RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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Dear Mike and Paizo Staff,
Thanks for a great season in Season 4! I have thoroughly enjoyed it, as have the other players in my local lodge. However, one thing that I am noticing is the sheer lack of Tier 1-5 games in this season. It's a bit disappointing. Players new to the game really have a hard time playing much Season 4, because, to date, there have been only 4 1-5s released in it (Rise of the Goblin Guild, Severing Ties, The Disappeared and The Cyphermage Dilemma[previously released].) I know, I know, you have another two on the way - but considering that everybody can play 1-5s and not everybody can play 5-9s or 7-11s, isn't it better to focus on the 1-5s? There were 10 each in seasons 2 and 3, and that was very, very useful. While 3-7s are nice to bridge the gap between 1-5 and 5-9, there is still a minimum level requirement, which makes planning a gameday of only the new scenario to be a hassle.
Seriously, I love what you guys have done with this season. It's been a blast, once I got over the initial deadliness of it. I have heard more good things about Season 4 scenarios than just about any other season I can think of. But please, spread the love! Newbies need scenarios too.
-Netopalis
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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You can always play old scenarios with new players, or have players play pregens and apply the credit.
If you played all the old scenarios DM for them so they can catch up to you.
I'm primarily a GM. I'm really bemoaning the fact that most of my players have had very, very limited experience with new scenarios. I've ran a lot of the really good ones, and I'm left with a handful of really good unplayed ones and a heaping spoonful of ones that I've heard end too quickly or are too easy in a post-UM and UC world.
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I would like more 7-11s than anything else.
I have largely stopped playing the 1-5s because: a) I have not enjoyed the story concepts behind them AS WELL AS the execution of them in the mechanics of the scenario, and b) I hate playing 1st and 2nd level PCs. I judge the newer 1-5s as needed, and try to do as much as I can to give the players a good experience, but I do not enjoy them.
Maybe this is a result of having 9 PFS characters or of lamenting that I am having some difficulty getting a group together for post 12th level play. But I don't want an undue number of scenarios for the lowest tier if the reason is that new players aren't able to play 'new' scenarios.
And that is my grumpy feelings on the matter.
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I'm weird, but I love playing first- and second- level characters.. I don't feel bad if they get squished, I like exploring new classes, and there /does/ come a point where you know you can wreck the scenario with your awesomeness at high levels and it gets boring.. Low level characters encourage more MacGyvering behavior in me.
+1 on "Please more 1-5."
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I can report that there are some players in Ontario who unfortunately have suffered quite a few character deaths. They were victim of a rather combative GM a year ago, and as a result, they have all but run out of low level scenarios to play.
Having extra 1-5 scenarios would be very beneficial for older players.
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I would like to see more 1-5's as well. But coming from an area where we are heavy 3-7/5-9 players this season, it's been nice to have a variety of Mid-tier play. We didn't see a lot of that in Season 3 which made things harder to schedule when we were sitting in those tiers.
I would like to add an additional suggestion: To make up for all the intense fear of lethality in 1-5, I recommend we take a more "Roleplay heavy" base for 1-5's. Adventures like Severing Ties, and The Blakros Matrimony where a lot of the adventure was RP before combat was a nice change of pace. It's something I would like to see more of in the lower tier to discourage min-maxing 1st level builds to survive.
As a result of the fear of lethality this season in low tiers, we had a lot of negative feedback from the Season 4 1-5's because if players didn't min-max, they felt like they were just totally screwed no matter what.
I personally don't care as long as I get to play. But as an organizer, I take all feedback good and bad into consideration when choosing adventures and as we are getting ready to expand to new gaming locations, we are a little hesitant to bring Season 4 level 1-5 Adventures with us to newer groups until we get them through 1st and 2nd level where they have more of a chance to survive.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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For a bit of perspective, and as far as I know, my local lodge has, in its year of existence, managed to field a single 7-11 table. Just the one. It only had 3 players, with a GM NPC. We've done a bit better with 5-9s, and we've done a good bit of 3-7s, but...the 7-11 scenarios have been practically irrelevant to us until now.
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But coming from an area where we are heavy 3-7/5-9 players this season, it's been nice to have a variety of Mid-tier play.
You'll be glad to know that there's a whole slew of 3-7/5-9 scenarios coming in the next few months; all five scenarios from #4–21 through #4–25, in fact.
For people who play the -EX scenarios with a 4*/VC, season 4 has only had five 1-5 scenarios, which seems a little low.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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Nosig: Do you feel that we really need equal numbers in all tier levels? I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I would guess that a substantial plurality, or perhaps even a majority of games are played in the 1-5 range, with the 7-11 range being fairly rare comparatively. Shouldn't Paizo print scenarios to suit those numbers?
Dear Staff, please do not listen to Netopalis. He says that there were no Tier 1-5 scenarios in Season 4. Clearly there were. I can remember playing at least two new season 4 Tier 1-5.
Which is as good of reason as any to continue your current release schedule.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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My vote is to swing for the fences and get 4 scenarios out a month! MORE PFS dangit!
ah! so you mean... not
"More 1-5s in Season 5, please!"
but just
"More in Season 5, please! "while I can sign on to this too... I would like to keep the quality up (or maybe even continue to improve it? been doing a fine job, keep it up?)
I agree that we could use just more scenarios, period. In fact, I'll even volunteer to write one!
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nosig's crunching of the distribution/advancement path seems to indicate a pretty even approach to releasing scenarios by tier... I don't think Paizo needs to change anything at all.
The hang-up seems to be on playing *only* season 4 scenarios with the idea you have to be able to advance all the way in one go. Why not supplement with modules or older scenarios?
Just having more people write more scenarios isn't a solution either- as Paizo has to devote more manpower to editing, developing, giving feedback, and publishing (electronically) the things. It only works if Paizo has the manpower to spare.
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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Only six tier 1-5 scenarios during Season 4 (one of which was a repeat from Season 3) didn't cut it. Moreover there were long stretches of time without a 1-5 scenario, at all. While it is true that older scenarios can be run for new players, sometimes the number of new players is not enough for "critical mass" (meaning not enough to make up a legal table). Older players need to sit at those tables and fill that role. This season I really struggled with getting a good mix of older and newer scenarios in my store, and had a hard time bringing along new players so they could get into tiers where they could play with older players.
Don't get me wrong: I muddled my way through it and was successful. Barely. But if Season 5 follows in the footsteps of Season 4 and has long runs with no low-tier scenarios, I don't know if I can pull off the same dance again.
So, count me firmly in the camp of More Tier 1-5 Scenarios, please. I'll go so far as to say there should ALWAYS be a new 1-x scenario published each month, with the second scenario alternating between mid and high tier each month.
PS - I will happily jump into the Just Plain Give Me More Scenarios camp, as well. I'd love to see three scenarios a month; one tier 1-5, one tier 3-7 (there are not nearly enough of these) and one tier 5-9 or 7-11.
+1 Whiskey.
The quality of writing in season four has been top notch. Hats off to quality control.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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Dear Staff, please do not listen to Netopalis. He says that there were no Tier 1-5 scenarios in Season 4. Clearly there were. I can remember playing at least two new season 4 Tier 1-5.
Which is as good of reason as any to continue your current release schedule.
I said nothing of the sort. I said that there have been 4 1-5s released in Season 4, and that one of them was previously released as an EX.
Whiskey Jack, Nosig: The problem is that the players that a particular lodge has at a particular game day influence what scenario can be chosen. Because of the scenario distribution, it is more difficult to play the newer scenarios as they come out, and it has essentially rendered Season 4 as a bit of a non-event for our lodge, at least until recently. We still haven't ran 6 of the 16 currently released Season 4 scenarios, and another 4 of the ones we *have* ran were single, small tables. Most of our players have played less than half of the Season 4 scenarios, and it's not for lack of desire.
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@Netopalis - As an organizer myself, I understand it is not easy to find scenarios that players haven't already played such that you can muster full tables and keep everyone happy. It is, however, just the way things are... is the solution in your mind just to release enough scenarios such that it out-paces your need for them? Mind you, I face the same problems you do- I even put out a poll to try to get feedback on what scenarios folks could (or would like to) play... to which I received very little response... so I do *get* that it is difficult.
AND I hate to say it, if you as an organizer "hold back" on the current season's scenarios to try to fit in older ones or modules until enough current season scenarios come out to make it possible to play them as a coherent arc, that doesn't work either. I saw this play out with another group where the players got upset- people had the perception that the organizers were "holding out" on the players.
Like I said- it's not easy and sometimes you have to get creative on how to handle these kinds of things. I would suggest looking into modules and have them stretch 2-3 game sessions as well as the APs or items like Thornkeep that could supplement your game days until enough of the current season comes out to make it work for you. Keep in mind, that won't stop players at your game day from playing things at Cons or events separate from yours... you can only herd cats so much.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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Just as a mathematical exercise, I'd like to see the distribution of what tier scenarios are played vs the production list of scenarios. I feel like a lot of players jump in at low level and never even make it to tier 7-11 play.
So are the national number of 1-2's recorded fifty times the number of 10-11's? 1-2 vs 4-5? I love this kind of info.
That being said, I'm at the point where I still get to pick and choose at all tiers, and I'm very happy with that. Maybe I'll get to this point where I'm running low on a specific tier, but with the overlaps of 1-5 and 3-7, I haven't noticed it yet.
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Some of you may not remember this but way back in October 13, 2010 we were told that there will always be at least one low level scenario a month so you would never run out of something to play for new and old players, and they did a really good job of that in Season 3.
Well in season 4 to at least my disappointment that ended. I brought up my concern about this with Mike at a convention and he said they are working on fixing this for the future. I will let Mike go into the details on the how because I think he wants to save that news on how in a future blog once the details are worked out.
So know that according to Mike, he is aware of the issue and is working on a solution.
I said nothing of the sort.Dear Staff, please do not listen to Netopalis. He says that there were no Tier 1-5 scenarios in Season 4. Clearly there were. I can remember playing at least two new season 4 Tier 1-5.
Which is as good of reason as any to continue your current release schedule.
Yes you did. You said there was an utter lack of Tier 1-5 scenarios in Season 4.
*If the mods decide to delete this post as well could I maybe get an email or a post in this thread explaining what I did wrong? Just deleting my post and not saying anything makes me wonder if the board ate my post. Then I re-post, then you think I'm trying to "pull something over on ypu" then you get unnecessarily angry.
Developer
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Just as a mathematical exercise, I'd like to see the distribution of what tier scenarios are played vs the production list of scenarios.
We have very detailed reports of just this sort of thing that we use to plan the spread of scenarios offered over the course of a season, but such data isn't something we have plans to release to the public.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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Chalk: I include the numbers for Season 4 in my opening post. I never said that there were zero of them. I'm a lawyer, and that's nitpicky, even to me.
Whiskey: The problem is that, for a module, you have to be able to ensure that the exact same table will be there for 2 weeks in a row. That's difficult. Playing a single chapter of an AP is kinda pointless.
Nosig: I think the distribution you mention would be just fine, given the relatively few number of players who hit 7-11.
For the record, I am not saying that my players have played through *all* the 1-5s. I am saying that it is becoming difficult to find 1-5s that match the quality of newer scenarios. With tables of 6 players and with the expanded resources now available, our teams bolted through Prince of Augustana in about 2 hours. I've ran Assault on the Kingdom of the Impossible in 45 minutes. There are a lot of scenarios out there that are simply not challenging for large tables of players with extra resources, and many of them don't have much in the way of plot, either. (Not saying that's the case with Augustana or AOTKOTI, in fact, I like their plots. I'm referring more to some of the older dungeon crawl scenarios.) These scenarios are fine in moderation, but when you keep running easy, quick things, it makes players lazy and unchallenged. It's not all of the older scenarios - Throaty Mermaid, Shades of Ice, the Pallid Plague, Voice in the Void and many, many others hold up very well. For every one of those, though, there's a weaker scenario.
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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When coordinating there is good and bad across the entire player base when it comes to the schedule.
Using nosig and St. Louis as an example, the good is the fact that everyone who shows up on any given game night will be able to play. But, dear lord, the poor GMs...I would never have made it to four stars GMing under those conditions. The thought of pulling out a scenario, reading it, prepping it, and running it within the space of an hour? My inner perfectionist begins babbling incoherently every time I see one of nosig's posts about this.
The good and bad in my store is simple. Because I schedule in advance, everyone always knows what is going to happen, and can plan accordingly. Like St. Louis, everyone who shows up gets to play. Unlike St. Louis, during any given game day there will be players who simply can't show up because everything I'm offering is something they've played, and I already have a GM for the table they thought they might want to run.
The best part about always getting a new tier 1-5 scenario every month? Both of these approaches would have an easier time with their game days. If all camps' lives are made easier, how could this be a bad thing?
To those who say that more scenarios would mean poorer quality, I understand your concern. I think Paizo, in general, has proven that they're pretty good at handling this, however, and will figure out how to keep quality up, assuming they decide they want to produce more scenarios each month.
Dragnmoon: thank you for the note on the hints of future plans.
To any PFS staff member peeking in: I trust you, and appreciate what you've done with PFS during the recent seasons. Remember that we make these comments and have these arguments because we love your game and your campaign. The large majority of us will always be happy with whatever you decide to do, and will figure out how to work within the environment you create. Complaining is just something that we do because we're human.
Edit...for grammar. Can't help it...
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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We have very detailed reports of just this sort of thing that we use to plan the spread of scenarios offered over the course of a season, but such data isn't something we have plans to release to the public.
I figured, I just always hope for a glimpse! I'm a math teacher and seeing statistics in action is like the first time you see Gary Oldman in The Professional.
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Using nosig and St. Louis as an example, the good is the fact that everyone who shows up on any given game night will be able to play. But, dear lord, the poor GMs...I would never have made it to four stars GMing under those conditions. The thought of pulling out a scenario, reading it, prepping it, and running it within the space of an hour? My inner perfectionist begins babbling incoherently every time I see one of nosig's posts about this.
I have the same reaction, but then I also cry a little thinking there is always a chance I might PCS into the area...and that scares me... ;)
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I had a smiliar problem Saturday, in lack of GMs and wanting to run high tier scenarios.
I'm running Crypt of the Everflame this weekend in an all day event. This will allow our newer players to play, and allow a high tier table. We've been able to get multiple tables at Ravenstone for the past couple times. Since I have most all the season 0,1 scenarios I use them still. It's not a matter of 'holding out' on season 4, it's a matter of budgets.
We are seeing an influx of new players here, and the ability to have new scenarios that tie into the season theme is a big help with drawing people in.
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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...the ability to have new scenarios that tie into the season theme is a big help with drawing people in.
This is something that shouldn't be overlooked, either, when weighing whether there should be more 1-5 scenarios.
People like playing the "new stuff." Whenever I offer game day schedules, I have one new 1-5 scenario and one old 1-x scenario. Let me lead into this with the fact that I'm pretty cognizant of who has played what, and am certainly aware of whether you are a new player who hasn't played the old stuff. But when players sign up for my games, newer players or older, they jump all over the new scenarios. When I reply to a request to sign up the number one response I am sending (to the point I have a draft that I just copy and paste) is to ask a new player to play the older scenario, first, as it is unlikely to be on the schedule again soon, while the new scenario will be offered several times over the course of the next couple months. Usually they switch. Often enough, they reply with, "I'm interested in the current story, and don't know what was happening in the old scenarios."
Once again, a new 1-5 every month will ease this problem significantly.
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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For example, I show up with In Wraths Shadow ready to run, with two others as back up, and only get two players. So we all split up and a table of Fabric of Reality forms around me (this was within a day of when it was released I think). And had a GREAT game. We are very flexible here in St. Louis. I'm not sure what I'd do if I move someplace else. Judge a lot more I guess... Play less for sure
Yeah, but that guy who had to run Fabric of Reality? adjljeh a;lkeich vasheffolcnd dalkdjvoei dhl dhf aocdl;kajreoiqwh clkajfhe ....
...
If you ended up in my store you would be able to play the new scenarios each month as they came out. So, currently, you'd always be playing twice a month. Likely, with your experience, you'd be GMing twice per month as well. That's not so bad, is it?
Also, we have modules on the schedule about once per month on non-PFS days, and are about to add Adventure Paths to the schedule as well. You'd be able to play those, I'm sure. So I don't think you'd play less.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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RE: New stuff.
I'd like a list of things that tie into the newer stuff. For example, the entire Devil We Know series ties tightly with the Aspis consortum which is a recurring plot element in season 4. I liked running them because they really have the "IF you didn't hate the Aspis consortum before..." vibe.*
Likewise, anything involving the Tapestry is a plus, since it still pops up in Season 4 in several places.
*
"Glorious Champion of Light,
The Silver Crusade believes in redemption. You must find this wayward member of the Consortum and show him the error of his way-
Nah, forget it. Just kill him."