Treasure of Jemma Redclaw too easy?

[Vic Wertz]

ThreeEyedSloth wrote:

Andrew Klein wrote:

(I would have had a ton of On the Horizon games being played if I did Extra Life this year).

That's great. However, that wasn't the event I was offering for our local group. People wanted to play through the scenarios again with different characters, so we arranged multiple tables of a mini-marathon consisting of scenarios 1-6.

I'm not going to tell everyone, "Oh, we have a brand new player. Sorry, we can't play the next scenario, we have to play On the Horizon again." We had On the Horizon ready to go for new players, but the timing ended up having some walk-ins join for an actual scenario.

As an experienced PACG player, I appreciate the challenge. It feels like a puzzle to solve. However, as a former and current coordinator on both a local and regional scale, my enjoyment derives from bringing in new players and having them enjoy the game. Seeing them turned off from the game because the rules of the scenario favored a very specific party is disheartening to see. It's not a big issue yet, but I'm simply expressing my concerns in case the difficulty continues to balloon towards a frustrating mess.

Please, please, please don't introduce people to the PACG by throwing them into the deep end of organized play. And please don't ask us to weaken what we need org play to be by asking us to make every scenario playable by newbies. Neither of those things is helpful. PFSACG play is designed for experienced players, and that's not changing. For new players, there are four really good ways to get people into the game: On the Horizon, the shortened demo, and the first full scenario of either Rise of the Runelords or Skull & Shackles. If you are using anything else to teach new players the game, you are doing them and us a disservice.

[ThreeEyedSloth]

Vic, I think you're misinterpreting some of what I'm saying.

I don't think every scenario needs to be "newbie-friendly." Obviously as a season goes on, the challenge will increase. I'm simply referring to the difficulty level of the very first scenarios that players will see in the campaign being at a higher level than I expected.

I'm not throwing players to the sharks, per say. We offer regular opportunities for new people to experience the game using On the Horizon or something similar. But what you're suggesting is something along the lines of forcing new Pathfinder Society players to never play anything other than First Steps or The Confirmation as their very first experience. You know that just isn't possible every single time.

I'm simply expressing my concern that the first handful of scenarios might be a bit too hard. Maybe they're not. From our local meta, our players certainly seem to be struggling, but maybe we're the exception. However, when someone buys a Class Deck and shows up for their first session, gets pummeled repeatedly and then quits, I'm not sure what to tell them.

Personally, I'm still having a great time and so are the majority of my players. However, I saw a potential trend and wanted to point it out. That's all.

[pluvia33]

Vic Wertz wrote:

Please, please, please don't introduce people to the PACG by throwing them into the deep end of organized play. And please don't ask us to weaken what we need org play to be by asking us to make every scenario playable by newbies. Neither of those things is helpful. PFSACG play is designed for experienced players, and that's not changing. For new players, there are four really good ways to get people into the game: On the Horizon, the shortened demo, and the first full scenario of either Rise of the Runelords or Skull & Shackles. If you are using anything else to teach new players the game, you are doing them and us a disservice.

I'm sorry Vic, but due to time constraints and only having one copy of the base set on which to run events, I have introduced four people so far using organized play scenarios. I played On the Horizon the first time I met up with players at my local game store, but after that I felt like I'd be doing the other players who know the game already a disservice if I just play introductory scenarios when On the Horizon took the entire allotted time to run it when I used it to teach new players.

However, all four of these new players really enjoyed themselves, loved the game and plan on continuing to play OP scenarios.

[Pirate Rob]

Vic Wertz wrote:

Please, please, please don't introduce people to the PACG by throwing them into the deep end of organized play.

Vic, I really don't think your expectations here are reasonable.

So I'm running a weekly event, and we're scheduled to play say scenario 3 of adventure 1 (Brine Dragon Hunt). We have a walk-in who is interested in trying the game.

What should I do with them? So far I've been teaching them how to play with whatever scenario we happen to be running.

Should I turn them away instead, or change whatever scenario we're running into On the Horizon? What is the expectation?

[Vic Wertz]

Honestly, I'd ask them to stick around and watch, and then offer to run them through a proper starting scenario afterward. (In that case, I'd probably go with either the shortened demo if you don't have a lot of time, or On the Horizon if you have time and if they want to get credit for it.)

The thing is, the way this game develops, we want to teach you the basics with a simple scenario that involves finding, cornering, and defeating the villain, and gradually introduce complexity from there. In Org Play, we want to challenge you, and we want to do complicated things that we can't fit on an ordinary scenario card, and those are both things that are more like skiing black diamond slopes and not bunny slopes. And it's only going to get worse as you progress through the season. Would any of you really drop a newbie into a scenario that's on a par with an Adventure Deck 6 scenario from RotR? It's not going to be good for them, and it's not going to be good for your party.

[Pirate Rob]

Thanks for the reply Vic, appreciate your insight into it. Of course I don't have any extra time after the 2 hours I have scheduled for PACG but that's not necessarily an impossible problem to fix.

For the venue I'm organizing, it looks like we're going to get up to at least 2 tables, and in a similar vein to PFS scheduling I can probably schedule an Adventure 1 Scenario almost every night, I would really like to be able to comfortably take walk-ins though.

Current Scheduling:

Nobody has made it to all the nights. Our first 6 weeks is each of the adventure 1 scenarios. After that we're going to be filling in what scenarios people need from adventure 1 to collect all the rewards. Once we get to at least 3 people having completed adventure 1, we'll make one of our tables adventure 2, while the other plays adventure 1. I imagine we'll keep getting enough new people/dead characters etc to be able to support an adventure 1 table indefinitely. If we grow to regularly 10+ people I can sacrifice my own copy of the game as well to keep the wheels of OP rolling.