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Here. I cribbed the info from the Pathfinder Wiki and started adding more information until I got distracted. Feel free to add stuff, but please avoid spoilers specific to any scenarios (generic meta-plot info is okay).
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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Another reason this wouldn't work: not all scenarios are just "combat heavy" or "roleplay heavy". I ran one recently where the first half was a dinner party, and the second half was a dungeon delve.
How would you hashtag that?
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assault on the wound
Is the boon where you lead those armies you've been building up all season. The blurb reads
Can the PCs lead their motley army to victory deep in the Worldwound?
Exactly what it says on the tin.
temple of empyreal enlightement
you're sent to explore an abandoned temple. GASP! its not!
scars of the third crusade
Unless the PCs intercede and put a stop to this mob justice, their allies' deaths will spark a new wave of internecine executions throughout the crusader nation.
Now unless the pc is looking to play peasant: the fireballing, you know damned well that its time to get your matlock on and do some investigating.
these are a few that people could misinterpret the blurb and not know what kind of adventure they are getting into.
And you're assuming that a hashtag system would be better. I doubt that.
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As for Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment...
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Twitter hashtags are hard to read and often intentionally silly, so I don't believe anyone is suggesting that exact implementation.
On the other hand, "well-rounded" is a sort of character some players like to build but many others do not. It's absolutely possible to build a character who wields his or her words as a well as a sword (and vice versa), but it's not always the character everyone wants to play. Personally, I find that well-rounded characters end up feeling too similar to each other. I prefer my characters to have pronounced strengths and weaknesses so they all feel distinct.
Regardless of player preference, we all work for the Pathfinder Society. Thus, the PFS might have some sort of preference for well-rounded agents, but they clearly accept that sometimes you need the right tool for the job or else they wouldn't have hired a lot of the PCs running around (many of my own included). Many of their agents must have been hired on for very specific reasons. That may not be the vision everyone has for the PFS, but that is the reality of this campaign.
There have been a number of times I've sat down at a table and received my mission briefing only to have my character's first question for the VC be "why, out of every agent available, did you choose me for this mission?" Not every agent fits every mission. For instance, my Sczarni kneecap-breaker, on loan to the society to help bash skulls, doesn't make any sense for diplomatic missions. It's not what he knows, it's not what he's good at, and there's no reasonable VC in the society that would send him on any such mission.
But they do. Why?
I realize a lot of PFS communities are small and don't have the luxury of being able to pick and choose missions in a way that's sensible. But for bigger communities, we do, and some sort of tag system would help us do it. I don't want spoiler tags. I don't want to be warned about the things the in-story VCs didn't anticipate when choosing their agents. Those things are fun as surprises, and exciting when done well. But what could be the harm in tagging scenarios with information presented in the briefing? Anything a VC knows when selecting his or her agents is information that players could use to screen which scenarios their characters would likely be chosen to take on.
For people with well-rounded characters, this idea likely doesn't do much for you, but it isn't intended for you either. For those of us who like to build diplomats who can't fight, fighters who can't sneak, and sneakers who can't diplomacize, this would go a long way toward making the in-story VCs seem more competent at their jobs.
Is it really in dispute that the Society has specialists and that their commanding officers would be careful about which missions to send them on?
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Here, I'll do mine:
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There have been a number of times I've sat down at a table and received my mission briefing only to have my character's first question for the VC be "why, out of every agent available, did you choose me for this mission?" Not every agent fits every mission. For instance, my Sczarni kneecap-breaker, on loan to the society to help bash skulls, doesn't make any sense for diplomatic missions. It's not what he knows, it's not what he's good at, and there's no reasonable VC in the society that would send him on any such mission.
But they do. Why?
Because sometimes there's a demon at the dinner party.
I'm not really for or against tagging scenarios. I think it's probably something better handled by a fan site, instead of asking Paizo to make that kind of call about their own product. I think most scenarios are designed to incorporate different play/character styles. There's been one scenario I can think of where there are zero fights, but even that is not a guarantee.
So maybe the VCs are the ones metagaming. Sure, they may say it's a diplomatic mission, but they know it won't be that easy.
I also think people should feel free to make characters that specialize or are more focused on combat or non-combat situations. But when you do that, you can expect to be in situations and scenarios that your character is not completely suited for from time to time. Non-combat focused characters run into that a lot more than combat focused characters. And I still believe there are "roleplaying scenarios" that will end very badly for some groups if they don't have at least a couple of combat capable characters along.
My 2 cp :)
While I think the use of hashtags in and of themselves is obviously controversial and would be best avoided. I actually like the idea of tags, maybe... I mean, I've played in some scenarios [namely Race for the Runecarved Key] where no one at the table was adequately equipped for the specific demands for the adventure. You could argue that all five players had bad characters, we all roleplayed bad, and it was all our fault, but what I got from it was if I had known the scenario was going to be as roleplay heavy as it was, I would not have played my witch, who understandably dumped charisma. I understand most of the arguments presented here, and where the concerns originate, but from my [albeit limited] experience, a more detailed [obviously spoiler-free] explanation of what to expect in an easy to read format seems kinda nice.
TL;DR I actually think it's not a bad idea. >.>
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My 2 cp :)
While I think the use of hashtags in and of themselves is obviously controversial and would be best avoided. I actually like the idea of tags, maybe... I mean, I've played in some scenarios [namely Race for the Runecarved Key] where no one at the table was adequately equipped for the specific demands for the adventure. You could argue that all five players had bad characters, we all roleplayed bad, and it was all our fault, but what I got from it was if I had known the scenario was going to be as roleplay heavy as it was, I would not have played my witch, who understandably dumped charisma. I understand most of the arguments presented here, and where the concerns originate, but from my [albeit limited] experience, a more detailed [obviously spoiler-free] explanation of what to expect in an easy to read format seems kinda nice.
TL;DR I actually think it's not a bad idea. >.>
I have some "food for thought" questions for you.
1. Does the scenario description, which tells you that you're going to an auction to sabotage the other bidders to ensure that the society obtains a relic suggest that there should have been at least one guy with high charisma in the party?
2. Isn't it generally a good idea to try and have at least one character who can do social encounters in any scenario? (Well maybe not Bonekeep I guess)
3. Should you always know what the demands of an adventure are before going in? Isn't that less of an "adventure?"
4. What would that tag look like versus scenarios where there are social encounters, but success is not so contingent on them? [FaceOrFail], [SomeSocial], [DressNice] ?
I see that the idea is less streamlined in practice than in my head. I suppose I simply need to be exponentially more vigilant in learning about scenarios before I play them. I agree that the point of adventure is to stretch yourself, which could be invalidated by this tagging structure. The game in question was played at a con, so given the special circumstance, I didn't do as much pregame planning as I usually do. I think the rest of my party had the same experience.
Moral of the story: I wish a system like this could work, but I can't think of a good way to do it..
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I recently played in the 10-11 tier of one of the specials, and we ran into several swarms at the same time. Looking around at the full table of 10th and 11th level characters, we realized that nobody could deal with swarms. None of the melee characters had swarm bane clasps, and none of the casters had areas effect damage spells memorized/available (our arcane caster was a Witch). Between the group, I think we had 4 alchemist's fires (I had 2, I think the witch had 2, the swarms had... many more hit points than those could do), and one character had some regular oil. Needless to say, this was a failure in planning for a group of very experienced players. We got creative and got through the encounter, though. The Inquisitor activated his Inquisition power that linked him to one of the swarms, so whenever either of them took damage, they both took damage. Then he stepped into the swarm and let it eat itself to death (I call that swarm Pizza the Hut). I used Forgotten Trick on my Ninja to pick up Ki Charge and nearly burned through all of my Ki (and shrunken!) fighting the other two swarms before ultimately time ran out on that part of the special and we moved on.
Now, if we'd had tags, we'd have probably known the swarms were coming, but it would also have probably been a lot less entertaining of a story.
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And #harpies. There should be a hashtag for harpies. :)
I hope my last message isn't misinterpreted. I don't want to know what is coming in scenarios. My point from the story being, if there were tags mentioning swarms, we'd have probably overprepared for it and it would have been a boring encounter. As is, it was frustrating (as swarms are), but memorable. We really should have been better prepared whether we knew it was coming or not.
I generally get enough information from the scenario description to have some idea which character I want to play.
I agree that it's good to plan ahead and be aware of what's going to be played - I had a rather odd session of Library of the Lion where one of the players was an illiterate halfling barbarian with a t-rex animal companion (he had both the Mad Dog and True Primitive archetypes).
As I recall, he spent most of the session handing people books and moving papers about randomly.
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Personally I think that planning a session for a charecter by knowing what the the adeventure involves is a little counter productive. As far as fiction goes to the members of the Society don't wake up saying "I think I will take an assingment today that plays up all of my strengths and has the exact kind of action and material that I want." Do they? I don't think so. They take the missions they are assinged and make the best of it. Some of my favorite sessions have been where I was put completely out of my element. Its moments like these that add to the varied history of some of my favorite charecters. I feel like the concept of #ing a scenario with to many story details takes away from the suprise and interest of being a pathfinder. If you wanted this we would be playing scenarios with titles like "The Doppelanger Effect", "The Osriani Tomb Crawl", and "A Night at a Taldor Party". When you know what to expect its just not as fun IMHO.