Suggested change for Sanctioned Module play.

[Viskous]

According to the podcast, it appears that the sanctioned Adventure Path system is successful with both "module" mode and home game mode. I know that I've gotten two chronicles for Burnt Offerings and one for Shattered Star book 1, that I enjoyed playing and GMing an AP and will continue to do so.

Would it be possible to adjust the Sanctioned Module play to mirror the home game style of play offered with the Sanctioned Adventure Paths, while still providing the current method of module play?

[Dragnmoon]

Let me start off by asking how you got 2 chronicles for Burnt Offerings? Is one of them GM credit?

Now to actually what you are asking about...

So when they first added Module to PFS they had something similar to Campaign Mode for Modules, which allowed you to make a PC with a set amount of gold and a level of the module, or play your own PFS character in the Module, also no conditions (including death) carried beyond the end of a module. Likewise, any wealth spent or resources expended during the course of the adventure were considered unspent upon the module’s completion. This was changed when Mike took charge of PFS due to too many people commenting that it did not fit well in PFS because players felt disconnected for their PFS characters and there was no sense of danger.

That said it allowed you to mix "Module Mode" and Campaign Mode" together and that was the major disconnect.

I think a separation of the 2 may work well for Modules just like they do in the APs. And this will especially be helpful with the new longer format of the Modules to be coming out soon.

[Viskous]

On the Burnt Offerings. Correct Played it and then GM'ed it. Next week I start GMing the section included in Chapter 2 for chronicle sheets.

I was unaware of the old module play rules, however doing the module like the AP "home" mode seems to alleviate the weirdness and allow for more Paizo products to be used and enjoyed.

I was also thinking that with the longer module formats, that they really wouldn't work in the 3 session mode that the current modules work with. Also , once you get past the lower level mods the higher tier ones seem to require a lot of cuts to get them to 10-12 hour stretches. So a change in module rules could help in that respect too.

[Chris Mortika]

Good day, Viskous. It sounds like you're an enthusiastic gamer.

An Adventure Path is an odd critter: most of the time, players are building specific characters for the AP, because they're going to be spending virtually their entire career there. The kind of PC that works well in Skull and Shackles isn't necessarily the same sort of character who works well in Kingmaker or Carrion Crown. (Not only in terms of classes and races, but in terms of backgrounds.) So it makes sense that a Pathfinder Society PC might not fit an adventure path, so players are given the option of playing the APs with a characcter that does fit, and applying that PFS credit to a legal PFS character.

A module isn't like that. Instead of serving as a focus for a character's entire career, they're a single adventure, intended for PCs of all sorts of backgrounds, races, etc.

Put another way, why would you not want to run your PFS character through the module?

[Viskous]

I have actually run through several modules and GMed them for Society play. I do enjoy playing through them that way even when forced into using a pregen.

I think time issues are what prompt this desire most. The main concern is while in a module we can't break it into multiple weekly sessions without locking that PFS character out of normal play. As the modules tier increases the length required to finish it increases considerably. It would be nice to spread a module out over 2 or 3 weeks, but then that PFS character is now prevented from being played until the module is done.

The next part is the restrictive nature of PFS.
I started GMing a Rise of the Runelords AP in December and am enjoying using the "full" pathfinder experience. I also write and run short one shot scenarios for the all girl game group at our FLGS. They wanted exotic races and prestige classes and all kinds of unusual stuff to try out.

So when playing PFS I feel even more restricted than I used too.

It would be fun to remove the PFS from modules, but at our FLGS it would be nearly impossible to run a module without PFS credit involved. Its been suggested that a scenario or two could be run just for fun and no credit. The response was an overwhelming silence...

[kinevon]

@Chris,

One of the things that needs to be accounted for, which will probably suiggest that newer modules will start to follow the AP version of the rules in the future, is that ina short time, the new modules will be coming out ona slower schedule, but be 64 pages instead of 32, and cover multiple levels of play.

IIRC, the first one out of the box, in the new format, is going to cover either 1-6 or 1-7 for levels of play. Either way, these new modules won't work well with PFS restrictions as they are currently setup for single-level modules.

Hopefully, since it is probably going to wind up being handled in a similar fashion to how the AP books are currently handled, with something like "Encounters X1 to Y15" as being the sanctioned section, modules will then offer a home play mode, to let players experience the whole module storyline, or PFS mode, for just the sanctioned section with PFS PCs.

Note: This is just a guess for how the new modules will be handled. I could be totally incorrect, or maybe even only partially correct. It might be possible that there could be two sections in each module sanctioned for PFS, instead of just one. If so, that would actually increase the amount of PFS sanctioned material coming out annually, instead of reducing it, as only one sanctioned section would do.