yes, that would be wonderful. However, we can't change Paizo's form. They don't collect that information, and have requested that we collect it. It's annoying, and it's frustrating, and it's going to increase the resistance to GMing. We can't help that; we have to listen to instructions from higher up, and they tell us we need these numbers.

not sure how readily the reporting form can be modified, but it might be easier to have a drop down or a checkbox to indicate where the game was played.

It would be a very long list.

GM Tiger wrote:

not sure how readily the reporting form can be modified, but it might be easier to have a drop down or a checkbox to indicate where the game was played.

It would be a very long list.

Not really. If they're just asking for games played on the Paizo forums, all you really need is a checkbox that says whether it was played on the Paizo forums. The Discord lodges have their own reporting number so it's easy to track that.

GMs for in person are collecting the data required.

Sign in sheets is how I used to collect the data and I still accept those. Many of my GMs have switched to using RPGChronicles so they just send the data from the reporting page.

I admit that since I do not have any PbP games to report I haven’t followed the link to see what the form asks for. I am guessing it is very close to what a sign in sheet requests.

In-person GMs don't contribute to the workload of tracking aggregate stats, they just make sure their sign-in sheet is filled out. PbP GMs do sign-in sheets too, in one form or another. This is another thing to do *in addition* to that. It's not much, but as Doug said it contributes to the 'death by a thousand cuts'.

to be clear, i'm not a PbP VO so these are just my thoughts as someone who knows some things but has no authority here

Super Zero wrote:

GM Tiger wrote:

not sure how readily the reporting form can be modified, but it might be easier to have a drop down or a checkbox to indicate where the game was played.

It would be a very long list.

Not really. If they're just asking for games played on the Paizo forums, all you really need is a checkbox that says whether it was played on the Paizo forums. The Discord lodges have their own reporting number so it's easy to track that.

Worth noting that this problem is not a unique to forums problem. Every lodge has needed to do reporting based on games run in their lodge. A drop down list would need to include all of these lodges.

Is Cottonseed lobbying for AcP multipliers or something? Sure, I'd do something to make that happen. The form seems OK, but whenever data is gathered two ways, there's going to be discrepancies that need to be ironed out. Maybe we could all create separate events and Cottonseed can claim multiple event numbers. I have "Watery Soup PbP" that's all Cottonseed, I could even create a new event called "Watery Soup PbP, brought to you by the Cottonseed Lodge." That work sounds proportional to the benefit.

The AcP multiplier would involve needing a new event code every three months and it would need to be a single event for the entire lodge. Would you (and other) GM's give up your personal event codes in favor of an AcP multiplier? This would remove the need to do any additional form for table counting, you get extra AcP, at the cost of your personal event code and needing to get a new code every 3 months (could be displayed on campaign header or some other prominent place).

Genuine question. I think people should share this with the decision makers regardless of what side you sit on.

For my VTT lodges we already have everyone reporting under a single event so we just switched it to a quarterly event in exchange for AcP. This does also require someone being added as a reporter the first time they GM, and then every 3 months the VO's need to spend a few minutes copying everyone over as a reporter for the new event.

Completely separately, I think from a data perspective the question needs to be asked, what is the goal here? If the goal is to get 100% accurate data about what is run in the online region then that is impossible. It is never going to happen without Paizo's support. Instead this gets put on VO's to gather data. For me personally and my VA's (again, not PbP) this means my lodges will do our best, reasonable effort to get the data and gather it in a consistent manner so it can be reasonably trusted. For my lodges that meant having a single event code for the GM's willing to use it. Most of our GM's used our single event already, and most continue to do so. I didn't want to implement anything in my lodges that involved unreasonable amount of effort to my VAs, or offloading responsibility to GM's. Instead my lodges are just rewarding GM's for what they already did. If GM's are willing to give up their personal event codes for a communal one that is changed every 3 months then this "how do I (VO's) get/gather reporting data" becomes a much easier question IMO.

If you had let me, I would have reported all the way back to May 2022 when I picked up a group of brand new SFS players in Castamir's and then we did enough subsequent games for them to get to Level 3, often trading off GMs. It was a fabulous group first recruited in Castamirs.

I had only one game to report for January and I did so.

I love these lodges and our online PBP community a lot, and would do more for them. I just wish that the tone for such an important announcement was a bit friendlier. We are all in this together as a community. Make us part of the solution, rather than treating us as part of the problem.

I love my online VOs, and my online community!