Necessity of Pathfinder Card Game Society Recorded Sessions?


Pathfinder Adventure Card Society


It doesn't appear that the Pathfinder card game society scenario that I played in at GenCon has been recorded online by our GM. Is an up to date online record a requirement to play in future card game society events, or is it sufficient to simply show up with a current log of completed scenarios?

Thanks in advance!


Do you mean recorded or REPORTED? GMs are supposed to report sessions, or their coordinator is, if it's at a con.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Your printed chronicles are the official record. The online reporting is just a useful backup.

If your sessions aren't reported, you can attempt to contact the Venture Officers about getting them added by providing the relevant information. However, this can be a slow process due to the many responsibilities of the VOs.

Grand Lodge

TriOmegaZero wrote:
Your printed chronicles are the official record. The online reporting is just a useful backup.

Whether RPG or ACG, these chronicles are the history of your adventuring with your characters. The online reporting is used not only as a backup but as tracking for Paizo to see what is being played and where. Data mining.

Silver Crusade 4/5 ***

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My experience is that while RPG scenarios are almost always reported (because they're required for GMs to get their stars), ACG scenarios are reported more sporadically. My local group has often mused that there should be some incentive to reporting. I'm at a loss as to what that could be though.

Off the top of my head, I'm thinking it would have to be based off of scenarios played, since there is no separate reporting for organizing a game. Maybe for every x scenarios you've played, you can add +1 to your reroll, with the caveat that you can't exceed the maximum value of the die rerolled. This could mimic adding GM stars to rerolls.


I know that the GM for my table for the special at GenCon told us not to sign in for each scenario (we did the first two but then it got rough with the taking down and setting up of the next scenario) and then said we didn't need to bother signing in for the full adventure. So my Shardra has made it through the special but the only evidence is my chronicle sheet. :)


I'm embarrassed to admit this.... but partway through Season of the Righteous, the store we play PACG at downsized, which included firing the guy who had been handling all the reporting. (He and his brother had each been running a table, and that went away too.)

My group at the last remaining table looked at each other and said, "Do you plan on playing these characters anywhere else?" The answer was No. So we didn't bother reporting our sessions, or even filling out chronicle sheets. I've felt compunction about this (but not enough to do the work).

I have wondered how often this happens, and how much PACG OP play is flying under the radar.

Lone Shark Games

I'm more embarrassed to admit that I have only 2 sessions of pacg play recorded for me, which is a horrible horrible lie, even if I do have an excuse of most of them being playtesting of one sort or another, and of starting a new pfs # last year when I couldn't find my old number after moving. :)

* Contributor

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Virtually all of our organized play is unreported. I keep all our play in a journal with scenario played, upgrades, and so on, but I rarely found the time to input those into the system.

It's particularly frustrating when I just keep getting the "character ineligible" over and over, when we play through with different characters. That was sensible for the RPG but not the card game. Being told I my entries were invalid when I took the time to input the information really killed my incentive to input the information again.

Shadow Lodge 4/5 *** Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant

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<sigh> Yeah... most of our PACG play goes unreported. A lot of it is because of issues we had when it was first implemented, though honestly a lot of it had to do with the difficulty of Adventure 2 of Season of the Righteous. We kept failing scenario after scenario and it got embarrassing/frustrating having to report loss after loss.

We keep our chronicles updated when we play, but reporting has definitely taken a backseat.

Grand Lodge

Keith Richmond wrote:
I'm more embarrassed to admit that I have only 2 sessions of pacg play recorded for me, which is a horrible horrible lie, even if I do have an excuse of most of them being playtesting of one sort or another, and of starting a new pfs # last year when I couldn't find my old number after moving. :)

When I log into paizo.com and go to My Account, it tells me my number in the Pathfinder Society section.

Scarab Sages

I like everything to be reported - even the home game I did to prepare for the "interactive special." I really hope the Cosmic Captive card scenario becomes available for reporting - I would love to see that notch checked off on Heggal's belt.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

If you're not reporting your sessions, we can't tell how many people are playing, and that makes it really hard to tell whether or not the program is worthwhile. Please report your play sessions.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/55/5 **

Pathfinder Maps, Rulebook, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I need to report all the session I have then.
I've faithfully signed all of them up on tracking sheets, just never got around to reporting them.

Sovereign Court 4/5 * Organized Play Coordinator

Part of the issue is with organizers collecting session sheets from tables. We are working to make session sheets more available and getting the word out about the importance of reporting.

On that note, Chris Lambertz helped me investigate why 8-00 The Cosmic Captive wasn't showing up as reportable. We fixed the issue and it is now available as the last entries under the "Season of the Runelords" subsection in Event Setup. Any event coordinator that has issues adding it to their event may email me at tonya.woldridge@paizo.com for assistance.


Vic Wertz wrote:
If you're not reporting your sessions, we can't tell how many people are playing, and that makes it really hard to tell whether or not the program is worthwhile. Please report your play sessions.

This does make me feel even worse...

But, as I understand it, for the RPG the person reporting the session gains a personal benefit. It shouldn't be necessary, but it would help the system if the person reporting PACG sessions received a benefit too.

If this is often a non-player, perhaps it could be a transferable reward.

Shadow Lodge 4/5 *** Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant

There's no benefit for a person to report an RPG vs ACG. The GM gets a benefit, but the GM isn't always the one reporting.


And then the issue comes down to "who is actually organizing the table?" My group is very good about splitting the setup and teardown duties even though I organize the session.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

The revised Guide is more clear that if you're the organizer, you're responsible for reporting it. (Of course, just because you're responsible doesn't mean you can't delegate.)


Eric Clingenpeel wrote:
There's no benefit for a person to report an RPG vs ACG. The GM gets a benefit, but the GM isn't always the one reporting.

OK, not being an RPG player, I mischaracterized it.

But the GM wouldn't get the benefit if the session wasn't reported, correct? That's my point.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Eliandra Giltessan wrote:
My local group has often mused that there should be some incentive to reporting. I'm at a loss as to what that could be though.

If you have any great ideas, let us know.

The reward has to be good enough to incentivize you, but not so good that it gives you an imbalance, even though it's only going to the person who reports the table.

There's also the question of whether it's even fair to limit the reward to just the reporter after the whole table has played (though I have to admit to kind of liking the idea of multiple players vying for the privilege of being the one who gets to report it)... but if you *don't* limit the reward to just one person, then it effectively becomes a reward everyone is getting every time, and it's hard *not* to overpower that.


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If the reward was something the reporter could apply to anyone at that table, that would work. Like how about for every x tables you report you get randomly assigned a type of boon and can add a card of that type from the box with the current adventure deck number to the upgrade pool for the table?


I'd like something like that, but the issue is probably a non-regular group - when do you apply it?

Shadow Lodge 4/5 Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West

Vic Wertz wrote:
Eliandra Giltessan wrote:
My local group has often mused that there should be some incentive to reporting. I'm at a loss as to what that could be though.

If you have any great ideas, let us know.

Unfortunately it's going to be hard to find a solution that works for the FLGS that runs PACG once a week (and is probably relying on the SO to handle reporting) without giving out unearned rewards at a convention (when the games are likely to be reported by the convention organisers).


JohnF wrote:
Vic Wertz wrote:
Eliandra Giltessan wrote:
My local group has often mused that there should be some incentive to reporting. I'm at a loss as to what that could be though.

If you have any great ideas, let us know.

Unfortunately it's going to be hard to find a solution that works for the FLGS that runs PACG once a week (and is probably relying on the SO to handle reporting) without giving out unearned rewards at a convention (when the games are likely to be reported by the convention organisers).

Convention organizers are likely to know how many tables an ACG table organizer has started - knowing who to assign credit isn't the problem, it's more of a how.

Silver Crusade 4/5 ***

My thought would be that it would be based off of sessions played, but the numbers would be a lot higher than the GM star numbers. Like for every 50 sessions played, you could put a non-basic card in the starting deck of a character. That would also incentivize the table to encourage the GM to report.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Eliandra Giltessan wrote:
My thought would be that it would be based off of sessions played, but the numbers would be a lot higher than the GM star numbers. Like for every 50 sessions played, you could put a non-basic card in the starting deck of a character. That would also incentivize the table to encourage the GM to report.

That's a good direction to take this. Other ideas?


The only thing there might be with how often you start a character. Perhaps something where X sessions played = 1 additional upgrade would be worth looking at as well.


I think Eliandra's suggestion is good, but conventions will often have people demoing card game and I want to incentivize people to volunteer in those situations as well. If we implement something like this can we have "demo credit" allowing people to report demo tables at a con (we already do this in some conventions where people only GM quests in PFSRPG)?

@hawkmoon: a season is around 25-ish to 30 sessions long. If you do a normal weekly thing without conventions you'd get one card upgrade every 2 seasons, I don't think having more than 1 would come up very often, unless your region is so saturated with PFSACG that you get 3-4 places to play a week. And if you do, I'd like to talk to your VL or VC!

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

I'm a generally solo player that dutifully reports all my sessions. Occasionally my wife joins me or I play at Gen Con; but 90% of the time, solo. It's tough for me to have a consistent time each week that I could get out and play at a store.

I'm just throwing that out there because any incentive or reward for reporting, is something that people playing by themselves at home will likely qualify for as long as they report their solo sessions. So if it ends up being a group thing it doesn't incentivize solo players to report.

One thing that might be fun and shouldn't terribly unbalance the game might be to allow characters from one class deck to be played with another - something like "You can play a character from the Cleric deck using the Warpriest deck." We already have something similar with AP character unlocks, and this would help people that like the earlier CD characters but are not as happy with the initial deck lists.

I also hope it's retroactive...I'm approaching 100 sessions reported after having played all three seasons so far.


Vic Wertz wrote:
Eliandra Giltessan wrote:
My thought would be that it would be based off of sessions played, but the numbers would be a lot higher than the GM star numbers. Like for every 50 sessions played, you could put a non-basic card in the starting deck of a character. That would also incentivize the table to encourage the GM to report.
That's a good direction to take this. Other ideas?

I really like this idea, though it seems like each season contains about 30 scenarios, so 50 may be a bit on the high side. What about making it 40 scenarios? That way it doesn't feel like you need to do 2 seasons to get a small bonus at the start of the 3rd, but it's still more scenarios than you'd encounter during a normal play through of a single season (even assuming you fail a few scenarios & have to replay them), so it still feels like something you have to work for, instead of just getting it automatically for completing the season. It also might encourage people to re-run scenarios that others missed, since those extra handful of scenarios will get them closer to a reward for the next season.


Speaking of reporting sessions, I can't report Season of the Plundered Tombs scenarios yet, can we get that functionality in soon?


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Vic Wertz wrote:
Eliandra Giltessan wrote:
My thought would be that it would be based off of sessions played, but the numbers would be a lot higher than the GM star numbers. Like for every 50 sessions played, you could put a non-basic card in the starting deck of a character. That would also incentivize the table to encourage the GM to report.
That's a good direction to take this. Other ideas?

Random stream of thought:

1. For above idea, consider 30 scenarios reported instead of 50, this would allow you to get the benefit for the beginning of the next season since each season is typically 30 scenarios (6 adventures, 5 scenarios per adventure). Less than 30 would also be fine, 50 seems a bit much.
2. Allow you to trade one card with another player at the beginning of a session (normally allowed by home game rules, but forbidden by the Guide). The cards traded don't need to be the same type.
3. Give you a mulligan on your starting hand, allowing you to shuffle up your deck and try again even if you drew a valid hand.
4. Duplicate one of the accessory powers, either the discard a card to draw a card power or the re-roll.
5. Extra die bump.
6. Give credit to everyone reported instead of just the person doing the reporting. Perhaps give extra credit to organizers (like they get 1.1 credits per scenario instead of just 1), with a checkbox on the reporting form to indicate who organized the session. This rewards people for putting the effort in to get people together and play without making it a competition on who gets to actually report it online. It is a cooperative game, after all.
7. Choose a skill not listed on your character card. You gain that skill. Its die is d6 and it is not based on any other skills.

5/5 5/5 Venture-Captain, Idaho—Boise

I like the idea of the die bump. our weekly group had been going through Season of the Runelords when we got four new players. I'm not sad about this because we are averaging 2-3 tables a week again; but the majority ruled for EVERYONE to start over as low level characters. Instead of going through every scenario, we are skipping ones we don't like (I'm looking at you 2-2b) and doing the bare necessity to level. We want to be able to play SEason of the Plundered Tombs soon. The die bump incentive is really nice because I realized as I was playing my Grazzle at Extra Life this weekend,even though he is now tier 3, he doesn't have any die bumps except for the one he just earned by completing one whole tier block of WotR 2.

I also like the re-roll idea. These are all some really good ideas. I also like if you report so many sessions, you can take an additional upgrade. I don't think this one is as useful because I'm not one to take that many upgrades. I'm the one to pass to players who need it more.


skizzerz wrote:

1. For above idea, consider 30 scenarios reported instead of 50, this would allow you to get the benefit for the beginning of the next season since each season is typically 30 scenarios (6 adventures, 5 scenarios per adventure). Less than 30 would also be fine, 50 seems a bit much.

+1 to this


Maybe reporting a certain number allows you to pool your die bumps? For example, I have 4 tier 7 characters, most of whom have extra die bumps that are just going to wallow away on their chronicle sheets, unused. So if you're playing solo, you can resurrect yourself BEFORE adventure 4 (lol).

Alternatively, allowing you to start a character fresh with a feat? Or non-basic cards?


Vic Wertz wrote:
Eliandra Giltessan wrote:
My local group has often mused that there should be some incentive to reporting. I'm at a loss as to what that could be though.

If you have any great ideas, let us know.

The reward has to be good enough to incentivize you, but not so good that it gives you an imbalance, even though it's only going to the person who reports the table.

There's also the question of whether it's even fair to limit the reward to just the reporter after the whole table has played (though I have to admit to kind of liking the idea of multiple players vying for the privilege of being the one who gets to report it)... but if you *don't* limit the reward to just one person, then it effectively becomes a reward everyone is getting every time, and it's hard *not* to overpower that.

Hello Everyone,

I know that this thread has grown a little stagnant, but I still wanted to post this to see what others think. Some of these ideas are branched out from others along with my personal take on the topic.

So the PFS GM Table Stars work in the following fashion:

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"GM Stars

In order to both encourage more reporting from GMs and event coordinators and to offer a “bragging rights” type of reward for GMs, Pathfinder Society Organized Play offers a GM ranking system. This system uses stars to denote the activity and experience of a given GM. The
stars are visible on your Pathfinder Society ID card, which you can download from paizo.com/Pathfinder Society and print off each time you gain another star. You can earn up to four stars for running (and reporting) a certain number of games, as follows.

• 10 sessions reported as GM = 1 star
• 30 sessions reported as GM = 2 stars
• 60 sessions reported as GM = 3 stars
• 100 sessions reported as GM = 4 stars

You are eligible to obtain a fifth star based on a number of criteria. To obtain a fifth star, you must accomplish the following achievements.

First, a potential 5-Star GM must have run a total
of 150 Pathfinder Society game sessions, including at least 50 different adventures and 10 or more Specials or Exclusive events over your entire history as a GM.

Second, once you qualify to be a 5-Star GM, you must work with your Venture-Captain to arrange to run a Pathfinder Society session in the presence of a Paizo staff member, a Venture-Captain, or a Venture-Lieutenant. This designated Paizo representative will evaluate your rules knowledge, improvisational skills, preparation, and ability to provide a fair and fun experience for Pathfinder Society players.

Finally, at the recommendation of the Paizo representative, you may be granted a 5th star, which will be noted on your paizo.com user profile, on your Pathfinder Society membership card, and on your posts to the Pathfinder Society message board at paizo.com. Paizo announces and recognizes all 5-Star GMs by name at both Paizo Con and Gen Con annually. There may be special five-star GM events and possibly even future five-star GM rewards (in addition to the
existing four-star GM rewards)."

-----------------------------------------------------------

I don't think that we should have exactly the same benefits due to the nature that theirs revolves around, but I do agree that we should get some benefits for being long standing players and possibly organizers as well.

The standard for advancement still plays a role in this as this is meant to compliment the current way things are accomplished. In that I mean that success 01, 02 and 04 for an Adventure award a skill, power and card feat respectively. Also, everything that has been reported be retroactively awarded if the player does infact meet the progression points that I mention below. Lastly, this does account for general replaying of scenarios.

So here's where my thoughts and a little bit of inspirations from this thread come in.

Instead of 'Stars', I think that we should have circles denote our group as a whole. Not an open circle like a hole, but a closed circle like you would fill in on a scanable test. It would represent cooperation and also our style of play being that everything is in rounds with a minimum of five and a maximum of thirty depending on the players you have at your table that also could be round. Ultimately, it wouldn't matter what color they were represented as, but I think that a nice middle of the light spectrum green would be good. Again, no real preference unless they wanted to let us have a purple color or something to the nature of '#A54EFF'. The following is an example of the color I mean:

-----------------------------------------------------------

https://www.hexdictionary.com/hex/A54EFF

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The Player Progression for circles would be as follows with each session earning one point per session reported:

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O = 50
OO = 100
OOO = 200
OOOO = 400
OOOOO = 800

-----------------------------------------------------------

This Player Progression follows the general equation (x * 10 * 0.2) and would not need to go past five stars until / if the RPG side decides to add more stars down the road. This would entitle the following benefits to all players on each of their characters:

-----------------------------------------------------------

50 Sessions = Upgrade One 'B Basic' to One 'B Normal'; 'B Elite' if none exist.
100 Sessions = Upgrade One 'B Basic' to One 'B Normal'; 'B Elite' if none exist.
150 Sessions = Gain One Die Bump and Note it on your Character Sheet Blank Space.
200 Sessions = Upgrade One 'B Basic' with One 'B Normal'; 'B Elite' if none exist.
250 Sessions = Upgrade One 'B Basic' with One 'B Normal'; 'B Elite' if none exist.
300 Sessions = Gain One Skill Feat and Note it on your Character Sheet Blank Space.
350 Sessions = Upgrade One 'B Basic' with One 'B Normal'; 'B Elite' if none exist.
400 Sessions = Upgrade One 'B Basic' with One 'B Normal'; 'B Elite' if none exist.
450 Sessions = Gain One Die Bump and Note it on your Character Sheet Blank Space.
500 Sessions = Re-Roll One Die on One Check Per Session.
550 Sessions = Upgrade One 'B Normal' with One 'B Elite'.
600 Sessions = Gain One Power Feat and Note it on your Character Sheet Blank Space.
650 Sessions = Upgrade One 'B Normal' with One 'B Elite'.
700 Sessions = Upgrade One 'B Normal' with One 'B Elite'.
750 Sessions = Gain One Die Bump and Note it on your Character Sheet Blank Space.
800 Sessions = Upgrade One 'B Normal' with One 'B Elite'.
850 Sessions = Upgrade One 'B Normal' with One 'B Elite'.
900 Sessions = Gain One Card Feat and Note it on your Character Sheet Blank Space.
950 Sessions = Upgrade One 'B Normal' with One 'B Elite'.
1000 Sessions = Re-Roll All Dice on One Check Per Session.

-----------------------------------------------------------

This will give you enough 'Die Bumps' to resurrect a character once and also get you started out with a nice benefit of extra feats. If for some reason a character runs out of feats that they can take, they would receive no additional benefits. Ultimately, this should not make characters too powerful aside from maybe some of the Adventure One Scenarios as the card upgrades are only for 'B' Series cards. The reason I like the idea about using the 'B' Series is so that you don't have to start so far back with banished cards.

Organizers would go along the same progression path for their benefits, but I also wanted to ensure that Organizers received the extra added benefit of a fast track. I think this should be whoever owns the Base Box and Adventures should receive the fast track credit. In the event that you borrow a store copy or convention copy, it could be whomever is nominated from the group. Overall it could look something like the following:

-----------------------------------------------------------

Player ( X ) --- Organizer ( X * 1.1 )

01 --- 01.1
01 --- 02.2
01 --- 03.3
01 --- 04.4
01 --- 05.5
01 --- 06.6
01 --- 07.7
01 --- 08.8
01 --- 09.9
01 --- 11.0
ETC... --- ETC...

-----------------------------------------------------------

The only issue I can immediately see with this is faux reporting to earn the extra benefits, albeit an extensive process, but even this can be done on the RPG side. I think that there should be a cap of six sessions per day to ensure that it would cut down on the inherent ability to cheat. This would make it a minimum of 167 days to get to that 1,000 session mark in the case of a Standard Player and 152 days in the case of an Organizer In all actuality, if one person is to truly play six sessions, it should take anywhere from five hours to ten hours depending on a myriad of factors. I don't personally know anyone who has time for antics such as these, but some of you out there might.

Again, these are just my thoughts and a little bit mixed in from you guys. I would like to know what you think.

Regards,

Snerrak

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

Snerrak,

I like the basic concept here but I have some issues with your specifics. First, the progression of cards sort of goes Basic->Elite->"Normal." Elite cards are eventually removed from the box but "normal" cards never are.

Overall the reward system is too complicated. Also it seems to be tied to one specific character for most of it, which makes it far less appealing as each thing is a "one and done." Also, I think your proposed ratio of sessions is out of whack - you can do about 2.5 card games sessions in the time for one RPG session, so that seems like a better ratio than 5 to 1.

One issue with giving too many game rewards is that unlike RPG GMs, the session reporter is likely a player as well. You don't want to sit down with a "new" character who has a deck made out of a bunch of non-Basic cards and multiple feats checked while your normal fellow players, who play with you all the time but don't report the table, get nothing.


ryric wrote:

Snerrak,

I like the basic concept here but I have some issues with your specifics. First, the progression of cards sort of goes Basic->Elite->"Normal." Elite cards are eventually removed from the box but "normal" cards never are.

Overall the reward system is too complicated. Also it seems to be tied to one specific character for most of it, which makes it far less appealing as each thing is a "one and done." Also, I think your proposed ratio of sessions is out of whack - you can do about 2.5 card games sessions in the time for one RPG session, so that seems like a better ratio than 5 to 1.

One issue with giving too many game rewards is that unlike RPG GMs, the session reporter is likely a player as well. You don't want to sit down with a "new" character who has a deck made out of a bunch of non-Basic cards and multiple feats checked while your normal fellow players, who play with you all the time but don't report the table, get nothing.

Hello Ryric,

As I understand it, you can replay the scenarios as many times as you want provided that you are not out of the one above or below for Adventure number. So in essence, you can play a really simple scenario 50 times and then receive the reward.

"You can replay any Adventure Card Guild scenario as many times as you like, as long as your character is of the appropriate tier (see Appendix 1: Tier Advancement System). When you replay a scenario, you do not gain the scenario, adventure, Adventure Path, or tier rewards, but you can upgrade your deck." - Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild Guide Version 4.2; Page 10

It's just based on the total sessions for all of your characters. Being that you can only report for one character per session, it doesn't seem like it would be very easy, if you are honest about your sessions, to attain each reward level.

"Solo play is permitted in Adventure Card Guild scenarios, although we encourage you to find other players. You may play solo with multiple characters, and each character can gain deck upgrades and scenario rewards as normal, but only 1 character can be registered as an official Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild character, and only that character can gain a Chronicle sheet for the scenario." - Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild Guide Version 4.2; Page 7

I don't personally think that this would cause many issues with the character advancement or how the game is played during organized play as these are all minor upgrades and being that it takes generally a minimum of 50 hours per reward, you would not receive many or them for a long time. Granted, I have played sessions that took about 15 minutes with four players and others that took almost two hours for the same amount of people.

As far as the reporter goes, they don't really receive much benefit as they would need to report ten games in order to receive the added benefit of simulating the completion an eleventh game. The only time this really benefits them is for every 90 games as they would be sitting at 100 instead of 90 and it's only if they reported all of those 90 games.

As far as the "regular players" getting nothing that you mentioned, I wrote that every player would receive a point per session reported. The organizer is the one to receive the (Player ( X ) --- Organizer ( X * 1.1 )) fast track benefit. So I hope that alleviates your concern there.

As far as the deck upgrades go, it would only apply to the cards within your box and not anything from the set box. Every one of your characters would receive this benefit; not just one.

Looking at your post above, under my reward system you would only be allow to upgrade one or two 'B Basic' cards and nothing else if you were to start a character. With my total, none of these rewards would apply to me yet being that I am under fifty.

Lastly, I don't personally care if people have an upgrade in their deck or not as it only helps everyone overall. It's kind of like not allowing for a person to have the promotional cards they bought because you didn't buy the 'Iconic Heroes' boxes.

Regards,

Snerrak


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Slight correction: while you can indeed replay the same scenario 50 times, the reward always comes the FIRST time that you successfully complete it. You cannot decide to "hold off" gaining the reward until a future replay. You do get deck upgrades each time, but you will probably have exhausted the pool of worthwhile upgrades at that tier long before 50 tries.

Telling people to grind scenario replays is not a fun nor viable strategy. Any rewards must be fully attainable by playing through each scenario in a typical season exactly once. For character-based rewards this should be the max, while general rewards can require multiple seasons' worth of scenarios. When I say character-based I mean things like "Choose a character; that character gains X" -- a good example of these are the AP rewards that let you treat certain loot as basic for a character.

The card game is a fundamentally different game from the RPG. There is no reason that the reward track needs to be similar between them, but lots of good reasons for it not to be. The track should be attainable by the common group of somewhat-dedicated players; that is, players who play though an entire season and only replay scenarios if they failed or someone missed a session. It would be good to assume these players are playing at a FLGS on the tip of the release schedule, meaning they will be playing only one scenario per week -- in other words, the fact an ACG scenario takes less playtime than an RPG one is irrelevant.


skizzerz wrote:

Slight correction: while you can indeed replay the same scenario 50 times, the reward always comes the FIRST time that you successfully complete it. You cannot decide to "hold off" gaining the reward until a future replay. You do get deck upgrades each time, but you will probably have exhausted the pool of worthwhile upgrades at that tier long before 50 tries.

Telling people to grind scenario replays is not a fun nor viable strategy. Any rewards must be fully attainable by playing through each scenario in a typical season exactly once. For character-based rewards this should be the max, while general rewards can require multiple seasons' worth of scenarios. When I say character-based I mean things like "Choose a character; that character gains X" -- a good example of these are the AP rewards that let you treat certain loot as basic for a character.

The card game is a fundamentally different game from the RPG. There is no reason that the reward track needs to be similar between them, but lots of good reasons for it not to be. The track should be attainable by the common group of somewhat-dedicated players; that is, players who play though an entire season and only replay scenarios if they failed or someone missed a session. It would be good to assume these players are playing at a FLGS on the tip of the release schedule, meaning they will be playing only one scenario per week -- in other words, the fact an ACG scenario takes less playtime than an RPG one is irrelevant.

Hello skizzerz,

I'm not advocating that a person should grind out 50 scenarios with one character, but there is the possibility that someone might do that to obtain the rewards from my list in the event that it gets accepted by Paizo. Ultimately with how many characters that are available, no one would need to grind with one character.

So there are 70 characters available in the first 21 Class Decks with each having two role cards a piece. If each were played out fully with the current 130 scenarios, it would amount out to 18,200 sessions. Granted the likelihood that a person would do this is very low being that it would take at least three years and 41 days to complete if they were to play every hour of every day and had perfect scenarios that took 1.5 hours to complete. On top of that, it would take another 64 days to report everything under the same conditions with five minutes as the reporting time per session. Overall in this musing, it would take three years and 125 days to just do this. Woo, all the numbers and such.

Class Decks 01 through 07 - 04 Characters
Class Decks 08 through 21 - 03 Characters
-------------------------------------------
Total - 70 Characters

Season 00 - 29 Scenarios
Season 01 - 32 Scenarios
Season 02 - 30 Scenarios
Season 02B - 08 Scenarios
Season 03 - 31 Scenarios
--------------------------
Total - 130 Scenarios

This doesn't take into account all of the characters that can be used or unlocked from the base box in Organized Play. The following are the characters without specific Class Decks associated to their class on the cards:

Skull and Shackles: 12 Characters Total

Ranzak - Could potentially be played with the Goblins Fight Class Deck.
Jirelle - Earned as an Organized Play reward.

Wrath of the Righteous: 13 Characters Total

Adowyn - A class deck is yet to be released for this character to be used.
Arueshalae - Earned as a GM reward at PaizoCon to be used with the Rogue Class Deck as I understand.
Crowe - A class deck is yet to be released for this character to be used.
Ekkie - Could potentially be played with the Goblins Fight Class Deck.
Enora - Earned as an Organized Play reward.
Shardra - Earned as an Organized Play reward.

Rise of the Runelords: 12 Characters Total

Tup - Could potentially be played with the Goblins Burn Class Deck.

Mummy's Mask: 11 Characters Total

Estra - Earned as an Organized Play reward. A class deck is yet to be released for this character to be used.
Mavaro - Earned as an Organized Play reward. A class deck is yet to be released for this character to be used.
Yoon - A class deck is yet to be released for this character to be used.
Zadim - Earned as an Organized Play reward.

I would post when you would earn the characters from Organized Play, but I think having the statement "Earned as an Organized Play reward." is spoilerish enough.

Regards,

Snerrak


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Ah, I see. I misinterpreted what you meant by your statement, my apologies. You were saying something more like "whatever the reward track is, be cognizant that there exist people who will grind out scenarios to power through the track faster than 'normal' play." Is that a correct summation of your viewpoint? If so, I think that just advocates roughly the same thing I'm advocating -- that the rewards for doing this be mostly minor, yet appealing enough to report sessions.

Bonus card upgrades and die bumps are nice, but with a 50 session gap between rewards, it won't come up often enough to be all that useful, especially since die bumps don't "roll over" at the moment. I still strongly believe that gap between each reward should be no more than 30 sessions to fit in with a typical season's length, especially if the rewards are "Choose one of your characters to gain X" rather than something the player themselves unlocks (for example, a one-time-use reroll).

Maybe something like a character reward every 15 reported sessions (i.e. applied to a specific character), with an additional extra every 30 reported sessions would be good. This would equate to an extra 2 things per character assuming you play one character through one season at a time. Nothing major or game-breaking. It'd look something like the following:

Sessions - Bonus
15 - Choose a character to gain a die bump
30 - Choose a character to replace one card in their deck with another card of the same type and same or lower Adventure Deck number. For example, Basic B Weapon to nonbasic B Weapon for a new character, or a Blessing 2 with a different Blessing 2.
30 - You may reroll all dice on a check after the result is revealed; take the new result, even if it is worse (one time use)
45 - Choose a character to gain a die bump
60 - Choose a character to replace one card in their deck with another card of the same type and same or lower Adventure Deck number
60 - You may reroll all dice on a check after the result is revealed; take the new result, even if it is worse (one time use)

and so on, following the same pattern. A bunch of consumable rewards that are very useful, but will not make someone who has these rewards and playing at the same table as someone who does not comparatively overpowered. For this reason, I advocate against giving feat rewards as part of this, or at least limiting them to skill feats. Extra power feats and card feats can make one character feel way more powerful than everyone else. If feats are given, they should be handed out very rarely, such as every 90 sessions or so.


skizzerz wrote:

Ah, I see. I misinterpreted what you meant by your statement, my apologies. You were saying something more like "whatever the reward track is, be cognizant that there exist people who will grind out scenarios to power through the track faster than 'normal' play." Is that a correct summation of your viewpoint? If so, I think that just advocates roughly the same thing I'm advocating -- that the rewards for doing this be mostly minor, yet appealing enough to report sessions.

Bonus card upgrades and die bumps are nice, but with a 50 session gap between rewards, it won't come up often enough to be all that useful, especially since die bumps don't "roll over" at the moment. I still strongly believe that gap between each reward should be no more than 30 sessions to fit in with a typical season's length, especially if the rewards are "Choose one of your characters to gain X" rather than something the player themselves unlocks (for example, a one-time-use reroll).

Maybe something like a character reward every 15 reported sessions (i.e. applied to a specific character), with an additional extra every 30 reported sessions would be good. This would equate to an extra 2 things per character assuming you play one character through one season at a time. Nothing major or game-breaking. It'd look something like the following:

Sessions - Bonus
15 - Choose a character to gain a die bump
30 - Choose a character to replace one card in their deck with another card of the same type and same or lower Adventure Deck number. For example, Basic B Weapon to nonbasic B Weapon for a new character, or a Blessing 2 with a different Blessing 2.
30 - You may reroll all dice on a check after the result is revealed; take the new result, even if it is worse (one time use)
45 - Choose a character to gain a die bump
60 - Choose a character to replace one card in their deck with another card of the same type and same or lower Adventure Deck number
60 - You may reroll all dice on a check after the result is revealed; take the...

Hello Skizzers,

Essentially your current understanding, and my interpretation by what you meant, are the same. In no way is this something static, so anything can be changed. I personally like having a challenge to make it to a large bonus as an incentive, but it's all up to the guys at Paizo to decide on whether they want something or not. Until then, I'll just keep working on the scenarios with my local VA and the others and see what comes out of this if anything.

Regards,

Snerrak


I just hope any groups struggling with level 6 of Plundered Tombs are reporting their losses so the designers see how frustrating these scenarios are. I'll save details for a more appropriate thread but 3rd session in a row with no wins at either of 2 tables, & today's were both repeated (so 4 losses today).

Lone Shark Games

Definitely good to know that kinda thing, yep. I'd previously only heard of successes. I'm generally good with the final set of scenarios being tougher, mind you, especially since we have a gap between seasons initially. Threading that needle between tough and rewarding and frustrating is particularly tricky with the high variance in optimization (character selection, card upgrades, etc) between groups.

I'm hopeful that some day we can cleanly implement methods for groups to opt into higher or lower difficulty to customize the experience to their group, though. Especially as some folks grab Ultimate decks and others don't.


I agree that croups with ultimate decks vs those who don’t use them will have very different challange when doing the same adventures. So some tweaking may be required. But it Also can be said that if you wan to have more challenge.... don’t use ultimate decks or at least not allow using two decks at all. And using ultimate decks is the official easy mode allowed to players...
but as you said it requires some thinking work to be done.

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