Derek Balling's page

A common story: we're all older, we used to play regularly when we were in our 20s, now that we're in our 50s, the overhead of a campaign doesn't fit into our daily life. We're lucky to do one-shots. Using the vast PFS pool of (essentially) one-shots fits the bill for our group. And since we're all of us living in about 5 cities around the country now, we do it via Zoom, Owlbear Rodeo, etc.

But I have some "mechanics" questions on how to do this, as a GM. (We're playing PFS1e if it influences the answers to any of these questions)

* Should I be setting up a new PFS "Event" for each of our fortnightly sessions? Or should I have one Event ("Some nerdy name for our group's gaming") and just a single table scheduled every other week as part of that event?
* There's no reason to do those little half-page sign-up sheets, right? Chronicle-sheets I understand yes, obviously a hard requirement, but if we're using something like rpgchronicles.net to do "sign-up" and chronicle-sheet generation, that half-sheet thing is just to make the GM's job easier at a table full of people they don't know, and to take it home with them after the session, to do the reporting afterwards, right? There's no expectation that the GM has some box of those they've kept around for every session they've run, to audit THOSE or something?
* I "know" (as much as anyone knows since there seem to be a couple different methods) how to track purchases of gear for PCs on the Inventory Tracking Sheets, but was there ever an expectation that *initial gear* (ie, session 0) purchases would be logged on that sheet as well? In theory they'd have to be in order to do a fully-accurate-to-the-copper-piece audit, but I can't picture logging on there "4 torches", "1 backpack", "3 sheets parchment" or whatever. It seems mostly intended for "items with three digit costs or more that you're buying from chronicle-sheets or based on your fame". Maybe I'm wrong.
* How do other people handle trying to get "clean" maps for VTT purposes when it's a scenario-custom map, and it's got GM-privileged info scrawled all over it? Are people recreating those by drawing them by hand? Is there some hard-to-find source for "cleaned up custom-map content" [and if not, dear god, could there please be?]
* Does anyone else just have general-purpose pointers in this space for things that worked well/badly for them?

Thanks!

I'm getting ready to GM 5-08, and I'm trying to figure out where I can find the battle-mat which is used for "C. The Final Exam"? It's not labeled, and I can't seem to find it anywhere. I suppose in theory I could just use the image from the scenario, but that seems optimal since it's got "non-terrain" markings on it.

So I'm (finally) getting around to cashing in playtest boon points, and (having been almost-killed once in 1e), "Against All Odds" (when dying, get a hero point and spend it to stay alive) seemed like it might be fitting for my 2e character. But I realized that "Starsong's Favorite" (get a hero point at any time) *seems* to accomplish the same thing, but with greater flexibility (I can cash in the hero point any time, rather than only when I'm dying).

Is there some reason why Starsong's Favorite isn't usable in the "dying" situation, such that you'd want the Against All Odds one instead?

Clearly there's a reason why there were two different-but-very-similar boons created, so I want to make sure I don't make a dumb mistake. :-)

I'm in the boons tab. I see that I can "purchase" a Wayfinder "Game Rewards" boon for my character. I have zero points, but the cost is 0, so that should be fine. It has a pre-req in the description of having played one session. That character has played one session, so that's fine.

But if I try to purchase it, I get told:

"That character does not meet the requirements for that boon."

What am I missing?

Is it an error that there is no Maps file included in the AP150 Single-File ZIP? They're in the "One file per chapter" ZIP, but appear to have been omitted from the Single-File ZIP.

No matter how many times I told the checkout process I wanted the Adventure Path subscription to start with #145 (first AP of 2e) it kept setting it up to start with 144.

Can you please make it so my AP subscription starts with 145?

Also, is there any subscription which includes the GM screens, or am I forced to buy the PDFs separately if I want to have both?

I tried searching for this and came up empty.

Is there going to be a "Core" vs "Standard" distinction in 2E as well?

I'm thinking about GMing a PFS adventure. The trick is that some of the players might "care" about accruing XP and others will not.

I feel like this HAS to have come before but I couldn't find it in the FAQ.

Is it a hard requirement that all players "care and get logged" or can it be logged for just the subset of players who give a hoot?

OK, as someone who only plays PFS games once a year, for four days a year, at Gen Con:

Am I reading this correctly that even though I've never referenced a single non-core item/trait/feat/etc. on the single character that I've been slowly progressing over the last several years, that if I want to finally be able to play that character with "like minded folks" in a core-only session, that I can't? I need to start all over?

I know that I don't play nearly as often as some of you and maybe for most folks "just rolling up and starting over" is easy. But it's taken me four years to make it to a measly level 4, and I'm not about to start over.

"Core Mode" fixed the one thing that I absolutely hated about playing in PFS games (the constant one-upsmanship on what folks were bringing to the table). But I'm not about to start over and throw away four years of grinding him up, three or four sessions per summer.

Being told (effectively) "keep putting up with the ultimate min-max'ing of folks who buy $1000 worth of books, or start over" would be enough to say "Nope, there's a third option, walking away from PFS."

There *has* to be some sort of allowance for this sort of thing. It's absurd that there isn't. Somebody please tell me that I'm insane.

Is there an authoritative list of the promotional boons (a la the ones available at Gen Con), including their effects, so that folks could see "What's out there that might benefit one's character", and attempt to trade for them?

That sort of thing would ALSO be helpful for those folks who do Hero Lab add-ons, so that we could try to get as many of them as possible into Hero Lab for easy application.

Suits of medium/heavy armor "include gauntlets" (among many other things).

If I have a suit of "+1 armor", which includes gauntlets, shouldn't the gauntlet be treated as a +1 weapon, if used for an attack?