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I was curious to see how close I was to my next star and noticed We Be Goblins has "GM ranking: +2" under the notes column. Being the curious fellow I am I wonder why gm'n PFS Specials does not provide the same bonus. Sorry if this has already been addressed, I did not find it when I searched the forums.
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All Modules give you 2 GM credits towards stars.
Specials do not.
The reason for Modules giving +2 over specials is due to the length it normally takes to run a Module compared to a Scenario or Special.
Scenarios and specials fit in a 4-5 hour slot, while Modules can take a few days to run.
So they extra credit towards your star comes from how long they take to run, not the exclusivity of what you are running (Specials).
You will notice that all modules give you +2 towards your star, even the short ones like We Be Goblins!, this is because the system currently can't differentiate between the long and short ones so it applies to all of them.
This is something that Mike has said does not bother him enough to change.
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So do all the Emerald Spire and Thornkeep levels - they're even worse, they give 3XP, 4PP, +2 GM credit, *and* run in one session. You can be a 5-star GM in no time if you just mine those babies!
[... he said, seething that this is the case and that there are actually people min-maxing their GM credit by only GM'ing these now...]
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I'll volunteer what my statistics will be once I hit my 3rd star on January 13th (I'm at 50 now, and I have the others already scheduled).
Have I intentionally scheduled MoFF, Risen from the Sands, and ES levels to get the extra credits? No.
Is it nice to get those extra credits? Yes.
Are they actually providing me any benefit currently besides a little purple icon? Nope.
Table Credits: 61
Reported Sessions: 43
~4-5 hr. Blocks: 45
Unique Scenarios/Modules: 29
Specials: 0
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Back when I was at 95 table credits, here were my stats:
95 table credits
49 unique scenarios/modules
2 specials
19 2 credit modules, so 19 "extra" table credits from it.
At this point, while I haven't updated my stats in my spreadsheet, I have run over 50 different scenarios/modules, although some of them have been run multiple times.
Accursed Halls: 7
Mists of Mwangi: 6
First Steps, Part 1: In Service to Lore: 6
Nothing else is over three times, and the ones at three are Voice in the Void and Black Waters.
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So do all the Emerald Spire and Thornkeep levels - they're even worse, they give 3XP, 4PP, +2 GM credit, *and* run in one session. You can be a 5-star GM in no time if you just mine those babies!
[... he said, seething that this is the case and that there are actually people min-maxing their GM credit by only GM'ing these now...]
There is still the requirement to run 10 specials and 50 different scenarios as well as the 150 tables of credit. So that would slow down the Emerald Spire/Thornkeep spammage a little bit for 5-stars.
And as we're sharing stats,
Just after hitting 4-stars:
102 table credits
98 sessions
4 were modules (did Murder's Mark three times, all by request, and one level of Thornkeep which ran about 5 hours?)
66% through online VTTs
9% through PbP
25% face-to-face
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DrParty: GM stars now provide mechanical benefits, in the form of replays and a bonus on rerolls... Some players will "earn" them as efficiently as possible.
I'm aware of those things, but I haven't bothered to use the GM chronicle sheet yet. I also haven't been in a situation where the star bonus mattered on a re-roll, though I imagine it will at some point. I can see the potential for the problem, but the time vs. benefits doesn't seem to be that big an issue.
Venture-Captain, Netherlands
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DrParty: GM stars now provide mechanical benefits, in the form of replays and a bonus on rerolls... Some players will "earn" them as efficiently as possible.I'm aware of those things, but I haven't bothered to use the GM chronicle sheet yet. I also haven't been in a situation where the star bonus mattered on a re-roll, though I imagine it will at some point. I can see the potential for the problem, but the time vs. benefits doesn't seem to be that big an issue.
Yes, unless someone is running We Be Goblins and Master of the Fallen Fortress only, the time invested is equal or greater then running and earning your stars with normal scenarios.
And there is only so much MotFF you can run before everyone has seen it. (we be goblins on the other hand can never be run enough ;) )
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And there is only so much MotFF you can run before everyone has seen it. (we be goblins on the other hand can never be run enough ;) )
I was going to mention this as well. Sure, you can offer Emerald Spire 75 times to get to 150 pronto dente, but good luck finding at minimum 225 people to play through, or at the very least 50 people who want to play it 3 or 4 times for the evergreen portions.
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Unless, of course, you are running Fallen Fortress five times in a day so get a bunch of 1-XP aasmiars in before the deadline. Or something similar. (Again, none of these are hypothetical situations, but observed cases.)
When it was only a few Free RPG "modules", this was less of an issue. With the addition of Thornkeep and Emerald Spire, there's a good dozen "modules" worth +2 GM that only take a single session to run. Many also give 3XP and 4PP for the one-session time investment.
There appears to be no good reason why this is the case. Does running We Be Goblins take more prep time than a regular PFS scenario? Should I get the same benefit running a level of Emerald Spire in a few hours as for running a full-on module or a sanctioned AP over two or three sessions? Just because a module was released as part of the MMO, is it more valuable to Paizo than its other work that they must incentivize people to run it?
Either GM stars measure a GM's actual experience, or they don't. Giving people a legal and easy route to pad their GM stars devalues the program for everyone, and turns it into just another number that can be min/maxed to "win" PFS.
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I'd like to run MotFF sometime, just for the sake of running it, but I have to admit I do feel a little cheesy getting +2 to the GM ranking for that. It really is no longer than a typical PFS scenario.
At the moment, I'm at 47 tables, with only one module in there. (It was "Murder's Mark", run in a PbF. There's a little bit of cheese here, as I inherited the module from a GM who disappeared about a third of the way in, and finished the game out.) I'm in the middle of running Dragon's Demand in Campaign mode, though, so at some point in the not-too-distant future I'm expecting to get three more +2's. And, that will have been at least six sessions, most likely more, so it's not really too cheesy.
It would be interesting to get actual statistics from the PFS folks on reported games to see if statistically MotFF, Emerald Spire, and Thornkeep are being abused like this. A few cases of people doing it really aren't all that big a deal, but if it does start to skew the distribution of scenarios played a bit, it might be worth worrying about.
Aasimarpalooza was ridiculous, though. I remember seeing people advertising online games that were going to be speed-runs of the evergreens so that they could get their aasimars made legal. Again, no idea if it was statistically significant, but it sure looked cheesy at the time. (I have a human character who thinks he has angelic blood in his history; originally designed as an aasimar, then I found out the rules were going to be changed, and rather than play him during aasimarpalooza, I just rebuilt him.)
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If someone is still providing a fun table, abides by the PFS rules, and doesn't cut corners for their own benefit, I don't think it's an issue. If someone's doing it just to get four stars (five star review might get a sideways glance), they could just as easily make fake characters with fake sessions or exploit the "campaign mode" of AP chronicle sheets if they're going to be so devious. The only real benefit is a bonus to shirt/folio/etc re rolls and access to a single exclusive scenario.
My numbers - 115 tables of credit
Full Modules - 2x
WBG and WBG2 - x5
Emerald Spire - 2x
Carrion Crown - almost done with #4 in campaign mode, 17 total 4 hour sessions
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I'd like to run MotFF sometime, just for the sake of running it, but I have to admit I do feel a little cheesy getting +2 to the GM ranking for that. It really is no longer than a typical PFS scenario.
MotFF has 9 combats in it. I've heard of people "speed running" it, but I don't understand how. Even when the combats last fewer than 3 rounds, just getting initiative 9 times takes a long time.
Venture-Captain, North Carolina—Asheville
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I'd like to run MotFF sometime, just for the sake of running it, but I have to admit I do feel a little cheesy getting +2 to the GM ranking for that. It really is no longer than a typical PFS scenario.MotFF has 9 combats in it. I've heard of people "speed running" it, but I don't understand how. Even when the combats last fewer than 3 rounds, just getting initiative 9 times takes a long time.
If you have your players pre-roll a bunch of initiatives, that can speed things up. For this specific case, though . . .
I personally would have zero fun with that method, but I suppose it would constitute a legal speed-run.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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I've ran MOTFF in 1 hour as part of an Aasimar/Tiefling special (also involving other very, very short scenarios), and I can say that the combats as written are fairly short, assuming the GM is efficient and that they are willing to allow quick solutions to problems presented. To my mind, with supremely experienced PCs, the scenario should run 1-2 hours. With newbies, 3-4 at most.
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Good point... So it's really only going to get them to 4-star with 2-star effort, not all the way to the top.
Meh. I don't really think it's a big deal, or at least not a big enough deal to rally for change. Sure, some min-maxy GMs might get to 4 stars faster, but I suspect that the kind of GMs would would take that option as an easy 'win' (rather than just running a lot and these modules simply being on the list) probably aren't likely to earn a 5th star anyway.
Stars 1-4 are about quantity (though quality should be involved too). The 5th star is about quality. I respect the efforts of all the GMs- we do a lot of work to further the enjoyment of others. But when I search the boards with a question, the answers I'm mostly likely to accept have 5 stars next to their name (or at least I respect the individual non-5-star GM's opinion).
Just my $0.02.
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MotFF has 9 combats in it. I've heard of people "speed running" it, but I don't understand how. Even when the combats last fewer than 3 rounds, just getting initiative 9 times takes a long time.
I can't imagine 'speed running' anything once, let alone over and over just to get credits locked in and such. It defeats the whole point. That being said, I'm kinda curious to try a speed run of a scenario, not for PFS credit, or even for anything serious, but just as a 'for fun' thing to see how it goes. Basically, PFS-legal PCs in-tier, all standard rules etc. No chronicle sheet, no reporting. Just drilling through something to see how fast it could be done (or how quickly we could die...).
BTW, it amuses me that I found this thread by googling "GM ranking: +2", since I also didn't know what it meant until now.