PFS-Chronicle Sheets

[Ascalaphus]

I don't think the competition Paizo is getting from AL is because AL has a superior online reporting system.

I think there are some improvements that could be made to the reporting system, but that it's probably not a good idea to move to a totally online reporting system. Paper chronicles have an advantage in that text on paper doesn't have to be run by a machine. If John Compton comes up with a really off the wall boon, all he needs to do is describe on the paper how to use it. He doesn't have to hire a developer to implement it in the reporting system.

I think that detailed online accounting (gold, boon boxes ticked etc.) is a very costly feature to implement, and not all that valuable to have compared to the current system. Would I want Paizo to make products more expensive because money is going into this? Not really. Would I put in my own programming time for this? No, I don't care about this feature.

IT improvements that I think would be much more useful are:

• Integration between Paizo's reporting DB and the Session Tracker so that when a player is reported at a table, their Session Tracker is automatically updated. And they receive a notification to that effect (so that they know it's done, and that they can notice erroneous reporting).
  
• Integration between Warhorn and Session Tracker so that you can also take upcoming signups into account when trying to set up a table for people.
  
• A Facebook integration for Warhorn so that you can set up events in stores that use Facebook for their local player base.
  
• Let Paizo reporting clearly track earned and used replay usages, and set up the data integrity constraints to correctly handle evergreen scenarios.
  

Right now we ask new players to make accounts at three different websites to track everything we need to track. That's a considerable hurdle to casually interested people coming back for a second game.

[shalandar]

Lau Bannenberg wrote:

IT improvements that I think would be much more useful are:

• Integration between Paizo's reporting DB and the Session Tracker so that when a player is reported at a table, their Session Tracker is automatically updated. And they receive a notification to that effect (so that they know it's done, and that they can notice erroneous reporting).
  
• Integration between Warhorn and Session Tracker so that you can also take upcoming signups into account when trying to set up a table for people.
  
• A Facebook integration for Warhorn so that you can set up events in stores that use Facebook for their local player base.
  
• Let Paizo reporting clearly track earned and used replay usages, and set up the data integrity constraints to correctly handle evergreen scenarios.
  

While I think these are admirable goals, there are some issues with these requests:

1) Integration between Paizo and Session Tracker: This move would say "We officially support and promote Session Tracker". That wouldn't be wise from Paizo's stand point. Now, any changes that are made from a "fan site" would need to be taken into account by Paizo staff.

1a) They could possibly get around that by implementing some web services/system references and allowing 3rd party software to access it. But that also opens up support needed from a programming perspective, and Paizo may not have that level of experience already on staff.

2) Integration between warhorn and session tracker: This has nothing to do with Paizo. Only between the developers of those two systems.

3) Integration between Facebook and Warhorn: Same as #2.

4) Track reply usage and evergreens: This is a good idea and fills a need that paizo currently supports. It is potentially easily doable, depending on the database and website structures Paizo already has in place.

[CrystalSeas]

Xathos of Varisia wrote:

Oh, there's money in it for Paizo. A lot of money in it. They need to attract new gamers. They've pretty much ran for 10 years on the premise that their game is superior to anything put out in the RPG market. However, the market is telling them that another product is drawing more interest and gaining the larger and younger demographic which will result in long term sales for that product. Paizo cannot coast along anymore. They have to be proactive or else they will become a niche company.

Conflating "total market" with "niche market that wants to play exclusively in Pathfinder Society games" again.

This expensive computer system and attendant staffing is only relevant to the group of gamers who always want to play within the strict subset of Pathfinder rules allowed by the Society. Even PFS players sometimes want to use the rest of the official ruleset.

There are a lot more Pathfinder products than just what is sanctioned by PFS. PFS is one marketing tool. It's not their whole marketing plan.

The druid's grove is not the whole forest.

[shalandar]

CrystalSeas wrote:

There are a lot more Pathfinder products than just what is sanctioned by PFS. PFS is one marketing tool. It's not their whole marketing plan.

This is an excellent point, and should be remembered by all who ask for PFS changes of any kind (including myself).

[Tim Schneider 908]

I'd definitely agree I'd much prefer paizo spend their dev effort on supporting community efforts instead. As demonstrated by pfstracker the community will put the shiny cover over it. If paizo did want to do development I'd prefer they provided an OAUTH & REST interface into the player session history. I'm not sure how that'd fit into their architecture but honestly that would be enough for me to actually pull out the dev tools & I imagine at least a few gems like pfstracker would come out of community effort.

As far as a digital chronicling process I can't come up with a way that works elegantly at the table.

Once you acknowledge not everyone will have internet at the game table, even at conventions, you need a solution that works offline.

The obvious next comment is missing reporting, but how about we just go with a convention where there's back-to-back games all day and you need to know your gold/boons for your next game. Which means the player needs to leave the table with something.

At which point we basically need paper, cause you need to be able to leave the table with something while they don't have internet & will want to use it in about 15 minutes at their next game table.

So while I'd love a digital chronicle solution, I don't think it can currently replace paper. Run it in tandem perhaps - then it's less about practicality for everyone and comes down to if paizo wants to invest in it for those who it would work for (I personally doubt if it'd be worth the investment, in fact I doubt the API's are even going to be worth it for them to make, but if they could easily get them it'd be a good thing. Just cost/benefit analysis which none of us out here have the data to actually prove we're the ones who are right).

[Brent Bowser]

If we're keeping 1 chronicle sheet per adventure, can we please not put the always available items on there? It's redundant.

What I would prefer is a more generic, multi use tracking sheet. You know how we really only use the left and bottom margins of a chronicle sheet now? Can we just put those 2 lines in a section and maybe squeeze 3 or 4 of those in a generic sheet? (Put a pin in the boon section, I'll get to that)

So we have a box at the top for sheet number, so like 1 for my brand new character. Then we record adventure name, date, event name and number, GM# and Signature, starting exp, earned and ending exp. Starting gold, earned, spent, ending gold. Starting prestige and/or downtime days, earned, spent, ending amount. We can get 3, maybe 4 of those per sheet. It's completely generic and saves space, so no more of not having the right chronicle sheet for the adventure and printing 8 pages of paper per scenario (7 player table max, plus GM). Thought I just had; 3 of those per sheet, 1 sheet per level. Got it. Then at cons and support, we just have piles of generic chronicle sheets.

So boons, similar fashion. A generic boon sheet where it records the adventure name, date, event name and number, gm sig and number. Then like 2 lines for someone to write their boon in there. Can squeeze a bunch of boons on a sheet.

By moving all of that onto generic forms players can fill out, (or the GM if you don't trust your players to write down 500 silver when you tell them they earned 500 silver) you can move all of that pertinent information into the scenario itself and save half a page per pdf.

[JDDyslexia]

Brent Bowser wrote:

If we're keeping 1 chronicle sheet per adventure, can we please not put the always available items on there? It's redundant.

Keep in mind it's not always redundant for CORE characters.

If CORE is still going to be a thing in PFS2, then there will still be some redundancy.

[Brent Bowser]

Joe Bouchard wrote:

If CORE is still going to be a thing in PFS2, then there will still be some redundancy.

Without debating the merits of whether Core should even exist, I feel it's safe to say all games will be core for at least the first year in 2E.

[Tonya Woldridge]

Locking this thread.

Commentary is moved to the blog discussing Chronicle Sheet Updates