Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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John Compton asked for feedback on specific ways things could be better.
So one of the things I am noticing on PFS scenarios, in general, is that there is no effort to concentrate the stat blocks onto one page, let alone one column. this is because stat blocks are placed in line in the text. This makes encounters very hard to run. I would like to see PFS put some effort into evolving a layout that extracts the stat blocks, and places them along side the text in sidebars or callout blocks. This would concentrate the stats in one place.
On a similar note, in the season 5 scenario I am prepping to run tomorrow, the callout blocks with the 4 player adjustment is often embedded in the text for then next encounter. (for example, encounter A1's stat block ends on page 6. The development section ends in the first column of page 7. The 4 player adjustment is on page 8. If I were running it from the book I would not have seen that till the PCs were going into encounter B. Encounter A2 ends on page 8, the 4 player adjustment is right above the stat block for encounter C. Encounter C's adjustment is two rooms into location E, etc. )
Again, proper use of side bars would let these be stacked on top of the encounters they are influencing. Having seen this used in other companies products, it is an excellent tool for concentrating information into a single quickly readable block.
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It's really nice to think these things, I would even prefer to perhaps, pull the stat blocks to the back of the book, in focused tiers instead of encounter (terrible habit of reading the wrong tier, right page) but for one thing.
Paizo needs to consider hard costs of material when printing, and they have a page count to follow. It's nice that we have a tech age that puts things into digital possibilities, but as a publishing company, they still have to put things into print. Knowing from experience the target page ranges to be 'efficient' with what they print out, the authors/editors need to mash as much together, coming out with a fine balance of information for you vs. leaving something enjoyable/vital on the cutting room floor.
refining stat blocks usually leads to white space on a page, which not only may be wasted area for the publisher, but tends to give the feel of being cheated by purchasers. They might feel that they paid for more empty pages than content.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
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On a similar note, in the season 5 scenario I am prepping to run tomorrow, the callout blocks with the 4 player adjustment is often embedded in the text for then next encounter. (for example, encounter A1's stat block ends on page 6. The development section ends in the first column of page 7. The 4 player adjustment is on page 8. If I were running it from the book I would not have seen that till the PCs were going into encounter B. Encounter A2 ends on page 8, the 4 player adjustment is right above the stat block for encounter C. Encounter C's adjustment is two rooms into location E, etc. )
+1 to this. I've learned that I have to look ahead to make sure there isn't a scaling adjustment for the encounter I'm running; I've almost missed a couple of them.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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refining stat blocks usually leads to white space on a page, which not only may be wasted area for the publisher, but tends to give the feel of being cheated by purchasers. They might feel that they paid for more empty pages than content.
As someone said above, I don't think it is even possible to buy the scenarios in a print paradigm, so page count and print efficiency largely become non issues.
Also, using sidebars allows you to refine the stat block to fit on one page and flow the text past it in the white space, to maintain that "full of content" feel. You can see plenty of examples of this technique in other companies products.
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As someone said above, I don't think it is even possible to buy the scenarios in a print paradigm, so page count and print efficiency largely become non issues.
I cannot disagree with this statement more.
I hate running scenarios from a tablet or computer screen, and I know that I am not the only one. There is also a separate group of customers that do not have a tablet or laptop, or who do but who choose not to bring them to game days. If they abandon the 8 1/2" x 11", "laid out for print" paradigm, they are ignoring the segment of their customer base that chooses to run from printed copies.
That said, I support the notion of "stat blocks altogether at the back of the scenario," or something similar. At the moment, part of my prep involves recreating those stat blocks in a word processor and printing them separately to accomplish this very thing.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Jeff, I'm not talking about abandoning the 8.5 x 11 format. I agree with you on that (I convert the scenario to my own format and print it 8.5 x 11.)
I am talking about the commercial print format. In commercial printing, you print onto large sheets and fold and cut them down to form your book. This makes certain page counts far more optimal than others.
(Here is an example of an article talking about this. I could probably find better, but I have other things I need to do.)
http://www.pbdink.com/blog/2012/11/11/page-counts-important-magazine-printi ng/
That said, I have gone back and looked. Of the 4 scenarios I opened, the page counts ranged from 20,22,23,24. That tells me that Paizo is not being too concerned with commercial print efficiency.
On a seperate issue, Jeff, do you layout your prep Landscape? or Portrait?
I find landscape easier to manage at table, but I wonder if it would be a turn off to people who are expecting portrait.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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Maybe not so much a layout issue, but I've seen a lot of confusion this season regarding how faction missions work -- specifically how they interact with the boons on the chronicle sheet. For example, if I'm playing a Silver Crusade character and in the course of the mission I happen to perform the Andoran faction mission (whether or not I was informed of it or supposed to do it), then do I get the associated boon? Or is it *only* for members of the appropriate faction?
Either way, it would be nice to call out exactly what players of various factions are supposed to get in terms of boons, prestige, and so on. Possibly this could be included in the Conclusion section along with the bookkeeping stuff for which checkboxes to select on the reporting form.
Thanks!
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Jeff, I'm not talking about abandoning the 8.5 x 11 format...
My mistake. Sorry!
On a seperate issue, Jeff, do you layout your prep Landscape? or Portrait?
I find landscape easier to manage at table, but I wonder if it would be a turn off to people who are expecting portrait.
I do Portrait, two-column. I find that I can usually get everything for a given scenario onto a single page, but I also use Perram's Spellbook to do spell cards for casters and whatnot. If you're curious, send me your email address in a PM and I will mail you a copy of my prep docs for 5-04 and you can see what I mean.
The level of preparation I do means that I won't get everything I need if they move stat blocks to the back, but it does mean that I won't have to do the same amount of preparation for a given scenario.
The other reason I do portrait is that I usually carry everything I need in a binder in sheet protectors, and with portrait I don't have to keep flipping that binder sideways. :)
Developer
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Maybe not so much a layout issue, but I've seen a lot of confusion this season regarding how faction missions work -- specifically how they interact with the boons on the chronicle sheet. For example, if I'm playing a Silver Crusade character and in the course of the mission I happen to perform the Andoran faction mission (whether or not I was informed of it or supposed to do it), then do I get the associated boon? Or is it *only* for members of the appropriate faction?
Either way, it would be nice to call out exactly what players of various factions are supposed to get in terms of boons, prestige, and so on. Possibly this could be included in the Conclusion section along with the bookkeeping stuff for which checkboxes to select on the reporting form.
Thanks!
Noted, Tamago. I know I left this out of the first three scenarios in the season, and upon hearing from campaign participants that it was unclear as to who got what, I began adding an explicit call-out in the Faction Notes section at the end of each scenario. If you have the opportunity, take a look at any of the four scenarios published in the past two months, and see if that matches what you've requested.
