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Would anything we are suggesting here fix the Cheat? I really don't think so. But heck - I've been wrong before, and I'd love to hear some suggestions. In the drive home, three of us gamers figured the only way to "fix" this problem is for the PLAYERS to enforce it. Don't play with the Cheat.
The only problem that I see with this, is if the players start skipping sessions because they don't want to play with the problem player. This is very disturbing for GMs and can destabalize PFS playing altogether. It's even worse if they don't tell the GM what's happenning (which is often the case!).
If you communicate what's happenning to the GM, you force the GMs hand to remove the player altogether (as opposed to 'teaching him'. Honestly, most people are too 'nice' when they see obvious cheating anyway.)
If you don't communicate with the GM, you waste his time on several nights and he wonders why he's doing this, demotivates him and kills your weekly PFS games.
Anyway, just something to think about. I've seen players 'take it into their own hands' several times, the outcome is usually not good. Having said that, I hate cheaters so much, I probably also wouldn't play, but at least the GM would know that they either had to play with cheater-face or me.
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With regards to cheaters, you have to take action. When I find a mistake, I chalk it up to being an error. No biggie. If the same player does it again, they may have forgotten to correct it since last time. Marginal problem. If it happens a third time, it is clear they intent to cheat so they are no longer invited/allowed to play.
IMO, you cannot facilitate the cheating by not taking action, nor can you jeopardize the other players.
People who only get to play at conventions are probably the ones who would need auditing the most, but just in general for mistakes and not to see if they are cheaters. People who play at game days and home games, where there is more time available or who can get with their GMs or fellow gamers in the off-time, should have these people help them make sure everything is good, just like you would if it were not for PFS play. But even with this, intentional cheaters are still going to cheat. Nothing stops them from changing things in the future once the character has been audited.
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It seems worthwhile
I'm not saying the proposal doesn't have merit, but after organizing or being involved in the organization of numerous conventions over the past few years, it is not practical. There are just too many variables and as Nosig said, the more it sounds like a pre-con requirement, the more it becomes a chore. That is likely to affect the player's decisions to even attend, let alone comply with what you are trying to do. And it would greatly increased the prep time of the organizer or GM's depending on who is responsible for completing the audits. Character sheets are waay too complicated for the process to be automated unless you are only checking on very basic factors. In which case, those can probably be checked at the table just as quickly.
That being said, I would be happy to be proven wrong. Go ahead and implement your plan and organize a local convention. It probably should offer at least 15 sessions since that is the level Mike seems to have set for an event to be an official convention for PFS purposes. Afterwards, provide feedback on what worked and what didn't. I would also like to hear from the player-base on their opinions as well. Good luck.
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What if there was a Chronicle sheet you could get for having your character audited by a GM at a convention or gameday? I understand the complications and I agree with Bob & Thea about the logistical nightmare that an audit presents. However, we all know the power of greed. What if Mike & Mark create an "Audit Chronicle" with boons based on success conditions? Each PC can get one every three levels. The sheet has specific areas that the PC must be checked off on. Compliance in each area grants a score from 0-2. A higher score leads to better boons. The advantage is the Chronicle is part of the PC's records and down the road (assuming the player can get an audit every three levels) an auditing GM can see if previous mistakes were corrected or are being repeated. Now getting audited is seen as a positive instead of a negative. Players will volunteer to have it done.
Do I think that cheating/mistakes are rampant in the game and require such a time-intensive solution? Not really. I just want to get the community onboard & make more work for Mike & Mark. There are always a few players whose characters make me raise an eyebrow. In my case, I just don't play with these people if I can help it.
In a campaign where we are all volunteers and the intent is to sell Paizo products, you have to give players the benefit of the doubt. If caught, no cheater is going to admit it. They are going to say they made a mistake--cause who hasn't ever done that? Then they are going to mend their ways for a few sessions and go right back to their cheating ways. The whole issue with cheaters is they think they are smarter than everyone else, so the rules don't apply to them.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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I kind of like that. When you sit down tell everyone to pass their character sheet two seats to their right...
I'm going to try something like this at my next game -- It looks like it could be the way to go for the non-con setting. It reminds me of what teachers used to have us do in grade school. And, in a way, all RPGers are kids at heart, so logically we should be treated as such.
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good stuff
I think there are possibilities here, but IMO the biggest problem is not going to be the players submitting, its who is going to do the audit. It would seem logical that the table GM does it and signs off on the audit chronicle, but they don't have the time what with setting up for the game, and then tearing down afterwards. Not to mention, they should be allowed to eat and use the restroom at some point. Afterall, GM's aren't slaves right?...right!?!
So we pass the responsibility on to someone else. But who? The organizer maybe? does s/he have time. In my experience, there is about 2 hours during the middle of each slot that the organizer is free and could perform audits. But what if the organizer also has to GM a table? Or what if the character to be audited is playing? Hmmmm
So we pass this on to a specific volunteer. Someone who's job it is to audit for a slot. What do they get out of it? A GM boon? They can get that for GM'ing AND GM credit for a character. What would be the incentive to being an auditor when those for GM'ing are better? Not to mention that it is often a challenge just to get enough GM's to cover the scheduled events, let alone adding 1-2 extras for an audit team.
Sorry, if I'm a wet-noodle on this. I just don't see the return on investment it'll take to make this a convention-applicable function. But I encourage someone to try and make it work. Until then, I will continue to believe that audits are best done at the local level where there is more time and the players involved likely know each other so the risk of hurt feelings or accusations of cheating are lessened.
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I don't think you're being a wet blanket Bob, you are just thinking about the practical considerations. I agree that small-to-medium conventions just don't have the volunteers or the time to accomplish mass/open audits. It almost needs to be done by appointment before or after the event.
Maybe next year at Winter War you could switch "Audit" for "Fumble" on your random prize generation list...
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It depends on what the players are used to and what they will get used to doing.
Generally players want to show up and play there character of awesome and they don't want to have to do anything extra.
Some areas muster at the spot while others pre-muster. It's mainly what custom is there as to what players expect.
Most places do a semi-premuster, however, it's hard to fully premuster before the con as things change up to the moment before the con
You might just be used to spot mustering, which if I recall you're Michigan right? Most of the LG (et al) that I recall from there was mustered on the spot.
Other areas of the country varied this.
close, he's in Illinois, you got the right half of the country good job.
There are advantage to both. For premustered you don't have the situation where you show up ready to play your 1st level PC only to find that the rest of the table is 5th level, etc. For on the spot mustering you can be more flexible (though honestly it can also be more chaotic).
From all the "on the spot mustering" I've seen and participated in it hasn't been that chaotic and has been fairly easy. We haven't needed to worry about any kind of pre mustering and had we had to deal with that then it really would have been chaotic.
But I don't think that you are saying, for example, that you think that warhorn is too much of a chore to ask players to sign up beforehand? Depending on your players (and what they can get away with not doing) it very well could be mind you.
But for many warhorn is a godsend, right?
For mustering GMs for a convention it's definately a nice tool to have, other than that I've seen it used more as a reference than a hard and fast tool
When prepping a scenario would it be nice to know what factions you had? If you will have a paladin or the like at the table? etc.
Personally I don't care what factions there are until they are sitting at my table. What factions are going to be present places no bearing on how I prep a scenario (have you read through society scenarios to know how the factions play into them?)
If you went with something like this, then you quickly avoid easy mistakes people make on characters by having it filtered through a set system where there are no mistakes on what's legal and what's not.
We don't see many 15 session cons in my neck of the woods. Most were done over weekends and would thus be in the range of 9 slots. Is that level acceptable? Otherwise I'd just have to talk about cons I've been to. Some are premustered with or without walkins. It really just varies with the locale and gaming circles.
That being said, I would be happy to be proven wrong. Go ahead and implement your plan and organize a local convention. It probably should offer at least 15 sessions since that is the level Mike seems to have set for an event to be an official convention for PFS purposes. Afterwards, provide feedback on what worked and what didn't. I would also like to hear from the player-base on their opinions as well. Good luck.
Perhaps you should organize one, make sure it's large enuf (whatever Mike would deem the number to be) to be consider a large convention implement all your suggestions. Until you've contributed to the society i.e. rolled your sleeves up and gotten dirty with the rest of us, I hold little sway to your opinion given from on high.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Folks, hang on a minute.
Most folks here think that having someone double-check PCs would be a good thing.
Some people here think that it would be an unwelcome burden. If that's true, then it's a nice idea in theory but too hard to implement.
Bang, we're done.
Other people think that it's worth it, if the manpower (a couple of people with HeroLab on their laptops) is available, either (ideally) before a con, or during.
If there's the resources available there have been some suggestions for how to make it workable. I personally like the idea of a boon for those PCs.
For what it's worth:
I've played a couple of PbP PFS games, and the GM has always audited the characters, 'cause there's time, and it's useful.
I've run a couple of high-level sessions at large cons where I know in my bones that someone's PC isn't adding up right, but there's no time to check. Other players at the table sit around and watch their colleague trounce serious party-killers by himself. An audit might have reassured everyone at the table, myself included, that the player was just a master of optimizer-fu.
If I'm ever at a large con, and I have a session left unscheduled, I'd be happy to volunteer to sit and audit. It's a chance to teach people the Pathfinder game rules.
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Chris
Thanks for your support.
Doug
I had a similar idea about a boon that would expire after 3 levels. You have much more details and I like your post a lot.
Whoever proposed making photocopies
Actually I this idea yesterday. We had a player who finally created his second character after he is now close to level 7 and promised a second character for month. It was always 'done' but he never showed up.
To put it midly - he was still 'unfinished' when he reached the table. The GM wasn't amused. But making a photocopy I slowly entered the character while we played. I had GMed this scneario before (but not played) so had more 'time' to be laid back.
Thanks to the photocopy we managed to keep interuptions at a minimum and the player left with a valid and workable character that had no evolution point underspend or other bits he had forgotten / wasn't aware off.
He even has all starting languages - too bad that we could have used one of them during the game. But he will have them next game.
Fully audited and legal - and yes - that SHOULD have happened before the game but it seems no pressure on the player managed to get it done in 2 month.
Nosig
I think one reason I started this thread is to get support for people who do ask if it 'looks odd'. It is okay if a GM doesn't audit because of time constraints / lack of optimizer-fu.
But for me it is important that if you find the time to do an audit that you are not singled out because 'nobody else is doing it - so why do you bother me asking questions'.
Making audits 'acceptable' will likely also make it more common that someone at the table asks - how is this possible - and isn't just walking away and decides - oh - I don't play with that player again.
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When someone comes up with a system that works at Gen Con, I will be thrilled. We are planning 750 tables that are not premustered, We will have roughly 450 characters per slot. If you develop a system that will work efficiently, I certainly would consider having volunteers set aside as Tier 1 status to audit characters for people who voluntarily chose to do just that. I just don't think it is realistic to audit that many characters in a reasonable amount of time, even if character sheets were sent before hand, I offered special boons, etc...
I invite someone to prove me wrong and email me a proposal to make it work, how many volunteers would be needed above and beyond HQ volunteers and GMs, and all the ins and outs. Keep in mind that there is no budget to create some fancy computer program to track everything or check everything.
Also, keep in mind, if you propose a system, you must also be at Gencon to oversee that it runs smoothly since it will be your plan that is in motion.
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Mike
Thanks for your feedback. Sorry if this thread puts further pressure on your job or on the job of organizers. I'm trying to help and make PFS better. This will only be successful if we come up with a realistic solution that organisers can opt in or not.
I will be working on a proposal. This will likely take a few days. In regard to oversee the program: if I'm back to GenCon this year than I'm happy to do so. I just don't know yet if I'm traveling over again as I'm located in the UK.
Volunteers: it's probably best from this point onwards to discuss ideas and a working scheme via e-mail. If you want to be involved, then please e-mail me. My details are in my profile.
In case I'm not at GenCon I would need a right hand man who would be able to participate in this discussions and be the contact person at GenCon.
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I won't be at gencon. I do have a suggestion, and that is that you might consider having players drop off a copy of their character sheet and chronicles at the beginning of a session and pick up a reviewed copy at the end of the session. The reviewer could look over 10? or so characters during the session and make some comments on each. The only problem is that doesn't really leave much time for discussion about the comments (and if you are using software maybe a printout of the character from the software?).
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What might be practical for GMs to do at cons is a verbal table audit of just one feature, without it being obvious it was even an audit. It should sound like you are giving their PCs extra spotlight time and helping the table understand each others characters.
For example ask _one_ of the following questions to every PC at the table in turn (or ask the one most relevant to their character type):
What magic items do you have that costs 1000 GP or more?
What is your highest and lowest stat?
What is your initiative bonus and how is it made up?
What is your best melee attack bonus and how is it made up?
What is your best ranged attack bonus and how is it made up?
What is your highest spell/power DC and how is it made up?
What is your AC and how is it made up?
What is your HP and how is it made up?
What do you have from non-core books?
What feats do you have?
By asking a different question every game, you get reasonable coverage of common mistakes.
It wouldn't be hard to could come up with a quick check-list of 3-5 key points to look at for each question and a list of common mistakes.
For example auditing Magic Items for:
1) costing more than their Fame limit (very common mistake)
2) adding up to an unreasonable sounding total cost (possibly explained by play-up chronicles).
3) inappropriate for character type - spell trigger/completion items for non-caster, Wizard item (e.g. pearl of power) for spontaneous caster.
It might be useful to publish such a check-list of common mistakes for PCs to check themselves.
It's not going to stop extreme cheating (like for instance faking a play-up chronicle) but should help make the table a little fairer.
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Ogre
Indeed, I think a copy or scan of a character-sheet is crucial. A player can't wait for half an hour (or longer) to get his sheet back. But you can send him for 3 minutes to a copy station.
My thinking right now is:
Minimum to make it useful is 1/50 of characters -> 80 characters for GenCon reviewed real time (finished latest by end of the session). That is 20/day and should be doable with 1-2 dedicated people available.
A boon for audited characters (see Dougs post). This will be a 'rare' boon as we will never have the manpower to do them all. As incentive there will be also a special boon for the auditors for x audits done.
Double the number if you have WiFi and can 'outsource' checking characters to be checked by volunteers not at the Convention. This is an option that people here complaining about not being able to get a boon actually might even have an advantage.
Ideally there would be a group of maybe 10 core people who have good knowledge of rules and an interest to do this. Ideally we could draw in a few volunteers who don't GM but have in-depths rules knowledge.
We will draw up rules how such a boon/audit can be done for home games / smaller CONs.
And yes - a GM who thinks a character shows very irregular skills/values can send that character to the audit as well. Hopefully this number should be rather small. These characters will receive priority.
Using an electronic character generation program (HeroLab ?) would be good but needs discussion with Lonewolf Rob. I do have a more or less complete licensed version but I can't expect volunteers to pay money to do this job and a dedicated program by Paizo is also not feasible.
But I'm not following my own suggestion to discuss via e-mail. Guess I first need to get exposure / drum up support.
So anyone interested - drop me a message.
Thod
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What might be practical for GMs to do at cons is a verbal table audit of just one feature, without it being obvious it was even an audit. It should sound like you are giving their PCs extra spotlight time and helping the table understand each others characters.
For example ask _one_ of the following questions to every PC at the table in turn (or ask the one most relevant to their character type):
What magic items do you have that costs 1000 GP or more?
What is your highest and lowest stat?
What is your initiative bonus and how is it made up?
What is your best melee attack bonus and how is it made up?
What is your best ranged attack bonus and how is it made up?
What is your highest spell/power DC and how is it made up?
What is your AC and how is it made up?
What is your HP and how is it made up?
What do you have from non-core books?
What feats do you have?By asking a different question every game, you get reasonable coverage of common mistakes.
It wouldn't be hard to could come up with a quick check-list of 3-5 key points to look at for each question and a list of common mistakes.
For example auditing Magic Items for:
1) costing more than their Fame limit (very common mistake)
2) adding up to an unreasonable sounding total cost (possibly explained by play-up chronicles).
3) inappropriate for character type - spell trigger/completion items for non-caster, Wizard item (e.g. pearl of power) for spontaneous caster.It might be useful to publish such a check-list of common mistakes for PCs to check themselves.
It's not going to stop extreme cheating (like for instance faking a play-up chronicle) but should help make the table a little fairer.
Fantastic idea !! Instead of 'do nothing because it can't be done' roll the die and look at the random audit table and ask a question.
I guess a more dedicated group (as proposed by me) would work towards this by giving you the data / ideas / questions to ask.
Thod
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80 characters out of 3000 is not what I had in mind. That is not even 3%.
Lets see if we can bring it to >10% of all characters at GenCon if this is acceptable. If you ask for 30% or more than you are right - it will be non-feasible.
750 tables * 6 = 4500 individual slots.
Average of 3 games played with the same character reduces it to 1/3 of the above.
So my estimate is 1500 different individual characters. Correct me if I'm completely off target here.
So if we have volunteers not at GenCon who can help out and double our numbers and manage 200 (80 + 20 problem characters not counted in the above * 2) and 10% might be feasible. At the moment I schedule 30 minutes for a review. I try to be conservative and don't oversell. I will need to check real timing.
I will be having more detailed numbers once my inbox fills up with volunteers (or stays completely empty). And once I did a few test runs.
And even if it doesn't work - we might be able to design some 'plan-B' checks like ZomB or at least figure out some suggestions.
But thanks for your input Mike - are you in the US? What time is it right now? Sorry to keep you up.
Thod
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It is currently 1:36 am. You aren't keeping me up. I usually average 4 hours of sleep a night.
I would think 25% would be the very bottom base you want to shoot for and that still sounds pretty weak for as much effort as this project is going to take.
Provide a mission statement in one sentence. From there, provide a list of 5 goals for what this project should accomplish. The community can help you narrow your focus after that.
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Just back to numbers:
If we say we aim for 1 audit every 3 levels than the number would be:
4500 / 9 = 500 to aim for 'full coverage' over time.
We are still out by at least a factor of 3 - so how to boost numbers.
Preferential audit for characters already in HeroLab format. Bring you character on a memory stick and you are assured a review (should cut down time to 10 minutes max - triple throughput).
Give the stamp of approval / audit for characters generated at the character generation station. This assumes HeroLab will be back as last year but could be done in 5 min extra. This is out of my own control - but it would be useful to know how many characters got created last year and what seems feasible.
Do some on-line auditing ahead of time.
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It is currently 1:36 am. You aren't keeping me up. I usually average 4 hours of sleep a night.
I would think 25% would be the very bottom base you want to shoot for and that still sounds pretty weak for as much effort as this project is going to take.
Provide a mission statement in one sentence. From there, provide a list of 5 goals for what this project should accomplish. The community can help you narrow your focus after that.
Nijad by you. Will do so.
I will just wait a little bit to see if I get feedback here from volunteers. If I can't get a core group that helps than it won't go anywhere. But at least I can say I tried.
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Do some on-line auditing ahead of time.
If you do this, how far in advance of the convention? How does the person receive their sheet back? Will anything change on the character sheet between the advanced audit and the first game of the con such as a scenario played after the audit but before the con? If it does change, then the advance audit would have been for naught. How do we keep track of all these pre con audits for proper credit toward the special Chronicle sheet that has been mentioned? How do we know a person has brought their pre con audited character and is in fact using it and not a different character? Just a few questions that would need to be answered, especially if some form of rare Chronicle that will not be accessible by 85% of the playerbase would receive. If they used Hero Lab and you are auditing with Hero Lab, how do you know the settings of both machines are the same? What if they use PCGen?
Those are just a few questions off the top of my head in about 2 minutes. If I sat down over an hour, I would probably come up with 50 or so questions that would need to be hammered out before something like this could be seriously considered.
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Just an idea, I'm in Australia and have no way of making gen con, but what about a roll off every session. Assuming a 2 minute audit is normally enough to find any significant discrepancies:
For a 17%~ audit of characters:
Have the gm do a roll off. Closest to ten (under beats over) "wins" an audit and potential boon, should their character undergo the audit without major discrepancies.
Like I said, this is only an idea and I realize the pain it could cause having gms audit a character per scenario.
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Sorry, I have not read the entire thread in detail.
I would like to propose the following :
Random selection of a few players who will have copies of their sheet audited. They might receive a small compensation for being selected, for example a ticket allowing them a special one-time only in this convention only +1 bonus to any roll, including that of another PC or a NPC.
The audit happens during the play sessions and aims for 2 things : detecting cheaters and improving PCs. That is, not only checking that no mistake (involuntary or otherwise) has been made, but also proposing improvements/rebuild, which would be the big boon in and of itself (ie, being allowed a rebuild).
The audit would need to be done by dedicated people with a very good grasp of PC optimization. Obviously, they need to receive some boon for setting their time aside for the audit.
This way, you will discourage cheaters and people will be rewarded (with a more efficient PC) for being selected.
Of course, the punishment for intentional cheaters must be both harsh and real for the whole procedure to be effective.
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I suspect if PC auditing becomes effective then you push the hypothetical cheaters into nigh impossible to verify ruses such as faking chronicle sheets, particularly "home-game" play-up chronicle sheets. Even with Paizo support and access to the organised play database you can't necessarily verify a chronicle sheet.
However improving the quality and consistency of the organised play character base sounds like an excellent goal.
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In all seriousness, I get about 200 characters per slot. I usually am considering eating everyone, exception processing, listening to players and greeting new people. Having a table and a volunteer for audits means two things.
First like Mike pointed out, you need 25% coverage to make it worthwhile. For 50 audits in 15 minutes between slots, you would need like 15 very busy auditors, whoa re going to be exhausted in 15 minutes of audit. Add the that arguments, and that is a half hour. Randon selection cuts this down, but is more trouble that its worth.
Second, the audit finds a problem, how does a player fix it. Many want to print a clear character sheet. No printer for player use, no laptop for them to use, and they may be doing it by hand. This causes problems.
Please think of the issue that arise when you want people to submit character ahead. Its hard enough to get people to put in correct levels and character classes in Warhorn. I can imagine the nightmare of printing out character sheets for everyone.
Any audit system is best handled at the table. I think all it takes is a DM to say, "Can I see your character sheet after this slot is over please?" When a bogus result from a player comes is you audit the damage or the roll on the spot in 30 seconds. If there is an argument you hand it up to the SR GM after the slot. You can always disallow something that is cheesy.
I keep saying in D&D, it starts and ends with the DM.
I usually encourage players to use Hero Lab. It makes life easy for a DM to look at a sheet for two minutes. I do not advise doing a 20 minute scrub of a sheet, but two minutes of looking at feats, ability score, skills and equipment catches 90% of problems.
If I may also point out, people don't like "fromage" at the table. Many times a bogus character finds that player steer to other tables. The free market takes care of some problems audits don't catch.