Faction mission


GM Discussion

Grand Lodge 3/5

Hello everyone,

I'm new as a Pathfinder Society GM, and I have a question for you. I know that we can't earn any Prestige Point anymore with faction missions, but still I would like to keep these missions on play, just for fun.

I'll soon organise a Season 3 scenario, and there is something that I don't understand. When there is a faction mission telling the PC to get a piece of information from someone, why is it impossible to find the content of the information ? Do I have to say "Ok, your character succeeds in getting the piece of information", and that's all ? It's a bit weird not telling exactly what the PC learns about.

Thanks in advance for your answers

Arp

4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ***** Venture-Captain, United Kingdom—England—Coventry

In each encounter where information on faction missions are given, there should be a mission notes section listing how the missions may be fulfilled.

Hope this helps.

Terry

Grand Lodge 3/5

Thanks Terry.

But it's not really a matter of how the misson may be fulfilled. For example, if the mission is "Find John and learn from him where the rebels are hidden", I wonder why it's not written in the scenario where the rebels are actually hidden.

4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ***** Venture-Captain, United Kingdom—England—Coventry

oh, I see - sorry, can't be any help with that

Silver Crusade 5/5 5/5 **

Yeah, you often just have to make up the details. I strongly suspect that it was a matter of word count. Adding those details would just have taken more time than was warranted.

On the bright side, whatever you make up is right :-) :-) :-)

Paizo Employee 4/5 Developer

Although I don't know the particular mission that you have in mind, I understand that the details are left out for two reasons: author knowledge and writing flexibility.

The vast majority of our scenarios are written by freelancers who are working off of an assigned outline. For the one scenario that I wrote, this did not include any details of what was supposed to go into the faction missions; instead, knowing what I knew about the factions, I was supposed to create faction missions that fit in the scenario and reflected said factions' flavor. That said, I didn't know what the big, behind-the-scenes picture was for most of the factions, so I couldn't actually include that detail in the turnover. When a developer would pick up such a scenario, he would make sure that the faction missions fit, were reasonable, and worked mechanically; however, it wasn't necessary for him to fill in the blanks about exactly what the message said. In fact, some faction missions involved procuring sealed documents perhaps for that very reason! Yeah, word count also played into it.

By writing flexibility I mean leaving ambiguous plot hooks open for future exploitation. If we know that Zarta has acquired several sets of sealed documents but never established what they contained, we can use that knowledge for a wide variety of plot purposes in the future. If we go out and say that each document is from Zarg the qlippoth-wrangler, then we've locked ourselves into the qlippoth-wrangling plot thread even if we later decide that qlippoths in no way fit into our upcoming plans for Cheliax.

As the GM, you likely have a good sense of what comes later in the scenario or even the season, so you have some flexibility in filling in those blanks if the scenario does not. In fact, think of this as an opportunity to exercise your own writing flexibility by making the information more relevant to the PC(s).

Grand Lodge 4/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento

That said, this is part of the reason some of us were happy to see faction missions gone.

Paizo Employee 4/5 Developer

FLite wrote:
That said, this is part of the reason some of us were happy to see faction missions gone.

I'm a little sorry to see them go just because they provided a rich pile of bizarre plot threads for me to look through when drawing up future adventures. Remember that time that Maldris did XYZ in Season 1? Well, it's come back to bite him. How about that contact you were supposed to win over for Taldor in Season 2? She's back!

Silver Crusade 5/5 5/5 **

I am still wildly ambivalent about faction missions going away. Some of them added a lot, some were very silly, most fell between those extremes.

One very, very clear effect that eliminating them has had is to significantly reduce the time required for a scenario. Again this is sometimes good and sometimes bad.

3/5

My question: Are we going to wait for another couple of months (say Decemberish) before listing the good and bad things that have been observed by GMs based on the loss of faction missions?

Grand Lodge 4/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento

I suggest listing as you go so it's fresh in your mind.

Grand Lodge 3/5

Thanks a lot for your very clear answer John Compton. Now I know what to do : be creative.

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