It's not quite as simple with Pathfinder since there are many more "N times per day" abilities (including spells). With 4E, many things recharge after one encounter.
Actually, even though I played D&D Encounters once, I'm a bit hazy on how much keeping track of stuff (daily powers, action points, etc.) there is from one encounter to the next. How does it work?
I agree that it would be great to not have to schedule an entire 4+ hour block for a PFS game.
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A few things to consider:
Pathfinder Society scenarios, while they can be sub-divided, are not really designed for a rotating cast of characters during a single scenario. Between scenarios, yes, during a single scenario, no.
So, it is possible to split a PFS scenario between multiple sessions, but, and this is the biggie, the same players & PCs need to be at all sessions of a scenario. Some groups already handle this through extended play home game sessions or PbP games, which can cause a scenario to take multiple sessions. Heck, the game I was running this past Friday started late ad ran long, so instead of calling the game after the third encounter, we decided, since the next Friday was unscheduled anyhow, to complete the game the following Friday. Everyone agreed to come back, and the players have all marked down what they have already used up during the scenario so far, so it should work okay this Friday.
Main thing is that, while PFS combat is supposedly faster than 4E combat, don't be prepared to believe that.
PFS has more save-or-die/suck spells, but that doesn't mean the bad guy fails his save, so be prepared for battles taking a while, especially if the baddie has access to darkness or invisibility of some sort. We won't even go into the supreme slowness of an encounter where the bad guy has flying and Greater Invisibility or Deeper Darkness as an at will ability.
Side note: Is there a good example around showing how the different sources of light and darkness fully interact, especially how "neutralizes" works? Also, as an aside, the various light sources, especially the mundane ones, need to have the light level/points they produce be annotated.
As to actual time spent on an encounter, that can be greatly variable. RP encounter with a bunch of non-RP folks? Either very quickly, or what feels like eternity. Non-boss combat encounter with a bunch of optimizers? About 5 minutes, unless the dice are rolling bad for them. Boss combat encounter with a bunch of non-optimized PCs? Hard to say. It could be a quick TPK or equivalent (small party, enemy with Charm spell, for an equivalent example), or a long drawn-out fight that the PCs barely wn or lose, but taking multiple hours to play out.
Add in the player running a pregen or otherwise less than fully familiar with their PC's abilities, so they spend a long time deciding on their next action during their initiative, and it can take a while to run a single encounter.
On the other hand, a group of optimizers fully familiar with their characters abilities, who have their next action decided while waiting for their initiative to come up, and a GM making quick decisions for the baddies and other NPCs, and you can have a very high level encounter go by very fast.
So, back on track:
Main point would be to make sure that everyone who wants to play agrees to splitting the adventure up over several sessions, and will be able and willing to come back for all sessions.
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I believe the PFS Quests will eventually fill the niche for shorter sessions. Something of shorter duration is clearly needed, especially for many stores which are unable to schedule a 4 hour slot after working hours.
However, I expect the 4-hour scenario to be the bread-and-butter of PFS for a long time to come. The format has been wildly successful in convention play, and many of the story elements of the better scenarios just would not work in a shorter presentation.
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My limited experience with encounters was that there was near-zero role-playing. The GM would lay out the box text and then, "roll initiative."
We would then spend the next 60-90 minutes in an over-CR battle. Even still, we usually defeated the BBEG without any losses.
Followed by 10-15 minutes of box text as we "greyhawked" the bodies and moved on to the next scripted encounter for the following week.
The GM rarely knew what resources (dailys) we used week to week, and many of the players failed to record them. So it was largely a scene of fully charged PC's for each encounter.
This experience left me disappointed with encounters. While I am partial to the PF rules system, I do not hate 4E and would likely play it under the right circumstances. Unfortunately, those do not exist and I stick to PF/S 100% of the time.
YMMV
My limited experience with encounters was that there was near-zero role-playing. The GM would lay out the box text and then, "roll initiative."
We would then spend the next 60-90 minutes in an over-CR battle. Even still, we usually defeated the BBEG without any losses.
Followed by 10-15 minutes of box text as we "greyhawked" the bodies and moved on to the next scripted encounter for the following week.
Whereas in PFS...
...on second thought, no comment.
;-)
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...on second thought, no comment.;-)
Yes, there is just as much opportunity for role-playing in PFS (more IMO) as there is with encounters. It's just that it feels like encounters are even more rushed that PFS. But, it's all in control of the GM. My comment was strictly from my experience and not intended to be a bash of encounters. More an indictment of the GM's I had.
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I'm glad that PFOS scenarios run 4-6 hours long. Anything different wouldn't feel right to me.
Having said that, there's obviously a need for 2 hour play sessions, and maybe Paizo can modify the "quest" system to accommodate that. Ex. 0.5 XP, 0.5 PA, etc.
I however feel there should be less rewards in any encounter system because everything resets before the next encounter and it just wouldn't be as challenging. Also, if you have a themed scenario that runs over several encounters, players will have a lot of time to think about the encounter chain (and maybe research), decreasing the difficulty yet again. It's human nature.
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Ok here is my take on things. I hope everyone gets something out of my post, and for those of you I met at PaizoCon it may make a little more sense.
I Coordinate and GM for PFS in my local area. I GM for encounters every week at my FLGS. Our encounters program is VERY successful. We have three time slots it is offered and at least one of those slots has 2-3 tables running.
We make heavy use of the tracking sheets available to track resources. A "day" of in game play usually consists of 4 combat encounters and a skills challenge (this is a 4e concept where the party has to use skills and reach x# of successes before x# of failures). On the tracking sheets we make sure players note when resources which don't recharge before games are used. For PFS this is where you would track which spells/slots were used for the casting classes. These sheets stay at the store from week to week. The GM's let the players know when the next day starts thus a fresh compliment of spells and such.
I think this could work in a fashion, maybe not with the scenarios as written. This would be more for a module or something. If a similar program were used maybe you could have the tracking sheet signed off by a GM at the end with the XP, treasure, and items earned carry into PFS play. The players would only get what they were actually there to play for.
As for RP and encounters it is exactly the same with PFS in my experience. It all depends on the players. Some of my encounters tables are heavy RP some aren't and the same goes for my PFS tables.
I am sorry to hear some of you have a bad taste for encounters and in my opinion it is due to it being poorly ran.
My 2cp,
Angela
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Thanks for the input, guys. I'm trying to see about running some PFS at the local shop that just opened up, but unfortunately the owner, being the only employee at the moment, can't stay past 8. And since the soonest I can start is 6, well you can imagine the predicament. I currently run Encounters there, and that works there because each session is meant to be 2 hours in length, but other than shortening the PFS modules (and for the most part depriving them of depth), I can't think of much to do.
The only other option would be to split them. I guess this could work, but then comes the problem of attendance. If Judd, July, Jack, Jacob and Jennifer show up at the table for the first week 1 of the module, and the next week, John, Jack, Judy, Judd and Jason show up, did Jacob, Jennifer and July get full credit? Same with John, Judy and Jason? Does everyone get prestige for their faction mission, even if their faction mission didn't occur during the part of the module they attended?
Hopefully one of the Paizo staff with have some input on this.
Run Games on Saturday. Also, the season 0-1 scenarios are 'quicker' time wise.