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Mike and John, I have a question on scenario formatting. Since PFS scenarios are published in the PDF’sIs there a reason that they only have about a 25 page length?
It would be a big help for GM’s if full stat blocks for each combatant in each encounter to be in the scenario instead of referring to a page in one of the beastries. I have all three in pdf as well as PFRPG PFBattle and most the other released aps for the IPAD.
Would it be possible to put all the stat blocks at the end of the scenario before the sign in sheet and the chronicle sheet and just refer to the pg number of the encounter at the end of the scenario? I think this would be very helpful for your game masters.
Mike and John, you are both doing a great job for the players and Game masters in PFS. Keep up the great work.
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Mike and John, I have a question on scenario formatting. Since PFS scenarios are published in the PDF’sIs there a reason that they only have about a 25 page length?
It would be a big help for GM’s if full stat blocks for each combatant in each encounter to be in the scenario instead of referring to a page in one of the beastries. I have all three in pdf as well as PFRPG PFBattle and most the other released aps for the IPAD.
Would it be possible to put all the stat blocks at the end of the scenario before the sign in sheet and the chronicle sheet and just refer to the pg number of the encounter at the end of the scenario? I think this would be very helpful for your game masters.
Mike and John, you are both doing a great job for the players and Game masters in PFS. Keep up the great work.
Lots of GMs do not have access to laptops or portable electronic devices and as such are required to print out scenarios during conventions or game days. The limited length is probably there to save paper in that common use case.
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Lots of GMs do not have access to laptops or portable electronic devices and as such are required to print out scenarios during conventions or game days. The limited length is probably there to save paper in that common use case.Mike and John, I have a question on scenario formatting. Since PFS scenarios are published in the PDF’sIs there a reason that they only have about a 25 page length?
It would be a big help for GM’s if full stat blocks for each combatant in each encounter to be in the scenario instead of referring to a page in one of the beastries. I have all three in pdf as well as PFRPG PFBattle and most the other released aps for the IPAD.
Would it be possible to put all the stat blocks at the end of the scenario before the sign in sheet and the chronicle sheet and just refer to the pg number of the encounter at the end of the scenario? I think this would be very helpful for your game masters.
Mike and John, you are both doing a great job for the players and Game masters in PFS. Keep up the great work.
If the stat blocks for common monsters are included at the END of the scenario as suggested, it would be pretty simple to NOT print those pages if you were worried about saving paper.
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I agree that's probably why the length is kept down.
That said, I always end up putting together a full enemy block complete with notes on the special abilities I don't know by heart, so I don't have to flip between 4 books during a session. I now have an electronic device to view that stat block with (I still print the PDF), but before then I was printing all of those enemy blocks in addition to the PDF. It wasn't saving me any paper.
That said, while it would be LOVELY to have a point form version of the act goals/plot hooks and the full enemy blocks (maybe 2 per page to minimize printing), the act of building those cheat sheets actually helps me learn the scenario better. Reading alone almost never gets the information to stick for me.
EDIT: The Fox posted while I was writing this. I'd completely missed the suggestion that the stat block go at the end. And I agree that does nullify arguments of page length for people who can refer to their devices.
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Seasons 1, 2, and 3 had the majority of the stat blocks. They did away with non-unique stat blocks in the scenario because they took up too much word count. Allowing the focus to be on the story and not stats that are already printed in other books. Often times, there were a lot of details that were left out because because the word count was too high.
Season 4 is when the stat blocks were done away with. I don't think it Is just a coincidence that when the stat blocks were done away with that the scenario quality got better.
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I am pretty sure the real issue is man-hours.
It seems trivial to us on the outside to suggest that Paizo simply cut-and-paste some stat blocks out of the bestiaries and concatenate them onto the end of scenarios. But it still takes time to actually do that, and it takes time to paginate everything after you are done. That is time that an editor is not doing something else.
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I'd love to do up a proposal on a new layout for PFS scenarios. I think it's just a historical thing, but GMing would be made a lot easier if there wasn't chunks of text to process, and more dot points. Walls of text could potentially be a thing of the past too, increasing realism.
Of all the games you've GM'd (or played), how many times have you used the backstory information on the first page?
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How hard would it be to have two versions of the PDF: One paper saver version and 1 monster stat block is on one page and not broken up version ?
Again easy. But how much editorial time does it require. Also, from a purely business standpoint, how much money is Paizo going to make by investing those editorial resources.
I think the shared drive is a much better way to make this happen. Let Paizo spend their resources on creating new content, instead of repaginating old content.
Edit: to clarify, I think this would be awesome to have as a resource. My reasons above simply reflect why I'm not hammering for it.