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Am I the only one, that DISTINCTLY DISLIKES Year 5 faction missions? I am frustrated enough that I cannot get the character class in a module providing gear useful to them--NOW I have to worry about getting the right class with the right equipment into a session that my faction gets credit for!
Yes, I know I can get full Prestige/Fame, but.....well......am I the only one?
EDIT: is that better LazarX, less offensive to you?
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I am frustrated enough that I cannot get the character class in a module providing gear useful to them
Um, you realize that your chronicle sheets are not the end of your item access, right? As your Fame score increases, you gain access to EVERY campaign-legal item under Xgp. There's a chart in the Guide to Organized Play. Items on chronicle sheets are IN ADDITION to that.
So you could never find anything useful on a chronicle sheet and still have perfect gear for your character. So, consider your frustration relieved! :)
NOW I have to worry about getting the right class with the right equipment into a session that my faction gets credit for!
"The right class with the right equipment"? Since when does Season 5 faction stuff have anything to do with which class you play? I'm not understanding your complaint.
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Yes, I know I can get full Prestige/Fame, but.....well......am I the only one?
As a player, I am sometimes frustrated by the 'read my mind' nature of the new faction boons. However, most of the time they are intuitive enough that just acting in accordance with your faction goals and philosophy is enough. Even when they aren't, the boon is never something necessary for your success the way prestige points can be. Decoupling the faction boons from secondary prestige points is a great improvement.
As a GM, I absolutely love not having to give out up to seven different handouts that only drag down the game with irrelevant side quests. Having every room start out with various forms of the question 'is my faction mission here?' was a huge drain on player engagement in the actual scenario. While there were some that greatly enhanced the roleplay with subplots, most were very bland fetch quests. I much prefer having entire scenarios devoted to specific factions, such as Weapon in the Rift and Library of the Lion.
If this has not addressed your complaints, please let me know and clarify them for me so I can better answer them.
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I HATE the old faction missions. I still play with some GM's who like to hand them out, and I know right away we are going to get dragged down every time. I can't imagine what it would have been like to lose my prestige every other adventure due to lacking a certain skill. (Nevermind that the rest of my party does...I need to be secretive.)
Better stories. Interesting boons. No bogging things down with ridiculous side quests. No losing prestige consistently on a random roll. Sounds like all win to me.
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One thing that has annoyed me with the Season 5 boons, is that there's no real reason why some of them would be linked to only certain factions.
My Andoran PC was continually pushing the party to help the innocent in The Wardstone Patrol, and yet doesn't get the Hero of the Inheritor Boon because she's in the wrong faction. hmm.
That being said, I have enjoyed all of the season 5 scenarios I've played, and I certainly haven't been picking which ones I play based on which faction gets the boon for it!
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I too was not a fan of the old faction missions. They took up a lot of the table’s time. Also, the ‘secret’ manor that they were supposed to be handled… usually the rest of the group helped out and if you didn’t you were branded a d*ck. I understand the complaint that now you sometimes can’t get your characters into the scenario if it’s faction specific but that just means that you might miss out on a kinda good boon. But before there were no boons, but you’d miss out on a prestige point over (like someone said) a random bad roll. Also, I like that our success (or not) can affect the results of next year’s world.
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I've missed quite a few faction boons during this season, but none of them made me want to go and gm the scenario. They are very cool and sometimes useful too, but nothing worth losing sleep for.
That said, they've gone a long way in making boons that can be used immediately and I'm more than grateful. No Western Katapeshi gnolls or Jalmerani diplomacy boons or one-time use intimidation flowers, etc. I still haven't used that damned Zho Mountains map, for instance.
Hey Paizo, we need a tier 7-11 scenario set up in those mountains, stat!
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I miss Chelaxian faction missions.
Zarta doesn't love me anymore.
I miss Baron Jaquo soo much.
I do not miss the Taldan post office.
I agree season 5 is not connected to me at all in the same way 1-4 was....honestly if I started in season 5 I would not care about factions. (and likely would not play pathfinder)
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I really like the Season 5 faction setup. I like that my Faction means more than some inane additional task I am assigned every mission. I feel that my characters are more connected to the meaning of their faction this season than ever.
No more am I directly penalized for playing a Druid merchant of Qadira who has no ranks in Sleight of Hand. Seriously, my first ever Faction Mission required that I steal something from guards who way outclassed our 1st level party. I'm a merchant not a petty thief.
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I hate season 5 faction stuffs.
I played most of season 5.
There is almost no connection unless you plan to play your character for certain faction specific missions. Personally I think this is horrible. If my character of that faction is passed the level requirements he does not get to participate. Unless ofcourse I want my non-faction character to get play and get left out of it.
I find the vague season 5 scenarios can be just as table time consuming since many of them are vague. When I have to explain to a faction they need to check thier emails or the message baord to read this vague idea so they have a clue of what to do. It takes just as much table time that does not really involve the players as we wait for people to bust out their smart phones and read through psots and complain about how they think these vague hints are no help to them.
Persoanlly I like the old faction mission, but many were poorly done. I feel that season 5s have less factions missions and they are almost all poorly done. Which is very sad, and should be the exact opposite. I like having a faction mission every scenario and it brought me closer to my faction. The flavor text of them were great. I agree with meridoc completely on his point. Now could the faction mission have been implemented better, yes. A better explaining of them, and offering a variety of solutions for the faction missions should be allowed, or allowing the team to help you. Personally I find it awesome when I have to roleplay another PC into helping. As a PC my character my not automatically help you, but roleplaying with them would easily change that.
When Player ask everyroom for a flower shaped pot from their faction mission that is the fault of the writer and/or DM not giving a character the information they need to understand where that pot is. Giving a better description where it is, or telling th eplayer it is hidden, so they have to do a perception check to find(which I find playerdo this every room anyway so it should not slow the game down)
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I don't think any of those things were related to his complaint, Thrawn. I think he was complaining that, since faction-based goodies are no longer given to every faction in every scenario, you can "miss" them by not playing the right character in a given scenario.
I don't recall any boons from this year that were game breaking if you missed it. With that said, I try to play the right faction for at least one of the available boons if I have the right character in range. When I GM, I try to always group boons on characters by faction, since I get more choice in that matter. So I have many more characters with boons due to GM credit than when I have actually played the mod.
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I miss Chelaxian faction missions.
Zarta doesn't love me anymore.I miss Baron Jaquo soo much.
I do not miss the Taldan post office.I agree season 5 is not connected to me at all in the same way 1-4 was....honestly if I started in season 5 I would not care about factions. (and likely would not play pathfinder)
Like I said above, I miss the faction handouts. I just feel less connected to the faction, because I'm not getting a direct communication every adventure.
Some of the faction missions were awful, but there were a few fun ones along the way. Usually for Taldor, for some reason. Why did Taldor get the most interesting faction missions, while Silver Crusade just got generic platitudes? I literally got Silver Crusade faction missions in seasons 3 and 4 of "Be nice to strangers", "Don't let any of your allies die", and "Don't kill anyone unless you have to". The only truly entertaining Silver Crusade faction mission I ever saw was in The Disappeared.
I think even a generic handout reminding the player to look out for opportunities to further the faction's core cause would be good. I could just see getting a letter from Maldriss telling an Andoren PC that he has no special instructions for this mission, but always be on the lookout for opportunities to help free any slaves. At least it would keep players connected to their faction, even if there were no slaves in that particular adventure, so it ends up not actually being a faction mission.
Actually, that was one of my complaints about season 4, too. There were old style faction missions, with secondary season-long goals you could do instead, but no reminders of what those goals were. Having characters in almost every faction, I couldn't remember them all, or which ones went with which faction.
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Fromper: Because good is boring :)
Have you seen the Silver Crusade faction mission in The Disappeared? LOL There's a reason I mentioned it as an exception. Hats off to the author of that scenario for one of the most creative faction missions ever.
And I definitely had the right PC when I played that - my chaotic good gnome prankster bard is Silver Crusade, and I laughed my butt off both in and out of character when I read that faction mission. My lawful good cleric of Sarenrae would not have been so amused.
My players in my homegame PFS campaign loved the old style missions. I still use them but for fun only. Prestige, etc gained is from the new updated way you should run 'em. We all play CoC so a handouts are always welcome!
As a player and GM the biggest fault (IMO) was the occasional "We have found a tomb that no one has been in for a billion years but we know there is a McGuffin hidden behind this carving of a nymph..." mission.
I would like a return to them but have more thought put in rather than the tacked on after feel a lot had.
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The only thing my Taldor faction has done with me so far in season 5 is that in the Library of the Lion - the GM took me aside and gave me the option to sneak away the night before and tell the Lion Blades that we were coming. (especially since my bard trained at their school)
Needless to say - as much as I was tempted just to see what would happen - neither I nor my character are quite that big of jerks - so I passed.
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Meh, I'd just as soon see the selection of a faction become mostly a background choice with small mechanical options, much like ethnicity or (for most PCs) deity.That, IMO, would be a shame.
I speculate that the vast majority of people who miss "the old way" only do so because it's what they're used to, not because of any actual appeal outside of familiarity. That is, if factions had never had "faction missions" in the first place, nobody would be asking for them.
Why do I think this? There are many things one chooses on character creation that helps identify who the character is and what they're all about; among these are faction, deity, alignment, and nationality/ethnicity. All of these are things that (unless you're a divine caster) are primarily in the background but strongly inform your roleplaying and the identity/motives/personality of your PC.
Yet not once have I seen someone say
Or,
Every time someone explains their attachment to old-style faction missions and how they improved the game in such-and-such a way, I try imagining what it would be like if no such thing ever existed and someone used the same argument to suggest the implementation of such a system for some other facet of PC identity. And every time, it sounds weird and unhelpful and really not worth the writing/development time it would take.
Therefore, I have to conclude that doing the same with factions was never really worthwhile and the only reason anyone really wants it is because they're used to it.
But that's just my speculation, for whatever it's worth.
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One thing that has annoyed me with the Season 5 boons, is that there's no real reason why some of them would be linked to only certain factions.
** spoiler omitted **
That being said, I have enjoyed all of the season 5 scenarios I've played, and I certainly haven't been picking which ones I play based on which faction gets the boon for it!
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The new style faction missions need some work, in that the only real way PCs are clued into the fact a fashion mission exists (often) is by a blurb on the scenario that says "you have a faction mission here".I can't agree with this more. Despite my faction supposedly having a clear set of goals, I'm magically suppose to know I'm expected to do something in this particular scenario.
I've yet to see a GM in Season 5 drop any unsolicited in-game clue for the players about fulfilling their faction mission. 100% of the time the players have to ask OOC or it doesn't even get mentioned.
1. It is stated which factions would prefer which missions. This is not saying that they would get a benefit, though they can. It is more to say that that faction would want the mission to succeed more than others and so people in that faction would be more likely to go on it.
2. I try to drop clues if it is not explicitly mentioned or I feel it is too convoluted.
3. Your faction goal is stated in the faction head's letter that goes out twice a year. I usually try to provide this when running a game to those who might need it.
4. The old faction missions were random and usually required a certain level of prescience.
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I admit I am divided on how the season 5 faction bonuses have worked. As a GM at the very least it feels a lot better. More often than not the faction missions were a distraction the players. I have seen many games zeroed in on completing their faction mission so hard to the exclusion of everything else. While I could argue that good faction missions didn't do that with five, ten, or eight faction missions per scenario, there are going to be a few that are just not good.
At best it generates a memorable experience at the table. At worst you get to see another play several minutes trying to figure out how to accomplish a mission their character isn't well equipped for.
I have a lot of great memories of faction missions that turned out so well. Unfortunately there were many more that just felt unnecessary and distracting from playing the scenario as a group.
On the way that the current scenarios focus on a few factions each I am divided since that in general means that any faction missions in the scenario will be a lot more relevant to the ongoing plot. However since I have a bag full of characters it feels a tad with my standard convention play "jump into any open game" since that generally means I'm grabbing a character that has no relation to the scenario. Not that it means anything at all since some of the funniest games I had this weekend didn't involve me in any faction side missions.
I miss Taldor characters insulting Dakar and getting pummeled for it. I don't miss 90% of the other faction missions though.
I do like the spotlight focus on certain factions in each scenario. I don't like the feeling that I am missing something by not playing a scenario with a character having an appropriate faction.
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please stop dismissing as some sort of superfluious fluff.
I'm not dismissing it as superfluous fluff. Fluff is not superfluous. I'm just saying that it's pretty telling that of all the myriad ways to not just be "Bob the Fighter", it's only this aspect that people are requesting to be reflected in a note delivered to their PC in every single scenario. But rather than repeat myself, I'll just ask that you re-read the post to which you think you're replying, and read it thoroughly, instead of just seeing that I don't agree with you and making assumption as to why. Thanks.
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I wasn't sure what to quote, without quoting the whole post, but I disagree with Jiggy, I don't think factions are just another background detail of your character.
For organized play to have an organic feeling of the world evolving and the and taking shape based on the players actions, there needs to be outcomes from adventures that help to shape that. Success and failure, that is a binary outcome of every adventure isn't they way the world works, your success is my failure, or that guy over their wins if we are both antagonized, or we all win together. These shades of grey, and the shadows they cast on the story we are telling together are what makes the over arching narrative plausible and immersive.
To help guide our role playing actions, our factions in that respect become our motivations on how we individually respond to a scenario, but without the outcomes of that being measurable the campaign team can't shape the world as a result of those outcomes. Faction missions allow scenarios to have shades of grey that are quantifiable, and allow our actions to breath life into the campaign by forwarding our own or sabotaging other faction goals.
PFS restricts us to a subset of factions to make the story telling meaningful by not diluting the options, but the factions guide, inner sea magic's arcane schools, or the recent <insert book name here>'s battle academies give GMs the tools to enrich their campaigns with the factions they choose, and the ones the PCs choose. In fact I would argue that each Deity should probably have a faction itself, as unit of agency for the church.
I think the issue with pre-season 5 was the inclusion of every faction in every scenario, there was too many frivolous missions when a faction really had not stake in the game. In season 5 the faction missions are poorly communicated, as they are not apart of the scenarios. I think I would like to see in Seasons 6 a hybrid where the relevant factions have their missions in the module, and a resisting of the temptation towards the creation of spurious missions.
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As of today I've played and/or run 27 sessions of season 5 scenarios.
I honestly can't think of a single "beer story" that I'd tell today (or years from today) based on a character's faction and how they interacted with the scenario because of it. Maybe Destiny of Sands Part 3, but then again even non-Osirion PCs were interacting the same way at the end.
HOWEVER...
I can probably tell over a dozen "beer stories" thanks to faction missions from prior seasons.
As mentioned above, Silver Crusade in Disappeared.
Taldor in Refuge of Time.
Cheliax in Citadel of Flame.
Sczarni and Silver Crusade both in Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment.
(...many more...)
And many time these faction missions are ones that help draw newer players out of their shell when otherwise they were kind of just "along for the ride" in the scenario. They were a great prop to hand out and effectively (sometimes) give a single player some insight that would help get them involved in the game when they were previously being drowned out by the more active/vocal players. The above instances I mentioned were "defining" for their characters.
Granted, there were times that having to make a random check for a PC not specialized in it may have been aggravating, but a lot of times these were resolved in under 60 seconds.
I only wish the season 5 "faction missions" were as good as the gems sprinkled throughout all the prior seasons. They actually just feel incidental at this point, and I have yet to hear someone tell me an "awesome story" for a season 5 faction mission at all, let alone one that can compete with the zeal which I've heard people relate their faction missions from prior seasons.
I personally play this game for "beer stories" where we can revel in player creativity and improvisation - and not for mechanical benefits, boons, XP or anything else. To me, that's what keeps people coming back to play, those awesome moments - and the older faction missions provided those. Season 5 faction missions have been bland, and sadly I don't have a single example where one was amazing (yet?).
EDIT: For context and those who think this is a belief held by players who were heavily entrenched in prior seasons, I began playing PFS around the same date that Veteran's Vault in season 4 was released (a little over 1 year ago).
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I wasn't sure what to quote, without quoting the whole post, but I disagree with Jiggy, I don't think factions are just another background detail of your character.
For organized play to have an organic feeling of the world evolving and the and taking shape based on the players actions, there needs to be outcomes from adventures that help to shape that. Success and failure, that is a binary outcome of every adventure isn't they way the world works, your success is my failure, or that guy over their wins if we are both antagonized, or we all win together. These shades of grey, and the shadows they cast on the story we are telling together are what makes the over arching narrative plausible and immersive.
If you call this disagreeing with me, you didn't really read my post.
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please stop dismissing as some sort of superfluious fluff.I'm not dismissing it as superfluous fluff. Fluff is not superfluous. I'm just saying that it's pretty telling that of all the myriad ways to not just be "Bob the Fighter", it's only this aspect that people are requesting to be reflected in a note delivered to their PC in every single scenario. But rather than repeat myself, I'll just ask that you re-read the post to which you think you're replying, and read it thoroughly, instead of just seeing that I don't agree with you and making assumption as to why. Thanks.
The factions are a good way for the writer to anticipate something about bob the fighter and pass him the spotlight for a moment without ever having met bob.
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The factions are a good way for the writer to anticipate something about bob the fighter and pass him the spotlight for a moment without ever having met bob.
^^ This 100 times.
I can't even count on both hands now how many times an older faction mission has transformed "Bob the Fighter" into "Robert the Taldan Bastard" or "Jane the Monk" into "Jane the Chelaxian Companion" for newer players who up until a moment prior weren't aware they could roleplay or develop richer PC concepts that a collection of mechanics on their page.
Season 5 completely lost the ability to help these new players, and I think is a big part why at least at our game store, when a new player starts their experience with season 5, we tend not to see them again, but when a new player starts in an earlier season, they have a higher chance for a "magic moment" that makes Pathfinder seem different than another game, and leads to their returning to the next game day.
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One of the problems I had with the old faction missions was the problem I had with the soon-to-be-old factions: I don't tend to make characters whose identity is wrapped up in nationalism.
I really, really like that the new factions seem to be based in personal goal/motivations rather than "I like this country, so I like whatever this country happens to like right now". Almost all of my characters have been Grand Lodge, Shadow Lodge, or Silver Crusade, because they were either generic or rooted in basic ideals ("watch out for each other", "help the helpless").
One of the things I like about the new secondary success conditions and the new faction boons is that they're not clearly spelled out instructions you're given prior to an adventure. I like that I need to be more proactive and try to anticipate what the Society and my faction would consider going above and beyond.
Some of the more RP-heavy Season 5 scenarios end with a big decision that the party must make. I've seen groups struggle over them because they're looking for the "right" answer rather than stepping back and saying "what would my character want to do?" They're so afraid of losing the PP that they'll completely break character in the hopes that they get it right. And almost always, there isn't a "right" answer: they're just different approaches to solving a problem.
How is all that relevant to the OP? Well, I think that the old Faction missions (and old factions, for that matter) were less about exploring who your character was, and more about telling you who your character should be.
"I'm a Tiefling, so I'm probably Chelaxian, so I guess my Faction is Cheliax, which means I collect evil artifacts for my sexually predatory leader."
vs.
"I'm a Tiefling. Was I enslaved? Did it make me rankle against slavery (Liberty's Edge)? Or did I not care because it allowed me to gain access to my master's dark reliquary (Dark Archives)? What do I care about more?"
You could still imagine your character in the latter fashion, but it tended to require more mental gymnastics:
"I'm Taldan, but I super-love money, so I guess I serve Qadira for a cut of the profits? "
Jiggy: Yes, it would be nice if SOMETHING about my character came up in the adventures to make me an active participant rather than a passenger on a train.
I found this to be counter-intuitive, as to me, the old faction missions were the definition of being on rails. "Find a tea set. Bring it to me." Whereas the new secondary success conditions and faction boons ask you to consider the nature of the Society and your factions to determine the best course of action. One is a directive, the other an invitation to explore.
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Absolutely none of my favorite moments are faction mission related, and I've seen every single one of the faction mission "highlights" that Wakedown mentioned (several at his table). I barely even remember the faction missions (mine or anyone else's) from my first scenarios, that's how little they impacted me. I have never once been excited to get a faction mission. The Silver Crusade one in Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment was memorable because of how the player went about it, but the new player seemed more frustrated by it than anything, and she didnt come back for months. All the faction missions that spoil aspects of the adventure really frustrate me, too, and completely ruin my immersion. The Cheliax one in Below the Silver Tarn (which actually has good faction missions in general for motivating RP) basically spoils the whole mystery, which completely ruins the horror atmosphere.
That's not to say I love the season 5 "guess the objective" format either, but I don't think there's any reason to go back either. Paizo should do better than either system.