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Seems to many out there that two adventures a month just does not cut it. I recently ordered some year 0 scenarios for Free RPG Day and was asked "Is there a reason you're starting back in the Season 0 scenarios? The season 1 scenarios are much better written, much stronger stories, and each offer 2 PA where the season 0 scenarios mostly offered 1." and my reasoning was like this.
Some of the year 0 scenarios are very well written, some experienced players sometimes need holes in their game list filled, and since Free RPG Day draws a lot of new players I want to be sure they will get plenty offered for them if they choose to continue playing.
It all comes down to this for me as a local organizer in the Cincinnati area. Many of our players were Living Greyhawk players and are used to a longer list of adventures they want to play. In PFS with the two adventures a month it gives me double trouble. There are players that join our group and need low level adventures and I want to accommodate them. I feel not every month I am given a low level adventure and it's been a long time since low level games were released more than one a month. Players that like their high level PC are frustrated when I offer low level games. The game store would like us to run PFS games four times a month. All these are incompatible with the release of two games a month.
I would like to voice a solution. Approve Pathfinder Modules for organized play. In Living Greyhawk they approved adventures for players to play as long as "The Red Hand of Doom". As an organized play opportunity and it worked well. The adventure was broken into chapters and Adventure Records (Chronicles) were awarded in waves. This also allowed players to enjoy a sense of the more epic adventure instead of the four our sit com style it begins to feel like sometimes.
Is there any chance that this could be done for Pathfinder Society? It would entail approving Pathfinder Modules, making a short addendum for organized play, and creating Chronicle sheets.
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Is there any chance that this could be done for Pathfinder Society? It would entail approving Pathfinder Modules, making a short addendum for organized play, and creating Chronicle sheets.
Although I wouldn't mind more scenarios, I'm not sure that this would be the best solution. While I'm sure most adventures would probably adapt well enough to a group of adventurers working for the Pathfinder Society, most probably wouldn't work well with all of the factions as well. There would have to be work done to shoehorn faction objectives in, and it wouldn't always be pretty.
Also the modules are desigend to take longer than the 4 hour Scenarios which are specifically intended for one-evening/convention paly. That's nto true of the modules.
But as he pointed out, LG successfully managed to break Red Hand of Doom into bite-sized chunks.
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It would not be that hard to break them into multiple 4 hour adventures. Write a Pathfinder addendum with plot hooks and encounter adjustments. Create Chronicles for each block of adventuring with treasure, Experience (if it's more than one), and PA. That way Paizo gets an adventure sale and players get extra adventures for their PCs.
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The idea of Adventure Paths broken down as PFS scenarios has potential. I'm surprised this thought hasn't come up before. Interesting...
Josh and Erik have been talking bout this since about 1/2 way through season 0. The issues are as i remember them are:
1: no factions in the modules.2: Modules don't follow the stricter gold per level plans that PFS do
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As Pathfinder Society is maturing, and players are jumping in at different points, it is often becoming difficult to find a scenario that a table of players with various scenarios played / not played, can agree on.
I found this at a recent Con in Melbourne. Due to a break-down in advertising/promotion, attendance was down, and we only had one table of players. If we had enough numbers for a second table of players, we could probably have split them and run different scenarios tailored to each group.
But as it was, we had a whiteboard list of every scenario, and a tick against every player's name, and consumed half an hour of valuable con-time before each session trying to shuffle players and scenarios to find one they could all play.
Perhaps this is the price of success, that players had covered such a wide range of scenarios.
Three or four scenarios per month would be more difficult for GMs to keep up with, but would help immensely with providing scenarios players could play without running out of options.
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Josh and Erik have been talking bout this since about 1/2 way through season 0. The issues are as i remember them are:
1: no factions in the modules.
2: Modules don't follow the stricter gold per level plans that PFS do
When I read many PFS scenarios the faction missions seem tagged on and superfluous. If I am right, it would be pretty darn easy to tack them onto a Pathfinder Module. Since the treasure is often linked to the encounter it shouldn't be too hard to have an addendum to each.
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Crypt of the Everflame 1st level
The Godsmouth Heresy 1st level
Masks of the Living God 3rd level
Carrion Hill 5th level
City of Golden Death 5th level
From Shore to Sea 6th level
Realm of the Fellnight Queen 7th level
Break them into manageable slots of adventure and you nearly double the number of game nights offered for Pathfinder Society players this year alone.
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But as he pointed out, LG successfully managed to break Red Hand of Doom into bite-sized chunks.
Bite-sized chunks that took from eight to twelve hours, each.
They also had the Time Unit mechanic in the campaign, which Pathfinder Society lacks. The Time Units made it possible to balance the adapted modules against the standard campaign modules, gold and XP-wise. The gave the XP and gold that there was in the module and then they ate up dozens of Time Units, as opposed to the one or two that a normal Regional or Core module did. A PC only had 52 Time Units per calendar year, and once those were used up, the PC couldn't play any more that year.