Venture-Lieutenant, Online—PbP
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My two children, both under 13, may be interested in playing in PFS. However, they do not have email addresses, and I will not create any for them, they are too young. Also, Paizo's privacy policy states:
Please note that nowhere on this site do we knowingly collect information from children under the age of 13.
There's also doubt as to whether creating such an account for a child under 13 is even legal in the USA.
However, the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play states:
All Pathfinder Society players must register themselves and
their characters online at paizo.com/pathfindersociety.
Put together, these rules seem to indicate that no one under 13 is permitted/welcome in PFS. Could anyone please clarify this for me?
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How? Do I simply not register their pfs numbers on the internet? Or will this make them 'invalid characters' because they're not following the rules?
No, there still needs to be some account that they've been associated with. I see that you have an aversion to them having their own email addresses and I have no problem with that. Do you also have an aversion to creating email addresses for them that they don't actually have access to? Gmail and Hotmail (or whatever it's called now if it's not still called that) are both free. If they want to play PFS you'll have to register them online--whether or not you want to give them access to anything online is your choice. This probably does technically break some terms of service agreement--but honestly no one is going to care.
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On the main pathfinder society page, click the link that says "Join the Pathfinder Society and create your character now!" from there, click GM/Event Coordinator and then under the heading Pathfinder Society cards, you can reserve 10 PFS #s, you do not need to have a pathfinder society account to play PFS, just a #, so even though their name is not on the cards, they do not have to be registered until they are old enough to have their own accounts.
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How? Do I simply not register their pfs numbers on the internet? Or will this make them 'invalid characters' because they're not following the rules?They'll be a speed bump for those who are handling event reporting... but not anything more serious than that.
I have never seen a player banned for not having their PFS number officially registered on Paizo. Keep the slip with their number and confirmation code and use that as their PFS card.
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I had a 8-year old play PFS. He was one of the more fun players I had and while some of his ideas were rather impulsive, every once in awhile he would see something that no one else saw and get an idea that that scenarios never took into account surprising much more experienced players.
I also had an 13-year old play, they made their own account.
It does put you into a tricky situation as you can't really tell them to get an email account or make a Paizo account. You shouldn't even need to make one for them. If you really need/want them to, then their parents can create an account for them using their own email but to be honest them having an account is not required, just the PFS number.
Though to be honest, at 13 it isn't uncommon for a person to have an email account but this will depend on their family and school district. Likely their parents use their email account for the children, odds are they have played some type of videogame that required an account by now and the parents filled that part in for them, this is no different. But it isn't required in order to play, just give them one of your reserved PFS numbers.
Edit: If you ever print off reserved PFS numbers, I strongly recommend you print 2 copies, cut one out to hand out and keep a master copy you can write down who got which numbers. Players sometimes loose their cards, or sometimes forget their numbers.
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13 is also not "under the age of 13".
But you may want to consider finally having them create an email address of their own anyways. If they're publicly schooled, many High Schools now require students to have an email address. I went to school in the 90s and I had to have one so teachers could email me assignments.
An email address today is no different than a physical mailing address two generations ago.
Regional Venture-Coordinator, Online
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You do not even need to create a different email address if you use GMail.
In GMail you can create aliases with identifiers.
So, if your own personal GMail account was SeussFamily@gmail.com
You could register each kids account using the email address:
SeussFamily+ThingA@gmail.com
SeussFamily+ThingB@gmail.com
And then all the email will just come to you without any new accounts to manage. (Assuming Paizo does not filter addresses for "+" in them.)
When they get older they can just update the account with their own email address, if they are still playing.
Just an idea.
EDIT: As someone who reports a lot of games, I will add that having your PFS number and PCs registered makes it SO much easier on us when it comes to reporting. ( Just as an added PSA. ;b )
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Venture-Lieutenant, Online—PbP
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If you play as well just register new characters for them under your own number. I have done so for my son as he only visits on weekends and in reality will not be playing in that many events.
Doesn't this create an issue if we all play at the same table? Surely something in the system would flag it if the same PFS number was reported three times at a table. Also, this would run into all of the limits on replay of a scenario.
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On the main pathfinder society page, click the link that says "Join the Pathfinder Society and create your character now!" from there, click GM/Event Coordinator and then under the heading Pathfinder Society cards, you can reserve 10 PFS #s, you do not need to have a pathfinder society account to play PFS, just a #, so even though their name is not on the cards, they do not have to be registered until they are old enough to have their own accounts.
I'm not certain this solution will work. I could have sworn that I read that when you reserve PFS numbers, those numbers eventually get recycled back into the system if unused. If that's true, it may produce unexpected results.
I could be off my rocker, in which case I'm sure someone will set me straight.
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Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
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Yeah, I've had a player with a 10** number that is a technophobe and has never registered his number. Once they're reserved, they're reserved.
My cousin's kids have both played PFS with us when I run at their house. She just make email addresses for them but didn't give them access until they were older and used those emails to register their numbers.
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First, thanks for being a good parent and being involved with your children's interests.
Second, nothing says you have to register the numbers immediately. Simply hold on to the registration code until you feel they are ready to have email and register the accounts online. Once they create a paizo.com account and associate their PFS number with it via the code, the system will identify all of the games associated with that PFS number.
The online system is primarily used as a backup in case you lose the physical chronicle sheets. It also acts a metrics tool to help determine future storyline based on reported events. One of the cooler features added a few years back.
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Nothing wrong with using one of your e-mail accounts to register your under 13 year old. I know someone who did that when their 11 year old daughter started playing (wink wink). So her PFS characters is linked to her parents e-mail account.
She get recognized as a pfs player and her dad controls the e-mail account. So a win win.....
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Venture-Lieutenant, Online—PbP
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Thanks everyone for your ideas. It sounds like it can't be done without at least stretching a rule somewhere, but everyone seems to agree that those rules can be stretched. There are at least no places that say 'if you do this, your account can be cancelled' or anything like that. Now I just have to decide which rules I'm most comfortable stretching. I also may make different decisions for the two kids, because their ages differ substantially. What is appropriate for a kid in the 8-12 age range may differ from what is good for a kid under 8.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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If you plan to attend a PFS event, it might be a good idea to inform the event organizer, that you want to attend with your children.
That should prevent a number of unwelcome surprises, especially when it comes to larger events. And some adventures might be a rather bad choices for young children.
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As far as everything I've read in the guides and on the boards the reporting is really just a tool the dev's use to see how many people and games of PFS are being ran and get a feel for what is being done so they can gauge how many resources (cash manpower) to put into it..
After all the more people playing the more money they can make off of supporting it and the longer they can keep it going..
A friend of mine had his backpack stolen from his car. It contained all of his PFS characters and their chronicles. The reporting system was invaluable in reissuing his chronicles, allowing him to continue playing with characters that he had invested many hours into.
You are creating an unnecessary headache for your organizers.
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...You are creating an unnecessary headache for your organizers.
I will gladly suffer this headache for a parent protecting the privacy of their children. :)
I might recommend making a backup list/spreadsheet of who played which character during what scenario including GM numbers and when, to address the lost chronicles mentioned. This list also makes it easier to get tables together, but I think that is not a problem yet.
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Why not just register a home game with PFS, reserve a set of PFS number cards and each kid gets their own number. Never need to register the numbers or create an account. Both kids get to play, and everything remains legal in the rules. No headache for anyone, and the kids privacy remains in tact.
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...You are creating an unnecessary headache for your organizers.I will gladly suffer this headache for a parent protecting the privacy of their children. :)
That is commendable.
The operable word in my quote was "unnecessary."
If you are his organizer, you can give him a couple of reserved PFS numbers with their confirmation codes. He doesn't even need to confirm them. He can just use those numbers for his children.
That is super easy. No emails. No registration. No privacy concerns. No headache.
Why make this harder than it needs to be?
