|
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 agree with Dom here. Trying to set up an official "audit system" is a lot of work for nothing (in my opinion). Most DMs will be tipped off that something is "not quite right" with a particular aspect of a character and can "get to the root of it" pretty quick.
|
|
wow... I'm going to feel like I'm doing my taxes at a CON....
Do we REALLY think this is going to catch "the Cheat"? I mean, really?
What are you going to do with "False Positives"? when the auditor is not correct - but he "knows" you have to many Feats for example. I have a Rogue/Wizard, he has Weapon Finesse and Alertness listed on his sheet - WF from a Rogue Talent and Alertness when his familiar is within 5 feet. So I get "flagged" 'cause I list two "extra feats".
Guys, your current approach is going to drive people out of our game - and it wont be the cheaters, they'll just addapt and feel like they "pulled one over on the system".
Have to say I agree with this ... we're making the 99.99% suffer and jump through hoops for the 00.01% that are actually cheating.
This does not foster an inclusive gaming society or a friendly community, instead it gives the air of "we think you're cheating so if you want to cheat we're going to catch you".
As someone that does travel to a lot of conventions both large and small we're better off leaving the audits to local venues and let people who want to go to a convention have fun. Cheaters are going to cheat no matter what we do.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'll have to get the answer from our Bus-Dev guy. All I remember is that he told me about an upcoming Con where the organizers were planning to have *eight* machines available to players and require every character to go through Hero Lab for vetting. Players did not have to purchase anything, as all the necessary resources were being provided. So it would entail a few minutes for each player to enter the character and print it out with the validation report at the bottom. Everybody is happy.
Yes! We used this at SCARAB and although character checking was not mandatory it was offered as a courtesy and we checked roughly 100 characters and found errors on about 20% and the break down in errors was 70/20/10 with 70% being against the player and 20% being neither for nor against the player and 10% in the player's favor. All that we caught seemed honest mistakes. No cheating was detected and everyone who had their characters checked really seemed to appreciate it.
The software worked great and we are working with the folks at Hero Lab to test a feature I don't think they knew they had. But, for us it was a really good fit for what we wanted to accomplish. We had 8 computers and 2 laptops with full (every option available) versions of the Pathfinder, Cthulhu, ShadowRun, SavageWorlds and partial of the 4th Ed components.
It took us about 5-10 minutes to check a 1st level character and about 30 to check a 10th level character.
The biggest errors we found at higher levels almost all had to do with FAME/PA/Gold calculations and what items were legal for purchase.
The software highlights errors in red and that made it really easy to help people find the problems with their characters and like I said most errors were against the character so players we really happy to find them and correct them.
The biggest problem we had was the computers we used for this we also the same computers we used for registration and they got very busy and then we really probably could have used two people instead of one showing folks how to self check their characters.
The really cool thing about all of this is that now we have a database of all those characters and next year can track their progress. A feature I would really like to see is for Hero Lab to export in XML or text or whatever and then have Paizo be able to import that file into my profile for historical record keeping. Then essentially I could travel to any convention in the world and if I forgot my character I could pull it up and print it.
I could go on for hours about the experience we had at SCARAB but I will close with this. We are going to certainly continue to offer this option - character error checking at SCARAB for many years to come. Hero Lab was an excellent fit for us, it is extremely expensive and this solution is not going to be feasible to use at many small conventions. However, I have mentioned to our WolfLair Rep that they need to have a convention license that will allow conventions to use the software on a short term 3 or 4 days.
I hope our experience at SCARAB is helpful to others.
|
|
You say 100 characters - which percentage overall was that?
I couldn't even guess we are still inputting reports. Best case would be a third. I would add - not all these characters were played either. Lots were just checked for accuracy for future use, once people got going on the software they just went to town creating characters too.
I think we went through three toners on the laser printer and I would guess one was nothing but PFS characters.
In the future as people get used to the character check-in/checking process at SCARAB it is our hope that it just becomes second nature to people who play ANY RPG at SCARAB that allows people to bring their own character that they walk-in pick up their badge, their $125 concierge bag and sit down and check-in their character.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Honestly, I don't see a that there is a problem to fix here. If we extrapolate Delbert's numbers to be roughly the same across the Society, the majority of players are gimping themselves. Of the 10% that have errors on their sheets in their favor, how many of those are honest mistakes and how many an attempt at cheating?
The fact is, a person who cheats will game the system no matter what auditing system you put in place. You can't make the audit a requirement before playing, because then PFS becomes Tax Form Day. If you make it optional with a boon as a reward, the cheaters will not not audit their characters. You still haven't fixed the "problem".
I'm of the mindset that putting any effort into creating an audit system for conventions is a waste of time and manpower that could be better spent elsewhere. Cheating should be handled at the table. The GM should have enough game education to know when something sounds too good to be true. A simple question "How does that work?" is all you need to tell if something is fishy. If the other players aren't having a good time because someone is hogging all of the glory, don't give them the spotlight. Ignore them and engage with the others at the table.
At the local level, cheating takes care of itself: people stop playing with the cheater. At the convention level, suspected cheating should be reported and tracked over the course of several sessions and the player removed from the game or the convention (per the guidelines under Cheating).
I'm not a tax accountant, I'm a storyteller.
|
|
Honestly, I don't see a that there is a problem to fix here. If we extrapolate Delbert's numbers to be roughly the same across the Society, the majority of players are gimping themselves. Of the 10% that have errors on their sheets in their favor, how many of those are honest mistakes and how many an attempt at cheating?
The fact is, a person who cheats will game the system no matter what auditing system you put in place. You can't make the audit a requirement before playing, because then PFS becomes Tax Form Day. If you make it optional with a boon as a reward, the cheaters will not not audit their characters. You still haven't fixed the "problem".
I'm of the mindset that putting any effort into creating an audit system for conventions is a waste of time and manpower that could be better spent elsewhere. Cheating should be handled at the table. The GM should have enough game education to know when something sounds too good to be true. A simple question "How does that work?" is all you need to tell if something is fishy. If the other players aren't having a good time because someone is hogging all of the glory, don't give them the spotlight. Ignore them and engage with the others at the table.
At the local level, cheating takes care of itself: people stop playing with the cheater. At the convention level, suspected cheating should be reported and tracked over the course of several sessions and the player removed from the game or the convention (per the guidelines under Cheating).
I'm not a tax accountant, I'm a storyteller.
and this is why I lurve my VC... even though he is a ginger
|
|
You are VERY correct, this is a MAN-POWER intensive process on the first half of each day of the first two days of our four day convention. Once people got past the learning curve and once they entered their character and saved it then the process of continuing the checking probably only took a couple of minutes.
Like I said - this system was not mandatory and was offered ONLY as a convenience. It worked well for us and may not work for others, just sharing the experience.
Having said that I do think it is important to have characters reviewed. Keeping in mind that the majority of errors we saw were working AGAINST the players and not FOR them.
I think if we had seen it working the other way, and in continuing to sample characters going forward, if we see the trend changing (towards cheating or errors in the players favor) we may have to implement MANDATORY check-in. But for now, for SCARAB, it will continue to be offered as an OPTIONAL service.
|
|
"character checking was not mandatory it was offered as a courtesy " - so I figure anyone cheating didn't put those PCs in to be checked)
+100000000000
You are absolutely correct. Our system would not have caught a cheater, without even MORE - much MORE man-power than we already had reserved for the process.
|
|
In really thinking about the cheating thing. Here is my 2 cents.
I would say that having the software would have allowed us to prove there was an error in the player's favor. Quickly and without bias
It would also allow a GM to quickly and without bias review a character in the event a problem were to occur where someone was accused of cheating and purposely making a broken design.
It would also allow us to help the player find and correct the error/s and get back to playing in a later session.
But what it would not do is prove that someone was in fact cheating VS making an honest mistake. That is a whole nutha can o worms!
Its not a lie detector its is simply a convenience for both player and GM and a way to let people self police their designs.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Once again, Auditing a Character is Not about catching a Cheater, It is about helping finding Mistakes that players have made and helping them learn more about the game. and correcting those mistakes.
I bet if you audit every PC at GenCon you would find that most of the corrected mistakes would be in the players favor.
|
I'm sorry, but I just don't see the return on investment. I applaud Delbert and SCARAB for pulling this off, but IMO, we do better by our membership by letting them play or GM. It is likely that the best auditors may be the best GM's. I don't want to pull them from a table to do this process.
Until erroneous character builds, cheating or otherwise, becomes a consistent problem, I just don't feel it is worth doing. YMMV.
I would not be offended if there was a audit requirement, but I'm not sure how the membership would react to it.
|
|
I think this thread has been really useful in identifying the real issue at hand.
A larger number than we would like of PFS character sheets contain errors.
Now the question is: how to reduce the number of character errors without turning PFS into tax time or overtaxing event coordinators/GMs etc.
While normally I complain about giving power to local coordinators I think this is the type of issue where they should be stepping up and figuring out solutions that work for their groups to help reduce errors.
Some possibly good methods I've seen discussed so far:
Having a knowledgeable volunteer go over people's sheets (either with them, or a copy of the sheet while that player plays). [Depending on the size of your group/con & availability of a rules monkey this can vary in difficulty]
Input sheet into a piece of software (like Herolab) and see what it says. [Requires a potentially expensive piece of software, although it sounds like there's the potential for support from the program creator on this front]
Neither method is likely to catch all errors but both are likely to reduce errors and neither of these really addresses what a GM should do if they think something is wrong at their table.
Addressing the issue at the table is a much trickier one, it singles a player out, it uses up extra time (which likely isn't available etc).
|
|
I would like to remind everyone to watch their language. I probably have made a few mistakes here in my wording - please let me know if I do so.
Remarks like 'Have you ever even RUN a table at a convention?' towards a fellow GM who is one of the most active convention GMs in the UK and just was at a convention a week ago because you disagree with his opinion is not helpful for the discussion.
Getting quoted false numbers in a discussion against me is something that really riles me up. I tend to react very personal and badly against that.
I know many people don't mean it if they throw in a number. But I take numbers serious. Saying 'for the 00.01% that are actually cheating.' infuriates me.
This is 1 in 10.000. That would mean with 40.000 player IDs there are a total of 4 cheaters. I did personally catch 2 (and in both cases I heard afterwards they had a history but that nobody was ever doing anything apart of looking away), Nosig seems to have found a third one. I'm sure between myself and Nosig we don't found 75% of all cheaters in PFS.
The same goes for the '200 characters per slot.' I assume this is related to MegaCon. I did count a total of 55 tables for 10 slots. This is an average of 33 PFS characters per slot - ignoring that some characters are played multiple times.
25% of 33 is way, way below 50. I don't want to belittle the effort and I want to help and not burden organizers. But we can't have a productive discussion if we just cite in(de)flated numbers to make an argument.
|
|
Getting quoted false numbers in a discussion against me is something that really riles me up. I tend to react very personal and badly against that.
I know many people don't mean it if they throw in a number. But I take numbers serious. Saying 'for the 00.01% that are actually cheating.' infuriates me.
This is 1 in 10.000. That would mean with 40.000 player IDs there are a total of 4 cheaters. I did personally catch 2 (and in both cases I heard afterwards they had a history but that nobody was ever doing anything apart of looking away), Nosig seems to have found a third one. I'm sure between myself and Nosig we don't found 75% of all cheaters in PFS.
The same goes for the '200 characters per slot.' I assume this is related to MegaCon. I did count a total of 55 tables for 10 slots. This is an average of 33 PFS characters per slot - ignoring that some characters are played multiple times.
25% of 33 is way, way below 50. I don't want to belittle the effort and I want to help and not burden organizers. But we can't have a productive discussion if we just cite in(de)flated numbers to make an argument.
I was not quoting numbers, I was using them as a reference for the disparity in the amounts of what people call cheaters vs. everyone else. I'm sorry you couldn't tell that. In the future I shall be very careful in how I word things towards you.
|
|
When catching an error on a character I think you would want to be extremely careful before accusing someone of cheating. As opposed to a situation where five people see someone consistently roll badly on d20 rolls and yet consistently tell the GM he rolled a nat-20, well then you've got a problem and a more clear cut case.
Again, keep in mind, SCARAB was NOT auditing characters nor were we attempting to find cheaters. We simply were offering a way for people to check their characters to make sure they were built correctly for PFS and other systems and our experience using the software for THAT purpose was an excellent one.
So I don't think our experience at SCARAB is a solution to catching a cheater just an example of another tool and resource available to help players and GMs.
Hope someone finds it helpful.
|
|
I was not quoting numbers, I was using them as a reference for the disparity in the amounts of what people call cheaters vs. everyone else. I'm sorry you couldn't tell that. In the future I shall be very careful in how I word things towards you.
Gives the Fluffy CatBunnyGnome a hug (unless it bites ;)
I know and no worries. I think at some stage early on someone quoted the rules to you and I felt this was also not constructive. It is just that this is what 'presses my buttons' so I thought I let you know.
|
|
Issues of 'paper pushing' during LG times
Someone wrote about this and as I don't have any experience of that time I would ask if someone could summarize it for me.
1) How was it done
2) What did work
3) What didn't work
From the remark I gather people are glad that PFS is not doing the same. And I don't want to fall into the trap to make mistakes that others have done before.
On the other hand - sometimes you can learn even from something that sdidn't work well.
|
|
At large, auditing characters is a good thing when it's appropriate. What people who are proposing this I don't think are realizing (despite it being said many time) there are times when auditing is [u]not[/u] feasible and when the logistics of the event are directly prohibitive to doing large scale audits.
Smaller conventions simply do not have the manpower -- Generally the few people that volunteer to help with the convention are needed for running games. There is only someone available in rare instances.
Larger conventions simply have a volume base of attendees that prohibit effective auditing.
In general -- the volume of what is done and needs to be done outweights the overall benefits of largescale audits at conventions. Audits should be done a more of a local level where they can be more effective. Personally, I would take offense to someone I didn't know telling me that my really kewl concept doesn't work when they don't understand the character creation for that specific class/archtype and aren't willing to listen because "they're an auditor". I wouldn't submit my characters for that.
......
Thod I wish you luck with this, but I seriously doubt that (given the numbers that have been stated by Mike) this is going to happen effectively to make the pay off what it would need to be.
|
|
When did this "audit" discussion get so melodramatic. I see no need for a GM to ever reverse engineer a character, or have a team on stand off site. Personally I think a quick review would be 2-3 minutes per character. Look stats feats saves etc... Review chronicle sheet look for items purchased, make sure fields are filled out. It is less about me knowing what is really going on, more about the player realizing he knows he is misssing HP's, or feats.
In theory this easy and quick, if someone has an error or problem a gm can spend as much time he thinks is possible before or after the session, talking about issues.
So there is a little hesitation, at the thought of reviewing chronicle sheets of players. This will pass after the first time, I have had players compliment me on reviewing a chronicle sheet and character. I can only speak from my experience but the players apprciated this even when I found some faults.
Should this be mandatory, well I think it is up to the GM, but during a slot like the Gencon special I would say no. I think as a society we need more reviews.
I have reviewed plenty of players, there was a time when I assumed players would naturally have a legal character, after playing with more players I found out I was wrong in that assumption. If a player came to my table, and refused my instructions to provide a character sheet and its chronicles, I personally would ask him to leave.
Recently, I had planned on running a season 0 scenario. I was going to review characters, a couple additional players dropped in. As a group we decided to run a different scenario so everyone could play. Time did not permit me a review.
Time... Seems the biggest problem at a convention, mustering should happen faster. For example for a normal slot at gencon. I think it would be nice to seat players if their gm's where ready, unfortunatley since these places are so busy, it would be wrong to sit a table in advance missing a player. I would side with the need of a mustering discusion, such as raising the art on the walls so players wouldn''t block the LOS with their bodies.
I am also a huge fan of character introduction, thinking this should be mandatory as well. I am not a fan of out of topic, or out of character conversation after character introduction.
Legal characters are a players responsibility not a GM's, I dislike any form of punishment or boon, if a new player rolled his stats without knowing a point buy.
I am a fan of Mike doing a special Mike only auditing of a random player, for a special reward.
|
I am a fan of Mike doing a special Mike only auditing of a random player, for a special reward.
I like the idea of an occasional venture captain/lieutenant random check with a special reward.
It would work along the lines of six people at a table, role d6 to pick one person at the table. Do this at 1-4 tables per session depending on the size of the convention. The person who is checked and has everything in order, gets a cool shiney like a faction t shirt or a race boon. This random testing encourages people to have their paperwork in order in order to get the special 'boon'. Prevents long lines at the sign up to check everyone in or implies that anyone is a cheater and prevents people from being jumped on for accidently making a mistake.
|
|
Kerney
Thanks for the support. We just should try to get off as much from the shoulders of VCs and VLs as possible. This could be a good opportunity to involve experienced players with a lot of rules knowledge who don't like to GM.
I'm not saying it will be easy to recruit these people. Getting volunteers is never easy. But I've seen a few active PFS players without GM stars hanging out at the rules discussions.
Off course if VCs/VLs take part - even better.
|
|
I like the idea of an occasional venture captain/lieutenant random check with a special reward.
not sure if I would like to extend it to Venture Officers...smacks of Teachers Pet problems.
The random selection process should exclude this issue. 1d<number of tables> and then 1d6 for which player. It could be performed at the table, during the game. Course, it would require the Venture-Officer to be free from GM'ing, organizational requirements, etc. In any case, it is an interesting idea and has me thinking about implementation.
Anyway I am never wrong!
By claiming to never be wrong, you are wrong. Epic Fail! :-)
|
|
I like the idea of an occasional venture captain/lieutenant random check with a special reward.The random selection process should exclude this issue. 1d<number of tables> and then 1d6 for which player. It could be performed at the table, during the game. Course, it would require the Venture-Officer to be free from GM'ing, organizational requirements, etc. In any case, it is an interesting idea and has me thinking about implementation.
Appoint a trusted person(s) in the local community. At least in my area and I suspect in most areas there are leaders who do not have an offical title but they are the people who step up to run games at the last minute, are people who are listened and are seen as stand up people. It would by definition avoid the terribly anal rententive as well as those who would play 'too loose'.
In a nine session convention have 3-4 such people do 1-2 of those slots each, leaving them plenty of time to play/hang out. Give them the cool boon too.
|
|
I would suggest that Paizo do the audits. Purely optional on the players part.
Players send a copy of their charcater in to Paizo. Paizo audits them when they have the time and man power. In return, player gets an audit result stating what is wrong, with possible solutions including areas that the player gimped and could be improved on.
Players would trust our Paizo people much more that some others who want to step up and be tax collectors (I mean character monitors.)
If a problem was questioned about the character in the future, player would bring out the audit (say done at level 4) and then have to justify changes made at levels higher than 4. Saving a lot of time.
Just to estimate how many characters would be sent in and what the work load might be ask yourself:
If I ask someone to tell me about your character?
How much time will I have to spend listening? :-)
|
|
I would suggest that Paizo do the audits. Purely optional on the players part.
Players send a copy of their charcater in to Paizo. Paizo audits them when they have the time and man power. In return, player gets an audit result stating what is wrong, with possible solutions including areas that the player gimped and could be improved on.
Players would trust our Paizo people much more that some others who want to step up and be tax collectors (I mean character monitors.)
If a problem was questioned about the character in the future, player would bring out the audit (say done at level 4) and then have to justify changes made at levels higher than 4. Saving a lot of time.
Just to estimate how many characters would be sent in and what the work load might be ask yourself:
If I ask someone to tell me about your character?
How much time will I have to spend listening? :-)
You do realize that could easily be more than 30,000 characters? And that is if we started this month. We will probably never have the time or manpower to do what is suggested here.