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NN959: Since you have a problem with people making assertions based on informed experience alone, I directly polled the players in my part of the world on this topic. The results were as I expected, and matched my comments above.
Q1) When choosing a PC to play, would you always try to pick one from a faction featured in the scenario?
Yes: 25%
It is a factor: 58% (most people said that party makeup was the most important factor)
No: 17%
Q2) If you don't have a PC of a featured faction, would you elect not to play that scenario at all?
Yes: 0%
No: 100%
Q3) Do you care about the factions as a whole?
Yes: 75%
No: 25%
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NN959: I've now had the chance to look back over the posting that happened overnight. Despite me politely asking you to stop, I see that you continued to make wild extrapolations and claim I said things that I didn't. Your posts are starting to resemble trolling (if they didn't already). Cut it out!
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No where did I mean to suggest people are not playing scenarios "at all", as in they will never play the scenario.
From the discussion that surrounded the questions, it was clear that people understood that this was a choice between playing now (100%), and missing out for now in order to play at some undefined point in the future (0%). It wasn't 'now or never'.
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Your entitled to your opinion, but I didn't bring the issue to light. I'm just trying to keep people from trying to cover it up and discredit those who say there is an issue.
Deliberately misrepresenting people by butchering the english language discredits no one but you.
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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.
Quoting would have helped, but as I understood your post, was that Factions, if they did not currently exist and were being considered for addition to the game would not be added as they would fail to have merit. I disagree with that sentiment. I think the purpose of factions as a mechanism by which to give meaningful feedback to players on the out come of the shared campaign, that is tangible, comprehensible, with a clear mechanism by which people can participate would merit their introduction.
I also agree with many that faction execution has not always lived up to its purpose.
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I haven't deliberately misrepresented anyone.Your entitled to your opinion, but I didn't bring the issue to light. I'm just trying to keep people from trying to cover it up and discredit those who say there is an issue.Deliberately misrepresenting people by butchering the english language discredits no one but you.
You're changing the definition of the word preference from what it is to what you want it to be for your point to have merit. Communicating badly is equivocation, not wit.
There are many competing factors that go into what character to play: a legal character for whats being offered, getting folks into the right tier, playing at the same table as people you want to play with, playing at a different table from people you want to avoid, getting the right table composition, getting a character that suits the adventure.
Yielding to some combination of those to play a character other than the one does not indicate a lack of preference for a character to play a game that involves their faction.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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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.
Verbatim from running 5-25 at PaizoCon this weekend past:
Hey guys, is anyone playing Grand Lodge? If so, you'll want to make sure you really focus on fulfilling the core Pathfinder tenants this session—explore, cooperate, and report!
I also reminded my players that
in the scenario wasn't just for those faction PCs at the table, and that everyone could benefit.
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Earlier I pointed out how I found Season 5 to be less special for casual players. These are the players who will play maybe 10-12 scenarios in a year, where maybe only a handful of them are even Season 5.
Season 5's method of handling factions is decent for the highly engaged players who will play every scenario of the season and already are entrenched in the lore of Golarion and the Society. This is especially so for a player who has multiple characters and picks their Osirion character for the Destiny trilogy or their Silver Crusade characters for Weapon or Assault.
I pointed out how I thought this was creating a more polarizing experience between the casual and dedicated players. The dedicated players always seem to get what is going on (what is happening in Destiny or what is happening in Weapon/Assault). In earlier seasons, it felt like everyone was on equal footing for the odd task that Guaril or Amara Li requested of their respective agents. The casual player is left feeling even more like they "don't fully get what is going on" while the dedicated players are even more enthused because they are putting another piece into the puzzle of the faction's story.
To me, this essentially makes Season 5 a bit more like Lost or Breaking Bad. Earlier seasons were perhaps more like Star Trek, Doctor Who or a sitcom like Big Bang Theory. Season 5 has a higher chance to make people feel like they aren't part of the "cult" of the show and they are missing out on key developments, whereas earlier seasons felt easier to simply drop into a single episode and enjoy it.
Now I absolutely loved Lost and Breaking Bad and would in no way advocate they format those shows in any way other than the way they did - it's just noteworthy that Season 5 has essentially changed the game that a lot of people were comfortable playing to one that feels a little less accessible if you are a casual person in this particular organized play setting. There is a danger now with 5E that these same casual players who are kind of bouncing around trying to find a "home" feel more connected to their Zhentarim faction because they are getting a chance to interact them every time they play (which is erratic as they are casually engaged in the hobby) versus if they are going to a store running PFS and just happen to have picked a Sczarni character to play and are signed up for Season 5 scenarios lacking Sczarni missions.
This potentially gets even worse for these casual players when they are told in a short while that they can no longer even be Sczarni faction and instead must pick a new faction. And that they can pick any faction they want, because The Exchange may not be exactly what they hope it would be, potentially feeling differently with a leader in the Trade Prince versus Guaril. These folks may throw their hands up and say something like "alright, that's enough, there's just too darn much going on here for me to catch up on figuring out what is going on!"
I honestly don't know what I'd do to address this, but still want to ensure the voice of the semi-casual player is represented here... these are the players whose eyes bulge when we try to explain to them the new faction changes coming down the pipeline, who then ask why all these "confusing" changes are happening, and it's hard to give them good answers without speculating. It's especially rough when they say things like "oh the earlier seasons were so good, too".
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Earlier I pointed out how I found Season 5 to be less special for casual players. These are the players who will play maybe 10-12 scenarios in a year, where maybe only a handful of them are even Season 5.
I pointed out how I thought this was creating a more polarizing experience between the casual and dedicated players. The dedicated players always seem to get what is going on (what is happening in Destiny or what is happening in Weapon/Assault). In earlier seasons, it felt like everyone was on equal footing for the odd task that Guaril or Amara Li requested of their respective agents. The casual player is left feeling even more like they "don't fully get what is going on" while the dedicated players are even more enthused because they are putting another piece into the puzzle of the faction's story.
I dont thinks its as clear cut as that. I run weekly/bi-monthly games as well as PbPs. Iam not a fan of the new Faction Missions/Secondary Conditions myself, and I would say that I and a portion of the rest of the player bases are interested in the story. I still have people actively requesting the old faction missions for no credit, and I much pefer them.
Im thinking about doing a poll between the two on the PFS boards, aimed at seperating Player and DM perspective, just to see.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, Contributor
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I was never a big fan of the 10 faction missions thing and would not like to go back to it. It gave scenarios a distinct scavenger hunt feel and filled it with a bunch of oddball psychic spoilers. I haven't dealt with or played season 5 enough to have a huge opinion about this year's faction missions, but if the choice is the little bit I've seen of season 5 versus previous seasons, I'd prefer we stick to season 5.
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Overall I am very happy with the change that they made in season 5 with respect to the faction missions/goals. As a player, I feel that for me it has gotten me more invested in my characters and the relationship that they have with their faction. Once or twice I have had to think long and hard to figure out how my character would act in a given situation. More often, because I have chosen a faction that the character would be invested in, the faction mission will simply fall into their lap because they would have done those things anyways even if I didn't know my faction had some extra investment in this scenario.
As a Gm I didn't really like the 10 separate little side missions that everyone was trying to get done either.
I can understand the argument that for someone who is very casual and doesn't have much of the world background knowledge, the old missions might be more involving for them, but my counter to that would be that this should be incentive for them to learn about the faction they have chosen and the world their character lives in.
So I really hope that they don't go back to what we had before. I look forward to seeing the factions evolve and to try new experiments in the ways that faction goals interact with the story. I'm not going to say that the current setup is perfect, and I think that new ideas should be welcomed. But please, let's not go back to the season 0-4 style missions.
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I've really enjoyed the shift in the way the factions are approached in Season 5 and the future plans for Season 6. I do agree that when a faction goal is relevant to a mission it should be made alittle clearer to that factions players as a new player may not realise what their factions objectives are as they are lacking the overall exposure to them. In my experience, the old style faction missions could be interested, but could also detract from the plot or cause a character feel obligated to take OOC actions just to get max PP.
Developer
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So as someone who's GM'd very little in season 5 and a great deal in previous seasons, I found the old faction mission style incredibly tedious.
There were some standouts, true, but by-and-large there was a whole lot of boring distraction. For as many people who latched onto a faction mission they liked, I've seen similar things in overall scenario missions, but I've seen more turned off by restrictive skill checks that kept prestige away.
What's worse is the lack of backwards compatibility. Let's be honest, the 10 faction tie-ins to the old 5 faction system was an awful kludge.
Now there's not only a chance to meaningfully impact the course of your faction, but a lot of these decisions involve knowing your faction, not just a handout telling you to grab a random item.
I always had a problem with the mission delivery system, too. The leaders sometimes knew where we were going and what was going on in ways that really strained disbelief.
I've also never felt that faction missions really defined my characters' connection to his or her faction, and that their loss made me any less a faction member. It's easy to play up faction and set your own goals, even if the mechanics don't reward it (just as you can play up deific devotion or alignment).
I'm quite pleased with the change. Even more pleased with the removal of nation-linked factions and the shift the ideological ones (which always made more sense to me)
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Again, as a player I don't mind seeing faction missions go the way of the dodo, but as a player, I've never really needed a faction mission for me to have crazy things for my character to do at a table.
Also, if I were writing a scenario, the last thing I'd want to do is "tack on" ten meaningless faction missions.
However, faction missions were a crutch for poorly designed scenarios to feed a bone to newer/wallflower players.
For example, a scenario like Merchant's Wake absolutely doesn't need a faction mission. The GM spotlight in this scenario moves from player to player in turn as each person gets a chance to roleplay with an NPC of their choosing. The first fight is interesting enough that almost every PC will get a chance to act, and in all the other fights there are 3-4 targets (usually) for the PCs to divide up and attack. Because Merchant's Wake is a well designed scenario, it provides a chance for the spotlight to shine on newer players or wallflower-type players who may be less vocal when sitting side by side with the seasoned veterans who have well developed characters and excel at playing them.
However, I've seen The Confirmation marginalize many, many new players as they play second fiddle to the seasoned veterans who are bringing in crazy level 2 uber-PCs (a replay problem since its an evergreen scenario). If this scenario included 10 faction missions, perhaps say each faction wanted to understand one aspect of the shrine, it would provide a guaranteed moment for a new or wallflower player to have the spotlight shined on them as they work through their niche in the adventure. There's other problems with this particular scenario (i.e. many PCs don't even get to engage the final boss in some play-throughs), but it's one that could've used the "crutch" of faction missions to ensure every player "had a turn".
If every scenario is developed well enough that it allows each and every person to shine at a 6-person table, the faction mission crutch is less important. However for the scenarios that are that well built, it was a decent crutch for the GM to turn to that newer player and give them time to shine, even if it was just a silly sleight of hand check or knowledge check. At the very least, that player (who was usually surprised they were important suddenly) had to then interact with others and figure out how they were going to do what they needed to do if they were lacking the skill - i.e. "Hey can you make a diversion for me?"
We typically can't control the first scenario people come to the store to play. I wish every new player showed up their first day for a scenario like Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment (complete with faction hand-outs), because that experience almost always guarantees they get a fair shake of "screen time" with their GM. Instead, Season 5 has had a lot of people coming out perhaps to Library of the Lion and wondering why they bothered as their fighter is rendered practically unnecessary. Library is a scenario that could've benefited from faction missions. It still may not have been a great A-grade experience, but at least maybe a Silver Crusade fighter could've felt more engaged. Perhaps his faction mission would've been to prove the value of the Silver Crusade's efforts to Glorymane. I'm sure that wallflower Silver Crusade PC would've loved a chance to step up, and politely ask her fellows if they wouldn't mind her having some screen time to do that. No roll even required! (The player doesn't have to know that).
As players or GMs (or authors) who have seen 50, 100 or more scenarios, we have a certain perspective of what we personally want when we are playing/GMing. It's difficult to take on the perspective of a quieter, somewhat nervous new gamer at a store and see the difference between Season 2 and Season 5 through their eyes. Season 5 has absolutely felt like it's more intended for those of us here on the forums, rather than that nervous first-time player who has to deal with the social pressures of finding a place among a bunch of strangers in their first game.
Mike B has the tools to test some of this. He could pull from his database all the emails of first-time players who have both played a Season 1-4 scenario as well as a Season 5 scenario in their first 4 games, and he set up a SurveyMonkey and ask them to rate the scenarios. My intuition tells me that he might find a heavy bias that new players preferred the older scenarios. I'm not saying it's 100% due to the faction missions that gave them an excuse to better engage at a table, but I think it's a part of it.
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However, I've seen The Confirmation marginalize many, many new players as they play second fiddle to the seasoned veterans who are bringing in crazy level 2 uber-PCs (a replay problem since its an evergreen scenario).
That's not a problem with the scenario or the replay options for tier 1-2. It's a problem with players who forget this is a social game where everyone at the table wants to have fun. Even if this is an uncontrollable problem, those players can only do it one time which should be limiting this problem.
Beyond that, if any of the players are true wallflowers, then it's the job of the GM to get them engaged in the game. That's not on the scenario.
If this scenario included 10 faction missions, perhaps say each faction wanted to understand one aspect of the shrine, it would provide a guaranteed moment for a new or wallflower player to have the spotlight shined on them as they work through their niche in the adventure.
I actually really like this idea except that The Confirmation was specifically designed to be faction neutral so that it can stand up for a longer period of time without being dated by changes in factions in later seasons. It could have perhaps been more tailored to things certain classes/races/skills, so that depending on the character you're playing there are different things to do.
There's other problems with this particular scenario (e.g. many PCs don't even get to engage the final boss in some play-throughs)
I don't even know how that's possible. PCs get two chances to fight the BBEG.
If every scenario is developed well enough that it allows each and every person to shine at a 6-person table
Again not letting everyone have a moment is a problem with the GM, not the scenario no matter how poorly written and designed.
edit: this is even funnier given that the first act of The Confirmation has the main NPC engage each PC individually to explore their background and survey their equipment. *smh*
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...pull from his database all the emails of first-time players who have both played a Season 1-4 scenario as well as a Season 5 scenario in their first 4 games, and he set up a SurveyMonkey and ask them to rate the scenarios. My intuition tells me that he might find a heavy bias that new players preferred the older scenarios. I'm not saying it's 100% due to the faction missions that gave them an excuse to better engage at a table, but I think it's a part of it.
If I had to bet, I'd say a larger percentage of any new players favoring older scenarios might have more to do with the fact that hardcore players aren't playing those older scenarios. N00bz playing with n00bz.
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Again not letting everyone have a moment is a problem with the GM, not the scenario no matter how poorly written and designed.
Not every GM is an expert level GM. It's not all just on the GM's shoulders. A new GM who had faction missions or is running Merchant's Wake for example has clear instructions on how to present the adventure in a way that allowed all PCs at least a moment or two to shine .. which mitigates their lack of experience.
I'm not going to tell a new GM in the store that the reason why the players loved his running of Merchant's Wake and disliked his running of Confirmation was "because he's not a very good GM". However, I can point him to scenarios that are are better designed in that they just naturally mitigate this, which just ironically happens to mean very few of the Season 5 scenarios for the 1-5 tiers.
edit: this is even funnier given that the first act of The Confirmation has the main NPC engage each PC individually to explore their background and survey their equipment. *smh*
Yeah, but this is different. There is a danger that the GM (hopefully in the guise of Janira, but not everyone is as good as this as others) makes the newer player feel like he is parental/policing their gear. He's also potentially pointing out "mistakes" ("Oh, you didn't buy any alchemist fires..."). Don't think about how you GM this, think about how some of the sketchier GMs run this. This isn't the same as a GM focusing on a player and giving them time to be creative in figuring out how to convince Jak'ti that the Society needs his wares. The Janira gear-review isn't problem-solving, it's problem-identifying.
N00bz playing with n00bz.
Games are better when everyone plays it as roughly equal participants. The best games/adventures try to ensure folks are as equal as possible by mitigating factors of inequality.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed The Confirmation and am not trying to pick apart the scenario (although I'm sure it feels like that now - everyone's a critic, right? You have my respect and admiration for writing many amazing scenarios, and I'm trying to keep my points focused on the benefits I perceived from having old-style faction missions despite how more than 50% were lackluster). I'm more trying to consider that had The Confirmation had faction missions then less-experienced GMs would've had a better forcing function to spotlight the less-experienced players. It's not a game breaking thing, but it is a subtle change that can result in a portion of the player base favoring a scenario like Merchant's Wake over The Confirmation because they feel like they "did more in that adventure" because their GM was clearly instructed to do so.
I don't even know how that's possible. PCs get two chances to fight the BBEG.
New players will obviously cede to the experienced guy with the 26hp barbarian or the crazy eidolon for deciding when to fight.
Barbarian1/Cleric1 activates travel domain agile feet, charges the minotaur while the others are navigating to get closer. Greataxe crit (1d12+12 x3 resulting in over 40 damage). This is why I'd always have at least 2 little targets in that fight. Perhaps a few 4hp kobolds from the caves rustle out from the undergrowth if the minotaur is killed in a single hit to try to rob whoever is lagging behind. End-fights always need more than 1 target to mitigate the 1-hit win (and later complaints of "I didn't get to even act!")
The next game, the minotaur drops Janira (a GM crit of his own) and then moves to engage the only creature on his side of the river in round 2. The minotaur dies to an AOO coupled with a readied action from a reach eidolon with a fauchard. The only PC that did anything meaningful that fight? The summoner and his eidolon.
I've seen four Confirmation games, and in 50% the final fight was solo'd by a fairly typical "veteran-uber-gamer" PC". I expect more Vyle Bard from you to mitigate such situations!! :)
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I'm not going to tell a new GM in the store that the reason why the players loved his running of Merchant's Wake and disliked his running of Confirmation was "because he's not a very good GM".
Of course not, but you should tell them the first part and then discuss why that could be. Perhaps the scenario focused on an aspect of the game that the GM was more comfortable with and thus ran a better game? Did the GM prep each equally? How was the chemistry of the players in each game? There is just *so* much that goes into a good time at the game table and the scenario itself is a surprisingly small piece.
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I'm not going to tell a new GM in the store that the reason why the players loved his running of Merchant's Wake and disliked his running of Confirmation was "because he's not a very good GM".Of course not, but you should tell them the first part and then discuss why that could be. Perhaps the scenario focused on an aspect of the game that the GM was more comfortable with and thus ran a better game? Did the GM prep each equally? How was the chemistry of the players in each game? There is just *so* much that goes into a good time at the game table and the scenario itself is a surprisingly small piece.
I agree with this almost completely. There are few dead ends in scenarios that can seriously wreck peoples fun.
Honestly I feel the DM chemisty with the players and anticipating what they want decides 90% of the game.
Infact I woudl argue there are only bad parts in a scenario. As a DM I have a great deal of control. The tone I use when speaking can provide immense hints and suggestive ideas that can bypass or assist with these headache parts. The mannerisms I use can walk people into traps or around them easily.
I am sure kyle would agree completely. Again this is the DM anticipating the players and what they would enjoy.
However, I've seen The Confirmation marginalize many, many new players as they play second fiddle to the seasoned veterans who are bringing in crazy level 2 uber-PCs (a replay problem since its an evergreen scenario).
Just to be sure, those experienced players can only play a 2nd level character in it once - the evergreen part refers to replaying it at 1st level.
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I totally agree with Wakedown that faction missions had the potential to draw in wallflower players by making them do something. I do think we need to have more of that in scenarios, but I also think tying those mechanics to factions undermined their effectiveness.
Even before season 5, certain scenarios will just be more appropriate for members of a certain faction. There is just that single "golden" faction mission, such as Taldor in Refuge of Time, Cheliax in Citadel of Flame, and Silver Crusade in Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment. If you are in a scenario and one player gets to spend ten minutes RPing with an NPC and you just have to say "I pick up the badges from the Aspis corpses," you are probably going to feel marginalized. Any time you have different missions for different characters, you will have a disparity in mission quality. That disparity will end up accentuated for new players who won't have the veterans having greater knowledge of which scenarios suit which characters/factions.
It's better to force a character to make a choice than a simple task. You give someone a task, and they will probably do it in the most straightforward way. Force them to choose something, and they will immediately become more engaged. Influence scenarios work because players get to choose who their character talks to, the angle they take, etc.... Even more artificial choices such as determining the order of places you go to in Severing Ties and Before the Dawn 1 still get people more engaged.
Now, I'm sure many would say that you always have a choice to not do your faction mission, but are the shy wallflowers going to do that? Why would the kind of person that likes to fade into the background want to rock the boat in any way? Furthermore, since the missions were tied to rewards, these players would be reducing their own effectiveness, and many new players (such as myself when I started) worry a great deal about being effective. Seeing everyone else at the table get 2 prestige and them only getting 1 isn't exactly going to make them feel like a star. Finding out they can't buy the traditional Wand of CLW after their first mission because they don't have two prestige like everyone else won't make them feel like they are good at the game. However, if the player had to make an active choice during the actual scenario and screwed up getting their second prestige, they will probably get involved with the other players and come out of it with a good story.
I'm not sure what mechanic we need to help grab new players, but it needs to offer choices, not straight-forward tasks, and there needs to be a consistent quality across the board. I'm hoping we see that in Season 6.
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Venture-Captain, Pennsylvania—Pittsburgh
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I'm gonna agree with Kyle on the importance of the GM. I love running the Confirmation as a first scenario for new players primarily because of the npc interaction at the beginning of the scenario. It gives us, as GMs, an opportunity to shape effective players who have learned to anticipate problems (as anyone who has gone through a three year training program should). And I've played some of the lowest rated scenarios and had a blast because of the GM, and played some of the highest reviewed scenarios and been bored out of my mind.
Additionally, I'm gonna say that Merchant's Wake is not a good scenario for a new GM to tackle. Looooots of moving parts.
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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I greatly enjoy the *concept* behind the Season 5 faction missions. Story should matter.
But that breaks down when it comes into contact with the player base, sadly. I enjoy playing characters that compliment the table. I don't want to *have* to play a character just because it fits one of the faction missions. Honestly, I rarely do (as I have plenty of options, and tend to play the role the party needs instead of being selfish and insisting on a shot at the boons other characters can get).
So, I miss the sense of identity that came with the old faction missions. It gave my PC a little personality, no matter which role I chose to play that day.
I wish there were a way to get the benefits of both styles to work together. I hope greater minds than mine (Mike Brock, et. al.) are hard at work on this.