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We need your feedback to know what is working and what isn't in order to continue to approve. Please drop your comments here. I will try to answer any questions about the logistical operations, and will record all your feedback into a comprehensive report for Tonya to review. The decisions we make to improve your experience at furniture Gen Con comes from your reported experiences.
Since not everyone follows all three Organized Play forums! I will mirror this thread in all three.
NOTE: if your comments are directed at a specific scenario, feedback is better submitted in the form of a review of that scenario on its product page where the developers/authors can see your comments and use them the improve the products they produce.
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I ran the Starfinder quests and the Thursday special for Starfinder.
I believe how the quests were handled worked out very well. I would suggest when doing quests to not handed out the chronicle sheet for the quest until the player wishes to have it. Have a tracking card and letting the player know when they are ready they can turn in the card at HQ (or designated area) to get the chronicle for the quest.
It is confusing to me how to handle those chronicle sheets. As a GM I am uncomfortable signing a chronicle that is not complete. And the quests are not complete until all 5 parts are done or the player chooses to move on with the character.
Over all, from my viewpoint, Gencon went very well.
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I ran the Starfinder quests and the Thursday special for Starfinder.
I believe how the quests were handled worked out very well. I would suggest when doing quests to not handed out the chronicle sheet for the quest until the player wishes to have it. Have a tracking card and letting the player know when they are ready they can turn in the card at HQ (or designated area) to get the chronicle for the quest.
It is confusing to me how to handle those chronicle sheets. As a GM I am uncomfortable signing a chronicle that is not complete. And the quests are not complete until all 5 parts are done or the player chooses to move on with the character.
Over all, from my viewpoint, Gencon went very well.
That was how it was handled at PCC this year for PFS' Honor's Echo.
It helped with marshalling tables as well, as we could fine-tune where we sent people with the tracking card a lot easier than trying to have them find it on their chronicle then sift through the chronicle
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That was how it was handled at PCC this year for PFS' Honor's Echo.It helped with marshalling tables as well, as we could fine-tune where we sent people with the tracking card a lot easier than trying to have them find it on their chronicle then sift through the chronicle
Well, we were still handing out the chronicle sheets as well as the card.
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Really the only thing I saw when I ran Claim to Salvation is that the first time the ranges for the Pregen's weapons were not printed on the sheets. This was also true with the Pegasus stat block as well as the goblin junkers. It was only a problem the fist time as I looked up and either memorized or wrote down the ranges for my next session, however, it was kind of had when none of the players or myself had a copy of the CRB yet. I made my best guess and it worked fine, until I could pull up my pdf after the session.
That was my only problem other than just low familiarization with the rules that will increase with time and repletion.
Oh and would it be doable to get the starships actually stated on the starship sheets instead of a stat block or both? The actual sheet is much more useful than the stat block at least to me when running combat.
Just my two cents,
Thanks
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Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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Yes, the ranges on the pregens weapons were something that I had to look up, and it was frustrating not having that easily accessible!
I want to say though that having the NDA starfinder rules channel for GMs was a life saver. Thurston kept us in the loop the whole way, and that was a god send!
Hmm
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When I got to my table to run School of Spirits Saturday morning, a backup GM was sitting there ready to cover a no-show GM's School of Spirits.
Hillis moved back to his table, but I sat at an empty table until the call for GMs to get reassigned. There was a table of players waiting for a GM to run School of Spirits for them. I moved my stuff and had a decent game, but was a bit flustered getting settled again.
I'm not sure whose wires got crossed, but the Marshals sent a group of players to an empty table, and none to my assigned table. What is the system for covering no-shows? Any idea what happened?
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We experienced a larger number of no-shows this year than in past which in turn made the number of times we had to make manual changes (touch points) increase. Anytime you are dealing with 350+ GMs, 195 tables of events, 40+ HQ volunteers, and upwards of 1200 players per slot, the more you have to play with "touch points" the greater risk of errors occurring.
As the over-all responsible party for that aspect of the show, I apologize for the disruption this caused you and any added stress. We continue to improve our process every year and we have some additional ideas to try that should reduce/eliminate this issue.
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The weekly emails we got where a bit wonky this year some showed up late Monday not on Sunday but the other info that could be in the email next year especially for the new volunteers is parking cost and the $50.00 deposit for the hotel room. Those things catch people off guard and should be mentioned earlier then the hygiene email so people who have a tighter budget can be prepared.
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There was a deposit this year? That's new.There has always been a deposit as far as I am aware. Usually the first one to check into the hotel for the room gets stuck with it.
Huh. In six years of going to Gen Con for PFS, I've yet to be stuck with a deposit. I think once the hotel tried to get me to, but just tell them no, and that you don't want any services.
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Huh. In six years of going to Gen Con for PFS, I've yet to be stuck with a deposit. I think once the hotel tried to get me to, but just tell them no, and that you don't want any services.There was a deposit this year? That's new.There has always been a deposit as far as I am aware. Usually the first one to check into the hotel for the room gets stuck with it.
That's what I did, and the clerk told me she wouldn't charge me, but I got dinged for $50 (which has since been removed.)
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Huh. In six years of going to Gen Con for PFS, I've yet to be stuck with a deposit. I think once the hotel tried to get me to, but just tell them no, and that you don't want any services.There was a deposit this year? That's new.There has always been a deposit as far as I am aware. Usually the first one to check into the hotel for the room gets stuck with it.
Tried that. Hotel wouldn't give me a key without a card on file. What we've got is a hierarchy of who's trying to make sure they're covered.
1. Hotel won't give a key without some kind of card on file to cover incidentals or damage.
2. Paizo doesn't want to give their charge information to cover incidentals since trying to recover the money from a volunteer charging to the room (even accidentally) would likely prove time-consuming and cost more than the charges.
3. The first person to arrive is left having to trust that their roommates don't charge to their account.
It's one of those constant low-grade nuisances we live with these days. Most of the time there won't be any issues but occasionally you have to spend hours of your life trying to recover $38.47.
I can't stress this enough: make sure you check the charges Saturday night or Sunday morning. That gives you enough time to straighten out things with your roommates.
I dont know if this is the place for this kind of feedback, but I found something interesting in terms of Starship combat, and that it was none of the 3 gms who ran it ran it the same.
1) I had one GM tell me that when the engineer diverts power from the thrusters, the 7 hit points are spread out 1 to each shield, with the remaining 3 going to the front. The next one said that they all gained 2, with the exception of the third. The third said our power core actually went down by 5% whenever we diverted to the shields, and that both the other GMs before me were correct about how the distribution worked.
2) we had one GM say that the numbers for each shield could never get higher than their shield number, while another let the sciende officer divert all our power into the front shield to get them up to 35 in a single move.
3) While outside of combat, we had one GM tell our group even one point of HP healing healed all Stamina like it was non-lethal.
I know the game is still new, but the fact that all 3 gms were confident in their contradictory answers was irritating.
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Only two snafus I had was once another GM and I were sloted for the same table at the same time. It was rectified by a quick walk to the HQ. The other was I had an empty table once till almost 15 after, but found a Marshall looking anxiously for a GM. Crisis averted.
All in all, it was a nice simple streamlined process that even a GENCON virgin and first time Sagamore GM like me found fairly easy to navigate. It looked easy because of all the hard work Bahb and the rest of the HQ staff put in to make it seem that way. Well Done!
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I dont know if this is the place for this kind of feedback, but I found something interesting in terms of Starship combat, and that it was none of the 3 gms who ran it ran it the same.
This is somewhat the place as it speaks to player experience but it's more of a question of GM philosophy than anything else. I'll give a little bit of a spoilered answer but let's take it to another thread if you want to discuss further.
But one of the things that we teach (literally, in the case of GM101) is to keep the game flowing as smoothly as possible. If you don't know the answer to a rules question and it's not going to cause a player death, just go with what makes the most sense to you. Don't interrupt the game to look up rules, look it up after the game. Conversely, if a player actually points out the correct rule, go with it then.
As for your specific experiences:
1) Your first GM was using a developer clarification that was correct UNTIL the FAQ went up on Thursday. Most of us didn't even know there was a FAQ during the weekend.
2) This is actually two different issues. I asked a designer about "going above the initial number" (quadrant, not total) when he stopped by our table and he wasn't sure if it was possible. (He wasn't a main designer of the starship combat rules.) The second part includes this and a separate issue (balancing has limited options) but it sounds like it didn't hurt your party.
3) Not correct. If you pointed out the correct rule to her, I hope she she would have been glad. I know I was every time a player pointed me at the location of the correct interpretation.
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EDIT: Had a long answer but realized that I Kevin had already provided the same answer and that this thread is intended for a different purpose than rules clarifications.
As you said, it is new and we are all learning. If I was one of the GMs that gave contradictory answers I will do better to learn the rules.
I hope you had fun regardless.
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I may be just repeating Kevin and Gary, but I'll do it anyway.
One of my tables pointed out that I ran something differently than their previous GM, and my response was that with ten GMs running demos in the exhibit hall, there were going to be ten slightly different versions of Starfinder. I tried to be explicit if I didn't know the answer and was making a judgment call: "You might read the book later and find out that's wrong, but let's go with it for now." However, even on reading the book on my flight home (....no, shut up, you're a nerd...), I was finding things that I hadn't run correctly. Frankly, there were things I ran one way the first day, went and looked up, and then ran correctly on later days.
If I was one of the GMs making things frustrating for you, I do apologize for that. I think now that the rules are out to so many people, we can all learn the correct rules together, and most importantly, have fun with Starfinder!
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The weekly emails we got where a bit wonky this year some showed up late Monday not on Sunday but the other info that could be in the email next year especially for the new volunteers is parking cost and the $50.00 deposit for the hotel room. Those things catch people off guard and should be mentioned earlier then the hygiene email so people who have a tighter budget can be prepared.
Interesting... I was the one who checked in, and wasn't even asked for my card...
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I may be just repeating Kevin and Gary, but I'll do it anyway.
One of my tables pointed out that I ran something differently than their previous GM, and my response was that with ten GMs running demos in the exhibit hall, there were going to be ten slightly different versions of Starfinder. I tried to be explicit if I didn't know the answer and was making a judgment call: "You might read the book later and find out that's wrong, but let's go with it for now." However, even on reading the book on my flight home (....no, shut up, you're a nerd...), I was finding things that I hadn't run correctly. Frankly, there were things I ran one way the first day, went and looked up, and then ran correctly on later days.
If I was one of the GMs making things frustrating for you, I do apologize for that. I think now that the rules are out to so many people, we can all learn the correct rules together, and most importantly, have fun with Starfinder!
This is why I started off every table stating "This is a learning experience for all of us. We are all learning the rules, myself included, and there are bound to be mistakes."
I've been reading since, and still find things I messed up. I apologize to any of my tables for any mistakes I have made (such as misreading that crits go to hull automatically...), but hopefully there weren't too many problems!
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...(such as misreading that crits go to hull automatically...)I am little confused by this. Can you expand a little more?
Sure...
I read this:
Critical damage is scored whenever a gunnery check results in a natural 20 on the die and damage is dealt to the target ship’s hull.
To mean that you deal critical damage on a nat-20, and that this means that the damage goes to the hull. Not that if you roll a nat-20 AND the hull takes damage you deal critical damage.
Totally my bad, and was much more clear in the shields section below that.
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With regards to the hotel, they have a policy of requiring a CC for incidentals and it appears Paizo instructed them not to use their card for that. I can also report that I know of at least one case where the Paizo card was used by the desk agent as the incidentals card and at least one case where the person checking in was the first one and said they had no card to give. The agent waived it somehow and checked them in anyway. So, the hotel was not consistent in applying its rules.
Its also important to note that if you use a debit card they will charge [whatever] ($50-100) from that account, but if you use an actual CC, they will only "hold" those funds. It usually takes longer for the former to be refunded than for the latter to be released. Something to consider for future events.
We will try to add some language regarding this issue to next year's documentation to reduce the surprise.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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Regarding the starfield maps. They're nice and pretty, but trying to mark the asteroid field from the quest on them, in ANY color, is hard to see on black. Also, trying to print them out is a LOT of black ink. I'm not sure what to do about this (Space is dark...) but please come up with something that's easier on the printer and on the eyes.
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James, that's more of a product feedback comment. Please drop a comment in the review of that product. The Gen Con volunteer organizers have no influence on product decisions and I'm not sure if any of the staffers are following these threads.
Also, there is such a thing as a white dry erase marker. You can search for them online. I have experience with them for quality or usefulness, but apparently they exist and might be the solution to the starfield darkness issue.
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Regarding the starfield maps. They're nice and pretty, but trying to mark the asteroid field from the quest on them, in ANY color, is hard to see on black. Also, trying to print them out is a LOT of black ink. I'm not sure what to do about this (Space is dark...) but please come up with something that's easier on the printer and on the eyes.
I'm sure with Starfinder you had less time to prep when I played the quest I thought to myself maybe cut out the asteroids on some colored card stock and place them in the star field. Maybe a Idea for future reference
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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James, that's more of a product feedback comment. Please drop a comment in the review of that product. The Gen Con volunteer organizers have no influence on product decisions and I'm not sure if any of the staffers are following these threads.
Also, there is such a thing as a white dry erase marker. You can search for them online. I have experience with them for quality or usefulness, but apparently they exist and might be the solution to the starfield darkness issue.
Sorry. I tried to put it in at the scenario review meeting on Sunday, but my flight left too early.
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Organized Play Manager
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1. Hotel won't give a key without some kind of card on file to cover incidentals or damage.
2. Paizo doesn't want to give their charge information to cover incidentals since trying to recover the money from a volunteer charging to the room (even accidentally) would likely prove time-consuming and cost more than the charges.
Paizo authorized the Westin to use the Master card on file for all the rooms. We realize not all volunteers have the means of covering the deposit themselves. The Westin didn't acknowledge our request.
That, plus the room assignment issues, meant I had a meeting with our Westin liaisons on Monday. We should have a better system in place now and can avoid issues next year.
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1. Hotel won't give a key without some kind of card on file to cover incidentals or damage.
2. Paizo doesn't want to give their charge information to cover incidentals since trying to recover the money from a volunteer charging to the room (even accidentally) would likely prove time-consuming and cost more than the charges.
Paizo authorized the Westin to use the Master card on file for all the rooms. We realize not all volunteers have the means of covering the deposit themselves. The Westin didn't acknowledge our request.
That, plus the room assignment issues, meant I had a meeting with our Westin liaisons on Monday. We should have a better system in place now and can avoid issues next year.
Thanks, Tonya.
That's the exact opposite of what the Westin clerk told me but I'm glad to hear that Paizo is looking out for us volunteers!
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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Given that they had a power surge from the construction next door take out most of their electrical system Wednesday afternoon, including the elevators and the computer systems, I'm not surprised if they had some of their responses mixed up.
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I had a really rough first SFS game on Thursday. Our GM was guessing a lot at skill checks and other combat basics (most of us were, but...). How much time did they get to review the book before running things? Did my GM just not cover the basic mechanics, or did everyone get stuck with not enough time to learn the game? I know this can't be addressed in a meaningful way now, and it won't be an issue next year, but it seemed like there was a LOT of confusion due to a lack of time to review the book, and it led to a fairly negative experience for my first game.
As for overall Sag experience, it seemed pretty well organized, and while I didn't attend any, the late night games seemed insane to me. I did notice a larger number of empty tables than in previous years, no-shows for the most part, which seemed odd, but I have no scope of what was going on or why more would be absent than last year. We had our GMs in place every game, and aside from my first SFS game I thought everything went smoothly. Well Done!
Overall, things went great! Everything seemed well organized with the exception of what others have noted, the empty tables and GM no-shows. One of my own tables had a very near GM no-show, and unfortunately the GM was very unprepared. I suspect from certain comments like "I'm not sure if this module has a starship battle or not" that the GM had not even read the module. It made that particular event not worth the money spent on the ticket, but it's the only experience like that I've had in several years of PFS at Gencon. Fortunately, a VC was a player at our table and I suspect he may have had a chat with the GM afterwards about preparation. That's more of a side note than anything, I realize experiences with individual GMs isn't really indicative of the overall organization that you were asking for.
More on point, I thought the decision to have the Starfinder Quest events have an actual organized event to play all of the hour-long scenarios in a single sitting was awesome. I've always loved doing those. I appreciate that you kept both formats, too, leaving the freedom for people to squeeze them in if they wanted to like it always has been in the past.
I'd be curious to know how the overnight games went for GMs. I wasn't insane enough to do any of them on top of everything else, but I was happy that they were opened as an option.
Thanks also for reducing the number of tokens required to retrieve boons on Sunday. I found an odd one buried in my tote bag from a few years ago and that helped me cash it in!
Starfinder Society Developer
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More on point, I thought the decision to have the Starfinder Quest events have an actual organized event to play all of the hour-long scenarios in a single sitting was awesome. I've always loved doing those. I appreciate that you kept both formats, too, leaving the freedom for people to squeeze them in if they wanted to like it always has been in the past.
Looks like we've been seeing a lot of positive feedback on this process. Good to know!
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No kidding. I know I messed up a lot of things, and took maybe a little longer than I should have referencing the book.
I sat your Table for starfinder I had a blast. I enjoyed the game greatly. I even GM'd my first starfinder society game yesterday running the quest. I was able to see how the mechanics worked and a good way to stay organized and run a game by sitting at your Table thanks you.
I also had to say I enjoyed everything that Paizo did for pathfinder even with the mishap on Saturday afternoon by over selling 9-01. Asking that poor GM to run the game cold at Gen Con he did a great job even with one of the players being pretty hostile at the table. He down loaded it on the his tablet kinda read through very quickly and looked at us and said lets have some fun. By the end of the session he had all of us laughing and the hostile player was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes. You would of thought that the GM ran the scenario 100's time he must be a old pro at running scenarios cold.
Thank you for another wonderful Gen Con this year i left a bit sad none of my Characters died.