RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
|
There's an off topic talk about earning fame in the Eldritch Archer thread, so I thought I'd move it over to it's own thread.
I've found with the older scenarios the second prestige point varies wildly from scenario to scenario Some are automatic (completing the primary condition completes the secondary) Some are pretty much required. (defeating the final enemy who can't escape you) Some are bloody near impossible (looks at Among the dead suspiciously)
Of course, the little of season 7 I touch seems to fall into the later catagory. When I ran Six Seconds to Midnight, the puzzle ruined the scenario more that the flying buggers of death. I gave them the secondary PP because they technically did complete the objective*
|
I'm not sure if you meant to have a question or something there, but I'm guessing this is what you are looking for.
I think faction missions determining second prestige led to the most failures to get both PP.
Secondary Success condition document for older scenarios is somewhere in the middle, highly dependent on the scenario.
More recent scenarios the least common for failing to earn a second prestige point.
This is just my feel of the situation I've never taken any data to back it up.
|
|
** spoiler omitted **
More directly on the subject of prestige and secondary success conditions the only scenario I've ever ran or played where I thought the second prestige was difficult to award was 5-04 The Stolen Heir which asks the players to act in a way that many will find distasteful and many of their PC's will need atonements for just to get that second prestige.
|
|
I'm not sure if you meant to have a question or something there, but I'm guessing this is what you are looking for.
I think faction missions determining second prestige led to the most failures to get both PP.
Secondary Success condition document for older scenarios is somewhere in the middle, highly dependent on the scenario.
More recent scenarios the least common for failing to earn a second prestige point.
This is just my feel of the situation I've never taken any data to back it up.
I think that depends heavily on the scenario. My interpretation:
- Faction missions had the benefit of the player knowing exactly what they needed to do - it was always very clear, which was kind of a detriment to the story at times due to "omniscient faction leader syndrome." If I saw failure in these, it was because I literally couldn't manage the task provided for some reason.
- Older scenarios that fell under the Secondary Success Condition doc were extremely hit or miss. Many times, the secondary condition was not intuitive to the party because the scenario wasn't written for it. Other times, it was literally a no-brainer.
- Recent scenarios are usually intuitive, but there are some that come to mind that very specifically weren't intuitive.
|
I'm steering well away from 7-X for now.
I'd advise against the same judging of a season on 1-2 scenarios because of difficulty that happened last year. There were some great season 6 scenarios that a lot of people never played because they didn't like a couple of the early ones. By the same token, 7-05 is one of the most flavorful and combat optional scenarios that has been published period, but you would choose to avoid it based on 2 other scenarios.
|
|
That scenario is just insulting. Have the daughter kidnapped and married off somewhere or get your second prestige. Seriously, someone should be locked in the stocks overnight with a basket of rotten tomatoes nearby for that one.** spoiler omitted **
More directly on the subject of prestige and secondary success conditions the only scenario I've ever ran or played where I thought the second prestige was difficult to award was 5-04 The Stolen Heir which asks the players to act in a way that many will find distasteful and many of their PC's will need atonements for just to get that second prestige.
See, that's one of my favorite SSCs. Good should not always be easy to do, and your choice to play a good character should put you in sticky situations occasionally. While PFS is not the moral dilemma campaign, the occasional moral dilemma is important.
After all, your Good character decided to sign up with an organization that is Neutral with Good leanings. You certainly can try to be a shining example in the Society and try to change it to Good (aka Silver Crusade), but helping out the daughter does you nothing but solve the basic problem you've been given, which is what the Society cares about.
That scenario is one of my favorite PFS scenarios to date, and while I understand that they are a spice to be used lightly in this campaign, I always cheer when I see one like this done well.
Venture-Captain, North Carolina—Asheville
|
** spoiler omitted **
Philip Carroll, Asheville Pathfinder Lodge, point of information: What?
Sorry if the tone in that spoiler is snippy, but I really like Stolen Heir and cannot abide its unjust besmirchment.
Edit: The Diplomacy DC isn't that high under the right conditions. A typical level 1 bard can make it by taking 10, after negotiations.
|
|
Thing is, while SSCs are much harder than old faction missions, they are things the party can (usually) collectively agree upon as being something to strive for. And that's a lot better than the status quo before.
Faction missions were once pseudo-clandestine skill checks, often with trained only skills and/or high DCs, that lead to a lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge-scratch my back-I scratch yours exchanges. These checks could be hard, but they weren't impossible. But the spirit of hidden agendas is lost when the missions are an open secret. Worse, they bog down play when folks are fixated on them over the actual objective of the scenario. Instead having a "going above and beyond" objective that the part can work collectively towards, openly, makes more sense and keeps the players invested in the actual mission.
Secondary objectives are often written with the Society's aims and interests in mind. Not the PC's and not their faction's. This is why in scenarios with faction plot content, you often see that members of that faction can instead earn their second prestige via the Faction goal route. The Society is Neutral, not Good. Their interests are sometimes served by less savory things.
Really, the expectation you'll get all your prestige in your career is, and always has been by design, unfounded and false. We've just had systems for years that people gamed and worked around to make sure they always got that second point. What we're seeing now are conditions for getting prestige be shored up to reflect the expected curve (~1.5 prestige per 4 hour scenario) being met with folks who don't run as written to make sure the SSC is achieved. Or worse, folks who predicate their build on max prestige.
tl;dr The system is starting to work as intended, which is that you won't get every Prestige Point possible. And it will only work if people run as written.
|
|
tl;dr The system is starting to work as intended, which is that you won't get every Prestige Point possible. And it will only work if people run as written.
Which apparently led to a *bunch of questioning* at GenCon during one of the specials because not enough of the tables did the secondary success condition.
So it does happen even during specials.
Actually, come to think of it, if there's a scenario that some of the players have GM'd before, and they deliberately *tank* the secondary mission objective or the GM de-emphasizes it so the table doesn't know it's an option and therefore is 'invisible' to the players, should the players who haven't played it before be punished for that?
|
|
tl;dr The system is starting to work as intended, which is that you won't get every Prestige Point possible. And it will only work if people run as written.Which apparently led to a *bunch of questioning* at GenCon during one of the specials because not enough of the tables did the secondary success condition.
So it does happen even during specials.
Actually, come to think of it, if there's a scenario that some of the players have GM'd before, and they deliberately *tank* the secondary mission objective or the GM de-emphasizes it so the table doesn't know it's an option and therefore is 'invisible' to the players, should the players who haven't played it before be punished for that?
** spoiler omitted **
Does the player tank it because they've run it, or because it's in-character for them to do so?
|
|
Does the player tank it because they've run it, or because it's in-character for them to do so?
"Expect Table Variation"?
Honestly, I couldn't tell you what leads to the mindset that causes that behavior.
I have seen folks who have deliberately ('on accident') make things difficult or impossible to attain (in retrospect, after play is done). And then argue the point with the GM for an hour.
I've also been part of a team that missed the second point during a scenario because even with everyone in the party helping and having the highest skill roll 'point' at the table, a finesse item roll bombed. THAT was an accident, and we as a table sort of shrugged and said 'Meh, things happen'...
|
|
It's possible to get the SSC in Stolen Heir without doing anything nasty, but you do have to beat a very high Diplomacy DC with the right NPC. You can bring down the DC by blackmailing him but even so it's hard. Just not impossible.
That's another problem I've got with the scenario. My GM ran it wrong and we weren't even given that option.
|
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
|
It's possible to get the SSC in Stolen Heir without doing anything nasty, but you do have to beat a very high Diplomacy DC with the right NPC. You can bring down the DC by blackmailing him but even so it's hard. Just not impossible.That's another problem I've got with the scenario. My GM ran it wrong and we weren't even given that option.
In my case, I feel that is a problem with the GM, not the scenario. We failed the SSC because we didn't make the K:Local to know who that NPC was, and so were never told later. He was just some random guy we never saw again. (Which is apparently not how it is supposed to go.)
|
|
Which apparently led to a *bunch of questioning* at GenCon during one of the specials because not enough of the tables did the secondary success condition.
I'm not sure, but I've heard it said that it's pretty common for GenCon multi-table specials to not be able to reach the best reward tier. (Probably due to the vast number of tables vs time component). It's still pretty incredible to be a part of IMO.
|
My issues with the bronze house is
Back on topic: I dislike the arbitrary success conditions. If the PCs are instructed to bring back artifacts in the briefing, but under the success condition it says they need to bring back at east 3 to count, then I will tell the players "bring back at least 3 artifacts." There is no way the players can read the author's mind to know how many is enough and if the VC wants a specific amount then I'd think they would say so. Pfs is played under time constraint. Hidden point systems encourage players to waste time trying to get extra points for fear they don't have enough to fulfil their secondary.
|
Some of them are just random, weird, arbitrary , or easily lost in the background. If you don't make a point of nudging the prestige macguffins forward to be interacted with your party will spend an extra hour per adventure poking at everything trying to find it.
Finding the balance is the really hard part when there's no clear path towards it in the scenario writeup. I don't want to steer the players directly to a Secondary Fame Point but I don't want to make it so hard they have to make a huge intuitive leap to find it.
Made-up example:
If the secondary success condition happens to involve getting information from an NPC you bump into in a bar (and the scenario doesn't have specific interactions) it can be really hard to give players the opportunity without driving them right to the point.
Bad: "Oh, lets see. There is a group of three dwarves at a table in the corner and behind the bar is the half-orc Bennigan that Drendle sent you to meet."
Still Bad: "There is a half-orc bartender matching the description Dreng gave you and three dwarves sitting at a table in the corner, one of whom is Savrin Decauix." "Who is Savrin Decauix? No one has mentioned that name yet." "Maybe we should find out."
Better: Have the rowdy dwarves keep interrupting Bennigan and give the players opportunities to interact with all of them.
|
Venture-Captain, North Carolina—Asheville
|
In my case, I feel that is a problem with the GM, not the scenario. We failed the SSC because we didn't make the K:Local to know who that NPC was, and so were never told later. He was just some random guy we never saw again. (Which is apparently not how it is supposed to go.)It's possible to get the SSC in Stolen Heir without doing anything nasty, but you do have to beat a very high Diplomacy DC with the right NPC. You can bring down the DC by blackmailing him but even so it's hard. Just not impossible.That's another problem I've got with the scenario. My GM ran it wrong and we weren't even given that option.
I concur. I try not to get mad at my radio just because someone decided to play KC and the Sunshine Band. Well, not that mad at the radio.
|
|
In my case, I feel that is a problem with the GM, not the scenario. We failed the SSC because we didn't make the K:Local to know who that NPC was, and so were never told later. He was just some random guy we never saw again. (Which is apparently not how it is supposed to go.)It's possible to get the SSC in Stolen Heir without doing anything nasty, but you do have to beat a very high Diplomacy DC with the right NPC. You can bring down the DC by blackmailing him but even so it's hard. Just not impossible.That's another problem I've got with the scenario. My GM ran it wrong and we weren't even given that option.I concur. I try not to get mad at my radio just because someone decided to play KC and the Sunshine Band. Well, not that mad at the radio.
** spoiler omitted **
My problems with this scenario are beyond just my GM, though. I've posted about this scenario more than enough previously and I don't really feel like going in depth about it again. If you want to find out my thoughts about it, a search through my post history should reveal all of my comments about it.
|
|
Some of them are just random, weird, arbitrary , or easily lost in the background. If you don't make a point of nudging the prestige macguffins forward to be interacted with your party will spend an extra hour per adventure poking at everything trying to find it.Finding the balance is the really hard part when there's no clear path towards it in the scenario writeup. I don't want to steer the players directly to a Secondary Fame Point but I don't want to make it so hard they have to make a huge intuitive leap to find it.
Made-up example:
If the secondary success condition happens to involve getting information from an NPC you bump into in a bar (and the scenario doesn't have specific interactions) it can be really hard to give players the opportunity without driving them right to the point.Bad: "Oh, lets see. There is a group of three dwarves at a table in the corner and behind the bar is the half-orc Bennigan that Drendle sent you to meet."
Still Bad: "There is a half-orc bartender matching the description Dreng gave you and three dwarves sitting at a table in the corner, one of whom is Savrin Decauix." "Who is Savrin Decauix? No one has mentioned that name yet." "Maybe we should find out."
Better: Have the rowdy dwarves keep interrupting Bennigan and give the players opportunities to interact with all of them.
worse: For every adventure you go on now the party tries to interact with EVERY described NPC, and they keep asking about NPCs you didn't describe yet.
|
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
|
Bronze House, building on what gnoams said
And DrParty as to season 7, my gaming $$ is limited. I have 0, 1, 2, parts of 3 and 4, and 5, and six. Both Bonekeeps, and the four star special. I've lots of scenarios I can run, and that doesn't include modules or APs (Running Carrion Hill on the 31st seems thematic). So I am going to be very careful when two scenarios a) run overlong, b) leave everyone at the table disgusted, not satisfied. Six Seconds from reading seems like a wonderful 'kids table' scenario with the fey, but it plays much different.
And this is coming from the guy who ran Black Waters for kids, and they enjoyed the spooky and the child saving.
|
|
tl;dr The system is starting to work as intended, which is that you won't get every Prestige Point possible. And it will only work if people run as written.Which apparently led to a *bunch of questioning* at GenCon during one of the specials because not enough of the tables did the secondary success condition.
So it does happen even during specials.
Actually, come to think of it, if there's a scenario that some of the players have GM'd before, and they deliberately *tank* the secondary mission objective or the GM de-emphasizes it so the table doesn't know it's an option and therefore is 'invisible' to the players, should the players who haven't played it before be punished for that?
** spoiler omitted **
At Gencon, no tables should have gotten both PP. Getting the second point requires getting an overall rating in the top tier (overwhelming success? The names elude me at the moment), or getting the next highest rating plus an extra condition. The run of Sky Key Solution at GenCon got the third highest rating, which meant that achieving both PP was not possible. Anybody that played 7-00 at Gencon should have gotten 1PP, which was announced shortly after the conclusion of the scenario.
|
|
That's just board culture. Calling it out won't cause people to stop explosive runing, putting scenario names under spoils, etc. Well, some lurker might fix their schtick I guess.
|
|
So what I'm generally hearing is to some degree, it is a failure on the GM's part to prep properly/understand the scenario before them. I can definitely sympathize with that; we have too many people who run cold (Bronze House was run cold for my table) and it hurts a lot when SSCs are usually very plot dependent.
|
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
|
So what I'm generally hearing is to some degree, it is a failure on the GM's part to prep properly/understand the scenario before them. I can definitely sympathize with that; we have too many people who run cold (Bronze House was run cold for my table) and it hurts a lot when SSCs are usually very plot dependent.
I found, that talking with your players at the conclusion of the scenario and telling them what is required to earn the primary and secondary prestige point, helps them understand why they did or didn't earn their reward.
Best case, it might make them more sensitive in that regard, and they might pay attention during briefings and ask sane questions.
|
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That said, scenarios could stand to do a better job calling out opportunities.
Out of anarchy has two sentences, one buried in a block of dialog. If the players miss the significance of that line, or the GM paraphrases too much, and the GM doesn't realize the importance of the second line, it is easy for the players to completely skip the interactions that would lead to the SSC.
Again, easier to do if the GM is running cold and hasn't read the scenario thread in the GM prep forum.
|
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
|
So what I'm generally hearing is to some degree, it is a failure on the GM's part to prep properly/understand the scenario before them. I can definitely sympathize with that; we have too many people who run cold (Bronze House was run cold for my table) and it hurts a lot when SSCs are usually very plot dependent.
I found, that talking with your players at the conclusion of the scenario and telling them what is required to earn the primary and secondary prestige point, helps them understand why they did or didn't earn their reward.
Best case, it might make them more sensitive in that regard, and they might pay attention during briefings and ask sane questions.
My wife is found of ending briefing Q&As with "Is there anything else we should know about this situation? Any special hazards or important people we should watch out for?"
|
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
When I ran six seconds, the oracle stuck his tongue out at the big bad, and got a diplomacy bonus in the process.
|
Venture-Captain, Germany—Rhein Main South
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In my experience the ssc is mostly done in my region, but i ran Horn of Aroden last weekend and the players said: "even if it costs us both Prestige i will do do this now -> has anyone a problem with that" I am glad they asked the table beforehand but they lost it because they did it anyway AND sabotaged it already.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In my experience the ssc is mostly done in my region, but i ran Horn of Aroden last weekend and the players said: "even if it costs us both Prestige i will do do this now -> has anyone a problem with that" I am glad they asked the table beforehand but they lost it because they did it anyway AND sabotaged it already.
** spoiler omitted **
The differences between a prince and a princess in that situation are absolutely amazing.
|
|
So what I'm generally hearing is to some degree, it is a failure on the GM's part to prep properly/understand the scenario before them. I can definitely sympathize with that; we have too many people who run cold (Bronze House was run cold for my table) and it hurts a lot when SSCs are usually very plot dependent.
I found, that talking with your players at the conclusion of the scenario and telling them what is required to earn the primary and secondary prestige point, helps them understand why they did or didn't earn their reward.
Best case, it might make them more sensitive in that regard, and they might pay attention during briefings and ask sane questions.
I'm a big fan of this as well. A lot of scenarios make more sense once the GM is able to be transparent about the mechanics and plot at play. I can't begin to count how many times I've run a scenarios months or years later and have that "Ohhhhhh" moment on things that made no sense when I was a player in it.
Briefings, well, YMMV. I really have no sympathy for folks (including myself), who don't engage with briefings or write down notes.
|
|
I'm a big fan of this as well. A lot of scenarios make more sense once the GM is able to be transparent about the mechanics and plot at play. I can't begin to count how many times I've run a scenarios months or years later and have that "Ohhhhhh" moment on things that made no sense when I was a player in it.Briefings, well, YMMV. I really have no sympathy for folks (including myself), who don't engage with briefings or write down notes.
That works fine as long as the GM doesn't go...
"Welp, since you didn't get X, you don't get the SSC. Sucks, but that's how it's written, sorry."
And leave it at that.
On the briefing thing:
My notes look like some mad conspiracy theorist's work so I'm very glad when someone who is say, a court reporter or such in their precise note-taking is present at a table during briefings.
HOWEVER!
On at least two scenarios because of my very emphasized points that were *barely* hinted at during the briefings we ended up gaining the (harder to get)SSC.
|
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The differences between a prince and a princess in that situation are absolutely amazing.In my experience the ssc is mostly done in my region, but i ran Horn of Aroden last weekend and the players said: "even if it costs us both Prestige i will do do this now -> has anyone a problem with that" I am glad they asked the table beforehand but they lost it because they did it anyway AND sabotaged it already.
** spoiler omitted **
Funny you should say that, the whole mess started when the boy called the Psychic (Tabitha Thrune, trait princess) something pedestrian, and she proceeded to slap him. Since that only dealt 1 damge the half orc clerc of DESNA showed her how to do it properly and slapped him properly. It all went downhill from there, but the players are mostly happy with their actions.
It was quite entertaining to watch from the other table, where I was running the excellent school of spirits.
|
|
Funny you should say that, the whole mess started when the boy called the Psychic (Tabitha Thrune, trait princess) something pedestrian, and she proceeded to slap him. Since that only dealt 1 damge the half orc clerc of DESNA showed her how to do it properly and slapped him properly. It all went downhill from there, but the players are mostly happy with their actions.
Which goes to the other side of the coin. Sometimes it might be more fun to (with entire party encouragement and consent) deliberately tank the other objective because it's much more entertaining.
HOWEVER: Expect Table variation.
|
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Eh. We stuck to summoning fiendish dogs to keep him up at night, putting poison ivy in his socks and so forth, all the while praising his heroics. At the end he was very glad to leave the adventuring to others, and never figured out we were behind it.
|
At this point, we decided to explore the dig, ran into the illusion guardian, and deciding that to stay and fight would be suicide, we found proof of thassilonain artifacts, but with no way to haul the wagons, we took a single vase as proof, and returned to town and got a stone to flesh for our bard, and returned to see if we could further explore the compound.
Of course at this point the wagons were gone and the site was abandoned.
We moved on to the Bronze House with out proof, but without the wagons we were unable to talk our way in as merchants and had to go in the front door using our writ. When we heard the destruction of evidence, we went into stop it, and did not have any combat in the house, but the guards were called and we were arrested.
Because we didn't actually kill anyone in town, we didn't lose 5 PP, but we got nothing for the scenario either.
It was basically impossible for our group to succeed in this scenario. There is only one path to success, which is horrible adventure design.