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I come here to express my concern that with the apparent increased prep needed for the newer scenarios, Paizo is accidentally turning away potential PFS GMs. I am concerned that the newer scenarios might be causing to much frustration for those who are starting to run, or do not run often, for whatever reason. What do you think?
Venture-Captain, Netherlands
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Honestly? Depends. If you play a lot, either in home games, or in PFS, before you GM, its going to be a lot easier.
I think it will mostly be a problem if someone is inexperienced overall. As a GM you need to juggle a lot of balls so to speak. Having a good knowledge of the system frees up your hands to for other things.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I think a bit more preparation is involved, but that it's a good trade.
Season 0 scenarios are often just go to A B C and fight a stock bestiary monster at each of those places. Done. Compare to an action movie with a plot so thin that if you just cheer at the explosions you're not really missing much.
Modern scenarios actually have a plot that's about more than murderhoboing your way out of a paper bag so that means you need to read the scenario a couple of times to see how it all fits together. Kinda like how you should probably pay attention to the dialogue in Indiana Jones.
There's a lot more rules stuff involved in modern scenarios, that's true, but there is also a serious effort to make things easy on GMs. Take a look at Portent's Peril for a recent example. It's one of the best-edited scenarios I've seen. The BBEG has abilities from about seven books, but they're all explained in her statblock. You could run almost the entire scenario with just the CRB for some base rules lookups. Everything's cross-referenced at all the places where you'd go looking for it.
So no, I'm not pessimistic. But you do have to "respect" scenarios enough to prep them properly. A good story requires more effort. Think of it as respecting your players who made time to show up for the game.
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I wouldn't undersell the transition to GMing PFS. There are a lot of things you need to learn to manage as a PFS GM, like hard schedule cutoffs, specific interpretations of rules that as a home GM you can ignore... which parts of a scenario you're allowed to cut if you're running short on time. Stuff like that. "Run as Written" to a newbie can seem a lot more limiting than how the more experienced members of the community interpret it.
Anyway, the worst scenario I've had to prep in the past couple of months was a Season 0 scenario, because I had to dig up all sorts of old stat blocks and templates that no longer exist.. Not to mention BBEGs with 2 hit points... how the heck do you make that not a cakewalk? I'm not so sure I succeeded.
I do like the 1-5 tiers to somewhat simpler to prep, so it's easy for a new GM to manage. I agree, the past few have been a bit more work than I think I like. But it's a small sample size, and I'm sure in time we'll have a few simpler scenarios released too.
Oh, and yeah, having the stat blocks at the end is a godsend. I'm not sure which god, hopefully not Asmodeus, but I'll take it. It's way easier to prep for the recent seasons than the early ones, and that makes me very happy.
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I think Season 8 has been fine so far. But a lot of Season 7 scenarios went WAY overboard with complicated rules, subsystems, etc.
When a new player offers to GM I try really hard to let them start with low tier early season scenarios. Let them at least get used to GMing before having to face some of the monsters out there.
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I have a pair of friends (a married couple) who are both 3 star GMs in PFS. They decided to switch to 5th edition D&D after buying School of Spirits, and deciding that learning a new edition was easier than figuring out how the NPC with the occult class in that adventure worked. I think they were expecting that kind of difficulty in GMing to come up more often in the future, so it wasn't just that the one scenario did something weird. It was more the expectation that this was becoming the norm.
I actually had a similar experience that almost drove me away from PFS. I didn't play much PFS in seasons 5 or 6, when most of my RPG time was spent GMing for a home group that kept things relatively simple, and didn't keep up with the latest and greatest books. I returned at the start of season 7, so the Advanced Class Guide, Pathfinder Unchained, and Occult Adventures had all been published while I wasn't paying attention, and I didn't know anything about them.
I played 7-01: Between the Lines at GenCon, then volunteered to GM it locally, only to be completely overwhelmed by players with the new classes at my table. Not to get into spoilers, but there's part of that scenario where the GM has to adjust the adventure based on what classes the group is playing, and I literally had no clue for 5 of the 6 PCs at my table whether they were full BAB, arcane casters, divine casters, etc. The paladin was the only class at the table that I knew anything about.
If I hadn't already been scheduled to GM again a week or two later, and felt bad dropping out of that commitment, I probably never would have GMed a Society game again. As is, my later game ran much smoother, and I realized the one bad experience was just a fluke. But it was a fluke based on the specific content of that scenario requiring a level of rules expertise that I didn't have at that time.
What we could probably use is disclaimers on the scenarios saying what level of difficulty they are for GMs. I know some of them already mention when they use material from a particular book in the product blurb, but I'm thinking we could use a more decisive disclaimer on adventures like those two.
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I started GMing mainly with season 1 and 2 scenarios. They were a lot easier to prep than newer ones. Sub systems are what take a lot of time. I don't think it's a bad thing. Newer scenarios are generally more fun and story rich.
While it's good that stat blocks are now in scenario I don't like how monster stat blocks are placed in the book. Some of them are in the middle of the scenario and for some monsters you still need to scroll several pages for stat blocks. It would be a lot better if all stat blocks were at the end. I mainly use tablet for GMing and it's often horrible to try jump from one stat block to another.
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Venture-Captain, Isles—Online
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I too dislike the combination of stats inside the scenario, and at the end, induces a lot of page flipping when you have a combat that uses stats from both places. To answer the OP's question - its very much scenario dependant, there are some scenarios i've been able to prep with a single read through, and others that require a lot more in depth review.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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While it's good that stat blocks are now in scenario I don't like how monster stat blocks are placed in the book. Some of them are in the middle of the scenario and for some monsters you still need to scroll several pages for stat blocks. It would be a lot better if all stat blocks were at the end. I mainly use tablet for GMing and it's often horrible to try jump from one stat block to another.
I strongly agree with this. My ideal adventure would have a low-tier and a high tier appendix with all statblocks, grouped into sections per encounter, and sideboxes with encounter scaling to remind you. All on neat page spreads.
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I have a pair of friends (a married couple) who are both 3 star GMs in PFS. They decided to switch to 5th edition D&D after buying School of Spirits, and deciding that learning a new edition was easier than figuring out how the NPC with the occult class in that adventure worked. I think they were expecting that kind of difficulty in GMing to come up more often in the future, so it wasn't just that the one scenario did something weird. It was more the expectation that this was becoming the norm.
I actually had a similar experience that almost drove me away from PFS. I didn't play much PFS in seasons 5 or 6, when most of my RPG time was spent GMing for a home group that kept things relatively simple, and didn't keep up with the latest and greatest books. I returned at the start of season 7, so the Advanced Class Guide, Pathfinder Unchained, and Occult Adventures had all been published while I wasn't paying attention, and I didn't know anything about them.
I played 7-01: Between the Lines at GenCon, then volunteered to GM it locally, only to be completely overwhelmed by players with the new classes at my table. Not to get into spoilers, but there's part of that scenario where the GM has to adjust the adventure based on what classes the group is playing, and I literally had no clue for 5 of the 6 PCs at my table whether they were full BAB, arcane casters, divine casters, etc. The paladin was the only class at the table that I knew anything about.
If I hadn't already been scheduled to GM again a week or two later, and felt bad dropping out of that commitment, I probably never would have GMed a Society game again. As is, my later game ran much smoother, and I realized the one bad experience was just a fluke. But it was a fluke based on the specific content of that scenario requiring a level of rules expertise that I didn't have at that time.
What we could probably use is disclaimers on the scenarios saying what level of difficulty they are for GMs. I know some of them already mention when they use...
I too was in this situation. I'm also find myself mentally saying "why do we need 30 classes to do (with some but not too many exceptions) what was doable 3-4 years ago. Because of that I find I kinda resent Paizo for dumping a bunch of low quality classes on me where they could have done much of the same thing with some archetypes. Basically we don't need a friggin warpriest. A fighter/cleric works just fine. Dang I feel and sound like such a friggin gronard.
On the other hand plot and narritive quality is much better now.
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I would not give a newer GM anything from Season 6 on. Everything before that is fairly simple but since then there's techno-rules (Season 6), Occult classes/rules (Season 7), Intrigue rules (Season 7), Horror rules (Season 8), and Elemental Planes (Season 8) rules thrown in as well.
To me, PCs' classes aren't a problem (it's the players jobs to know their characters, not mine) but when NPCs are classes I've never played (or, honestly, never even read since they don't interest me at all) it becomes a real pain.
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I too was in this situation. I'm also find myself mentally saying "why do we need 30 classes to do (with some but not too many exceptions) what was doable 3-4 years ago. Because of that I find I kinda resent Paizo for dumping a bunch of low quality classes on me where they could have done much of the same thing with some archetypes. Basically we don't need a friggin warpriest. A fighter/cleric works just fine. Dang I feel and sound like such a friggin gronard.
On the other hand plot and narritive quality is much better now.
It's not that I mind the new content. I think a lot of the new classes are interesting and worthwhile to play. Most of what Paizo publishes is still good stuff.
It's just that the sheer quantity is making the game less accessible. I wasn't playing for 3.5, but I'd guess Pathfinder has surpassed it for rules bloat at this point. PFS is no longer a newbie friendly introduction, and the Core campaign isn't popular enough to help with the problem. And frankly, I always felt that should be Core + APG, instead of just the Core Rulebook. If it was, I might have jumped in and tried promoting it locally. But limiting it to just Core is just the exact opposite of the main campaign, in being too limited and missing some essential material that defines the game.
I think the edition wars are starting to favor WOTC again, just because we've reached the point of it being about rules bloat vs simplicity, rather than being about quality.
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I started GMing mainly with season 1 and 2 scenarios. They were a lot easier to prep than newer ones. Sub systems are what take a lot of time. I don't think it's a bad thing. Newer scenarios are generally more fun and story rich.
While it's good that stat blocks are now in scenario I don't like how monster stat blocks are placed in the book. Some of them are in the middle of the scenario and for some monsters you still need to scroll several pages for stat blocks. It would be a lot better if all stat blocks were at the end. I mainly use tablet for GMing and it's often horrible to try jump from one stat block to another.
It gets really bad when an NPC is a variant of something in some book. The appendix has the base form, but you have to remember to apply the different weapon or whatever.
Quite frankly, if the pfsprep site and the paizo GM thread didn't exist I'd either stop GMing or only GM older scenarios.
And there are many scenarios that are all but impossible to run cold. Yeah, one should never run cold but sometimes circumstances conspire to force it.
Regional Venture-Coordinator, Appalachia
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I too was in this situation. I'm also find myself mentally saying "why do we need 30 classes to do (with some but not too many exceptions) what was doable 3-4 years ago. Because of that I find I kinda resent Paizo for dumping a bunch of low quality classes on me where they could have done much of the same thing with some archetypes. Basically we don't need a friggin warpriest. A fighter/cleric works just fine. Dang I feel and sound like such a friggin gronard.
On the other hand plot and narritive quality is much better now.
It's not that I mind the new content. I think a lot of the new classes are interesting and worthwhile to play. Most of what Paizo publishes is still good stuff.
It's just that the sheer quantity is making the game less accessible. I wasn't playing for 3.5, but I'd guess Pathfinder has surpassed it for rules bloat at this point. PFS is no longer a newbie friendly introduction, and the Core campaign isn't popular enough to help with the problem. And frankly, I always felt that should be Core + APG, instead of just the Core Rulebook. If it was, I might have jumped in and tried promoting it locally. But limiting it to just Core is just the exact opposite of the main campaign, in being too limited and missing some essential material that defines the game.
I think year 7 was rough.
Because Paizo dropped a veritable crap ton of new material that year that probably should have been stagered a bit more and all of it was being pimped in the PFS scenarios which required GMs to learn a lot of rules subsystems.
Throw on top of that that the higher level Advanced Class Guide characters all tend to hit a wall (level 7 Warpriest just cannot half-ass the cleric role well enough any longer, just as an example that very nearly led to a TPK) and that the Occult Classes have the ability to bust several low tier scenarios entirely and yeah GMing has become a bit more of a challenge.
And I totally agree regarding Core Campaign. Taking away Archetypes REALLY kills what makes Pathfinder for me to the point where I have been hesitant to do anything Core as a player.
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I have to agree about the pimping new material.
There were scenarios coming out tied to rules that hadn't even been finalized yet (i.e. dreamscapes). It cheapens PFS when the season gets defined by new mechanics instead of the story arc. People eagerly await the new scenarios for their stories, not for some sample intro into a book that may or may not have gained any traction among the players. There's no need to rush the new material into organized play, especially faster than GMs can process. A veteran GM should not be confused running a PFS scenario.
And yes, at a recent local con I heard several complaints from GMs & Venture types about how difficult it is to keep abreast not just of the rules changes to old rules, but all the new rules & classes. Many planned to drop out because they felt they couldn't do their jobs as advisors and judges, even thought they're still the most qualified we have. That's severe, and I hope things settle down before that happens.
It would be hard for a player to step up to GM in this environment.
And I disagree about the ACG classes hitting walls, and have witnessed too many counterexamples.
Warpriests should never pretend to be good healers (except of themselves).
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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I started GMing mainly with season 1 and 2 scenarios. They were a lot easier to prep than newer ones. Sub systems are what take a lot of time. I don't think it's a bad thing. Newer scenarios are generally more fun and story rich.
While it's good that stat blocks are now in scenario I don't like how monster stat blocks are placed in the book. Some of them are in the middle of the scenario and for some monsters you still need to scroll several pages for stat blocks. It would be a lot better if all stat blocks were at the end. I mainly use tablet for GMing and it's often horrible to try jump from one stat block to another.
It gets really bad when an NPC is a variant of something in some book. The appendix has the base form, but you have to remember to apply the different weapon or whatever.
Quite frankly, if the pfsprep site and the paizo GM thread didn't exist I'd either stop GMing or only GM older scenarios.
And there are many scenarios that are all but impossible to run cold. Yeah, one should never run cold but sometimes circumstances conspire to force it.
The last scenario I ran, the blocks in the back had the templates applied.
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I started GMing mainly with season 1 and 2 scenarios. They were a lot easier to prep than newer ones. Sub systems are what take a lot of time. I don't think it's a bad thing. Newer scenarios are generally more fun and story rich.
While it's good that stat blocks are now in scenario I don't like how monster stat blocks are placed in the book. Some of them are in the middle of the scenario and for some monsters you still need to scroll several pages for stat blocks. It would be a lot better if all stat blocks were at the end. I mainly use tablet for GMing and it's often horrible to try jump from one stat block to another.
It gets really bad when an NPC is a variant of something in some book. The appendix has the base form, but you have to remember to apply the different weapon or whatever.
Quite frankly, if the pfsprep site and the paizo GM thread didn't exist I'd either stop GMing or only GM older scenarios.
And there are many scenarios that are all but impossible to run cold. Yeah, one should never run cold but sometimes circumstances conspire to force it.
It's not so hard. 1) read the summary. 2)look for and understand the weird mechanic. (after season 3, it's almost always there.) 3) glance over spells and read up on the unfamiliar ones. 4) double check the success conditions 5) wing it.
The secret to running cold is giving up on the idea that your version of the scenario is going to look exactly like everyone else's. Don't change the encounters. Don't change the skill DCs. But if you miss a bit of info or evidence that would propel the plot forward, let them find it in another location, or make up an npc they can talk to to get it.
Some of my most fun is had when scenarios go off the rails anyway. You're right it's not ideal, but it's not world-ending either.
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I started GMing mainly with season 1 and 2 scenarios. They were a lot easier to prep than newer ones. Sub systems are what take a lot of time. I don't think it's a bad thing. Newer scenarios are generally more fun and story rich.
While it's good that stat blocks are now in scenario I don't like how monster stat blocks are placed in the book. Some of them are in the middle of the scenario and for some monsters you still need to scroll several pages for stat blocks. It would be a lot better if all stat blocks were at the end. I mainly use tablet for GMing and it's often horrible to try jump from one stat block to another.
It gets really bad when an NPC is a variant of something in some book. The appendix has the base form, but you have to remember to apply the different weapon or whatever.
Quite frankly, if the pfsprep site and the paizo GM thread didn't exist I'd either stop GMing or only GM older scenarios.
And there are many scenarios that are all but impossible to run cold. Yeah, one should never run cold but sometimes circumstances conspire to force it.
It's not so hard. 1) read the summary. 2)look for and understand the weird mechanic. (after season 3, it's almost always there.) 3) glance over spells and read up on the unfamiliar ones. 4) double check the success conditions 5) wing it.
The secret to running cold is giving up on the idea that your version of the scenario is going to look exactly like everyone else's. Don't change the encounters. Don't change the skill DCs. But if you miss a bit of info or evidence that would propel the plot forward, let them find it in another location, or make up an npc they can talk to to get it.
Some of my most fun is had when scenarios go off the rails anyway. You're right it's not ideal, but it's not world-ending either.
But that doesn't address the specific complaint that Paul made. When the barbarian in the appendix has a greatsword but truncated statblock gives him a scorpion whip and trades out power attack for proficiency that's a pretty huge difference. One that nearly killed a PC until I caught the change after the fact. I understand why truncated statblocks are used in modules and APs where page count matters but for scenarios it just adds that extra level of disorganization where you need to look at four different pages in order to run an encounter. There are some encounters so needlessly complicated either due to organization or mechanics that if run cold the GM will spend more time flipping back and forth than actually running the encounter.
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I don't think running PFS is getting harder, but prepping to do it well certainly has. With the four-player adjustment, there are multiple permutations to deal with, and with the profusion of new classes any NPC boss becomes much more complicated to deal with.
Paizo have done some very helpful things to help mitigate this: providing stat blocks, making it easier to print maps without labels, and so on. Still, it's a lot of material to prep for. In our home games, we try to determine subtier in advance based on Warhorn signups, but at a con you often don't know until you sit down what you'll be running.
The PFSPrep site for me is pretty much essential for the variant stat blocks, maps, handouts, tracking sheets, etc. I think Pirate Rob and the many folks that contribute all that good stuff should get volunteer of the year for the huge amount of work they do and work they save me and other GMs.
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I don't think running PFS is getting harder, but prepping to do it well certainly has. W
I probably prep less than I should. I certainly prep less than some people on the boards seem to.
But I'm really not going to spend significantly more time prepping. Even as it is I am often close to burning out as a GM.
And my desire to prep REALLY gets lowered when the bad guy is rendered all but helpless by bad tactics, bad placement, or overpowered PCs taking advantage of the power creep (Gallop?)
The more prepping and GMing becomex a chore the more likely I come to just quitting.
One thing that all GMs should keep in mind.
If Players are running material outside of the core assumptions itis THEIR responsibility to make such material available upon request, not the GM's to buy it. Ususally scenarios featuring NPC's with such material will have enough information to run them as needed for the encounter.
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It's not so hard. 1) read the summary. 2)look for and understand the weird mechanic. (after season 3, it's almost always there.) 3) glance over spells and read up on the unfamiliar ones. 4) double check the success conditions 5) wing it.
The secret to running cold is giving up on the idea that your version of the scenario is going to look exactly like everyone else's. Don't change the encounters. Don't change the skill DCs. But if you miss a bit of info or evidence that would propel the plot forward, let them find it in another location, or make up an npc they can talk to to get it.
Some of my most fun is had when scenarios go off the rails anyway. You're right it's not ideal, but it's not world-ending either.
To be clear, I'm not saying that one should run *cold* on purpose, or that winging it is EVER better than having a well-rehearsed product to bring to the table. If you take the time to read the scenario more than once, you'll have a chance to really explore why your NPCs behave the way they do. You'll be able to answer PC questions that aren't called out after the briefing. In short, you'll be able to be a proper GM.
Cold games are almost never ideal. Can people do it? Sure. With a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the rules, lots of experience, and the guile to lie to you outright and pretend it's the gospel truth. But should a person assume they're capable? No. It's a good way to crash and burn, walk away embarrassed, and provide a substandard experience. Smart GMs don't run cold until they're forced into it. "I signed up to GM tomorrow, then on Tuesday my daughter came down with pneumonia and I just haven't had the time. It's Friday night, and I need to put this thing together or people are going to go home."
The GM 101 material even calls it out. It happens sometimes. But there's a big difference between being pushed into a cold-run situation and inserting yourself into one on purpose. The first is an unfortunate (but not unheard of) accident. The second is just being foolish.
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I probably prep less than I should. I certainly prep less than some people on the boards seem to.
But I'm really not going to spend significantly more time prepping. Even as it is I am often close to burning out as a GM.
And my desire to prep REALLY gets lowered when the bad guy is rendered all but helpless by bad tactics, bad placement, or overpowered PCs taking advantage of the power creep (Gallop?)
The more prepping and GMing becomex a chore the more likely I come to just quitting.
I feel ya. I'm currently in a race to see if I get my fifth star first, or if I burn out on PFS first. (I'm just shy of 140 tables.)
The new scenarios are harder to run because they're full of classes and rule mechanics that I'm just not very familiar with. The old (pre-season-4) scenarios tend to be ROFLstomped by PCs, even if there aren't six of them. (I ran "Eyes of the Ten" for a group of five extraordinarily overpowered characters, and almost never had the sense that I was providing anything approximating a challenge to the players.)
-Rob
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As an aside, I haven't been following the Starfinder discussion at all. Does anybody know if they're planning on taking the opportunity to essentially create Pathfinder version 2.0? Simplify lots of things, try and bring various characters in line power wise, etc.
The single biggest thing that is coming close to driving me from PFS is the power creep. One major reason that I like Core games. Unfortunately, Core is dead locally (yes, I tried. Managed to keep it going for about 9 months before it died) so the only place I get to play is online
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As an aside, I haven't been following the Starfinder discussion at all. Does anybody know if they're planning on taking the opportunity to essentially create Pathfinder version 2.0? Simplify lots of things, try and bring various characters in line power wise, etc.
The single biggest thing that is coming close to driving me from PFS is the power creep. One major reason that I like Core games. Unfortunately, Core is dead locally (yes, I tried. Managed to keep it going for about 9 months before it died) so the only place I get to play is online
I'm not sure about what's on the boards, I know there are people who know the answer to your question (as there is a playtest group out there), but since they're under a NDA they won't be able to answer your question.