DarthMelon's page

Quentin Coldwater wrote:

shadowhntr7 wrote:

Chiming in to say I'm honestly not a fan of the PFS-side changes. Many times, a scenario feels too short and rushed as it is, with players leaving scratching their heads over what happened and whodunnit. Cutting out a quarter of the time not only means authors (and players) can invest less time in building a proper scene and story, but also players who like roleplaying and developing their characters have less time to do so.

Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way, but if a four-hour adventure becomes a three-hour adventure, wouldn't that leave more time for RP? (Assuming you'll still play for four hours.)

Hampsterpillar wrote:

It seems to me that this will actually increase the amount of time you can invest in RP and character development? Usually when I'm left scratching my head over what just happened in the scenario its because the GM is plowing through encounters and subsystems to try and make sure we finish.

If there's less to "make sure we get through" then there's potentially more time to actually talk to NPCs and for the PCs to interact with each other.

Interesting that you both feel that way! Perhaps I'm the odd one out in that, but I'd be concerned that with the expectation and timeslot being set for 3 hours, players would assume no more than 3 hours runtime and plan to leave at that point. This of course assumes a perfect world where scenarios are written appropriately for the time slot, instead of being excessively short/long.

In addition, to me, part of the RP experience is how your character reacts to the events of the scenario. If a quarter (or more) of the scenario is cut to try and fit this new, reduced timeslot, would I not also have a quarter less 'triggers' for roleplay? Plus, there's enough people out there who are full 'rollplayers' instead, they'll be wanting the combats and stuff included in full, and cuts have to be made somewhere.

My local lodge plays almost exclusively on Weekdays. Our start times are generally 6pm so people can come after work, the problem is the game stores close at 10pm. This means we have to be out the door within 4 hours. There are a lot of scenarios where we have to rush through it. The change to a 3-4 hour scenario will give us much needed breathing room.

That said, very disappointed by the level band changes. As others have said, scheduling is always the final boss. Our lodge has been growing lately and changes like this make it much harder to put a table together. Not having all the star blocks in the adventure is also a bad change for the GM. Hope they reverse course on those.