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I've got two games left that have basically not been moving much since Christmas, and not sure if they will finish. I expected it to slow, but not as much as it did. It would take a big push, which is still possible, but not sure how likely, so I to would like to know as well about not making the deadline. Either way, I am going to try t complete them, and will play through. In both cases they have completed a lot of the challenges and gotten far enough to have qualified for playing.
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It should have been emailed out to all the players and GM's.
Check your email around 10/7/13.
Or HERE
I got the boon, just no instructions as to what I'm supposed to do with it. Just give it to all the players?
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I did, but I believe they also should have received it by email. If not, feel free to have them download it from that link. It can only be applied to a singe character per player, (but does not have to be the one they played), and is basically a one time use minor bonus. As long as it is applied within the date (Oct 1 - 28th I believe), you can use it any time thereafter.
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About half of the Gameday scenarios running on Mythweavers are in this situation with 1-2 encounters still to run. The others are complete and reported. Maybe we are a slower-running community in general (which works for us - we are a fairly international group) or maybe this completion rate is similar to other PbP groups and we just don't tend to hear about the slower groups in threads like this.
Greycloak, I'm curious to see how the Mythweavers games are being run. If the players post at least once during a weekday and once on the weekends, you should be able to finish a normal scenario in about 6 weeks average (though GMs need to be able to post a little more often to answer questions or clarify things). I've run about 15 PBP PFS scenarios on the paizo boards, and I'm usually able to complete a scenario in an average of 4 weeks.
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@DM Rah,
It boils down to accommodation for player and/or GMs lag.
One game had a GM replacement when he couldn't meet a posting rate that would lead to possible conclusion.
Another had an inexperienced GM who did not push the pace when faced with occasional Player lag. In that case, one might end up with an average of 3-4 posts a week per participant rather than the 6+ you describe in your games. Combine that with Christmas and two Thanksgivings in the meantime and you end up with a game that runs longer than 3 months.
Honestly, I have never had a game I've GM'd run 6 weeks. I forced the pace pretty hard in this gameday game (I ran Shadow's Last Stand I) and only finished a week before Christmas. In my game, things lagged because there was one particular enemy that the PCs found hard to hit (That encounter alone took more than 2 weeks and 7 combat rounds to run). I did run the optional encounter and I didn't cut roleplaying scenes short, instead letting things play out fully, but it still ran about 9 weeks. My longest scenario was 4-01, which took us a little over 5 months with all the different faction missions and a couple of tough encounters with a fairly inexperienced group.
In my opinion, these types of PbP games are perfectly valid and should be supported as well, despite potentially being outliers relative to the faster rates described in this thread. I've got kids and all that and can reliably post once a day or so during the work week and often don't post on weekends. That means that some of my games take 4 or more months to conclude.
I suspect that our speeds aren't the only PbP games run with this kind of pacing and I don't mind being a representative for the subset of the PbP community that will tolerate (and even looks for) a more casual pace.
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I wonder if part of it might be that we are mostly PbP-only players so a lot of the games are low tier with low-level PCs that do get bogged down in combat once in a while when they bump up against an enemy with DR or high AC or something. That said, one of the groups for this Gameday finished Fangwood Keep on Christmas Eve, so it is possible for us to go fast as well.
The higher and mixed-level games tend to go a little quicker when we GMs play our more powerful characters, but we will often have 4 L1's and a couple L2's in a group. To get an idea, I've been playing for a year and a half and despite GMing about 1 game for every 2 I play in, my highest level PC is 4.2 (I have several characters playing and GMing concurrently and like to keep no more than 1 GM credit per 2 PC credits on my characters).
We are a pretty diffuse lot (participants from the UK, Canada, USA and Australia, and a fair number of new to PFS players, like me). Some of our community only post every couple of days, but we are running valid PFS games and hew pretty close to the rules as intended so there's no reason why we shouldn't get access to some of the fun the larger PFS online community gets.
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I was in the Fangwood Keep group and have to say, that went quite well.
We pushed it a bit by agreeing on some assumptions by the GM, like walking order, automatically going into the next room after doing some standard actions etc.
Most important though, we didn´t have a lot of negotiations in the beginning, but one huge fight - i think that sped up things.
I once was in a group here that finished Reign of Winter in two weeks online PbP, but in several much slower games too.
There are a lot of people in very different live situations participating here. More casual gamers should definately have a place too!
Also i have to say that a lot of people seem to be used to being led through scenarios here. Which leads directly to questions of playstyle and table variation issues, that are probably not solveable.
This was my first mythweavers game.
Overall i would say the community is nice and mythweavers has a lot of very good options for PbP. Only the small layout and the few posts per site annoyed me a bit. Would do it again though. Lots of roleplay potential there.
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Greycloak, you have to think of the On-line Gameday as, well a gameday/convention situation. That means games have to be ran in slots that have to be completed in a predetermined amount of time. People who on average run a scenario in 6 hours would not do well in a 4 hour convention slot.
Everybody knew up front how long they had to run the game and should have paced their game accordingly. If it takes you on average 4 months to complete a game, then you should either speed up your posting rate or reconsider participating in an event that has a 3 month time limit. I tell my players up front that I expect a daily posting rate and if they are not able to accommodate these requests they should find another game or expected to be botted if their pace is slowing down gameplay.
That said, it sounds like you run an excellent PbP game. It just may not fit the structure of an "Online Gameday."
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Nebten, I agree.
While cautioning the other GMs to do the same, I picked my game carefully, watched my pacing extremely closely and finished with lots of time left over. The thing is, there are a half a dozen other GMs over there who ran gameday games and despite best intentions and a discussion about pacing at the beginning, some of their games have not been as snappy as mine. We are far from a top-down type of organization so despite best efforts, some are certainly going to go over the limit.
The issue still comes down to three end-ponts:
Should they report early and finish late?
Do they report late and still get credit?
Or, do those players who happened to be in a slower group miss out despite running 3 months in good faith?
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What could really help is a set of GM tools/guidelines authorized by PFS for PbP to speed up games e.g. guidelines for DMPCing, booting players, advancing the story, calling combats that may be a foregone conclusion, rolling saves, etc.
Isn't a lot of stuff above a GM's call as the table manager though? If someone doesn't post in the agreed timeframe they go on delay or DMPC (at my discretion) and after a week they are likely just dropped altogether after a notice to post. If a combat is all over bar the shouting and its a wash, isn't it up to the GM just to declare it so and 'summarise' the end?
The problem is that an 'authorised set of tools' is just as likely to wind up with the players demanding their application, and far from being a tool for assisting a GM will be seen as a tool to control them.
"Hey GM, I know I didn't post for a week and you emailed me 37 times, IM'd and phoned and Facebook stalked me to ask me what was going on, but the RULEBOOK says you weren't allowed to boot me until AFTER a week, I was still technically on Day 7 because its a Global Online Game and it was still day 7 somewhere amirite?"
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If I were playing a face to face game and stepped away from the table for any reason I would fully expect the GM to either take my action, ask another player to take my action, or skip my action entirely. There is nothing in the rules that explicitly states that he or she is allowed to do so; yet unless my character purposefully impaled himself on a spike I wouldn't even dream of complaining.
You simply can not create rules and guidelines to cover every situation that might come up during a game; and I wouldn't want to play in a campaign that attempted to do so. Every now and then we have to rely on discretion and common sense.
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Online
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Hey, Guys:
Today is the last day for the first PbP "Game Day" - and You guys have really rocked out the games over the last three months.
So far we have 65 games reported to the online VOs, and more outstanding.
For those GMs who have not reported your games, please make sure and report them to the google form by Monday, January 6th, 2014 @ 10 PM CST US [UTC-6]:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/12Oi8QetOXEtrcM9-KEni35hVFTHivGNaMpPmbGN3j- 0/viewform
[We should start reporting them to Paizo on Tuesday.]
Once the games are all submitted by the GMs we will start sending out GM boons to the GMs via email on Tuesday.
Player boon winners will be determined by random selection from the players reported by the GMs and sent out via email after that.
For those GMs who have not completed their games you can:
A) Go ahead and end your games today and report them as part of the game day. If the PCs have completed 3 encounters in a regular scenario they can get 1 XP - and, if they have completed the secondary mission, they get 1PP as well. Gold rewards should be calculated based on encounters completed.
B) Complete the games as normal, but report them under your own events when completed.
If you choose "A" you will, of course, be included in the GM boons, and Player boons, as indicated above.
If you choose "B" you will, unfortunately, not be included for the boons, but you do get to complete the sceanrio.
(We need to report these games as a group for the Game Day and cannot wait for late tables to finish - so these are our only choices.)
We have learned quite a bit from this initial PbP Game day - but we would like to hear back from you guys, both players and GMs.
Please take a moment and give us some feed back here - all responses are anonymous (Simple form with one text box):
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qzo5AD0WdqTpR_5C71wrXApd6mMT16zdtI8PbrtAlO E/viewform
Some Changes already in the works:
We are already going to make changes to the way player registration to be done for PbP Game Day # 2 - allowing the GMs more flexibility to "muster" their own players.
We will also be handling Boons differently, as well as reporting.
We are also wrapping up rules/structure for the first official PbP Special - so we can run Siege of the Diamond City via PbP for you guys.
And we will have a set of common table guidelines to be used for future PbP Game Days after we get some feedback from you guys.
All that said, THANK YOU!
You guys did an impressive job on the first PbP game day - and are a great bunch to work with.
If anyone has any question, or concerns, that need immediate attention please contact us at PFSOnlineVOs@GMail.com and one of us will get back with you ASAP.
Thanks again and we will follow back up with you guys on Monday evening with the final details.
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Most of the changes you suggest are the feedback I would have given.
The Warhorn sign up just made more headaches than anything at the start, and the double handling of reporting (and thus the looooooong delay for boons and play credits) needed to be changed.
That said, overall it was a good time, and I was happy that I got to be involved in a bunch of sessions as a GM and as a Player - Hopefully the Boon Gods are kind and on Tuesday it's like Christmas all over again! :)
Looking forward to the next OLGameday.
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N N 959, I would hope any guideline from Paizo or the event organizers would be pretty loose and open to individual GM modification.
There is a wide range of play style among PbP gamers, and I think a GM organizing a game should set out the ground rules right at the start for their individual game. If a GM gathers a group with the agreement that everyone posts at a certain rate, then they should also dictate the terms under which a player looses credit or is booted from the scenario. Personally, if I were running a game requiring 1 post per day and 1 on the weekends, I'd boot someone if they hadn't posted in a week and give them credit based on the number of encounters they actually participated in before booting. Now, if someone posts that they have a personal problem that will restrict posting for a week, then they should discuss that with the group as a whole, and probably arrange for some kind of contingent actions. In this day and age, loosing internet at your house isn't a good excuse. A person could take 5 minutes to use a friend's computer, a public wifi spot, or even a smartphone, to update their situation. If someone has a lifestyle or job that can take them away without notice (such as the military) I think that should be stated up front with contingent actions based on lack of posting for a certain amount of time.
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In general, I lot of these issues I try to take care of before the game even begins. Usually my first post is in the discussion thread where I lay down what I am expecting, a few issues I have had in the past (and what I will probably do if they come up again), any questions anyone might have, and also make it clear that I am willing to work with people because real life comes first.
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Thirded on the issue of the rules being flexible. I'm sure the intention is not to disrupt pre-existing sets of practices that are working well, provided they hew to the overall PFS ruleset.
To drop some stats, back in March (the last time the site mods did a count), our Mythweavers PbP had more than 26,000 posts and we have many dozens (100+) of completed scenarios. It's hard to count the latter as some GMs report the games themselves, others let the coordinator (me) and my predecessors do it for them.
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Yeah what I have seen at cons was usually GM rolls offs etc, but wasn't sure how that was going to go (or how it normally works) - I haven't GM'd cons as a PFS GM before, so no idea.
I just know I have a few players chasing a few things and tend to give my 'won' player boons etc away. Due to the above I haven't scored a GM boon before, I've only seen them :p
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We are also wrapping up rules/structure for the first official PbP Special - so we can run Siege of the Diamond City via PbP for you guys.
And we will have a set of common table guidelines to be used for future PbP Game Days after we get some feedback from you guys.
All that said, THANK YOU!
You guys did an impressive job on the first PbP game day - and are a great bunch to work with.
If anyone has any question, or concerns, that need immediate attention please contact us at PFSOnlineVOs@GMail.com and one of us will get back with you ASAP.
Thanks again and we will follow back up with you guys on Monday evening with the final details.
Any word on the next game day's approx. starting dates or the new PbP guide?
Also, how can we volunteer to run Siege of the Diamond City? Or will that be restricted to those that already have it or the Online VO's?
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Online
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Hey, Guys:
Quick Update.
(Sorry about the delay in the response - we are trying to get clarification on some things.)
First off - with everything reported to us - you guys ran 72 games over the 3 months - which is very impressive in itself.
The average seems to be about three games ran per GM during that period.
The High end seems to be one GM who ran six games during that period.
The feedback has been very positive - so thank you to everyone who ran games for the first PbP Game Day - you guys did an awesome job.
We did make one slight oversight in the reporting form though - we included a GM email address field in every event reporting form... except this one. DOH!
So we will need to get with some of the GMs to get an email address and a name for the GMs we do not already have that info for - we will get with you guys to clear that up so we can get you all your GM rewards, et cetera.
As far as the next PbP game day - it looks like we are going to completely gather feedback, and complete the event guidelines, before the next game day starts, so we are going to push back the start of PbP Game Day # 2 until the end of March, 2014.
That will allow you guys to get some regular games in - and will allow us to complete the guidelines, and get feedback from you guys on them, before we actually get started on the next one.
We will have a full update for you guys a bit later.
Let us know if you have any questions or concerns at PFSOnlineVOs@GMail.com
Thanks again!
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I know that one of the emails you will be missing is for a replacement GM for a game that was run on Mythweavers but was originally mustered on Warhorn. There may have been a second one, my memory is foggy.
Do you want those GMs to contact the PFSOnlineVOs email directly? What information do they need in that email for you to ID the person and the game etc.?
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Ninja'd, but yes!
Given that a decently paced PFS scenario can take about a month, it's reasonable that someone mustered their two tables and ran each through three games.
I ran a second game for each of my groups, but chose not to report it as part of the gameday (these were groups that had largely existed previously). I didn't want a lag in the reporting, personally.
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Online
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The 6 games were reported at about 2 per month - I assumed they were ran simultaneously. :)
The games have been reported to us - we are just beginning to report them to Paizo. (We will be reporting them as the games come in next time.)
We'll post when we have completed reporting to Paizo, so we can have everyone verify everything looks correct.
- Jesse
Seeing as the 2nd gameday will be pushed back a bit for very understandable reasons, I was wondering if anyone is setting up a Society PbP for something like the Confirmation?
I have some mint-condition never before used characters that I'd like to try out. :)
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Hey, Guys:
Quick Update.
(Sorry about the delay in the response - we are trying to get clarification on some things.)
First off - with everything reported to us - you guys ran 72 games over the 3 months - which is very impressive in itself.
The average seems to be about three games ran per GM during that period.
The High end seems to be one GM who ran six games during that period.
The feedback has been very positive - so thank you to everyone who ran games for the first PbP Game Day - you guys did an awesome job.
We did make one slight oversight in the reporting form though - we included a GM email address field in every event reporting form... except this one. DOH!
So we will need to get with some of the GMs to get an email address and a name for the GMs we do not already have that info for - we will get with you guys to clear that up so we can get you all your GM rewards, et cetera.
As far as the next PbP game day - it looks like we are going to completely gather feedback, and complete the event guidelines, before the next game day starts, so we are going to push back the start of PbP Game Day # 2 until the end of March, 2014.
That will allow you guys to get some regular games in - and will allow us to complete the guidelines, and get feedback from you guys on them, before we actually get started on the next one.
We will have a full update for you guys a bit later.
Let us know if you have any questions or concerns at PFSOnlineVOs@GMail.com
Thanks again!
Thanks Jesse. It has been fun & it is time to start a random game.
Will the email question slow down the GM boons? I assume random player boons are after that, and possibly even after reporting to Paizo. Do you have an idea what we can tell the players about timing/chances of any prizes?