I am helping guide some new players to PFS. These are VERY new players with no knowledge of the world or even RPG experience in general. The concept of picking a faction and doing missions for them is new and exciting, but they don't come with a lot of heavy character concepts outside of "I am a druid!" or "I am a fighter!". I do realize that if they don't like their faction anymore that there are mechanisims to change it later, but I don't want to dampen their enthusiam because the faction they pick gets killed off. Because I know that they will spend a great deal of time carefully reading each group and then picking their favorite.
So I am curious if I heard wrong. That some of the less popular factions are going to go away (maybe this year). I honestly do not play enough PFS to know which Factions are popular (unless other players make a big deal of it at the table I sometimes don't even know which ones I am playing with).
Any suggestions? What factions should I help guide them toward or away from? Or is this something that is no longer happening?
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No one knows which factions are going away. I would point them to the Guide to Organized Play, it talks about all the factions. You might also send them this Faction Discussion Page. They can meet players in the respective Factions. Hope that helps.
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Last I heard from Mike Brock, Factions will be changing, but he was mum on details, naturally.
I would recommend donning the GM hat and running them through the First Steps scenarios. Each shows some insight to which factions are which so they can get some idea of the practice of these groups before deciding. If they really like a faction, they can choose it. It might also help flesh out their character ideas.
If/when factions get axed, they can change. I have 5 characters in 5 factions, most of which are from new factions. Will I be sad if one of my factions is cut? Yeah, but that's the fun of playing in a living world. It's part of the game. Make choices and go along with them.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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Pure speculation, but it seems like Osirion, Qadira, Lantern Lodge and Sczarni are probably in the most trouble. Grand Lodge, Shadow Lodge, Andoran and Taldor are likely safer picks. Take it with a few pounds of salt, as I only GM in my local area and with an online group comprised of folks from one region over.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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How will they decide, if anyone knows? Pure popularity? And why would/are they being cut?
I'll miss the Sapphire Sage if he goes. I loved their stuff in the earlier scenarios since they didn't have a direct opposing faction like the others.
Just made a Sczarni, will only be sad if the faction goes if I can't keep the trait that gives him an insane bonus to Intimidate. (I play the guy more like a Taldor member probably.)
They are being cut based on both popularity and the percentage of success on faction missions. There was a blog post about this that I would encourage anybody who is curious to read:
http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5le4j?The-Path-Before-You
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Pure speculation, but it seems like Osirion, Qadira, Lantern Lodge and Sczarni are probably in the most trouble. Grand Lodge, Shadow Lodge, Andoran and Taldor are likely safer picks. Take it with a few pounds of salt, as I only GM in my local area and with an online group comprised of folks from one region over.
There's no indication where I play that those factions are weak/strong.
Interesting. I tend to play Osirion (as do several of my PFS friends) so I never considered that being one that could be on the block (They always seemed pretty popular). I was trying to steer these new folks to whatever faction seemed intesting to them (but also seeing if we could get a variety of factions...so we are not ALL Osirion for example (which is currently the case before our fist game next week), since we are pretty much only ever going to play together. It would be more fun if we had different missions.) Thanks for the blog post link...that actually helps quite a bit.
Also thanks everyone for the input.
Yes of course they will pick what they want. But the current situation is: "What faction are you? Osirion? Ok we will be that one." These are new players to both pathfinder and to organized play, I was trying to reduce barriers to entry that could arise from their faction disappearing. But if there is no info (other than Blog) about which faction might be in the less than column. No probs. We will just play along with everyone else.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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Interesting. I tend to play Osirion (as do several of my PFS friends) so I never considered that being one that could be on the block (They always seemed pretty popular). I was trying to steer these new folks to whatever faction seemed intesting to them (but also seeing if we could get a variety of factions...so we are not ALL Osirion for example (which is currently the case before our fist game next week), since we are pretty much only ever going to play together. It would be more fun if we had different missions.) Thanks for the blog post link...that actually helps quite a bit.
Also thanks everyone for the input.
Yes of course they will pick what they want. But the current situation is: "What faction are you? Osirion? Ok we will be that one." These are new players to both pathfinder and to organized play, I was trying to reduce barriers to entry that could arise from their faction disappearing. But if there is no info (other than Blog) about which faction might be in the less than column. No probs. We will just play along with everyone else.
Well, like I said, you should take what I said cautiously because I am only playing with a minute sliver of the PFS population. Locally, there are maybe 2 Osirion PCs. Maybe 1 Qadiran. A couple of Lantern Lodge, but they're all played by the same guy. Shadow Lodge and Cheliax are the most popular locally. Having seen the convention reports posted on that other thread, though, I think that my experience is skewed.
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Grand Lodge and Andoran are the only guaranteed safe factions. Andoran has always been the most popular faction, and Grand Lodge is the default faction for new members who don't make a choice.
They've said 1-2 factions might be cut, so I severely doubt it would be more than that. If I had to guess, I'd say Lantern Lodge, Qadira, or Osirion would be in the most trouble, but that's mostly guess work. Cheliax and Taldor have enough of a following that I'm guessing they're relatively safe. I have a hard time judging Shadow Lodge, Sczarni, and Silver Crusade, as they seem to be more varied in popularity from group to group.
Also bear in mind that the cuts will be made based on the popularity of those factions in season 4 play. So if you play older adventures now, they won't count towards those statistics. Also GM credits do count.
Personally, I keep intentionally playing my Silver Crusaders in season 4 adventures just to try and help the faction survive, since I'm not sure how well it's doing, and I actually care enough about that one to want it to live.
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Fromper, you really think Lantern Lodge could be on the chopping block? Season 3 seemed to be tied muchly with Lanter Lodge, or at least the Tian Empire. I would think Qadira would definitely be more likely for the axe seeing as it's sometimes hard to distinguish it from Sczarni (though I wish THAT one would get cut just because I'm tired of trying to pronounce it...)
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The season 3 adventures may have been Tien based, but I just haven't seen many people playing members of that faction. And of those I have seen play Lantern Lodge members, I've heard a lot of complaints about lame faction missions.
Personally, I think the Silver Crusade is a necessary part of the Society, just to give the truly good characters a place. But I'll complain about the lame faction missions in that one, too. Other than The Disappeared, where Silver Crusade had a faction mission that made me practically fall out of my chair laughing when I read it.
And I like Cheliax and Sczarni for exactly the same reason - to give decidedly non-good characters a home. Shadow Lodge, Taldor, and Andoran have interesting flavor, too.
Personally, I wouldn't miss Grand Lodge, Qadira, Osirion, or Lantern Lodge if they disappeared, despite having a character in each of them. But then, there's only one faction I haven't gotten around to joining with a PC yet.