Starfinder Society Guide Update: Year 3

If the first time you introduce oatmeal to a nerd it has maple syrup in it, it better have maple syrup every (#*$(#*@ time, or it’s not oatmeal.

— Larry Wilmore, on the Nightly Show

I guess it’s a good thing they’re not adding maple syrup at the start anymore.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

If the first time you introduce oatmeal to a nerd it has maple syrup in it, it better have maple syrup every (#*$(#*@ time, or it’s not oatmeal.

— Larry Wilmore, on the Nightly Show

I guess it’s a good thing they’re not adding maple syrup at the start anymore.

They will be, unless they go back and redo every old chronicle sheet. Or at least will be making the dm explain the bad news of you don't get that cool thing printed there.

Why wouldn't you get the cool things that are printed there?

Why wouldn't you get the cool things that are printed there?

That would be the maple syrup.

If its on the pancakes for some scenarios, people will be expecting it on other scenarios. (they are adding mapple syrup) The only way for new players not to get them is to not play old scenarios (which is not how i see new players playing)

OR

New players are still going to play old scenarios, so they're still going to have to deal with getting built up expectations that get dashed when the newer scenarios don't have boons.

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:

Why wouldn't you get the cool things that are printed there?

That would be the maple syrup.

Honestly, your analogies are nonsensical and just confusing the issue.

New players are still going to play old scenarios, so they're still going to have to deal with getting built up expectations that get dashed when the newer scenarios don't have boons.

Eventually, that will go away. New players will come in on the current crop, then later get surprised when older scenarios have the boons on the sheets themselves. And they should already be used to the ACP system delivering boons as that will be what the current crop is doing.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:

Why wouldn't you get the cool things that are printed there?

That would be the maple syrup.

Honestly, your analogies are nonsensical and just confusing the issue.

But those analogies are like yellow squash on a grey day!

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:

Why wouldn't you get the cool things that are printed there?

That would be the maple syrup.

Honestly, your analogies are nonsensical and just confusing the issue.

I think the cherry was fairly straightforward. Wouldn't be fair to paraphrase a quote and change it.

I just don't see how the new system helps anything at all.

New players don't have to deal with the boon slotting system because they're new: they don't have boons yet. They can pick it up as they go 3 or 4 games in.

There's no effort spared on coming up with the boon. It's just delayed effort.

You don't need to ditch the boon system entirely to fix "hey i know that guy" boons. You can just move those to a checkbox.

To gain that benefit you're

1) Upsetting a lot of players now going "hey wheres my boon"

2) Annoying geeks with change. Geeks don't like change (hence the larry willmore quote)

3) Relying on the paizo website to do something. The whole APC system that organized play was based around was.. what? a year and a half? almost 2 years late? Yes. It should be easier now that pathfinder2s system is working but that doesn't mean that it WILL work.

4) putting more stress on the DM for accuracy in the boring bookkeeping part of the system

5) For new people, here's a fifth website to check for the game isn't a reduction in complexity.

Right now when i have a new person i need them to

1) learn starfinder.
2) learn roll 20
3) get to the discord
4) get familiar with SFS
a) sfs guide
b) sfs additional resources
5) Learn/register with warhorn
6) register with paizo
7a) Either Hook the card to their account or 5b Get a PFS number

6) Delayed gratification is reduced gratification for most people. People are most excited about the boon right after the scenario. Getting the boon at any other time is a let down.

7) going to have to deal with players having boons now (some very good ones, some that have integrated into the characters) and what happens when you switch systems mid campaign.

There's another behind the scenes benefit to the new system as well.

Think back just a few years, to say Season 7-8. In those days, reporting was considered important by many as only useful for GM table counts and reconstructing lost characters' histories. We used to tell new players "don't worry about the site, paper chronicles are what matters." This was great on our end, because it made things easy. On the other hand, on Paizo's end, the Organized Play team could only use the data from games that actually got reported. In addition to meaning certain reporting boxes got skewed, it must have been hard for OP to give Paizo leadership hard numbers as to the player base and the games we were playing. In an industry as financially fragile as RPGs can be, this may explain part of why it took so long for OP to gets some of the help we've known they needed.

Now, with the new system, you can still earn the most basic rewards without worrying about the reporting. But if you want any of the new shiny extras, including scenario boons, players as well as GMs are encouraged, nay required, to ensure the reporting is complete and accurate. This allows the OP (now the OPF, really) to get much better data, from numbers of games played across the world all the way down to how frequent characters stick to one faction versus spreading out. This would certainly help any funding/resource discussions that occur behind the scenes.

We can even see some of this in the size of the team between these two points. When Tonya came on, it was just her and John, with Linda join relatively soon after IIRC. Now, we have Tonya, Thursty, Linda, James, Alex, (until recently) Michael, and Jenny. Given some time for these new changes to stabilize the data, and it could lead to the OPF team getting even more resources for our benefit.

Redacted...

Now, with the new system, you can still earn the most basic rewards without worrying about the reporting. But if you want any of the new shiny extras, including scenario boons, players as well as GMs are encouraged, nay required, to ensure the reporting is complete and accurate. This allows the OP (now the OPF, really) to get much better data, from numbers of games played across the world all the way down to how frequent characters stick to one faction versus spreading out. This would certainly help any funding/resource discussions that occur behind the scenes.

We can even see some of this in the size of the team between these two points. When Tonya came on, it was just her and John, with Linda join relatively soon after IIRC. Now, we have Tonya, Thursty, Linda, James, Alex, (until recently) Michael, and Jenny. Given some time for these new changes to stabilize the data, and it could lead to the OPF team getting even more resources for our benefit.

Two clarifications.

One, OP is still OP and handles the scenarios and program framework. OPF (organized Play Foundation) is responsible for community building/volunteers and uses the OP program as produced by Paizo.

Two, Linda was helping John/Mike before I got on the scene. She started in the spring of 2015.

But your point is extremely on point. We need numbers to do things.

There's another behind the scenes benefit to the new system as well.

.

I'm not sure this entirely a benefit. The solution to under reporting is social engineering to get the players to poke the DM into more accurate reporting.

What would you call this then, if not social engineering?

What would you call this then, if not social engineering?

Bribing with cherries.

Landon Hatfield wrote:

Redacted...

Now, with the new system, you can still earn the most basic rewards without worrying about the reporting. But if you want any of the new shiny extras, including scenario boons, players as well as GMs are encouraged, nay required, to ensure the reporting is complete and accurate. This allows the OP (now the OPF, really) to get much better data, from numbers of games played across the world all the way down to how frequent characters stick to one faction versus spreading out. This would certainly help any funding/resource discussions that occur behind the scenes.

We can even see some of this in the size of the team between these two points. When Tonya came on, it was just her and John, with Linda join relatively soon after IIRC. Now, we have Tonya, Thursty, Linda, James, Alex, (until recently) Michael, and Jenny. Given some time for these new changes to stabilize the data, and it could lead to the OPF team getting even more resources for our benefit.

Two clarifications.

One, OP is still OP and handles the scenarios and program framework. OPF (organized Play Foundation) is responsible for community building/volunteers and uses the OP program as produced by Paizo.

Two, Linda was helping John/Mike before I got on the scene. She started in the spring of 2015.

But your point is extremely on point. We need numbers to do things.

Ah, the two points I was iffy-est on. Good to know, thank you. :)

What would you call this then, if not social engineering?

Sorry, should have had a question at the end.

'm not sure this entirely a benefit. The solution to under reporting is social engineering to get the players to poke the DM into more accurate reporting?

I don't think I like being put in the middle between the nitpicky part of the book keeping and paizos web technology. Isn't it still not calculating the APC correctly?

TOZ wrote:

What would you call this then, if not social engineering?

Sorry, should have had a question at the end.

'm not sure this entirely a benefit. The solution to under reporting is social engineering to get the players to poke the DM into more accurate reporting?

I don't think I like being put in the middle between the nitpicky part of the book keeping and paizos web technology. Isn't it still not calculating the APC correctly?

Outside of some edge cases (we know Quest 7, for instance, is misbehaving), AcP is working fine from a calculation perspective. If you've got sessions that don't look right, email us and we'll take a look!

TOZ wrote:

What would you call this then, if not social engineering?

Bribing with cherries.

*looks at pictures* They're the same thing.

Eat a sundae. No cherry.

Cherry comes later in the mail
Even if it comes, the timing is off.

I would agree with a minor tweak. We don't even know if a cherry will be coming until it does, or we are told at some point to expect it. It is quite possible you could complete a scenario and based on the contents a boon of some kind is an obvious opportunity, but for whatever reason, it never comes.

So we have redefined what a sundae is in that it might have a cherry, but we'll have to think about it, then source it, then package it, then send it to you and hope that your receipt is properly recorded in our database otherwise you won't get the cherry unless you go to the customer service desk and complain about it.

And the longer it takes for said cherry to be distributed, the less story impact it is likely to happen. Giving out boons from previous seasons seems to be a poor direction to take, so the later in the season a scenario releases, the less likely it is to ever see a boon produced.

It seems to me the best course of action would be to just not expect boons on every chronicle. This was the expectation for all of PFS1 and most of SFS. If a scenario warrants a boon perhaps because its part of the meta-plot or is an interaction with a unique ancestry/item/feat/etc., great, add it to the chronicle sheet. Those should almost write themselves. For the rest of the scenarios, just don't add them. This would maintain player's expectations while reducing the stress on the developers. Win-win.

But, if you knew ahead of time that the cherry wouldn't come until later, it's not a letdown.

It's practically a pre-order at that point.

Was there a way to know before PaizoCon that the cherry was being delayed? Seems like we all got sundaes and when the restaurant saw that everyone upset about the lack of cherries, the manager suggested that they might hand some out in a year, or not.

Now to wait another 2 months for the conversation to continue.

Now to wait another 2 months for the conversation to continue.

I'm not sure if this helps the conversation. We try to read the forums, but that takes time and requires that we don't do something else, like sanctioning or scenario production.

We've read the feedback and are discussing how to proceed. As we get decisions, we'll share with the community. No timeline projected.

Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:

Now to wait another 2 months for the conversation to continue.

I'm not sure if this helps the conversation. We try to read the forums, but that takes time and requires that we don't do something else, like sanctioning or scenario production.

We've read the feedback and are discussing how to proceed. As we get decisions, we'll share with the community. No timeline projected.

My apologies Tonya, that wasn’t a jab at you or your team, it was directed at the poster above me “replying” to another poster from 2 months ago as if the conversation was still ongoing.