Remember -- Paizo is a business, and in my experience that means you need to make a business case for any new expenditures. Would hiring a $35K per year "FAQ guy" increase net revenue by $35K? I'm skeptical.
That is, someone gets paid $35K a year and their entire role at the company is simply to answer rule questions and build up an elaborate and comprehensive FAQ for the entire corpus of rules. They have a computer rigged with three or four monitors, an ergon
It would require an extreme lack of success to do this. Because it would mean a fundamental loss of vision and strategy surrounding the game, where the game is about a huge corpus of rules and rules lawyering instead of playing and having fun. Skip William's "Sage Advice" column, for me, was one of the initial bellweathers indicating that the game was becoming a "Magic: the Gathering" exercise in interrupt vs instant vs swift vs immediate vs free vs partial action BS instead of entertainment.
Frankly, if they won the lottery and declared "full time FAQ master!" I would think to myself "Well, there we go, down the rabbit hole," and start looking for another system,
Total FAQ Entries
Product, Number of FAQ Entries, Latest Update
Core Rulebook, 15, 11/24/10
Bestiary 1, 3, 11/24/10
Gamemastery Guide 0, N/A
Advanced Player's Guide, 30, 12/13/10
Bestiary 2, No FAQ TAB EXISTS
Adventurer's Armory, No FAQ TAB EXISTS
Total FAQ Entries supporting 6 books: 48
Total FAQ Questions posed: Hundreds (perhaps thousands, certainly many hundreds of posts on many threads)
"The boys have been buried in Ultimate Magic and other pressing projects in the wake of the holidays. I will see that additional issues on the FAQ are addressed ASAP." (Link)
"Just wanted to drop a quick note to let you guys know that I fully understand our FAQ system is pooched at the moment, and that our staff has not been as rapid or responsive as we should be in clearing issues from the queue.
Quite honestly, the success of our game has taken everyone by a bit of surprise, and the constant need to reprint our rulebooks (and to fix as many errors and clarify as much as we can with every printing) has taken a huge bite out of the design team's productivity insofar as the FAQ is concerned.
It is my sincere hope (and expectation, frankly) that as soon as Ultimate Magic is off to the printer (probably next week) the design team will finally have more time to make the FAQ a more serious priority.
I unfortunately cannot snap my fingers and summon an eidolon with perfect PFRPG rules knowledge to make up for this inefficiency, but I know it is a big problem and it is very high on the list of things to fix as soon as the current emergency has been dealt with.
Thanks for your patience.
--Erik" (Link)
Ultimate Magic has now shipped to the printer (couldn't find a post but I've seen several saying as much.)
Erik has assured us that once Ultimate Magic was done they'd put a major focus on the FAQ so I'm sure we should be seeing a substantial number of outstanding items addressed very soon.
@Hogarth: In response to the question of "would paying someone $35k/year be justified? Well while that sort of person may not bring in income, they MAY prevent the loss of income. I can speak for very many players who contact me via d20pfsrd.com, and assure you that very many people consider the FAQ situation something that is causing them to consider abandoning PFRPG. Its basically only because Erik has assured us that this is going to receive attention that they are waiting to see what happens.
@Hogarth: In response to the question of "would paying someone $35k/year be justified? Well while that sort of person may not bring in income, they MAY prevent the loss of income.
Yes, they might do so...or they might not. Which is why you make a business case, i.e. your best guess at whether or not it will be financially viable.
It's certainly not good to have a bunch of people saying "I don't like errors in my product", but whether that actually results in decreased sales is hard to say.
Thank you, Djinn Soked--a man of reason and one who can think creatively (and financially).I think I can solve the FAQ problem quickly right now:
Q. Rule x. is broken
A. Just let the GM houserule it for now.
I'll take the $35k in bullion or alcohol pls.
;-)
There are a lot of creative players who think of things that were not thought of when rules were made so there can't be a rule for everything. If a rule question pertains to a very creative situation sometimes I think it is ok to say "refer to your GM", and it won't be a copout.
For the base intention of the rule I think they should have an answer assuming there is a contradiction such as the core book having a rule that says SLA's can be counterspelled, and in another place it says they can not.*
*This is actually in the book.
I understand the "you the are GM" argument, but they get paid to do these things so I don't have too.
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It would require an extreme lack of success to do this. Because it would mean a fundamental loss of vision and strategy surrounding the game, where the game is about a huge corpus of rules and rules lawyering instead of playing and having fun.
I totally (and respectfully) disagree. I see it more like this:
As a home GM I can fix whatever rules I want to create what I feel is a consistent, logical rule set. I "houserule," and I make these rules clear to my players, and if they're cool with it, we play and we have fun.
But I also GM PFS. I can't use my houserules to fix inconsistencies or internal contradictions in the rules [and as Wraithstike points out, we're not talking about corner-cases here, but core rules that are unclear]. I have to go by the RAW. At some point in the future, as the number of splats and classes and races increases, and the number of rules grows, and, by extension, the number of little things that don't quite work or don't quite get explained creeps up with no official clarification, my job as a GM becomes more difficult and less fun. Similarly, my experience as a player of PFS becomes more and more uneven as various GMs are called upon to make more and more judgment calls, some of which I agree with, some of which I don't.
At some point PFS just isn't that much fun. I stop GMing PFS and stop playing PFS and just play my home game, where I can retreat to my own parallel set of rules (Have you seen how many "veteran" players like Kirth Gersen are already doing this?). I stop buying PFS mods and stop going to cons to participate and grow the Pathfinder brand. And here it where it matters to Paizo's bottom line. I continue buying fluff books because I like Golarion and the minutia about the world, but I'm doing so much with my own crunch that I don't need any more of Paizo's crunch books. I stop reflexively buying EVERYTHING Paizo puts out. And for the 50/50 books, well, sometimes I buy them, and sometimes I don't. Then I start working on my homebrew world ('cause I'm already using my homebrew rules) and the Paizo fluff becomes less important too.
I've gone from being a Superscriber to an occasional customer. Too many solid customers do that and Paizo has to start looking for new target audiences, card driven games, 4th... er... 2nd editions with more flash.
So, clarifying and errata'ing rules is NOT a waste of time or sign of weakness and lack of imagination. It's ensuring that your core product, the engine of your success, is as good as it can be. If they don't do this, at some point, PFS becomes untenable, they loose a major marketing tool and way to introduce newcomers to the hobby/product line, and drive people into a developing houserule systems that break their dependency on Paizo for rulebooks. ANd that's not a very good business model. It may not warrant a $35K position, but it sure merits more attention than it's getting right now.
At some point in the future, as the number of splats and classes and races increases, and the number of rules grows, and, by extension, the number of little things that don't quite work or don't quite get explained creeps up with no official clarification, my job as a GM becomes more difficult and less fun.
...
I stop buying PFS mods and stop going to cons to participate and grow the Pathfinder brand. And here it where it matters to Paizo's bottom line. I continue buying fluff books because I like Golarion and the minutia about the world, but I'm doing so much with my own crunch that I don't need any more of Paizo's crunch books. I stop reflexively buying EVERYTHING Paizo puts out. And for the 50/50 books, well, sometimes I buy them, and sometimes I don't. Then I start working...
I snipped a little in the middle but just wanted to agree with the above. I subscribe to three lines and if the FAQ system isn't substantially improved in the next couple of weeks I'm probably going to cancel all three subscriptions.
I snipped a little in the middle but just wanted to agree with the above. I subscribe to three lines and if the FAQ system isn't substantially improved in the next couple of weeks I'm probably going to cancel all three subscriptions.At some point in the future, as the number of splats and classes and races increases, and the number of rules grows, and, by extension, the number of little things that don't quite work or don't quite get explained creeps up with no official clarification, my job as a GM becomes more difficult and less fun.
...
I stop buying PFS mods and stop going to cons to participate and grow the Pathfinder brand. And here it where it matters to Paizo's bottom line. I continue buying fluff books because I like Golarion and the minutia about the world, but I'm doing so much with my own crunch that I don't need any more of Paizo's crunch books. I stop reflexively buying EVERYTHING Paizo puts out. And for the 50/50 books, well, sometimes I buy them, and sometimes I don't. Then I start working...
I still don't have the physical core book yet. I would rather wait an extra month or 2 for a book to come out than wait for errata. I think errata is more important than many of the products especially since the more stuff that comes out mean just the errata and FAQ's fall farther behind. I just realized that the sorting excuse is not as valid since a database was organized for them on your site. All they would have to do is just answer the questions.
Enough of my mini-rant. I have to go.
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In a sense, I think more or less this particular gap would likely be filled by the hands of fans.
Experienced high ranked PFS GMs in a closed and mature environment could eventually resolve worthy FAQs with consistency. PFS and PFS conventional events just haven't been out long enough to recognize enough GMs of significant talent. If there was enough, I would think that they could deal with FAQ problems or playtest solutions in public PFS events.
Overall, even though there will be more FAQ problems as time passes, I believe there will be an increase of people able to resolve them.
Give me an official icon thingy, access to devs and I'll dedicate 20 hours a week for minimum wage to this.
Dream part-time job? You bet.
Ah, but here's the rub: if the devs had time to be accessed, this position would be unnecessary, wouldn't it? The devs would do it.
This hypothetical position would be someone able to fly solo. James and Jason and Stephen et al don't have time to be on tap.
I see a fair number of questions that come through the hopper over and over again (Poison Rules, Race Trait versus Racial Trait being recent ones) that have been clarified by developers or just explained. These things just need someone with a little time and effort to incorporate.
There are also a fair number of questions about things that come up that are clear in the rules but commonly misunderstood.
These sort of things don't need a developer to take care of, just a person with a little judgement who can answer the simple question "Has this been asked more than 10 times?"
I'd like to see a volunteer take over that end of things so the developers can take care of the FAQ questions which need some developer input.
I would support this. Empower one person at paizo (could even be an intern) or a few people on the forums to review every FAQ-flagged post, and either reply with a link to the appropriate place in the SRD to answer questions that have an obvious answer, a link to the appropriate FAQ to answer questions that have been answered already, or to write it up for a developer to look at. That way the developers don't have to deal with filtering the wheat from the chaff and they don't have to read 200+ post threads to understand the sides people are taking.
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I nominate Sebastian, CoDzilla, Cartigan, Sharoth, Ravingdork, CourtFool, TOZ, Bugley, Seeker, Mikaze, Kaeyoss and of course myself as Rules Gurus. Why? BECAUSE WE CAN. And because with that mix of individuals we can be...
I think Paizo just exploded. Hell, I think WASHINGTON just exploded. That much concentrated WRONG has to be chemically unstable.
I nominate Sebastian, CoDzilla, Cartigan, Sharoth, Ravingdork, CourtFool, TOZ, Bugley, Seeker, Mikaze, Kaeyoss and of course myself as Rules Gurus. Why? BECAUSE WE CAN. And because with that mix of individuals we can be...I think Paizo just exploded. Hell, I think WASHINGTON just exploded. That much concentrated WRONG has to be chemically unstable.
Chemically?! I think that it would be unstable on quantum level disrupting subatomic probabilities and causing more damage to space-time continuum than Large Hadron Colider.
I removed a post (and the replies to it) that did not seem to be kind-spirited.
I removed a post (and the replies to it) that did not seem to be kind-spirited.
Hey, Ross does a lot of forum moderation - he can be the guy who collates all the FAQ posts for the developers to review! ;)