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A lot of people are asking for more info to be given. The problem is that the information existed, it just sounds like *your* GM did not give it to you. I would have expected the GM to explain what the color codes meant, how each tier's efforts would affect the others, what each announcement meant for them, etc.
I did all these things for my table and they had a blast. At the outset, five of the players were just doing it for fun with pregens and did not complete the reporting sheet. By the end, they grabbed player numbers and we discussed who their area organizers were and how they could get into regular PFS play.
Also there are those saying it was just endless combat. Actually act two had fifteen different encounters and fully half of them were role-playing. Perhaps you just chose to do the encounters that resulted in combat. Dunno. I'm just saying there were plenty of opportunities for non-combat activity.
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First off the GM did not appear to have a hard copy, and was using his lap top. which he admitted he hated adobe acrobat since it froze and did not work on his lap top a lot. Also he said he was moved up to tier 7-8 so was not fully prepared. No maps drawn or anything.
The maps didn't seem to be a big issue unless middle tier had more complex maps. Definitely sounds like the GM should have brought a hard copy if that was an issue before Gen Con.
I put this one on your group. At 7th level, you should have ways of dealing with flying creatures, invisible creatures, and creatures with damage reduction.
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I played at tier 10-11. We did have boss fight.
** spoiler omitted **
Wow, congratulation Samantha on that final battle! I was at another 10-11 table that did well enough, but we were way too deprived of resources by that point to pick that challenge. I'm impressed.
I already posted my experience and comments in another thread so I won't repeat them here, but I hope Thursty sees them. (Silly Mimo. Why did you post in the thread with the polite title? This is the internet after all.)
I really did have a lot of fun with this one.
I enjoyed the Special well enough and might of enjoyed it more had the GM filled us low levels in on the effect we were having. Also, although re-enforcements were supposed to arrive they neve did and two characters were forced to spend the entire last act reloading the balista. Terrible for them.
That being said, I like the concept of this special alot. Pathfinder cooperating rather than racing. Like me some "fighting in a war" action.
Not sure if this is possible but maybe seperate the special into two sections, one focused on combat and one on RP. Let people choose which they want to do. Maybe ticket it that way? Maybe decide at muster? Not sure there is a way to make it work. It's impossible to make everyone happy but that might help with peopel complaining either too much combat or RP.
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Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator
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Ok here was my Issue with the Special, it should have been a blast for our group but it was horrid. We played tier 7-8 everyone was level 7 and I was lvl 8. We had a Ranger, druid, cleric, sorc, fighter, and me as a paladin.
First off the GM did not appear to have a hard copy, and was using his lap top. which he admitted he hated adobe acrobat since it froze and did not work on his lap top a lot. Also he said he was moved up to tier 7-8 so was not fully prepared. No maps drawn or anything.
So we start play all excited only to be pulled into a tent to find some possessed person, which none of us could figure out how. After wasting over an hour there I said I just wanted to leave the tent. He said we could and everyone just looked dumb struck cause when we went in he said magic covered us and sealed us in. We thought for over an hour we could not leave.
After that we ran around looking for demons only to never really find any till close to the end.
Now between this was constant pauses to wait for the laptop to work or to backtrack cause he read the wrong thing on his laptop.
Finally! Finally close to the end we encounter a Mythic Vrock, and my Paladin can finally shine...no...GM basically says the Vrock is to afraid of you and won't come down to fight you. So all he does is hover above us and use some wing spike thing to harm everyone, then summon another Vrock, then do other stuff. The only person who had fly was the druid who tried to bravely go up there change into a large cat and grapple the Vrock to the ground. Which ended up killing him. So in the end we just has to basically tell the Vrock's to F off. And we just dragged the poor druid away.
Everyone else was having a wonderful time and cheering and our group felt useless. Within the first 2 hours half of us were just playing on our phones between turns not even paying much attention. I think we managed to gain 6-8 VP the whole game, everyone by the end was soo pissed and just turned off. and I was even more so cause I decided to...
We had 40 hard copies of the Special at HQ and every GM was made aware of this. Please email me the GM's info so I can chat with him or her about their side of the Special.
My apologies for your poor experience. We try to do the best we can with the GM selection process but will sometimes miss. Hopefully this won't dissuade you from future events.
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The special seemed well written and the communication was well done (go Volunteers for standing up so long!).
As hard as it must be to write into a system, the more interaction between tables the better. This is the major difference between the special and any other scenario.
Yes the combats and role-plays were interesting. I particularly liked protecting the ritual for a given time. But I'd gladly have given up one encounters worth of time to help a higher tier (I was 3-4) table directly. Once I understood what my DM holding up a 1 meant compared to the table next to us holding up a 5, I felt like I had a much smaller impact (which makes sense of course, as I'm a weaker character, but still makes me feel less heartened to fight 100%).
Someone mentioned earlier having individual tables of various tiers linked, which sounds really cool. Though probably less cool when you're linked to a higher tier table that gets TPK'd before the end. It's definitely a complex problem and I given the changes in just one year I'm excited to see what next year brings.
I played low tier (I was a third level bard). We eventually got the idea that those little slips of paper that came around from time to time were generated by the success of the next tier up, but it was never explicitly stated. In addition, they were so weak that while they were still useful, they were no big deal. Although that might be because we kept rolling ones for our 1d6 of healing.
In the end game, the boon was MUCH more useful.
I do know my character spent more consumables in this scenario that in all others combined.
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I had a majority of my s%$% explode in the final combat, as I with my familiar solo tanked "The Destroyer" because everyone else was in d100 land.
This was epic. The fact that all of my gear assploded ( all my stuff, except for two wands...) is also epic. This is not disappointment, because I f**king killed that Dragon nice and slow.
Carry on good sirs.
Carry on.
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Aww man, we were supposed to get reinforcements on the catapults? Our nearby tables must not have saved any at all! It was my first special and I loved it. Still talking about how great it was.
However the rewards were subpar. I can see how unlimited waves can be unfun or evenpun ishment. Extra table interaction would be cool, we knew the big catapult helped, but not the ballista. I think those are the only complaints i can think of, still a total blast!
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I put this one on your group. At 7th level, you should have ways of dealing with flying creatures, invisible creatures, and creatures with damage reduction.While I semi agree with you, I was put into a random group since I was a single player as were most of the people there. So lack of ability was not %100 our fault.
I think it was more that, by 7th or 8th level, you should have already gotten fairly far along in building up your stock of consumables for oddball situations.
Potion of Fly: 750 gp or 2 PP
Easily affordable by 7th or 8th level.
Potion of Invisibility, potion of Gaseous Form, weapon blanched arrows and longbow/shortbow, etc.
There are several threads on here, going back years, that cover expectations for what a character of X level should be able to handle, and what consumables, if their class does not provide a ready way to handle it on their own, can fill that need. Indeed, at least one of those threads was a paraphrase from a similar thread/advice post from Living Greyhawk.
@Quaseymoto: Not sure if it got changed from the beta at PaizoCon, but that number the GM was holding up? It wasn't how much effect yoru group was having, but that your group had defeated an encounter in area X, where you were in area 1, and the other group was in area 5.
I don't remember exactly which quadrant referred to which quarter of the city, but 5 would have been the plain outside the city.
And that was a pick-up table, 3 who played together, another 2 who played together, and my PC. We wound up with some nice synergies, over the whole group, though.
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This was my first special and I had a blast. I showed up without a group and so wound up at a table strangers. (1st and 2nd)
We had a great DM despite the fact that her had been told to prep for middle tier.
My only real complaint was the initial muster. IT would be really nice if they had some way to get the individual players into groups instead of just 'come back when you have a group of 6'
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This was my first special and I had a blast. I showed up without a group and so wound up at a table strangers. (1st and 2nd)
We had a great DM despite the fact that her had been told to prep for middle tier.
My only real complaint was the initial muster. IT would be really nice if they had some way to get the individual players into groups instead of just 'come back when you have a group of 6'
Well, if you didn't like how long it took to muster that way, imagine if the marshal had to make every group of six. Players should muster their own group of six. On Saturday night, I played The Hellknight's Feast. I went to my marshaling area, got to talking with a couple of others, someone said, "Hey, who is for Hellknight's Feast?" People came over, we talked levels and in about 3 minutes we had a group of six (and I am not sure anyone in my group was with others - I think we were all individuals.) Easy for players to do because we only have to be responsible for one table. Imagine the marshals doing that.
One thing that I think would help - when setting up the event where people can buy tix, I would have them buy tix for specific tiers. That is, you buy a ticket for the special in the 1-5 tier, for example. That way, you have some idea of how many people in each tier. As well, you get GM's assigned to specific tiers that way and avoid the problem of, "I prepped for low tier but now am running for level 11" or whatever. It facilities better planning and control on the part of the organizers (that is, you have a better idea of how many tables of each tier you need) and then you can marshal by tiers instead. That may have helped. I only speak from having played in a couple of specials for another game that had level bands. You would buy a ticket for a given level band, you were then marshaled that way, and away you went. It never took a substantial amount of time to marshal that way.
Mark
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A lot of people are asking for more info to be given. The problem is that the information existed, it just sounds like *your* GM did not give it to you. I would have expected the GM to explain what the color codes meant, how each tier's efforts would affect the others, what each announcement meant for them, etc.
I've seen similar comments to the bolded part above a couple of times in this thread. Any time that something like this comes up, it indicates an area in which the design can be tightened. Never underestimate just how unintentionally dumb people can be when passing on information. If this information needed to go to the players, then it needed to be in a highlighted box with arrows and a caption saying 'Read this to your players'. That might get a success rate of 95% at best. Having the announcer explain the colours on the map might have been a better way of achieving 100% (less the % of people who weren't listening/paying attention).
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@Quaseymoto: Not sure if it got changed from the beta at PaizoCon, but that number the GM was holding up? It wasn't how much effect yoru group was having, but that your group had defeated an encounter in area X, where you were in area 1, and the other group was in area 5.I don't remember exactly which quadrant referred to which quarter of the city, but 5 would have been the plain outside the city.
I was referring to the last act, when low tiers were manning the catapults. Each successful volley resulted in 1 point.
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The section on the color codes was extremely clear to GMs, fwiw. I made myself a separate handout, but I didn't give it to the players. All I told them was that as the districts shift to red, the creatures get stronger.
Same here. I told my table that the colors represented who had the upper hand in the district and gave them a generic idea of what that meant without telling them flat out the mechanics.
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Nah, if your character can't fly or hasn't got missile weapons, its totally your fault.I put this one on your group. At 7th level, you should have ways of dealing with flying creatures, invisible creatures, and creatures with damage reduction.While I semi agree with you, I was put into a random group since I was a single player as were most of the people there. So lack of ability was not %100 our fault.
Yep, if you're a ground-bound melee character without a good bow option, you need to have spent 2PP on a potion of fly by that level. You might encounter flying enemies who don't want to come down to fight you before you could possibly have someone with flying magic (or if they do, it might be their highest level slot, which they aren't obligated to spend to get you in the air).
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Nah, if your character can't fly or hasn't got missile weapons, its totally your fault.I put this one on your group. At 7th level, you should have ways of dealing with flying creatures, invisible creatures, and creatures with damage reduction.While I semi agree with you, I was put into a random group since I was a single player as were most of the people there. So lack of ability was not %100 our fault.
Even if you don't want to spend resources, slings are free. Take the -2 and use free ammo.
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for reference I played 7-8.
I loved the special, it's the most fun I have had playing PFS to date. We had an excellent party that acted quickly, and worked well together.
We did 9 or 10 missions before the final battle. We nearly always went to reinforce areas that were getting overrun, gotta stop them demons somehow! I think it was pretty close to 50/50 for combat/non-combat. some were a mix of both.
We had additional enemies appear each round (if that was supposed to be 1d4+1 rounds, our fight was pretty rough lol) I believe we fought 5 mythic vrocks, all told.
When the first vrock showed up we were all excited it's like "SWEET boss time!" by number 5 it was more like "we're all invisible saving these soldiers, while the fighters pile on the AC buffs to avoid getting hit"
So I'll agree that it felt anti-climatic by the end.
I wanted to think about it like the mines of moria, we're fighting off hordes of weaker demons, then a bigger one shows up and the others scatter, cause yikes. Like when the goblins flee the Balrog.
After x soldier's are saved. BBEG Demon ports in, and the smaller ones either flee, or reinforcements stop coming. If you kill that one early, Have PCs go around to different tables with some sort of chip and drop it on a lower level table. Maybe give the whole group heroism or MYTHIC heroism :) If your allies destroying a powerful foe and running off a group of demons doesn't inspire courage, I'm not sure how a bard does :).
I like the idea of waves, but there has to be a point where the PCs have won their battle. Because crushing a Mythic Vrock, just to have more appear seemed.. less interesting.
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One thing that I think would help - when setting up the event where people can buy tix, I would have them buy tix for specific tiers.
We've already discussed this with Mike and that's the plan. I'm hoping we can actually sell by sub-tier, since that's how we muster. It means the Special will show up in the program as 5 or 6 separate events, and we'll have to juggle how many tickets of each subtier we sell. Inevitably, there will be people that buy tickets for the wrong subtier just to get a ticket and that will cause other issues.
Overall, though, I think this is the way to go to make life easier for everyone as the event grows.
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Here is what I like about folks like Mike, Jon, et al.:
We make suggestions, and they respond. And no, they won't always be able to do what we suggest, but the very act of responding and providing some feedback? That's full of win right there!
Thanks, Jon - I hope it works out. For the record, I didn't play the special, but I did hear from lots who did about challenges in mustering. I thought this might be A way to tackle it.
As I recall from the past, when another big RPG had their organized play in there, the mustering points weren't located just at the back of the room, but on the sides, too. I don't think that's particularly feasible for two reasons: 1, adding mustering points on the sides eats away at potential table space; 2, if the mustering point for someone with disabilities is, say, in the far corner, it would be difficult for them to get back there.
I will say, as a GM and player this year for PFS, I thought, on the whole, things were really well-organized and ran pretty smoothly. In an event this size, there are bound to be a few hiccups.
Now, can you do anything to make Gen Con 2014 get here any faster?
:)
Mark
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We've already discussed this with Mike and that's the plan. I'm hoping we can actually sell by sub-tier, since that's how we muster. It means the Special will show up in the program as 5 or 6 separate events, and we'll have to juggle how many tickets of each subtier we sell. Inevitably, there will be people that buy tickets for the wrong subtier just to get a ticket and that will cause other issues.
Overall, though, I think this is the way to go to make life easier for everyone as the event grows.
I think you see it, but I want to be sure. I believe that selling tickets by sub-tier opens more new problems than it fixes.
How does a group of friends who have one character out of tier buy their tickets to get seated together?
What about someone new buying a ticket for a tier without an appropriate pre-gen available?
What if someone miscalculates when they buy tickets and levels out of the subtier they purchased?
What if the estimates for sales of each subtier are off and tickets for a 5-9 are sold out at 5-6 but only a handful are sold at 8-9?
My main point is to be sure the problem you are solving is worth the new problems that will be created by selling separate sub-tier tickets for the same scenarios.
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One thing that I think would help - when setting up the event where people can buy tix, I would have them buy tix for specific tiers.We've already discussed this with Mike and that's the plan. I'm hoping we can actually sell by sub-tier, since that's how we muster. It means the Special will show up in the program as 5 or 6 separate events, and we'll have to juggle how many tickets of each subtier we sell. Inevitably, there will be people that buy tickets for the wrong subtier just to get a ticket and that will cause other issues.
Overall, though, I think this is the way to go to make life easier for everyone as the event grows.
The only time I saw this as an issue was during the special. Instead of selling them by sub-tier sell them by the Tier assigned to the GMs. 1-5, 3-7, 5-9, etc. I think that selling tickets by Tier for the special would alleviate some of the issues we had with GMs having to run non-prepped tiers because we had a huge influx of 1-2 and 3-4. It would also give players enough range to make a table of friends that does not exactly fall into one sub-tier.
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The only time I saw this as an issue was during the special. Instead of selling them by sub-tier sell them by the Tier assigned to the GMs. 1-5, 3-7, 5-9, etc. I think that selling tickets by Tier for the special would alleviate some of the issues we had with GMs having to run non-prepped tiers because we had a huge influx of 1-2 and 3-4. It would also give players enough range to make a table of friends that does not exactly fall into one sub-tier.
We're talking specifically about tickets for the Special. As Mike Bohlman pointed out, there's a host of other potential problems but it makes mustering easier for everyone so it's probably worth some other pain points.
The big issue is that GMs were assigned scenario tiers (1-5, 3-7, 5-9, 7-11) but the Special doesn't match those tiers, instead being broken up into 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13, and 14-15. Selling tickets by subtier will allow us to more efficiently assign GMs to those subtiers and result in better prepped GMs which leads to a better play experience for players as well as faster mustering.
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I think you see it, but I want to be sure. I believe that selling tickets by sub-tier opens more new problems than it fixes.
How does a group of friends who have one character out of tier buy their tickets to get seated together?
Buy tickets of the same subtier. The out of tier player gets out of tier gold.
What about someone new buying a ticket for a tier without an appropriate pre-gen available?
The only subtiers where that should be more of an issue than it already is are 5-6 and 10-11. We can handle it with level 7 pregens just as we would for any other scenario. Not that I'd want to play in a 10-11 Special with a level 7 pregen at my table. I doubt the 12+ players will be looking to have any pregen players at their tables, so that shouldn't be an issue there.
What if someone miscalculates when they buy tickets and levels out of the subtier they purchased?
Poor planning leading to people having no character in tier for the ticket they bought? Some of that is on the player. From the time you buy the ticket to the time you play is generally several months. You can work on leveling a character up to the appropriate tier or you can refrain from playing a character that you want to play in the Special.
What if the estimates for sales of each subtier are off and tickets for a 5-9 are sold out at 5-6 but only a handful are sold at 8-9?
There was no 8-9 subtier for the special. It was 5-6,7-8,10-11. Still, the question remains. We haven't worked out the details of exactly how many tickets to sell at each subtier, but I'm pretty sure we can get some decent estimates for now and refine the model over the next few years. I doubt we'll ever be exactly right using this model, but we should be able to get pretty close.
My main point is to be sure the problem you are solving is worth the new problems that will be created by selling separate sub-tier tickets for the same scenarios.
Most of the problem we're solving involves getting people mustered quickly and into the proper subtiers. Honestly the biggest problem is people buying tickets for subtiers they don't have appropriate characters for, and there's a couple of ways to deal with that already built into the PFS campaign rules.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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The only time I saw this as an issue was during the special. Instead of selling them by sub-tier sell them by the Tier assigned to the GMs. 1-5, 3-7, 5-9, etc. I think that selling tickets by Tier for the special would alleviate some of the issues we had with GMs having to run non-prepped tiers because we had a huge influx of 1-2 and 3-4. It would also give players enough range to make a table of friends that does not exactly fall into one sub-tier.We're talking specifically about tickets for the Special. As Mike Bohlman pointed out, there's a host of other potential problems but it makes mustering easier for everyone so it's probably worth some other pain points.
The big issue is that GMs were assigned scenario tiers (1-5, 3-7, 5-9, 7-11) but the Special doesn't match those tiers, instead being broken up into 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13, and 14-15. Selling tickets by subtier will allow us to more efficiently assign GMs to those subtiers and result in better prepped GMs which leads to a better play experience for players as well as faster mustering.
My one big problem with this proposal is that Gen Con registration happens quite early. Event Registration this year was on May 19th, nearly three months before Gen Con! At that point, I will not have any idea how many experience points I will earn for which characters in the intervening time. This makes it *very* likely that by the time the show rolls around, I will not have an in-tier character for whichever slot I'm signed up for. Especially if I'm signed up for one of the higher tier slots, where I only have a couple characters in that level range.
I understand that it would make it easier to muster if everyone knew which levels they would be playing ahead of time. But that far in advance, many people just plain won't know! And it seems to me that having people show up with characters who are different levels than what they are "supposed to be" will cause even more confusion during the process.
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My one big problem with this proposal is that Gen Con registration happens quite early. Event Registration this year was on May 19th, nearly three months before Gen Con! At that point, I will not have any idea how many experience points I will earn for which characters in the intervening time. This makes it *very* likely that by the time the show rolls around, I will not have an in-tier character for whichever slot I'm signed up for. Especially if I'm signed up for one of the higher tier slots, where I only have a couple characters in that level range.
I understand that it would make it easier to muster if everyone knew which levels they would be playing ahead of time. But that far in advance, many people just plain won't know! And it seems to me that having people show up with characters who are different levels than what they are "supposed to be" will cause even more confusion during...
Like I said, some of that is going to have to be on the player. 3 months is a decent amount of time to focus on leveling a character if necessary, but not so long to refrain from leveling one. Most players I know try to keep a range of PCs of different levels so they can play in most any game. If you follow that practice generally it shouldn't be very hard to tweak it so one character falls in the level range appropriate for the ticket you bought.
Maybe you play out of tier with a character that is one off from the level range you purchased.
Worst case, you can play a pregen. I'm not a fan of that solution, but it's there if all else fails.
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My one big problem with this proposal is that Gen Con registration happens quite early. Event Registration this year was on May 19th, nearly three months before Gen Con! At that point, I will not have any idea how many experience points I will earn for which characters in the intervening time. This makes it *very* likely that by the time the show rolls around, I will not have an in-tier character for whichever slot I'm signed up for. Especially if I'm signed up for one of the higher tier slots, where I only have a couple characters in that level range.
I understand that it would make it easier to muster if everyone knew which levels they would be playing ahead of time. But that far in advance, many people just plain won't know! And it seems to me that having people show up with characters who are different levels than what they are "supposed to be" will cause even more confusion during...
Like I said, some of that is going to have to be on the player. 3 months is a decent amount of time to focus on leveling a character if necessary, but not so long to refrain from leveling one. Most players I know try to keep a range of PCs of different levels so they can play in most any game. If you follow that practice generally it shouldn't be very hard to tweak it so one character falls in the level range appropriate for the ticket you bought.
Maybe you play out of tier with a character that is one off from the level range you purchased.
Worst case, you can play a pregen. I'm not a fan of that solution, but it's there if all else fails.
I have some concerns about this, too.
* What happens if someone's character dies earlier at the Con and their other favourite/available is a totally different subtier?* What happens if they'd planned right for their local store schedule, but some unexpected life event blows up those plans between purchase and the Special?
This isn't going to affect half the attendees or anything so drastic, but with the number of people attending these events it's also not likely to be an insignificant number. In my case, I'd definitely not be willing to play a Special with a pregen if I've got other characters. Yeah, that would be my decision, but it seems like a needless disappointment for people who registered in advance.
Still, the idea of pre-registering subtiers is intriguing and there are potential solutions for this snag:
* Maybe keep 2 slots open at each subtier. Not so many that you end up with GMs having no players, but enough that the someone really stuck has an option.
* Set up a slot-trading station where players who no longer have a valid character at their preregistered subtier (and don't wish to use a pregen) can swap slots with other players in the same situation. Maybe it could be the boon station or other info location, so people can trade in earlier in the day/weekend if they realize their situation before the last second.
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If you can believe it, his GM has the PCs running random directions in the darkness (when they tried to move), but not because they were confused, because he thought that's how darkness "should work".What.
It boggles my mind when I hear about a "ruling" that makes fantasy heroes less competent than real-life commoners.
For the record, I will actually do this to my PCs if they arent' working together. One person moves off in magical darkness, and no one else has Darkvision? then the PCs try to say they follow the person despite not being able to see them and the person didn't say anything. No, you can't metagame.
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My one big problem with this proposal is that Gen Con registration happens quite early. Event Registration this year was on May 19th, nearly three months before Gen Con! At that point, I will not have any idea how many experience points I will earn for which characters in the intervening time. This makes it *very* likely that by the time the show rolls around, I will not have an in-tier character for whichever slot I'm signed up for. Especially if I'm signed up for one of the higher tier slots, where I only have a couple characters in that level range.
I understand that it would make it easier to muster if everyone knew which levels they would be playing ahead of time. But that far in advance, many people just plain won't know! And it seems to me that having people show up with characters who are different levels than what they are "supposed to be" will cause even more confusion during...
Like I said, some of that is going to have to be on the player. 3 months is a decent amount of time to focus on leveling a character if necessary, but not so long to refrain from leveling one. Most players I know try to keep a range of PCs of different levels so they can play in most any game. If you follow that practice generally it shouldn't be very hard to tweak it so one character falls in the level range appropriate for the ticket you bought.
Maybe you play out of tier with a character that is one off from the level range you purchased.
Worst case, you can play a pregen. I'm not a fan of that solution, but it's there if all else fails.
Never having been to GenCon some of this might be off base. Never having been to GenCon some of this might be on target...
When selling sub-tier tickets you know just what GMs are needed. When the registration is full you will see that you have X 1-2 tiers, Y 5-6 tiers etc. If all the tickets for a given tier are sold and only one for another table has, switch the maximums.*
When selling sub-tier tickets have 10% (5%? 15%?) be "Tier Incognita". You will know 90% of your tables and only have to muster the remaining 10%.
Make mustering its own event. Something near dinner time for example the night before. (Glad to you meet you five, now should we grab a burger?) A mustering table could also take 3-4 tables during a prior time slot to organize this or a table from every slot. (Tables 1-99 running scenarios, table 100 mustering.)
Have a mustering table at the end of every PFS session. A group of PCs just finished their first slot of the con and had a great time together. The get their chronicle and head over to the mustering table. If the table had a seating chart people could be assigned "table 3Z" instead of just '"one of the tier 8-9 tables".
*this would be limited by GenCon guidelines and probably out of your control, but it can be worked around.
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Something inspired by Curaigh's comment about pre-mustering before the event: What about pre-mustering by posting notices outside the playing room, days in advance? Kinda like a bulletin board where people can post "Group of 3 seek 3 more for blah blah blah slot. Have two tanks, healer, need arcane, face", etc.
I know a tiny bit of this went on here on the forums, but let's think outside the box to find ways to expand this on site. Pre-muster would help quite a bit with making slot-time mustering go smoother.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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For the record, I will actually do this to my PCs if they arent' working together. One person moves off in magical darkness, and no one else has Darkvision? then the PCs try to say they follow the person despite not being able to see them and the person didn't say anything. No, you can't metagame.If you can believe it, his GM has the PCs running random directions in the darkness (when they tried to move), but not because they were confused, because he thought that's how darkness "should work".What.
It boggles my mind when I hear about a "ruling" that makes fantasy heroes less competent than real-life commoners.
Being able to do what I can do in real life isn't metagaming. Removing that capability from the PCs, that is metagaming.
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2) Figure out a way to link tables of different tiers (for example, all yellow tables are linked) so that something like the siege weapons directly influence the partner table(s). The waves would be more enjoyable if after each successful siege weapon shot we heard a cheer go up around us.
Special ammo, with consecrate payloads, or similar.
Give a player a Nerf gun, and tell him to pick one of the tables in the red zones.
If he can bean the GM, one of the main demons is impaled.
A shot to the body takes out a lieutenant minion...
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Like I said, some of that is going to have to be on the player. 3 months is a decent amount of time to focus on leveling a character if necessary, but not so long to refrain from leveling one. Most players I know try to keep a range of PCs of different levels so they can play in most any game. If you follow that practice generally it shouldn't be very hard to tweak it so one character falls in the level range appropriate for the ticket you bought.
Maybe you play out of tier with a character that is one off from the level range you purchased.
Worst case, you can play a pregen. I'm not a fan of that solution, but it's there if all else fails.
Seems like a bad idea. Just imagine, if a player can't get into subtier 1-2, he'll buy a subtier 10-11 ticket to get into the event, and you'll think you have a bunch of high tier PCs when you don't, and have the same problem you have now. Drama when the event begins, with high level pregens with real PCs. Drama in general as player's forecasted PC tiers don't match the tier on the ticket.
In other words, lots of un-fun stuff that has nothing to do with the game.
You can't overbook the slot (Ex. Allow 500 tickets each subtier) to find out the exact numbers because overbooking always leads to drama (Ex. Airlines).
If you could release 75% of the tickets (using your estimates) and then release/re-manage the remaining tickets based on what has sold out, that might be possible (if Gencon allows that).
Maybe contact Gencon to see if they have a solution we don't know about?
Best Solution: Since you know exactly what people played this year, I would plan using those values. Prepare some of your volunteer GMs to run multiple subtiers on notice in case the estimates are wrong, so that every GM doesn't have to do it.
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Like I said, some of that is going to have to be on the player. 3 months is a decent amount of time to focus on leveling a character if necessary, but not so long to refrain from leveling one. Most players I know try to keep a range of PCs of different levels so they can play in most any game. If you follow that practice generally it shouldn't be very hard to tweak it so one character falls in the level range appropriate for the ticket you bought.
Maybe you play out of tier with a character that is one off from the level range you purchased.
Worst case, you can play a pregen. I'm not a fan of that solution, but it's there if all else fails.
Seems like a bad idea. Just imagine, if a player can't get into subtier 1-2, then they'll buy 10-11 to get into the event, and you'll think you have a bunch of high tier PCs when you don't and have the same problem you have now. And high level pregens with real PCs. Plus lots of drama.
You can't overbook the slot (Ex. Allow 500 tickets each subtier) to find out the exact numbers because overbooking always leads to drama (Ex. Airlines).
If you could release 75% of the tickets (using your estimates) and then release/re-manage the remaining tickets based on what has sold out, that might be possible (if Gencon allows that).
Maybe contact Gencon to see if they have a solution we don't know about?
Best Solution: Since you know exactly what people played this year, I would plan using those real estimates for the future. Prepare some of your volunteer GMs to run multiple subtiers on notice in case the estimates are wrong, so that every GM doesn't have to do it.
To be fair, every GM was given multiple subtiers to prepare just in case. It looks like the distribution was scaled a little too high though.
(On the flip side, it's better to have to many high level GMs that need to run the low level stuff cold than it is to have too many low level GMs and need to run the high level stuff cold.)
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To be fair, every GM was given multiple subtiers to prepare just in case. It looks like the distribution was scaled a little too high though.
That and there were mistakes made by the muster folks in assigning tables to GMs who weren't ready for that tier. Some GMs had to run low when they were expecting to run higher tiers, but there were also a few (including myself) who went the other way. We could have traded, if it had been easy to find each other. As is, I was fine with just borrowing a copy of the stats from someone that had them, and sending my players away for a bathroom break at the start of Act 3 to re-read how that act worked at that tier.
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To be fair, every GM was given multiple subtiers to prepare just in case. It looks like the distribution was scaled a little too high though.
That and there were mistakes made by the muster folks in assigning tables to GMs who weren't ready for that tier. Some GMs had to run low when they were expecting to run higher tiers, but there were also a few (including myself) who went the other way. We could have traded, if it had been easy to find each other. As is, I was fine with just borrowing a copy of the stats from someone that had them, and sending my players away for a bathroom break at the start of Act 3 to re-read how that act worked at that tier.
As one of the two Tier 1-5 muster marshals, it wasn't mistakes that lead the two of us to assign Tier 1-5 tables to GMs who were prepped for higher tiers.
When all other players had been seated, and the Tier 1-5 tables that had been originally allocated were completely full, we still had about *10* tables of players with paid event tickets looking to play Tier 1-5, and GMs who didn't have players.
I know some GMs were asked to voluntarily switch to a low level table… but I didn't handle every table assignment.
Added: I know some mistakes were made at other muster points early on, but from what I could see those marshals corrected the mis-assignments before play started. (Granted my focus was on seating those Tier 1-5 tables.)
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I have to say, I enjoyed the special, as it was my first one, Also, as one of the lucky few who were to get in with generics since I registered for Gen Con so late, I would like to thank you guys for the opportunity to get in and fill in for those GMs who wanted to run a game, but didn't have a table.
Next year, if I get to Gen Con, I'm definitely signing up early to get in to the special.
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Clovercanuk:
Nothing we do is going to be 100%. There will always be outliers, cases where people didn't make the subtier they planned on. People will just not show up for Gen Con because of life emergencies. We will never be perfect in getting things set up ahead of time. What we can do is plan better to have a better idea of how many GMs we need at each subtier. Right now, we don't have any way of knowing in advance -- basically, we've been guessing.
Anything is an improvement on that, and we'll be better able to refine the numbers in future years as we see how the percentages at each subtier work out. Some of it can be addressed by having GMs prep multiple tiers, but it's not fair to the GMs to ask them to prep all tiers. We'll probably look at "Your assigned subtier, one adjacent (probably down) and subtier 1-2". Then we can assign marshals and muster stations by subtier and make everything smoother.
Players wishing to form tables ahead of time is a great idea, although I don't know that we'll be able to do signup boards outside the hall. I'll make a note of the idea, however, and we'll investigate it.
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If the GenCon sign-up site can support it, maybe it can add an ability, like the old WarHorn 1, to let people put in their class and level into their Special mustering list.
Paizo might, also, if it isn't too manpower intensive, send out an email to all registered players, about 2-3 weeks before, to take a survey of preferrd/alternate/second alternate PC class & level for the Special.
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I was impressed by the Warhorn setup used at PaizoCon UK, which collected not just the expected level of the PC to be used, but also asked players to predict the class (or at least a role, such as 'arcane').
This not only allowed tables to be grouped at the appropriate tier, but with a good mix of PCs.
But nothing is going to prevent the disruption caused by a dead PC.
"Well, I would have had a level 5 PC for this slot, but he took an arrow in the eye."
Even the best planning will be subject to last minute amendments.
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Rather that create a new thread I thought to apply to this one. The Siege of the Diamond City at DragonCon was awesome. I played on the tier 3-4 table and it was great. Our only regret was not being able to know what our giant catapult shots were doing - but we did get feedback in game that it was doing some good.
The Seeker aid cards were helpful and we used them mostly for aid-another that was really good. We offed our mythic bee-thing shortly before time was called, but I think we got 5 big shots off with our catapult.
A very nice mechanic - and the early game was really interesting. the TV screen a little hard to see, but it could be seen and there was a real sense of working together.
Thanks be to the writers and playtesters, but most of all to the producers and participants in giving players a great show.