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So, recently I have had the opportunity to discuss the issue of reporting with some players and the topic that seemed to illicit the most passionate response was that of reporting lag time. Some didn't seem to care how long it took to report an event, but the majority felt it was disrespectful to the players/GMs if the reporting took very long. The average expectation seemed to be in the 1-2 week range, but that varied depending on if we were talking about convention reporting vs. gameday reporting. Typically the former was given a bit more latitude due to the volume that had to be reported; upwards of four weeks. But, the caveat was that if there were soo many tables to report that it would take more than a few weeks, there should be more than one person reporting. Some even said the volume is not relevent because a good coordinator would delegate reporting to a team if the volume was large so they would be reported without delay.
When it came to gamedays, anything more than a week caused grumbling. At worst, the session should be reported before the next scheduled event. In fact, many seemed to think that gamedays could easily be reported at the table, immediately after the chronicle sheets were completed. My local VC usually does this and it is quite effective.
Now, of course this is all a very small data pool and my results are certainly not enough to say they represent the general feelings. So, I am interested to hear from the community. Not so much about what IS being done, but moreso, what you want to be done. What do you feel is a reasonable time expectation? How soon before you get irritated that your results have not been reported?
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I usually try to do it by the next day. How awake I am when i finally get home around midnight and whether i remember to bring my bag in with me at are big factors.
I have no life though. As long as it gets reported before I forget that I played the scenario its fine, because the only use for me for reporting is to check to see if scenarios are available for me to play or not. Other people are busy and I understand if they don't get around to the boring paperworky part of DMing.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I used to take my sweet time about it because I loathe the website interface for reporting. Also because of the change to adding venues to scenarios; I have to wait until the event "owner" adds scenarios before I can report.
Something I found makes my life substantially easier: maintain a spreadsheet of players/PCs I've reported before. If someone wrote down a number illegibly there's a fair chance I can look it up.
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Something I found makes my life substantially easier: maintain a spreadsheet of players/PCs I've reported before. If someone wrote down a number illegibly there's a fair chance I can look it up.
Dead tree sign in book for the win. I WILL lose a piece of paper. I MIGHT not lose a journal.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Dead tree sign in book for the win. I WILL lose a piece of paper. I MIGHT not lose a journal.
Something I found makes my life substantially easier: maintain a spreadsheet of players/PCs I've reported before. If someone wrote down a number illegibly there's a fair chance I can look it up.
That works too I suppose. The general point is to collect as many (hopefully identical) PFS numbers for a player as possible.
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Reasonable? 2-3 weeks seems good. I just sent my tables from TraCon Hitpoint to our VL. The con was in 11/28-29. Irritated? After about a year, maybe. If it's nothing too grand, say a quick evergreen with friends while we wait for something else or a table for a bunch of greenhorns who just want to try the system, then sure, wait a year or two: It might never get reported. But something like a multi-table special should be up, pronto.
Con games in general should get in the system fast since information has a tendency to vanish as the days pass and the more international/statial a convention is the harder it gets to find or ask for info once it's over.
Proper management is key, of course, but we're all human.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Conventions—Gen Con
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I usually try to have it reported that day or the next. My friend Don can take forever- sometimes allowing multiple sessions to stack up before getting around to it. This is pretty annoying, but they are home games so we let him slide.
When we run games for stores, however, we make sure that reporting is done asap.
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My Expectations for reporting are based on how long it takes me to report. I can only base it on experience.
1 Day for game days
2 days for conventions with less then 50 tables.
I have no experience with more then 50 tables so I don't have expectations to base on, but I have been surprised when conventions of 50-100 tables take weeks to months to report.
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For me it depends on what time the session ends. If we finish early or on time then I can usually just get online and report the session there at the table. If it goes long I will wait to do reporting in lieu of getting my stuff together and getting home, in this case it can take a couple of days to a week for me to get it reported.
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Dead tree sign in book for the win. I WILL lose a piece of paper. I MIGHT not lose a journal.
Something I found makes my life substantially easier: maintain a spreadsheet of players/PCs I've reported before. If someone wrote down a number illegibly there's a fair chance I can look it up.
Oh this is a tempting idea, I have access to a cirlock binding machine I could print up a fair number of generic reporting sheets, with more actual room for people to write, and bind the damn thing.
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Reporting games should be done quickly, because some folks depend on the reporting system to double-check their paperwork. GM's depend on it for their in-game benefits (re-roll bonus) that can literally be the difference between life and death.
I know it took at least an extra month or two to get to 5 GM stars, because I had a half-dozen games that I had GM'd, not taken a GM Chronicle for (and so had no paper record of it), and were never reported by the coordinator. (Yes, yes, my GM'ing also slowed *way* down when I wasn't a V-O any more. Sue me. ;) Had to track a few down from my warhorn records.
REPORT! comes before EXPLORE! and COOPERATE! in the motto, after all.
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I have a very low tolerance for lag on reporting, in part because I know how fast it can pile up. The coordinator I interact with the most is VERY good about reporting from the store and it is always a pleasant experience interacting with her.
IMO, the ideal is reporting at the end of the event, though I know this is impractical for some events. During conventions, I think that part of HQ's duties should include reporting after each slot - GMs turn in their sign-up sheets after the table wraps up, but before the next slot, so HQ then can enter it immediately. This can have all sorts of helpful impacts besides avoiding lost sheets, not least of which is extra GM stars suddenly being available for rerolls and recognition. How awesome is it to say during a con that someone hit 5 stars that day? I think it's great, in part because I know what some of our MN folks have done in the grand race to 150.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Illinois—Champaign-Urbana
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I often track and cross-check my sessions using the reporting system (I was doing it when I spotted this thread) so reporting is important to me. I'm excited if it shows up within two days and satisfied if it's reported within two weeks. My experience has been that if an event is not reported within three weeks than it usually never gets reported. I've experienced only a few cases of events being reported more than three weeks after they are played, and I usually assume the data is lost forever after a month. As a player I can live with it, though I find it annoying. As a GM I find it very frustrating to run a table that is not reported by my event coordinator within a week or two. It can dampen my enthusiasm for GMing at a particular venue if they didn't report my table last time. I don't GM that often and I'm picky about things when I do ;-)
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When I run I try to have my games reported within a day or so. It only takes a few minutes to do.
When I am a player, I would expect that a game should be reported within a month of when the session was played (give or take a week) regardless of if it was a regular weekly session, a game day or a convention. Mostly this expectation has been met but there have been times when it has not. I know that the paper chronicles are the official record but it is nice to be able to see all my sessions online.
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I wonder what the average lag actually is? I'm firmly of the opinion that the reporting interface is abysmal and that this makes reporting a far, far more onerous and boring chore than it should be. And people tend to put off boring and onerous chores.
[Pause for the usual suspects chiming in on how trivial and fun and quick the process is]
The process is sufficiently onerous that even Venture Captains sometimes fail to report sessions at all, let alone in a timely fashion.
I suspect that game days actually have a worse average lag than Cons. Onerous boring chores aren't too bad as occasional events, as weekly events they can start to REALLY drag.
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Doesn't really matter that the system isn't as good as we'd like it. Part of the job is reporting, and it needs to be done.
Sure, it needs to be done. But its NOT a job. It's an unpaid hobby activity. And people fail to do or put off as long as humanly possible boring, onerous chores even when they ARE a part of an actual job.
The sheer fact that this thread exists kinda shows that slow or non reporting is, in fact, an issue.
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I'd throw in as well with about a week turnaround time for local games. I think a month is understandable for cons, but the longer a game goes without reporting the harder it is to fix reporting sheet errors. I haven't always held myself to that standard, but they do all get reported eventually and I haven't missed one yet.
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A week is about the longest I expect for a gameday. Conventions are much more variable. I prefer to have reporting done the night of, something that has been fairly easy given the volume of games lately. I'm hoping for Phoenix Comicon to be reported as sessions sheets are turned in. We'll see how well that works.
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it takes longer than that to get over the con crud...My Expectations for reporting are based on how long it takes me to report. I can only base it on experience.
1 Day for game days
2 days for conventions with less then 50 tables.
You can report games while you have con crud.
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Doesn't really matter that the system isn't as good as we'd like it. Part of the job is reporting, and it needs to be done.
Sure, it needs to be done. But its NOT a job. It's an unpaid hobby activity. And people fail to do or put off as long as humanly possible boring, onerous chores even when they ARE a part of an actual job.
The sheer fact that this thread exists kinda shows that slow or non reporting is, in fact, an issue.
I'm not going to sit here and say it's fun. But onerous is certainly a gross hyperbole. It takes about 30 seconds to 2 minutes to report a single session. If that's onerous...
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Venture-Lieutenant, California—Los Angeles (South Bay)
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I usually try to report within a few days of an event. I consider it important to players to make sure that everything is up to date.
One problem that I can see is having a GM who does not get the information to the reporting GM. In this case, is it better to designate more than one reporting person?
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Sure, it needs to be done. But its NOT a job. It's an unpaid hobby activity. And people fail to do or put off as long as humanly possible boring, onerous chores even when they ARE a part of an actual job.
The sheer fact that this thread exists kinda shows that slow or non reporting is, in fact, an issue.
Of course it's an issue - but it's mostly an issue because of procrastination, and not because it's some "onerous" task. Keeping Chronicles and ITS could be called "onerous", too - but it's the rule, and you either do it or don't play. Timely reporting is (should be) the same.
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Followup question... how long should it take when you report a problem with a report that someone else issued ... i have some issues that I have reported 8 or 9 times over the last 14 months...
I've had issues misreported that I sent in requests to fix and never been fixed years later.
The answer I always here is paper copies trump the database because of how many errors there are in the system. I've had scenarios registered to the wrong character, under the wrong system (core vs. normal).
One of the big one's I've encountered was someone in another state reporting scenarios under my SO's number, he's never been to the state let alone played PFS there. We've emailed them going the person who played this may want credit and never heard back, and it's never been changed.
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Your best bet is to get in contact with your local Venture Captain. They have a wider access than your Venture Lieutenants and are likely much less busy than the Paizo staff. Let them know which session is in error and what the correct information is and they should be able to handle it for you. If you don't have access to a VC or they have too high a workload, try asking around. Some of us have more time than others and can help you out too.
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Your paper chronicle is the thing that really matters!
If your GM hasn't provides one, go and ask (him/her)/the local organizer/VA/VL/VC/RVC/CC for one (in that order)
For GMs at cons the reporting is critical for earning stars, especially for specials. Tthe chronically may be sufficient, but it is easier if the number in the reporting system is accurate.
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My expectation is the day of the event. Next day is acceptable and happens often (usually when games run up to closing time). We usually have a player reporting while the GM is finishing chronicles.
I'm curious why the extra step at con? That is: GMs reporting to HQ, then HQ reporting. Is it just be because session 1 runs right up to session 2 time-wise? Is it lack of internet?
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I'm curious why the extra step at con? That is: GMs reporting to HQ, then HQ reporting. Is it just be because session 1 runs right up to session 2 time-wise? Is it lack of internet?
Most places I have been don't have access to the reporting site at the HQ desk, don't have registered reporters on the HQ staff, and sometimes don't even have HQ staff to do reporting.
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Expectations: game day (1 week), conventions (1 month).
Having said that, I think the *goal* of reporting should be 1 week in all cases, because when it drags on I find that things never get reported at all.
When things don't get reported, as a player it's annoying but livable. As a GM, I'm irritated, and if I was GMing a special it would demotivate me to not do it again.
This year, I've had all of my sessions at a major convention 6 months ago not reported (and I don't believe they ever will be) and another major convention in November (U-Con) was also not reported. I'm still holding out hope for U-Con. Luckily I was only a player.
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This year, I've had all of my sessions at a major convention 6 months ago not reported (and I don't believe they ever will be) and another major convention in November (U-Con) was also not reported. I'm still holding out hope for U-Con. Luckily I was only a player.
That sucks. I'm still waiting on a session from GenCon, which I've pretty much given up on, but I was just a player.
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I'm curious why the extra step at con? That is: GMs reporting to HQ, then HQ reporting. Is it just be because session 1 runs right up to session 2 time-wise? Is it lack of internet?
The primary reason for this is that the standard system only allows the creator of the event in Paizo's system to report. The creator can manually enter the avatar names of additional reporters, but in the case of conventions, that is a large list (up to hundreds) of GMs. It is easier to just have them submit the reporting sheets to HQ.
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This year, I've had all of my sessions at a major convention 6 months ago not reported (and I don't believe they ever will be) and another major convention in November (U-Con) was also not reported. I'm still holding out hope for U-Con. Luckily I was only a player.
If the problem is systemic of a specific area or VO, and you have already discussed the issue with the event organizer/s and VL/VC, you should notify the RVC. Perhaps it was just your event/s that are missing, but if an entire convention failed to be reported, that is a much larger problem.