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As some folks may know, I take my 1000 post benchmarks seriously, and I try to bring forward a discussion point or thought. Something I've either seen or learned along the way to the 'next benchmark'.
So the topic on this one?
A disturbing trend that's cropped up more in the past year or so is a drive towards a lot of 'hard' facts, points, etc.
The following questions are thus brought forth:
Why do we need such exacting precision in our GMing and our play?
What are the requirements for a GM (particularly in PFS) in regards such a concept?
How do we preserve speed of play (both as GM and as Player) while minimizing this?
When is a good time for this sort of attention detail, and when is a bad one?
Where does the mindset come from that exceptionally dense detail is better than a casual working observation of a given ruleset?
These are simply questions to start the topic, and to help me continue to learn.
Thank you very much for your time in advance.
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I'm not quiet sure what you are asking, could you maybe give an example of the sort of thing you mean?
A couple of times in the past year, folks have tried to pin down the PFS development team with 'hard numbers' on various items, or how to 'SPECIFICALLY' address certain numbers or concerns.
Do we need that level of detail, when it will hamstring GMs and players from being able to make 'table calls'?
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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I guess I've seen that sort of request since the campaign began.
It's the natural product of the tensions in an Organized Play campaign. I would imagine that every "how does this work, *exactly*" question stems from an incident at a table, where a player and GM disagreed about whether some ability would work under some specific condition.
Some years ago, the question was "Can Animal Companions use weapons?" And PFS campaign management said "No." And that probably disrupted the plans of a whole bunch of players with druids and great apes and magical greatswords.
Some years later, questions were raised about how, *precisely* did the rules allow Gunslingers to draw and fire six weapons a round. And campaign management has weighed in, because it's no fun for the GM when the party stomps all over the dire threats, and it's no fun for the player whose character simply doesn't work at this table or the other.
A good house GM can make 'table calls' about rules, feats, and equipment. A good PFS GM oughtn't have to make a call whether or not a PC is legal, or whether or not a character is built around a rules exploit that *might* work at somebody else's table, but not at theirs.
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While I can't speak for other people, I know that personally I find grey areas frustrating. I've purposely avoided playing character builds I thought would be fun because I just didn't want to have to deal with the inevitable table variation.
Unlike many of the people here, I've only been playing tabletop RPGs for a few years now. I come from a background of years of competitive Magic the Gathering play and largely use Pathfinder as a means to sate my love of good tactics RPGs, which is unfortunately a relatively sparse genre in the video game world. Some of the social aspects and role playing are amusing, but for the most part I play for the mechanical aspects, especially combat and character building.
With a mindset shaped by the above, I have a huge leaning toward needing/preferring hard and set rules. I thoroughly dislike the concept of GM fiat, and my first few home campaigns (and a few PFS sessions) taught me that it's unfortunately a common outlet for nerd power tripping. Given all of that, I very much prefer to have very clearly defined ruling for how a given interaction functions. I spend hours and hours poring over content and speccing out my builds and the last thing I want is to show up at a table, excited to play this character I've spent all this time carefully crafting, only to be told that a core part of my character will not function as intended because the GM disagrees with the rules or a given interpretation of them.
While I understand that the freedom and loose reigns of the system in many aspects is a huge draw for some, maybe even many, of the players, but for me it's one of the few turn offs of this and other tabletop RPGs. To be fair, though, it's entirely possible that years of Magic spoiled me, by having a thoroughly concise ruleset that governs the interactive behaviors of nearly every moving part of the game and by giving out official rulings on any grey area that might emerge. It would make me beyond ecstatic to see Pathfinder move into a direction with a heavier focus on standardized rule writing, better/more consistent content editing, etc.
Sorry for the wall of text.
tl;dr table variation frustrates me
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Precision is required because a character needs to work the same whether you're sitting at my table, the table next to mine, or a table on the other side of the world. The only way to ensure that thousands of GMs, from all different backgrounds and walks of life, rule the same way on a given issue, is to specify exactly what the rules mean in a given situation.
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At what point, however, does it cease being a cooperative play environment and becomes a mass production line of characters marching from Level 1 to Level 12, with little to no variation or exception, because all the different variations have been mapped out and either definitively excluded or included?
I 'get' not wanting to have 'TOO MUCH' variation. At the same time, if the answers are too precise, they will get lost in the wash of 'rules noise', based on my personal experience.
So how do we address the concern of the 'grey areas' that a GM has control over while still maintaining some viable aspect of player character agency?
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I'm still unclear where you want to draw the line. I don't want more granularity than we have, because this game is very circumstantial with rules sets that are designed to be adjudicated based on the circumstances. The more hard coded the rules, the less leeway a GM has to deal with strange circumstances.
But any looser than they already are, and you start creating situations where each table is different based on house rules, different interpretations, misunderstandings, and personal bias.
I'm comfortable at the level it is as far as how Organized Play should be dictating the rules.
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If anything more clarifications, what I think you mean by granularity, opens up more stuff. I can stop worrying about slog of explaining how a character works and hoping we both understand mounted Combat the same way. I can take ideas off the bench and focus on the character of the character - two fighters with greatswords can be worlds apart as characters.
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At what point, however, does it cease being a cooperative play environment and becomes a mass production line of characters marching from Level 1 to Level 12, with little to no variation or exception, because all the different variations have been mapped out and either definitively excluded or included?
I think we're discussing very different issues here. Standardizing the rules doesn't do anything to remove the unique play experiences you get from sharing a table with your fellow players. It just means you don't run the risk of your character suddenly not working, or working far better than intended for a session.
Mechanical consistency is paramount, when the purpose of organized play is to give everyone a fair play experience.
Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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At what point, however, does it cease being a cooperative play environment and becomes a mass production line of characters marching from Level 1 to Level 12, with little to no variation or exception, because all the different variations have been mapped out and either definitively excluded or included?
I'm pretty sure a single character class can offer up to a thousand different permutations so I think your being a bit overdramatic. Do all of those permutations work? No. Do enough of them do? Yes.
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I don't find it necessary for a character to play exactly the same at every table. Hell, I might make different rulings between two tables for any number of reasons.
I feel the absolute opposite of this. Not only should a set of rules work the same way at any given table, but arbitrarily choosing to apply the rules differently should not ever be okay, in my opinion.
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Having GM'ed more than I ever want to, and will continue to do so in the future, I know my players are going to get themselves outside the written rules. They are going to choose scene options I could never prepare for. Experience as a GM lets me choose 1) is what they are asking even possible, 2) what sort of action should it be, and 3) where do I set the DC. Those situations, this sort of granularity won't help.
That said, I don't want to have the "Does that enemy have cover from you?" or "What do you mean I cannot mount the barbarian?" conversation at the table every week. If they are going to set a rule on something, it should be clear. There will be plenty of times when the monk wants to ricochet bounce himself off the allied skeleton's head to get behind an enemy.
Give the players a world that consistently makes sense, and they will continue to have fun doing non-sensible things in it.
This is sort of what I'm trying to figure out here. I've been GMing for... a while. In different systems, for... a few years.
When things become too precise, then there's this perception that if one does not do *exactly like this* one is *wrong*.
Way I learned to GM, and how I learned to play, is that GMs are arbiters of character fates. It's in the job description. But if we have more rules than say, a governmental body has regulations, not only are they NOT going to be remembered in a given moment, but players will see those 'edge' cases and aim for them *deliberately*.
Mileage may vary, but have others ever noticed this?
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But if we have more rules than say, a governmental body has regulations, not only are they NOT going to be remembered in a given moment, but players will see those 'edge' cases and aim for them *deliberately*.
First, I think you may be severely underestimating the number of regulations observed by governing bodies.
Second, I don't agree that people won't remember rules. If you're talking about a disorganized collection of piecemeal rulings then yes, people will forget them or not know about them, the same way people currently forget about or don't know about existing FAQs, Campaign Clarifications, etc. But if you're talking about well defined and standardized rules, that don't really REQUIRE those sorts of FAQ and CC fixes of clarifications, then it'll just be something people know, the same way many players now have intimate knowledge of the rules.
Developer
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Precise calls are important to me, as a player, because I know rebuilds are expensive detriments to a character's wealth, prestige, and boons.
For example, right now I'm trying to figure out how a Rogarou's Change Shape ability functions. If it's indefinite, I can play a puppy spiritualist whose phantom was his master. The entire character concept is utterly crushed if I sit down and a GM tells me that the duration of the ability is 1 minute per level. While it is very clear to me that the ability is indefinite, I like to have something I can link to a GM beforehand: in my experience, most GM's don't want to nerf you. They just want something in writing to show the others at the table in case someone gets salty.
That being said, I keep a collection of characters around the same level in case a GM decides that my character shouldn't be allowed. It has only happened once, but it made the GM feel awkward no matter how much I told them I didn't mind (and I didn't). So having campaign leadership explain something does help alleviate that.
Believe it or not, I don't actually like when a GM is bewildered with my character. I enjoy the response of "I've never seen that before", but not the call of "what weird crap are you using this week?"
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In my opinion, the Pathfinder rule set is now at the point where the number of additional rules has created enough lack of clarity and potentially unbalancing interactions that it is prohibitively costly from a time perspective for campaign leadership to clarify anything except the most egregiously unbalancing problems. I am quite happy to let individual GMs make rulings as they see fit. Players who want to build characters in the gray zone will need to accept table variation.
I'm still firmly in the camp of "if I paid to buy the book [after AR was updated], I deserve to use the character options from it."
That being said, the problems I encounter most often usually involve "Core plus one" or only using the first two years of published books. The idea that the only characters that encounter table variation are those using seventeen sources, most of which were printed in the last couple of years is...just not true.
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I agree that many rules issues are too specific to bother Campaign Leadership with. But when there is literally no way to use an Additional Resource approved feat, race, class or item as written, there is a problem. For example: Gun Twirling.
That being said, Campaign Leadership has responded to and dealt with the most egregious of issues better than in any other organized play I've been a part of and I love how PFS is organized. I really don't have a major complaint here about how things are done!
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Q: Why do we need such exacting precision in our GMing and our play?
A: To help insure a consistent gaming experience and minimize table variation. It is the reasoning behind chain restaurants. The customer always knows what they are getting when they go to a McDonalds anywhere in the country.
Q: What are the requirements for a GM (particularly in PFS) in regards such a concept?
A: Previous campaigns have used some online tests to qualify for being a GM. These were not especially hard, but I don't know as they were especially effective either. And, of course, there is always the problem with demand for GMs exceeding the supply. To be honest, there is just too much rules glut these days to expect any GM to be a rules master. The real solution may be to come out with Pathfinder 2.0 and reboot the campaign.
Q: How do we preserve speed of play (both as GM and as Player) while minimizing this?
A: As a GM, know the rules and prep as much as you can. This, of course, means more work for GMs which will put off more people wanting to GM. As a player, know your character and the rules surrounding it. But again, this requires more work on the part of the player and will put off more casual players.
Q: When is a good time for this sort of attention detail, and when is a bad one?
A: It is a good time when table variance on a particular rule becomes excessive, when you have spare time, and when a character's life or mission success depends on it. It is bad when you don't have time, when it will bog down the game unnecessarily, and when it will come across as being overly punitive.
Q: Where does the mindset come from that exceptionally dense detail is better than a casual working observation of a given ruleset?
A: Engineers.
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It basically boils down to the fact there are two basic types of Organized Play members: Invested and Casual.
The Invested players want to invest in the game as much as possible. They will pour through the rules, look hard for additional play opportunities, go to lots of Cons and try to gleam as much as they can from the organization/game. They are the rules lawyers and power gamers, but they are also the organizers and GMs, and the ones most likely to go to the effort of giving feedback. These are the people who want detail, want paper work, want to know exactly where they and their characters stand, and care the most about cheating as that dilutes their ‘investment.’ And they want to be recognized for these efforts. They are an important backbone in any organized play environment, but usually represent a minority. Without them, Organized Play groups would become disorganized and chaotic and would eventually die due to entropy.
The Casual players just want to have fun playing the game. They usually don’t care about the details and hate the paperwork as both can get in the way of enjoyment of the game. They are the lifeblood of organized play as they usually represent the majority and are frequently made of up new players. They are the ones that fill out the tables so everyone gets to play and the base from which Invested players come from. Without them, Organized Play groups would not grow or change and would eventually die due to stagnation.
Both Invested and Casual players are important to having a healthy Organized Play group. The problem has always been that doing something for one groups tends to alienate the other. Campaigns like Living Greyhawk focused more on the Invested Players. They had a very dedicated base, but it was relatively small, so it is arguable it did a lot to expand the hobby. Living Forgotten Realms took the opposite approach. It focused on the Casual players. Initially it met with a lot of success from huge numbers of new players. But this focus made the Invested players feel less and less like their ‘investment’ was paying off. This caused infrastructure problems within the organization that eventually led to its collapse, not because there weren’t enough players, but because there weren’t enough people interested in GMing and organizing for those players.
So a proper balance has to be struck in order for an Organized Play group to thrive. Discussions like this are actually about where that balance should lie. That’s always a tricky decision and one that can change with the times.
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Why do we need such exacting precision in our GMing and our play?
What are the requirements for a GM (particularly in PFS) in regards such a concept?
Table variation to some degree is an expected byproduct of inconsistent GMs and isn't something the PFS leadership needs to address.
Regarding the requirements of a GM, the issue arrives with how much power they are allowed to exert over the scenario or their minions. PFS leadership likes to be in control, keeping their GM's on a short leash, but that means that the GM needs to be able to follow the lead to an exact detail. If the rules are vague, PFS needs to fix this if they expect the GMs to be following their lead.
The online rules resources for PFS are terrible. And PFS leadership seems to rely on them. No offense, I understand lots of time and effort is put into them, but as a reference, they are a mess and they promote rules disputes. Noted issues are as follows:
-Players feel that the offical forums should yield official answers, but they often don't and are even critized by other posters for "unreasonably" expecting official answers.
-More so, PFS rules questions which specifically pertain to a player's enjoyment of PFS are often moved to the rules section, despite being a question easily resolved by a home GM and really only a question in regards to PFS play due to the PFS GMs being unable to houserule situations.
-Additionally, PFS has loads of rules which seem to exist only within the forums or within one of many online resources. A post here or there by someone on the PFS staff is often all that constitutes a ruling. Having these in obscure places promotes rules disputes. Additionally, we've got FAQs, campaign clarifications, additional resources, blog posts, and eratta to sort through in order to find out what is supposed to be the correct ruling. There's just too much information in too many locations to expect players to know all of them, which means that they aren't very useful because players don't know them.
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Regarding solutions, PFS leadership should decide if the short leash is worth fixing all this. Allowing their GMs a bit more control over the scenario and the players would remove the player's need to contact PFS, which would reduce the need for PFS to actually fix anything.
For example, could have the GM houserule a given ability by writing the houserule on a Chronicle Sheet, and just let the player use that. Now the player doesn't need to go on the boards or otherwise request an offical answer from PFS.
Could also grant the GM the option to alter the scenario so as to avoid foreseeable rules disputes.
Regional Venture-Coordinator, Appalachia
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This is a really interesting discussion thank you for bringing it forward.
This is sort of what I'm trying to figure out here. I've been GMing for... a while. In different systems, for... a few years.
When things become too precise, then there's this perception that if one does not do *exactly like this* one is *wrong*.
Mileage may vary, but have others ever noticed this?
I think the main issues here actually come not from the organized play side but from the Product Development side being sort of schizophrenic about what it thinks on these issues.
I think John and Tonya do an admirable job in managing this where possible but without a consistent philosophy on the game design side a consistent organized play philosophy is challenging to implement without feeling arbitrary.
For instance, the Ultimate Intrigue introduced a lot of skill unlocks and feats that certainly suggested a "if the rules don't say a thing is possible as a default use for a skill/feat/ability then it doesn't do that" stance on how to read feat/skills/abilities. Conversely, a lot of splat material takes a very liberal approach when it comes to those same aspects - thinking specifically about the Pathfinder Companion Series like Path of the hellknight or the First World Book.
I think its worth noting that just about everyone hates Ultimate Intrigue and likes the Companion books suggests what the community wants, but the juxtaposition means that we are very often left with questions of how rules written with these different ideas in mind are meant to interact. Ideally, this burden would not be placed in the laps of home GMs and Organized play leadership but here we are.
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As is, players don't like giving themselves occasionally dead class features, and thats why all these questions get asked and its hard to blame them. I agree with you that leadership should be liberal in the case of things that arent game breaking to encourage a greater variety of builds. It would be so easy to build every fighter with Power attack and suite of "solid but uninteresting" options like Improved Init and Blind fight.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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The problem is that this is a game where it becomes a Kuthonite act of ritualistic pain trying to figure out how the hell a specific mechanic works. My one Oracle is missing parts of her class feature. I have a Mesmerist with an archetype that is broken in a way that I'm pretty sure the designer didn't know how the class works in the first place. My Alchemist if you went with the logical ruling was useless. This isn't stuff the GM should even have to fix in the first place.Having GM'ed more than I ever want to, and will continue to do so in the future, I know my players are going to get themselves outside the written rules. They are going to choose scene options I could never prepare for. Experience as a GM lets me choose 1) is what they are asking even possible, 2) what sort of action should it be, and 3) where do I set the DC. Those situations, this sort of granularity won't help.
That said, I don't want to have the "Does that enemy have cover from you?" or "What do you mean I cannot mount the barbarian?" conversation at the table every week. If they are going to set a rule on something, it should be clear. There will be plenty of times when the monk wants to ricochet bounce himself off the allied skeleton's head to get behind an enemy.
Give the players a world that consistently makes sense, and they will continue to have fun doing non-sensible things in it.
This is sort of what I'm trying to figure out here. I've been GMing for... a while. In different systems, for... a few years.
When things become too precise, then there's this perception that if one does not do *exactly like this* one is *wrong*.
Way I learned to GM, and how I learned to play, is that GMs are arbiters of character fates. It's in the job description. But if we have more rules than say, a governmental body has regulations, not only are they NOT going to be remembered in a given moment, but players will see those 'edge' cases and aim for them *deliberately*.
Mileage may vary, but have others ever noticed this?
For instance, the Ultimate Intrigue introduced a lot of skill unlocks and feats that certainly suggested a "if the rules don't say a thing is possible as a default use for a skill/feat/ability then it doesn't do that" stance on how to read feat/skills/abilities. Conversely, a lot of splat material takes a very liberal approach when it comes to those same aspects - thinking specifically about the Pathfinder Companion Series like Path of the hellknight or the First World Book.
Yes pick a book where part of the discussion revolving around it was a guessing game involving whether or not the writer knew how sundering work.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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For instance, the Ultimate Intrigue introduced a lot of skill unlocks and feats that certainly suggested a "if the rules don't say a thing is possible as a default use for a skill/feat/ability then it doesn't do that" stance on how to read feat/skills/abilities.
Splatbooks are really just as guilty of this, see for example Animal Archive introducing the Flank trick. Until that trick existed you might think that a combat-trained wolf companion would know to flank, just like a pack of wild wolves would.
I think its worth noting that just about everyone hates Ultimate Intrigue and likes the Companion books
I like and dislike parts of Ultimate Intrigue on a per-chapter basis, really. The explanations about Illusion magic and Stealth are very valuable to me. It takes Stealth from being 80% usable to 95%; of course the final 5% of weirdness drives people nuts. The minigames are interesting although they're not always suitable for dropping into the middle of a PFS game with no warning. The heist chapter is wonderful.
Player companions on the other hand... I find they contain a lot of filler text and often redundant abilities.
I have no idea how you came up with the "figure" that people like one kind of book better than the other.
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The problem is that this is a game where it becomes a Kuthonite act of ritualistic pain trying to figure out how the hell a specific mechanic works.
That's a great way to describe it.
Then you ask for clarity from the developers in form of a rules question on the rules forum, but no answers are given (usually) by anyone of authority to offically answer it. And unless it results in a really over powered balance issue, they just don't ever address it.
And them not addressing it isn't an issue for home games, since the GM can just houserule the issue and it's resolved. Paizo and the Pathfinder Developers don't need to address this, since having a GM works just fine to patch up rules that aren't well explained.
But for PFS, where the GM isn't allowed to houserule or otherwise fix broken rules, PFS needs to answer these questions. That's the cause of the need for Granularity in PFS.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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To take a stab at some of the opening questions. What sort of precision do we need in the rules, why do we need it, and how far should we go to get it?
What we need in PFS is rules that are clear enough that you can take a character from one table and play it at another table. That means a couple of things:
1) What's legal at one table is legal at all tables. GMs don't get to ban your character just because they don't like some ability. This can be difficult with some of the more complicated entries in Additional Resources.
2) "Whether your build will even do anything" should be knowable beforehand. If you're planning a cavalier, you want to know if it's even possible to use a lance and ride-by attack from the back of a horse with only 5ft reach. (This has been contested.) For some questions you really shouldn't have table variation otherwise entire classes become borderline unplayable.
3) Ideally, less-high-stakes questions are also predictable. Like whether your horse can also attack during a ride-by attack (with a lance or scimitar). It would be nice to avoid table variation here but the character would still be playable even if his horse didn't get to attack.
That covers the what and why, now the question how to go about it and how far to go.
Ideally we'd have a crystal-clear game, but anyone who seriously thinks that's possible has never seen these exact same arguments happen on the boards of other RPGs. Face it, Paizo isn't NASA, it doesn't have that kind of money and pressure on code quality. Most of us wouldn't be able to afford the books if they tried.
From a GM you should expect a good working knowledge of the core game. Thoroughly reading the Combat and Magic chapters go a very long way towards smooth running.
I don't think GMs need to keep up with the minutia of clarifications of obscure class features from softcovers. Keeping up with major FAQs and changes to core line products is valuable though. Some VOs compose email bulletins of "stuff from this month you should really know" for their parish. Of course every geek is going to have an opinion on what is really important, so keeping to main points is tricky. You don't want to overwhelm casual GMs.
If a player wants to use something exotic, the burden of keeping up should be with the player. If you're playing something weird and unbelievable, you better take a few minutes before the game to talk the GM through it and show that you know what you're doing.
Finally, Paizo ought to transition towards a more professional version/change documentation/management tracking system. Errata, FAQs, rulings and clarifications aren't incidents but continual practice, so tracking them in the current ad-hoc manner doesn't make sense.
I personally think forum rulings should have an expiration date of one month; after that if it hasn't been centrally codified it's become obscure. And that includes blogs that don't get pinned on a central page.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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Regarding PFS needing more clarification, here my anecdote, apologies in advance.
I've noticed this trend in life as something that happens whenever anything gets big. When I worked for a small business, there was wiggle room for not quite following the rules because it was appropriate. Instances of "using common sense" were good enough because you knew the name of everyone working around you. It was a good work environment because everyone was burning the candle at both ends to get things done, but we were far from perfectly efficient.
Later, when I was hired on at a large engineering manufacturer, there were no "common sense" clauses, and way more standard operating procedure documents (SOPs). There was a hierarchy of leadership, paths of promotion, and every process--major or minor--was documented. And on some levels it needed to be. It allowed for the individuals to change roles, be fired, be hired, and for the company to be sustainable. The downside is that I as an individual employee felt like a nameless cog in the machine. Which is, in a mechanical sense, exactly what I was to the company.
I don't think that PFS has gotten to that point, and given its volunteer base I don't think it ever will. But good documentation, SOPs, and things like that allow it to live on beyond its members.
There are countless times when I see the forums, see a question, and literally slam my head into my desk, asking "why can't we just use common sense?" And the answer inevitably is "because we have so many people, and people understand things differently."
So, locally, with my people that I know by name. I encourage the use of common sense. But here, in this global network we belong to, there are times I must accept that some of these "common sense" questions need official answers too.
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I love the idea of having an expiration date on forum rulings.
That would be completely unworkable.
Not everyone camps on the forums 24/7 to learn all the things, and even those that attempt to find they miss some of the things.
It would be far too easy for a GM to go "Well, I haven't seen any ruling beyond 'x' on such-and-such, so gunslingers have to use their guns as clubs for this scenario, it's the only way to make it fair for everyone in the absence of any further information.", for sake of example.
Or
"Well, since I haven't seen the AR updated in a while, I'm sorry, you can't play your catfolk even if you have a boon for it.", etc, etc, etc.
If anything, instead of eliminating 'table variation' it would increase it by an order of magnitude, especially in circumstances where different rulings come down about different parts of a character build and a GM may not be 100 per cent on all of them.
And who wants to be the player turned away because the GM didn't like the fact that their tengu's feathers were bright blue (dyed, MIND YOU, as per the ARG!) from a 10-11 table because otherwise they wouldn't have a character in range?
No, expiration dates are an exceptionally poor idea.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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The whole point of an expiration is so that a GM or player doesn't need to be camped on the forums. If a ruling doesn't get codified into one of the more searchable formats (FAQ, clarification etc.), then it just stops counting - you don't have to search for it anymore. It just sinks into the forum swamp and dies.
So yeah, that would force Paizo to both adopt a more easy-to-use system for codifying rulings (instead of the current "it's soooo hard to post things, we sent it in, it'll be online within a few weeks" practice).
And it would also force Paizo to choose it's battles in what it really wants to rule on.
For new players and GMs it would mean that you don't need to go down years into the history of PFS to acquaint yourself with rulings that may have already been contradicted in other forum posts.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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The whole point of an expiration is so that a GM or player doesn't need to be camped on the forums.
The problem is that you still really bed to be camped on the forums regardless. The only way I can ever see that going away is if their ability to publish material that is written correctly in the first place improves which given recent history isn't happening any time soon.
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Because new forum rulings can still pop up, and those won't be expired.
And because if forum rulings expire, then the rules affected might once again be thrown into uncertainty, and the best place to look for how it might work will end up being the previous ruling on the forum.
Having a forum ruling expire doesn't make the rule in question any clearer. It's more of a situation of trying to create an incentive for Paizo to address things like the FAQ more quickly. It almost feels like a punishment for Paizo employees if they don't update the FAQ or campaign clarifications or whatever document fast enough. Now they have to come back to the forum and clarify that their clarification still applies. And that just doesn't seem like a good approach to things.
There are clarifications from Mike Brock that are still out there from 5 years ago, and that still help clear up things that would otherwise be unclear. Would it be great if those made it into one of the documents? Sure. But until they do, it's still useful to have some idea of how to handle those situations.
I'm sure if someone looks hard enough, that are still things that Mark Moreland clarified, or any of the former campaign leads, going back to Joshua Frost in season 0 or 1. Why would we want to make those things unclear again, just because Paizo is busy and they haven't had time to update the FAQ?
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Because they shouldn't be too busy to do their jobs. It should not be unreasonable to ask they their products be better written or at least supported such that the contents are clear and concise for organized play in a timely manner.
Honestly, if those clarifications were of any importance then they should be properly documented somewhere better than the forums anyhow.
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There are countless times when I see the forums, see a question, and literally slam my head into my desk, asking "why can't we just use common sense?" And the answer inevitably is "because we have so many people, and people understand things differently."
Oh I agree entirely, that PFS isn't large enough to abandon common sense, but I feel it's doing so anyway and that is the issue that the OP is mentioning.
I've said it before, the way pathfinder works, having a GM just apply common sense and make a houserule to resolve a situation is perfect for pathfinder. That's the common sense solution. The GM isn't just a referee, they can actually resolve issues without sending the players to forums to debate things.
PFS has decided to disregard the role of the GM in favor of more standardized system that PFS leadership has direct control over. And that's fine too, but in doing so, it requires much more micromanaging, or rather, requires more Granularity in the rules. Now, if players have a question, they need to ask PFS and wait for an answer from them.
If PFS leadership wants players to apply more common sense and just figure things out themselves, then they need leave more of the game issues and solutions in the hands of the players. That's just how it works.
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If PFS leadership wants players to apply more common sense and just figure things out themselves, then they need leave more of the game issues and solutions in the hands of theplayersGMs. That's just how it works.
Fixed that for you.
I've seen far worse systems than PFS, which should be disturbing and comforting at the same time.
Out of several different organized play groups, it's the one that's closest to 'getting it', but oft-times I find myself wondering if there's anything I can do to help -- I can't Venture-critter anything, I simply do not have the time available to do that job right -- but at the same time I want to help.
That being said, I've seen what some 'crowd-sourced' solutions have turned into, and I have this fear of becoming part of the problem.
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There are clarifications from Mike Brock that are still out there from 5 years ago, and that still help clear up things that would otherwise be unclear. Would it be great if those made it into one of the documents? Sure. But until they do, it's still useful to have some idea of how to handle those situations.
5 years... that's a long time. If it's not important enough to make it into an official document in 5 years, there's clearly no intention to fix this one.
Is it really that unreasonable to say this one has expired as an official ruling? You can still use it as an example of how things were ruled in the past. Just because it expires, it doesn't cease to be a reference, but saying it's a current ruling seems misleading if they haven't touched it in 5 years and in that time determined it wasn't worth adding to the book, the eratta, or the FAQ.
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If PFS leadership wants players to apply more common sense and just figure things out themselves, then they need leave more of the game issues and solutions in the hands of theplayersGMs. That's just how it works.Fixed that for you.
I've seen far worse systems than PFS, which should be disturbing and comforting at the same time.
Out of several different organized play groups, it's the one that's closest to 'getting it', but oft-times I find myself wondering if there's anything I can do to help -- I can't Venture-critter anything, I simply do not have the time available to do that job right -- but at the same time I want to help.
That being said, I've seen what some 'crowd-sourced' solutions have turned into, and I have this fear of becoming part of the problem.
:) that works too. And I agree, crowd-sourced definitely has potential to result in disaster.
But I still think that the solution to avoiding Granularity is found by pushing more choices on the local GMs, rather than having PFS be responsible for rules consistencies.
On the flip side, if PFS decides they don't mind Granularity, then they should really micromanage the rules a lot more. More work, but more consistency. A nice, well organized, rules solutions format for submission of rules disputes would be excellent.
Kinda a lawful vs chaos thing....
Or they can just keep trying to keep PFS leadership neutral...
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There are clarifications from Mike Brock that are still out there from 5 years ago, and that still help clear up things that would otherwise be unclear. Would it be great if those made it into one of the documents? Sure. But until they do, it's still useful to have some idea of how to handle those situations.5 years... that's a long time. If it's not important enough to make it into an official document in 5 years, there's clearly no intention to fix this one.
Is it really that unreasonable to say this one has expired as an official ruling? You can still use it as an example of how things were ruled in the past. Just because it expires, it doesn't cease to be a reference, but saying it's a current ruling seems misleading if they haven't touched it in 5 years and in that time determined it wasn't worth adding to the book, the eratta, or the FAQ.
It's not always that they decided it wasn't worth adding to the book. It may be that they don't know every single clarification post that exists out there. In some cases, it's just a matter of them going through so much material, that they miss adding a few things to the FAQ or the guide. For a recent example that I've been confused about, when the FAQs were updated, there was an FAQ about applying multiple boon chronicles to a character that say they have to be the first boon. The FAQ says you can, as long as all of them come before the first chronicle played. Seems straightforward enough.
But can you add the boon chronicles while you're still able to do a rebuild? (3 XP or less?) That ruling didn't make it into the FAQ, but the post from Mike Brock is still out there from 2012 clarifying that yes, you can. What happens if it just expires? Can people no longer add race boons to characters with 3XP? Are all of the previous characters that do have race boons added at 3XP now illegal? What tells them that they can't do it now, when there's a post out there saying they can? Do we really want it being legal one day, then illegal the next day, with nothing from campaign leadership telling us that something has changed or how to handle the change?
It's one thing if they issue an FAQ, and they say that they know it used to work one way, and now it doesn't. We have a clear way to proceed. But if there's something out there saying it's legal, and there's nothing saying it's illegal, but the original clarification has expired, suddenly it's all sorts of confusing.
For a second example, where it took a very long time to get an official response, who can play Masters of the Fallen Fortress? Can it be played by a level 2 character? Originally, no. Then the guide changed to reference Tier 1 modules as being able to be played once with a level 2 character. Then pages and pages of forum posts followed of people arguing back and forth about whether or not it could be played by a 2nd level character. What value is there in having something as basic as what level character can play a module be uncertain? How is that in any way good for the campaign, when someone just showing up to the game because they thought they had good information is told they can't play?
Now, finally, after the Season 8 guide was released, and the attempt to clear things up didn't actually clear things up, we got a forum post from Tonya saying that it was for level 1 characters only. Hurray! An answer! They weren't able to update the guide again until Season 9 (and I haven't actually checked the language to see if it's fixed). What value is there is having the answer to an extremely debated question, but saying that we're going to ignore it a month later and go back to fighting?
I just don't understand how clarity around the rules of organized play is not a good thing, even if it requires a little searching to get that clarity. It feels to me like people are upset that they need to take the time to do a forum search, when the alternative, realistically, is not that Paizo is suddenly going to have the resources to update everything immediately when a decision is made. No, what will happen is that things will just go back to being unanswered and people wll fight over who is allowed to play a scenario.
I also think that people aren't upset as much about the clarifications of things in the guide, rather they are more upset about the clarifications of the rules of Pathfinder. Like, Boots of the Earth can only be used once a day or something like that. But here's another thing I don't understand. Clarifications like that, for changes in the rules of Pathfinder, don't typically appear in the forums. They generally show up directly in the Campaign Clarifications document. So I don't understand how expiring rulings in forum posts even affects a situation like that.
So I'd like to turn it back around to you and ask, what is a clarification that they've made in the forums that you don't think should apply anymore? And why is it better for organized play if it doesn't apply?
If what you're really saying, like Angel Hunter D, is that you are upset about how long it takes for the official documents to be updated, that's a valid complaint, but a very different topic than this thread was about at the start. I share the frustration of waiting for a new version of Additional Resources or Campaign Clarifications, or even that the FAQ only changes every couple of years. But throwing out the rulings that they have made just because they are a little difficult to find does not solve that problem. It only makes it worse. Rulings appear on the messageboards because it is easier for them to post quickly here. Saying you don't want things clarified on the message boards anymore is only going to make things take longer to be clarified, and again, I just don't see that as a good thing.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Because new forum rulings can still pop up, and those won't be expired.
And because if forum rulings expire, then the rules affected might once again be thrown into uncertainty, and the best place to look for how it might work will end up being the previous ruling on the forum.
Having a forum ruling expire doesn't make the rule in question any clearer. It's more of a situation of trying to create an incentive for Paizo to address things like the FAQ more quickly. It almost feels like a punishment for Paizo employees if they don't update the FAQ or campaign clarifications or whatever document fast enough. Now they have to come back to the forum and clarify that their clarification still applies. And that just doesn't seem like a good approach to things.
It's absolutely an incentive for Paizo to develop a better FAQ system. Currently we keep hearing "it's too hard to document things" or "we sent it to the web guy and he'll get around to it in a few weeks, after we send him a dozen other things". I realize Paizo's people are busy, but I think it's a signal that they don't have a good documentation process in place. It shouldn't be so hard to document things. If you make a ruling that you want to keep around permanently, you should document it, not let it sink into the swamp.
There are clarifications from Mike Brock that are still out there from 5 years ago, and that still help clear up things that would otherwise be unclear. Would it be great if those made it into one of the documents? Sure. But until they do, it's still useful to have some idea of how to handle those situations.
I'm sure if someone looks hard enough, that are still things that Mark Moreland clarified, or any of the former campaign leads, going back to Joshua Frost in season 0 or 1. Why would we want to make those things unclear again, just because Paizo is busy and they haven't had time to update the FAQ?
We don't want to make things more unclear, it should be much easier to find rulings. Right now if you're a new player with an idea, you have to do the following:
- Search AR, FAQs and Clarifications. Check for errata. Look in the Guild Guide. These are all searchable although it would be nice if we could compress this list down a bit. But we'll take it. At least these can be searched exhaustively.
- Find if there are any forum rulings relating to your issue. You can do some searching for keywords and hope you run into something. Or you can try searching the post histories of all current and previous campaign leaders. So a new player has to go figure out just who's been campaign leader five years ago and trudge through all that.
That's insane. This guy can never be sure he's really seen everything, that there isn't another forum ruling he doesn't know about. It can't be searched exhaustively, and it's difficult to search at all. It's become way too hard to be sure that you're playing by the rules.
There are other issues too. Mike Brock clarified a lot about familiars five years ago, but most of that has been overturned recently in some blog posts and FAQs. The blog posts contain clarifications that the FAQs don't have. So anyone trying to figure out just exactly what his familiar can do needs to know about all of those.
It's not always that they decided it wasn't worth adding to the book. It may be that they don't know every single clarification post that exists out there.
That's even worse really. If campaign leadership doesn't know about an old ruling, why should it even remain in force? If it was important, they should be aware of it. If they aren't there's a chance they'll rule on the same issue again and do something different, making things more confusing.
For a second example, where it took a very long time to get an official response, who can play Masters of the Fallen Fortress? Can it be played by a level 2 character? Originally, no. Then the guide changed to reference Tier 1 modules as being able to be played once with a level 2 character. Then pages and pages of forum posts followed of people arguing back and forth about whether or not it could be played by a 2nd level character. What value is there in having something as basic as what level character can play a module be uncertain? How is that in any way good for the campaign, when someone just showing up to the game because they thought they had good information is told they can't play?
Now, finally, after the Season 8 guide was released, and the attempt to clear things up didn't actually clear things up, we got a forum post from Tonya saying that it was for level 1 characters only. Hurray! An answer! They weren't able to update the guide again until Season 9 (and I haven't actually checked the language to see if it's fixed). What value is there is having the answer to an extremely debated question, but saying that we're going to ignore it a month later and go back to fighting?
I don't think you've quite grasped what I'm proposing. It's a tandem:
1) Paizo needs to get more professional about version management. RPGs are a lot like software, any big project with multiple people working on it needs version control software. Paizo needs to get the tools that will help them track rulings properly and in a way that you can search them efficiently and exhaustively.
2) Stuff that can't be properly searched (blogs not pinned to AR/Clarifications, forum posts) should not be permanent rulings. They're a great place for discussion, to figure out the cons and pros of a proposed ruling. But after the discussion is done, the final result should be enshrined in a permanent record, not pushed down into the swamp.
I just don't understand how clarity around the rules of organized play is not a good thing, even if it requires a little searching to get that clarity. It feels to me like people are upset that they need to take the time to do a forum search, when the alternative, realistically, is not that Paizo is suddenly going to have the resources to update everything immediately when a decision is made. No, what will happen is that things will just go back to being unanswered and people wll fight over who is allowed to play a scenario.
Searching the forum isn't as reliable as you make it out to be. It's a matter of "unknown unknowns" - you don't know what you've missed. Maybe you should have searched on another search term, maybe it got posted by an earlier developer, maybe there's a newer post that overrules it. Maybe you'd never expected there to be a ruling you need to look for because the issue seemed clear-cut to you.
I think one of Paizo's problems here is that they rely way too much on "developed here" web solutions for this. Tracking code changes is something any IT company does. And they've all got money riding on it being so easy that developers actually do it. RPG rules are similar enough that Paizo should look at copying someone else's better wheel.
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So, again, saying you want the process to be better is fine. Saying until Paizo makes the process better, we're going to ignore things they've said that we know are out there and reduce conflict among the participants in the game, because we don't like the process, doesn't make any sense. And it doesn't address any of the issues this thread brought up initially.
I'm not following your example with the familiars. That was updated into the FAQ. Mike's post from years back has now been superseded. It is, essentially, expired. They made a big deal about announcing the changes were coming, giving people a chance to weigh in on them, and then posting them in an official place (the FAQ). The FAQ is the rule now. You don't need to know about Mike's forum post anymore. Isn't that what you are asking for? Forum clarifications do expire in a way currently. They expire when a newer clarification is issued. If they just expired on their own, where would that leave players? Can someone who got a wand using familiar in 2012 still have their wand using familiar use a wand in 2015 if the clarification hasn't made it into the guide or the FAQ? You're punishing the player at that point if the answer is no, not the campaign staff. If something was forgotten when moving the information from the blog to the FAQ, that's not going to affect anything unless someone is actually trying to use that option. And if someone is trying to use the option, then they should be able to point to where they saw the option is legal. It would be better if things were accurately matched, but punishing the players because the campaign staff forgot to add part of their clarification when they moved things to the FAQ is misguided. It's not a question of how reliable the forum is. I'm not saying the current process is the best process. I'm saying expiring old rulings without replacing them only makes the whole process more unreliable, because it returns things to a point where there is no answer instead of a potentially difficult to find answer. And that hurts the players and GMs more than it hurts Paizo.
Remember that a GM is only bound by a clarification on the forum if they are aware of the clarification. That allows the campaign staff to answer somebody's question quickly, and that person to save a link in case they need to show proof that whatever it is they are doing is legal. If neither the GM, nor the players are aware of a ruling on the message boards, then the GM just makes the best call they can and moves the game along. They shouldn't stop a game to search through the boards until they are sure that no clarification exists anywhere. Later, they might do that so they're sure the next time it comes up. They also have an extremely helpful tool to do so... They can ask the community, and generally if there is a clarification out there, someone on the forums knows about it and can point them in the right direction.
The other problem with trying to create an incentive like this for Paizo to work faster... Is that it's up to Paizo to implement this. Say the team says tomorrow that all forum clarifications over 1 year old are invalid. That doesn't affect them in any meaningful way. That affects us. Now all of the questions that have been answered over the years are unclear again. That's the opposite of helpful. They aren't obligated to answer all of those questions again any faster than they do now.
What I'm getting from you and other posters here is that you are frustrated with the process. Fine. Start a thread and tell them that you are frustrated with the process. Tell them why you are frustrated. Maybe if enough people do that, they will actually fix some of the issues. Asking them to invalidate years of campaign rulings, though, would not fix the issues you are frustrated with, and it brings back a lot more issues that were resolved a long time ago.
What, I think, this thread started about is not a question of how the clarifications are communicated, but which clarifications should be made in the first place. Is it helpful to the campaign to have a clarification on how a particular spell works, or is that something that should be left to the individual GM until the PDT addresses it with an FAQ? Expiring forum posts doesn't address that issue, because the PFS team don't make clarifications like that in the forums. They used to not make clarifications like that at all. Now when they do, it's through Campaign Clarifications.
It's possible there are one or two similar clarifications out there in the PFS forums, but the vast majority of forum clarifications are related to how organized play works, not how a game mechanic works. What level characters can play this scenario? Are options from the Advanced Race Guide legal for other races? Can you continue playing with 2 players if someone drops in the middle of the game, and how do you handle it?
How organized play works is not something that should be left to an individual GM to decide. How two games mechanics interact is something that could be. Retiring old forum clarifications is going to impact the first of those two things, and not the second.
If what you want is to send a message to the PFS team letting them know how frustrated you are with their response times or that clarifications from the past are missed in more recent updates... You can literally send them a message telling them exactly that. You're a venture officer and can probably do that on forums they pay closer attention to than this one, and that I and a most players don't have access to. Tell them what the problem is, directly, instead of advocating for a change that doesn't address the problem you are frustrated with.
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Saying until Paizo makes the process better, we're going to ignore things they've said that we know are out there and reduce conflict among the participants in the game, because we don't like the process, doesn't make any sense.
That is not what is being said.
There is a civil debate here regarding Granularity in PFS: what causes it and how to fix it (if it needs fixing).
Personally, I see the issue being one where PFS rules present PFS as having sole control over every ruling, but PFS leadership doesn't actually resolve every rule dispute. This creates dysfunction were players debate the exact wording of rules because they can't rely on getting a ruling from their GM or from PFS.
For solutions, I'm of two minds. 1) PFS could relinquish control over every ruling and go back to the "ask your GM" solution that the Pathfinder Game supports. 2) PFS could accept the need for Granularity and develop a stronger system to keep track of rules disputes and permanently resolve them.
Either solution works for me, but I don't think leaving it as is presents a good option.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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So, again, saying you want the process to be better is fine. Saying until Paizo makes the process better, we're going to ignore things they've said that we know are out there and reduce conflict among the participants in the game, because we don't like the process, doesn't make any sense.
That isn't what I'm saying. I'm saying you need to have both aspects in place:
- A good documentation system
- Expiration dates on everything that's not in that document system
I'm not suggesting implementing only the second part and then hoping for the first.