A Few Updates

Monday, September 9, 2013

Happy Monday, folks. Season 5 of Pathfinder Society Organized Play is well underway, and Mike and I have received considerable feedback both in person and through email about what works well (lots apparently) and what could stand improvement. In just a moment I will provide a few updates, clarifications, and reminders about the nuances, rules, and expectations of this new season. For the moment, though, I would like to share a bit of our progress on the online play frontier.

Online Play

Whether it's by play-by-post or real-time, virtual tabletop, our online games are going strong. Paizo recently added an online play subforum to the Pathfinder Society page, and Mike recognized the many requests for online leadership by appointing a Venture-Captain of Online Play, Joseph Caubo—who has in turn appointed several venture-lieutenants.

Several of my first Pathfinder Society scenarios were played online, but it's been nearly three years since that last game. I know I'm not the most knowledgeable about the nuances of online play and the needs of the VTT-using community. As a result, Joe has been an invaluable contact and liaison for understanding what the community needs, communicating how a new development might adversely impact the online play experience, and providing—both by his own hand and with the help of several others—helpful graphics that I use when making proposals to other departments to make scenarios easier to use.

There are plenty such developments in the works, and I would like to highlight two: map tags and paperwork. I remember playing The Eternal Obelisk, a now retired Season 0 scenario, and the GM had to instruct us to ignore the big red square with a capital T on the extracted map. No matter one's ability to avoid metagaming, that's a hard piece of player knowledge to ignore. Our GM could not remove the trap marker because the map tags were directly incorporated into the map and not included as a separate layer. Savvy GMs can sometimes paint over these markers or extract them in backdoor ways, but I'd rather we make that process easier by layering things in the main product. Starting with Pathfinder Society Scenario #5–04: The Stolen Heir, all scenario maps should benefit from this treatment.

Inventory Tracking Sheets

Mike and I also hear many requests for form-fillable documents, particularly Chronicle sheets and the Inventory Tracking Sheet (ITS) included in the back of the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play. The ITS has been included in a form-fillable format and has received three important clarifications:

  • Players may produce their own versions of the ITS to meet their own design preferences and character inventory needs. Any alternate ITS must contain the same types of information found on the official ITS (e.g. item, cost, Chronicle acquired, Chronicle sold, charges, etc.)
  • Although a player must record purchases on the ITS, a player need not also record an itemized list of purchases on the Chronicle sheet. A simple note of "Adventuring gear purchased—see ITS" or "bucket of wands—see ITS" will suffice.
  • A player is not required to record individual purchases totaling 25 gp or less on his or her ITS. This is largely to avoid having to fill an entire sheet with small, mundane purchases like chalk or torches. We politely recommend that those purchasing lots of an inexpensive item (e.g. 10 flasks of acid for 100 gp) still record that on the ITS.

Season 5 Reminders

Remember that the new scenario reporting sheet included in the back of Season 5 scenarios has four checkboxes labeled A through D. In the Conclusion section of a scenario, there will often be one or more checkbox conditions that help me to track players' decisions throughout the season and use that information to help the campaign, society, and factions to evolve over time. Not every scenario will have these cues, but most will. For example, the scenario might prompt the GM to check A if the PCs used the scroll of awaken on the giant frog, B if the PCs used the scroll of awaken on the blueberry bush, C if the PCs successfully befriended the resulting creature, and/or D if members of the Cheliax faction sealed a dark bargain with the awakened blueberry bush to create a pie of ineffable evil. As a developer I could then decide which creature to include in a future scenario and whether said creature would start out as friendly or indifferent. Furthermore, the fate of Cheliax might develop an appreciation for single-use, edible, evil artifacts.

Finally, please point participants to the faction head letters. These are clearly linked in a recent blog as well as in stickied posts in the Faction Talk subform. I've read many appeals for more clarity regarding which scenarios deal directly with which faction, and I have a few respectable ideas regarding how to publicize that scenario information without spoiling the somewhat serendipitous sense of discovery for others.

Lots more in the works,

John Compton
Developer

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Tags: Pathfinder Society
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Liberty's Edge 1/5

Quendishir wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:

Lets see

3 adventures per level X ll levels X 4 encounters per adventure X 6 rounds per encounter times 5 arrows per round= 3960 arrows. 1 arrow= 1/20 gold= 198 gold pieces and no more tedium of having to track every single arrow you shoot.

well worth it.

Or heck, buy your ammunition in single increments. Congratulations, you are now an MMO ranger who doesn't run out of ammunition, and can have living steel, flame-forged, frost-forged, Elysium Bronze, alchemical silver, and cold iron arrows as much as you want!

You must buy Special Material ammunition in full lots.

per the current revision of the Guide p23 The paragraph headed Item Value.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

P33J wrote:
Chris Rathunde wrote:

They are required for all characters, old and new, as of August 15.

Any purchases made for old PCs after that time need to be recorded on an ITS. Purchases prior to August 15 are not required to be recorded on an ITS.

"Ah! Yeah. It's just we're putting new coversheets on all the ITS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. All right!" /Office Space

No knock at Chris, I love you buddy, it's just his quote triggered that scene and really solidified my issue with PFS as of late.

What exactly is the issue?

That they try to make the game cooler?
That they try to make the game easier?
That they try to make a GM's job easier?
That they try to make a Player's responsibility easier?

Because all those things is what the ITS does.

What it does not do:

Make more paperwork.
Make more rules.
Make more stringency.
Make things harder.
Make things more bookworky.

So what exactly is it about the ITS that you find distasteful?

Liberty's Edge 5/5

graywulfe wrote:
Andrew Christian wrote:


But I know for a fact (and in a bit I'm going to go find the exact quotes to prove it) Mike made very short, clear, concise statements, multiple times, and linked to those statements multiple times, prior to Monday.

I can't shake the image of a Mike's forehead shaped dent in either the wall of his office or the top of his desk.

I know if I had been in Mike's position for those couple of days, the level of obscenity I would have been spewing, would have had my coworkers and/or my wife checking to make sure I had not accidentally lit myself on fire.

And now it would be dented by a dropped jaw at all the people who still don't understand it after all of that.

1/5

Isn't the existence of an additional document more bookworky for the online gm? Before it was: "Okay, what did you buy and what did you sell? I'll note it down on your sheet" to "also, send me your ITS sheet. Oh, you're emailing me a photocopy of your ITS because you play both online and offline? Okay guess I have to print out the sheet, initial it, scan it, then send it back to you."

This also means the player will have to print out a new ITS sheet to bring to their next offline game.

Liberty's Edge 1/5

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Gordon Pang wrote:

Isn't the existence of an additional document more bookworky for the online gm? Before it was: "Okay, what did you buy and what did you sell? I'll note it down on your sheet" to "also, send me your ITS sheet. Oh, you're emailing me a photocopy of your ITS because you play both online and offline? Okay guess I have to print out the sheet, initial it, scan it, then send it back to you."

This also means the player will have to print out a new ITS sheet to bring to their next offline game.

ITS DOES NOT NEED TO BE SIGNED!

1/5

graywulfe wrote:
Gordon Pang wrote:

Isn't the existence of an additional document more bookworky for the online gm? Before it was: "Okay, what did you buy and what did you sell? I'll note it down on your sheet" to "also, send me your ITS sheet. Oh, you're emailing me a photocopy of your ITS because you play both online and offline? Okay guess I have to print out the sheet, initial it, scan it, then send it back to you."

This also means the player will have to print out a new ITS sheet to bring to their next offline game.

ITS DOES NOT NEED TO BE SIGNED!

I apologize for my misunderstanding then.

Liberty's Edge 1/5

Gordon Pang wrote:
graywulfe wrote:
Gordon Pang wrote:

Isn't the existence of an additional document more bookworky for the online gm? Before it was: "Okay, what did you buy and what did you sell? I'll note it down on your sheet" to "also, send me your ITS sheet. Oh, you're emailing me a photocopy of your ITS because you play both online and offline? Okay guess I have to print out the sheet, initial it, scan it, then send it back to you."

This also means the player will have to print out a new ITS sheet to bring to their next offline game.

ITS DOES NOT NEED TO BE SIGNED!
I apologize for my misunderstanding then.

No problem, I should probably stay away from the boards early in the morning.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Gordon Pang wrote:
I apologize for my misunderstanding then.

He's irritated because it's not just your understanding. It seems every time a thread pops up about ITS, someone still has that misconception.

For each new rule, there will be 100 threads asking about that same rule. Such is the internet.

Liberty's Edge 1/5

Mystic Lemur wrote:
Gordon Pang wrote:
I apologize for my misunderstanding then.

He's irritated because it's not just your understanding. It seems every time a thread pops up about ITS, someone still has that misconception.

For each new rule, there will be 100 threads asking about that same rule. Such is the internet.

pretty much nail on head there. It is probably not fair of me but it feels like no one is doing there due diligence to learn these things. However, maybe I just spend way too much time perusing the boards.

Scarab Sages 1/5

Andrew Christian wrote:

I disagree. If it is a purchase over 25gp, it should be on the ITS.

Otherwise, what's the point?

To create more room on the chronicle sheet for cool words.

Paizo Employee 4/5 Developer

I would like to provide a bit of clarification on the point about maps. Here at Paizo we're thrilled that people are playing online, in particular with the use of VTT programs. As noted in the blog, that's a central reason for our layering map tags.

That said, please use these maps in places that only your gaming group can access. As these maps are part of a watermarked pdf, it is not OK to publicly redistribute the maps, placing them where they would be available to the general public.

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