Faction Mission (GMing Question / Poll)

[Darkenspirit]

I tried doing a search for this question to see if it came up before but I didnt find anything searching for

"Faction Mission warning", "mission advice", "faction mission notice"

Basically I wanted to ask what other GMs are doing for ambiguous faction missions that PC's might easily miss because there was absolutely no way to tie the mission with the event.

Also I wanted to ask in general how do GM's feel about "warning" the PC's when a possible chance to do their faction mission is coming up. This is purely a style question, some players like being told they have it coming up and some people might get upset if they find out at the end of the game they were supposed to do something completely no-obvious despite paying attention and working hard to figure out their faction mission.

Most faction requests are simple and blatantly obvious when you are supposed to do them, but sometimes, collecting information or stuff like that are not as obvious. So I wanted to hear some experiences you may have had or what you have done to adjust for these situations.

[cblome59]

It really depends on the player.

When I have a new player, I always make a point of looking at thme, then thier faction mission and asking if there is anything else they wish to do in the room.

Once you are an established player, you don't get the warnings.

EXCEPT when the missions success points don'e match up with the Faction Mission handout. This doesn't tend to happen with the new mods much anymore and probably was only an issue of editing where it was changed in one spot and not another.

[Jiggy]

So far, my experience has always been either that the player did what they needed to do, or they missed it and at the end they realized what they did wrong and were fine with it. In one situation, there was a mismatch between what the scenario tells the GM a certain faction needs to do and what the player's faction handout tells them to do:

Cassomir's Locker:

I forget the faction, but one of them asks the PC to gather poison - IIRC, it even says it doesn't care what kind or where they get it. There are several places where you can find poisoned crossbow bolts, and the player dutifully collected every single one. The scenario, however, tells me that his faction point hinges on him dissecting a spider they fought and grabbing its venom sack. Completely blindsided the player when I told him, and he protested, showing me his handout. As I re-read it, it was obvious that there was no reason the bolts should not have been acceptable, so I gave him the point.

[Mike Lindner]

As a GM I try to ask the players after they read their factions missions if there is anything unclear. I also don't hand out faction missions until after the VC briefing so people have a few dedicated minutes to read and such without being distracted. After that point I generally leave it to the players to figure out how and when to accomplish their goals. I may give a nudge to new players though.

If people aren't paying enough attention to the game to do their faction missions that is their fault, not mine.

Now, on faction missions that just don't make any friggin' sense I will offer some guidance. The most bothersome thing I see is when the mission is so vague that the PCs are constantly trying to do it, but there is nothing to do until the last 10 minutes of the scenario.

Or if the missive contradicts the text in the scenario I'll give the player the benefit. Such as a recent one I played where my mission was to get an article of clothing from a dead person and explicitly told to not desecrate the body, while the scenario text said to cut off the person's finger.

[Darkenspirit]

@Clint, I like that approach. Its good to hear there are edits done to keep it going.

@Jiggy, It is exactly things like that. I have seen this confusion several times over and ontop of that, there have been ridiculous DC checks to do some tier 1-2 faction missions. (A DC25 to copy down a page out of a book? What?)

@Mike, Thats the thing I see the most! When the faction mission is vague and that is literally all the PC is focused on for the entire time. They get tunnel vision and completely forget about everything else that is going on and often times it just ends with confusion or the GM having to say, "Stop, your chance to do the mission will come much later" just to placate this behavior.

Thanks for the replies so far! I'm about to do some of my first GMing in Society next week and I was curious about this part thats unique to Pathfinder. I have GM'd (or DM'd as I really want to say), a few home games with 3.5 before with okay success.

[CRobledo]

Also something I have picked up recently (a side effect of playing Taldor, I guess) is asking the GM if the faction missions has to be completed secretly, if unclear on the text AT ALL. I have seen people burned by this more than once.

[Euan]

Other than asking if anything is unclear when I hand them out (also after the mission briefing) I'll only step in if there is some disconnect between what they have and what I have (which happens).

Otherwise they're on their own. PP is not guaranteed.

[Jiggy]

Euan wrote:

PP is not guaranteed.

My recently-finished Dr. Pepper disagrees.

[BigNorseWolf]

Some of the missions there's no way to know what you were supposed to do

Quest for perfection part III Silver crusade

Spoiler:

- Dont use any of the defense points is COMPLETELY metagame. Theres no way for a character to even know they have the defense points , and no way for the player to know that they're driving a triceratops through the fourth wall

Gods market gamble

Spoiler:

Scarzini?, even if you make the shop keeper friendly he's hardly the only person you could turn into your own smuggling ring). You also can't move someone more than 2 steps with a diplomacy check, so IIRC the second anyone mentions pathfinder or shows a wayfinder your mission is fubarred

.. and the infamous

Spoiler:

fungus in the pit trap instead of the nice warm room where you'd expect it to be growing...succeed by failing, fail by succeeding! He's just lucky i was using a druid rogue AND failed the easy spot check and reflex save. Most aren't that lucky.

[Mike Lindner]

QFP3 does have some badly written faction missions for sure. You should know about defense points though. Spending them is up to the player, not the GM, although I agree the mission is still poorly worded. I totally misunderstood mine when I played that scenario as Lantern Lodge.

Fungus in the pit trap I actually got due to a party member finding it.

When people complete their faction mission I do tend to let the person know, just to avoid wasting time because they aren't sure if they still have more to do. "You hear a ding in the back of your mind." I'd rather metagame the faction missions if it means spending more time on the meat of the scenario, especially when they have little to nothing to do with the society mission.

[Purple Fluffy CatBunnyGnome]

For the vague factions missions, after the 2nd or 3rd time the player tries to do it .. I'll tell them that they have a sudden light bulb and they don't feel that they'll find their faction mission until later, newer players I'll give them a bit more.

I've been by the faction mission bugs before;

One scenario on my little gnome had to bring back gigantic horse statues... first the size issue...umm really... then the fact that the statues animated when we went near them, auto fail for faction mission.

[Rob Duncan]

Some of the missions are /really/ vague (or I'm really dense).

I read through the faction missions first, then the scenario. If I couldn't figure it out what my players are supposed to do /without/ the "Faction Mission" alert text for the GM, I assume that they are equally slow. :)

After the VC briefing, I hand out the faction missions, let them do knowledge checks, etc. and ask questions then.

This follows along with the infamous Robot Chicken RPG session on Youtube when the players are told they are going into the dark caverns under a particular city in a campaign realm with a forgotten name and will encounter spiders: one of the players immediately asked what they knew about spiders, how to kill them, if they did anything useful, etc.

After they get to ask questions and have a sort of "aha" moment and know what they're to look for, I'll give a small hint (is there anything else you want to do here?) when they are ready to leave an area and a "you feel like you're missing something.." if we reach a point of no return.. but I don't give overt clues unless really called for.