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Having played Living Greyhawk myself I was rather fond of it, even though where I lived (Alaska) there wasn't many LG tables, and most of my experience was in the Duchy of Urnst, I did enjoy that aspect of it, and I liked creating characters that felt tied to my region. Like my Sete Roughrider light cavalry Fighter/Ranger/Wild Plains Outrider, who's motivations were directly tied to the duchy. Also the meta-organizations (like the roughriders) that gave your character a sense of belonging.
One thing I miss more than the regional stuff from LG was the stuff you get on ARs, even items sometimes as well as "boons." More recent Pathfinder ARs are doing a better job of this, but many times it is restricted by your faction, and you almost feel punished if you go on an adventure and just because you aren't scarab sages, half of your boons on the AR get scratched off.
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I'd love it if they could manage this. If you even organized which area of the world was which country/region in Golarion based on helping to create more inter-regional travel between conventions (cross-polinating as it were), then it would probably be even better for the regions as well. However, it would require one of two things to happen:
A) Increased production capacity. Assuming these would still need to be vetted, developed, and layed out by John Compton & Team (There's a 3rd PFS Developer out there now it seems), then the capacity would need to be dramatically increased. With the 3rd developer, maybe this is possible.
- or -
B) They need to give up rigid control over developed content and let the regions self-develop with only marginal vetting/oversight from John & Team.
Frankly, unless the 3rd developer was brought in to do more content and there isn't some restructuring that means one of the current ones is moving to a different position in the company, they likely already have a plan for what that additional content is going to be. Which means this particular plan is not very likely to happen. Despite me really wanting it to.
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QA and production issues aside, with the proliferation of online play, does the online domain become its own “region”? What if every one is physically in the same region (let’s say the Great Lakes) but play online—can they play GL exclusive scenarios or are they limited to online region exclusive scenarios?
Honestly, it’s enough of a bummer that certain scenarios require being at a Con or can only be run by someone with X amount of stars. Adding regions is not personally enticing to me as a GM or player.
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Man, not being able to travel is just my favorite part of life.
It gets me going in the morning.
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While I like the idea in a way, I think it's one better left out of PFS for now. If popularity ever increases to the point where freelancers can be hired, scenarios vetted, and there is enough 2.0 non-regional content to keep areas going, I might change my mind.
Right now, I just can't see it. I like that PFS scenarios are more controlled. While I would love to see more scenarios, turning over development of them to non-Paizo employees/freelancers just doesn't seem like a door I'd want the campaign to open (and that's before getting into issues of compensation for the people writing the scenarios).
If it was done in house/through freelancers, the same issues wouldn't exist. However, it's very hard for me to imagine a situation where the PFS team could oversee any significant number of scenarios in this category. Not when things like updating the Additional Resources and Campaign Clarifications are taking months at a time, convention support is coming a day before the event, and on top of that they're launching a new campaign/system. Even if the areas were broken down by the RVC regions, and it was limited to 1 scenario a region a season, that's 11 additional scenarios when a typical season has 25 plus some specials. That's a significant increase.
More important than the workload issue, though, is that we already have a situation where players are feeling left out of some of the content. As neat as it is to have something like Solstice Scar, part A flew by without a lot of people having a chance to play it. Even online, only a single session was managed (that I'm aware of) with 3 tables 2 days before it was retired. Now, hopefully the entire series will be opened back up sometime after this initial run of it, but that may come too close to the launch of 2.0 to really matter. So more content that is difficult to be able to play doesn't seem like a good thing when there will already be a limited number of 2.0 scenarios at launch. And I do think this is a question for 2.0, because implementing this in 1.0 seems incredibly unlikely to happen.
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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TL:DR: This is a flawed, and impractical idea, and depending on the implementation would cause significant damage.
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Somewhat more coherently:
- Development time: PFS manages to produce about 2 scenarios per months, but some months like the start of the season usually result in a pretty high workload, and that isn't even accounting for some of the more experimental, ambitious projects.
I am pretty happy with the current quality, and your suggestion would either involve publishing less content for ALL players, or pushing the current team to do even more. Considering their workload I am really not in favor of that (some like John Compton are already involved in SFS as well, and I really want a sequel to Live Exploration Extreme) .
- Access: We already hear a sizeable number of players complaining that they have difficulty accessing some of the scenarios they regard as critical for them to enjoy the current metaplot (not having played something defining like Assault on Absalom can really shift your view on a couple of recent releases).
So with regional scenarios in mind, depending on availability, their plot would need to be so irrelevant to the current season or plotlines that they might as well be a module like the Gauntlet. Not saying that they can't be decently written scenarios, but I kinda appreciate a PFS community that can consume the current releases and enjoy the stores that are told over several scenarios.
And even if we take out the "story" factor, limiting access to anything playable will annoy some players, maybe just the lucky ones who have played "everything" but other players (and GMs) will be annoyed on principle.
I noticed something:
Living Greyhawk had a practice of placing many scenarios that take place in different regions of the game world in different Regions of the Real World. It really fostered travel to other locations to see/interact with the gaming community in different regions. know it was an aspect that I enjoyed, traveling to a different part of the country to visit my family - and getting in a game that I could only play in that region. Or traveling to a Regional Con just over the border - and trying to cram in an extra game there, just for the "unique" record... something I couldn't get at home.
I am assuming you are talking about the US... but frankly, this is a global campaign, and while it might be somewhat affordable to make a trip to another part of the US.. traveling to Europe or Asia is usually associated with significantly higher cost.
Even if you distribute a single scenario for every current RVC region, that will still feel very unfair for some areas, and while it might be somewhat possible to limit a scenario to the "online" region (even though I could already see the vicious blowback from players who would not appreciate it) anything other than that will be really challenging.
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Fanfiction: From the “horror” stories I heard about the campaign, a lot of it was more or less regional fanfiction.
I really don't mind any individual organizer/GM offering their own adventures for players at their events, as long as it is absolutely 100 % clear, that this is basically fanfiction meant to entertain their players.
Everything more than that would likely require significant development resources... from what I understand, not significantly less than looking for a freelancer to write it, and anything that is published as a PFS scenario is reflecting the entirety of Paizo's organized play.
Even a single scenario that fails to tackle a difficult topic (sex, politics, etc.) already could do a lot of damage, either via public perception or how it affects the view of the player base ("Well the scenario told us to torture those guys recently, so I should not be punished for using it as the new default problem-solving solution....." .. yeah maybe this is a straw men argument, but it’s not too far of from some discussions I have read)
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One campaign, one story, individual experiences:
Among the chief appeals of organized play is the fact that we all play in a single coherent, planned worldwide campaign. At least in theory, table variation should be minimal and players should be able to talk about their exploits and experience the seasons as a community. In my honest opinion that is part the reason why multi-table interactives are such a memorable experience (they remind me of a very cinematic wow style raid experience) and why I am very critical of everything that limits players access to the campaign.
Every single regionally limited scenario weakens the bonds that bind our worldwide community, and I personally think that the current storytelling opportunities created by the current use of factions is a much better solution than anything regional.
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Organization: Not your problem, but as a convention organizer, having to schedule tables for guest coming from another country is already a neat challenge (mostly because the language barrier), and we really try to offer scenarios to all our players - some can't play tier 7-11 scenarios locally, others lack the stars required to run some scenarios and other are limited to conventions.
I used to overwork local GMs, to give visiting players a real chance to play at least some of what they miss locally, but any more than we already have would be a non-starter.
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I fully realize that due to never having played in that environment, I might be totally unable to understand it... but I see the potential impact on my community and feel that something like this would cause a lot of damage.
Venture-Agent, Australia—QLD—Brisbane
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As someone who lives in a country with a lower population, and from my own experience with LG, I would absolutely despise region-specific content. Region-specific content works much better when physical travel between regions is easier ie.. in the US or Europe.
The real attraction of the regions in LG to me was the level of detail applied to developing them, not the exclusivity.
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Indirectly (and man, some good cohesive thoughts above) it also becomes 'pay to play(win)' when the folks who CAN afford to hit every region do so and those who cannot continue to lag behind.
In OWBN (A LARP organization, but the principle applies) they actually had to implement a 'No more than 8 exp per month, and no more than 5 attendance exp' cap on a given character, because there were folks who would do a 'Regional Tour' and get six or seven games in a week (when the system was designed for 3-4 exp per month).
It may not *seem* like a lot on the surface, but the power disparity became dramatically evident over time.
As someone noted above, there's already huge financial restrictions on play access for good chunks of the PFS population due to table limits on Specials and the like (thus effectively mandating they be played at larger conventions).
We don't need to amplify this. As it is, with four mouths to feed (PF1, PF1(CORE), SF, PF2) there are already going to be some issues.
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I think that regional scenario offerings is a really cool idea, but not one that is well suited to PFS. I already travel to different regions in order to play with other parts of the community, but I do this because the global community that we have is what makes PFS so special for me. So while having my region tied to Osirion or Ustalav or whatever would be cool I am against adding something that would divide our community or exclude members of it.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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To launch PFS2 properly we'll need more content for everyone, not fragmented content.
Also, the financial picture is very relevant. If it's going to cost a lot of money to be able to play because you have to travel, you're excluding a big chunk of your player base.
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Based on Paizo’s response to our previous attempts to launch a program to include community created content I would seriously doubt you’ll see this considered for PFS2. However, with them no longer producing content for PFS1 after the 2E launch, i think it could be a great addition to PFS1. Though if that influence players not to participate in PFS2 which in turn would hurt revenue, they still might reject it.
When the committee reviewed this topic, we had considered options for regional content rotation such that you would have have to travel. Eventually all content would make it to you region. PFS is not based on regions like LG was so we’re not as restricted on how content is released
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Based on Paizo’s response to our previous attempts to launch a program to include community created content I would seriously doubt you’ll see this considered for PFS2. However, with them no longer producing content for PFS1 after the 2E launch, i think it could be a great addition to PFS1. Though if that influence players not to participate in PFS2 which in turn would hurt revenue, they still might reject it.
I do, potentially, foresee in a couple years, once PFS1 organically becomes irrelevant (its going to happen, whether its 2 years or 5), individual lodges and/or regions creating their own content. Of course you most likely wouldn't be able to travel with your character from lodge to lodge with your characters like before. But you could still play regional content.
It would be cool if the VOs of various lodges banded together to decide who is what region and such. And if they did this, they could have a loose agreement on standards and such for adventures, so that folk could travel inter-regional.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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It would be cool if the VOs of various lodges banded together to decide who is what region and such. And if they did this, they could have a loose agreement on standards and such for adventures, so that folk could travel inter-regional.
I fear that you might be underestimating the mountain of problems, disagreements, regional differences and conflict that might create (but you might just file that under general German Angst).
A good example might be to do a big Pizza order for about 200+ people, all with their individual dislikes and likes, these days we have a very experienced PFS team who we judge to make the right call for the entire campaign. Your suggestion does not have that, and if I were to write a scenario that has the following item on the chronicle sheet.. it might annoy some confused people.
"Button of Torch killing: If you press this button, it duplicates and Grandmaster Torch dies/is destroyed. Not even divine power can prevent or reverse this effect. Should Torch already be destroyed, instead, it summons a small petting zoo for your enjoyment".
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More importantly, a lot of us are already pretty busy - and will be busy supporting PFS2, SFS, and ACG.
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True, but there were some really awful adventures written for LG with some equally awful rewards. Not all triads we’re actively involved in the vetting/approval process or were the source of some of the really bad stories. Unless we expect John and his team to approve all scenario ideas, it’s a challenge finding a competent group of approvers.
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To use myself as an example:
Air fare to The Netherlands: ~$700
Lodging: ~$1000, maybe more
Incidentals (beer): more than I am willing to admit...
Another
Paizo Con air fare: $507
Lodging: $550
Incidentals: See above
Total: plus or minus, over $1500
Another
Gas to drive to, oh let us say... Chicago: $60, both ways so $120 total
Lodging: Imma posit around $120/night, likely more so four days equals $500
Incidentals: See above
How can you tell me those are not totals that equate to paying to win or simple faith for adherence to or execution of writing standards?
There is nothing stopping you and yer buddies getting together to do this on the regular as it stands right now. It should just never be sanctioned.
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True, but there were some really awful adventures written for LG with some equally awful rewards. Not all triads we’re actively involved in the vetting/approval process or were the source of some of the really bad stories. Unless we expect John and his team to approve all scenario ideas, it’s a challenge finding a competent group of approvers.
or perhaps lay down some strong guidelines/rules... perhaps having "Regional Lodges" only write scenarios for Tiers 1-4? so you get your "start" in the Society in your home region and only move up to the "big game" when your working for the Home Office.
There was some really bad adventures in LG... but at the same time there were some very flavorful ones too. On balance - I'm not sure... it was fun at the time. I still remember visiting the Court of Faire when I visited a region on the other side of the Continent from my home. It felt like I had visited another land... and I sort of had!
It might be a good idea - or not. It was just an aspect of LG that I liked, but that didn't make the transition to PFS.
I figured I'd toss it out and see if someone smarter than I am could figure a way to make it work...
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To use myself as an example:
Air fare to The Netherlands: ~$700
Lodging: ~$1000, maybe more
Incidentals (beer): more than I am willing to admit...Another
Paizo Con air fare: $507
Lodging: $550
Incidentals: See above
Total: plus or minus, over $1500Another
Gas to drive to, oh let us say... Chicago: $60, both ways so $120 total
Lodging: Imma posit around $120/night, likely more so four days equals $500
Incidentals: See aboveHow can you tell me those are not totals that equate to paying to win or simple faith for adherence to or execution of writing standards?
There is nothing stopping you and yer buddies getting together to do this on the regular as it stands right now. It should just never be sanctioned.
ok, yeah, I give up. Clearly it is a bad idea.
But you know what? Back in LG days, I can remember traveling to my sisters house (Colorado to Missouri) to help her move her household to DC. On a whim I jumped onto the Dyvers board and posted that I was going to be in town on XX Saturday and was anyone playing? I got two replies, one from over the border in Illinois... So, Saturday afternoon, after packing the Rental truck, I ran out for the evening and went to someones house I had never met. Walked up to a front door, knocked and when someone answered said "Is the LG game here?" And that's how I sat down with 5 total strangers around a dinner table and had a really fun game. Then I did it again the next week just outside of Washington DC. when I dropped off my sisters stuff - and on the way back I picked up that Illinois group (that time was out in the country at an old farm house - and adventure in itself to get there). (As long as we are counting money for this, the Total Extra Cost these games was less than a tank of gas for my car, even counting getting lost in the Ill. Contryside - and the first group even supplied dinner.)
About year later I went back for one of their local CONs, bringing 4 friends with me that time... it was a blast (but co$t much more - but heck, we saved for it for almost a year).
I know when I was in Colorado I set up several games (weekend and weekday evening) for "out of towners" who were in town on business. They'd post on the local LG board that they were in town and in the spirit of friendliness we'd arrange a game. Or three if they were there long enough. Heck, more than once I had a gamer "crash on my couch" (guest room) when they were traveling thru and we'd set up a game.
But times change, and we don't do that anymore. And I think we lost something when it died... But then, I'm just an old gamer...
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To use myself as an example:
Air fare to The Netherlands: ~$700
Lodging: ~$1000, maybe more
Incidentals (beer): more than I am willing to admit...Another
Paizo Con air fare: $507
Lodging: $550
Incidentals: See above
Total: plus or minus, over $1500Another
Gas to drive to, oh let us say... Chicago: $60, both ways so $120 total
Lodging: Imma posit around $120/night, likely more so four days equals $500
Incidentals: See aboveHow can you tell me those are not totals that equate to paying to win or simple faith for adherence to or execution of writing standards?
There is nothing stopping you and yer buddies getting together to do this on the regular as it stands right now. It should just never be sanctioned.
Its not like you don't pay these prices for conventions anyways. And for the couple you stay local with, you just save on travel expenses.
Any model that gives rewards for going to conventions is going to have the same argument. As long as its not permanently locked (I'm looking at you Convocation 4712 and Race for the Runecarved Key, Part 2), and eventually anyone, anywhere, gets to play it from the comfort of their own home (if they want), then I don't think it should be a huge issue.
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To use myself as an example:
Air fare to The Netherlands: ~$700
Lodging: ~$1000, maybe more
Incidentals (beer): more than I am willing to admit...Another
Paizo Con air fare: $507
Lodging: $550
Incidentals: See above
Total: plus or minus, over $1500Another
Gas to drive to, oh let us say... Chicago: $60, both ways so $120 total
Lodging: Imma posit around $120/night, likely more so four days equals $500
Incidentals: See aboveHow can you tell me those are not totals that equate to paying to win or simple faith for adherence to or execution of writing standards?
There is nothing stopping you and yer buddies getting together to do this on the regular as it stands right now. It should just never be sanctioned.
Its not like you don't pay these prices for conventions anyways. And for the couple you stay local with, you just save on travel expenses.
Any model that gives rewards for going to conventions is going to have the same argument. As long as its not permanently locked (I'm looking at you Convocation 4712 and Race for the Runecarved Key, Part 2), and eventually anyone, anywhere, gets to play it from the comfort of their own home (if they want), then I don't think it should be a huge issue.
But... Regional Exclusive Scenarios (at least the way they were run in LG) aren't exclusive to CONs.
So... is it that 'jon dehning' is objecting to them because he thinks they are Regional CON Exclusive Scenarios? He doesn't realize that most of the scenarios (more than 80% anyway) were not run at CONs? Is he upset at scenarios that are run at CONs, and so objects to Regional Exclusive Scenarios because they might be run at a Regional CON?
I'm confused... sorry...
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To use myself as an example:
Air fare to The Netherlands: ~$700
Lodging: ~$1000, maybe more
Incidentals (beer): more than I am willing to admit...Another
Paizo Con air fare: $507
Lodging: $550
Incidentals: See above
Total: plus or minus, over $1500Another
Gas to drive to, oh let us say... Chicago: $60, both ways so $120 total
Lodging: Imma posit around $120/night, likely more so four days equals $500
Incidentals: See aboveHow can you tell me those are not totals that equate to paying to win or simple faith for adherence to or execution of writing standards?
There is nothing stopping you and yer buddies getting together to do this on the regular as it stands right now. It should just never be sanctioned.
Its not like you don't pay these prices for conventions anyways. And for the couple you stay local with, you just save on travel expenses.
Any model that gives rewards for going to conventions is going to have the same argument. As long as its not permanently locked (I'm looking at you Convocation 4712 and Race for the Runecarved Key, Part 2), and eventually anyone, anywhere, gets to play it from the comfort of their own home (if they want), then I don't think it should be a huge issue.
And yet there are people that still air their displeasure at needing to travel to get to play the cool shiny race boon. When will those race boons be delivered to the comfort of their home?
A lot of convention logic is predicated on paying to get stuff. I understand that in order to get people to pay the badge fee and potential other expenses, a new shiny object must be dangled in front players. Which when combined with changes to boon allocation, a player could still walk away empty handed. Just using our own boon dispersal method, Andy, it was/is possible for me to attend all of these cons and go home with nothing. This potential escalates if one removes Paizo/Gen Cons from the list. Having never attended Origins or Winter Fantasy when it was a thing, I can not comment on whether a player received a boon simply by returning a token to the prize table.
The RSP is helping to dispel this necessity, but has a ways to go.
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To use myself as an example:
stuff I wrote
Its not like you don't pay these prices for conventions anyways. And for the couple you stay local with, you just save on travel expenses.
Any model that gives rewards for going to conventions is going to have the same argument. As long as its not permanently locked (I'm looking at you Convocation 4712 and Race for the Runecarved Key, Part 2), and eventually anyone, anywhere, gets to play it from the comfort of their own home (if they want), then I don't think it should be a huge issue.
But... Regional Exclusive Scenarios (at least the way they were run in LG) aren't exclusive to CONs.
So... is it that 'jon dehning' is objecting to them because he thinks they are Regional CON Exclusive Scenarios? He doesn't realize that most of the scenarios (more than 80% anyway) were not run at CONs? Is he upset at scenarios that are run at CONs, and so objects to Regional Exclusive Scenarios because they might be run at a Regional CON?
I'm confused... sorry...
No, I do not care wether these CON scenarios are offered at CONs or at Honest Al's CON Game Day. I am fundamentally against any idea that promotes an already unhealthy amount of paying to win in PFS. If there is a push to get players to travel more from one region to another, then the local leadership should be the ones advocating, advertising, and ultimately leading by example.
I travel(ed) a lot to other parts of the country to play PFS and I talk to people from other parts of the world and country. I suggest they come and visit us in September for a lovely little con we have. I am somewhat successful in this, for whatever reason. I have never once had to lower myself by using a lure of "You can get this one cool thing that NO ONE ELSE IN YOUR TOWN WILL EVER GET!!@!!!!111" to get these folks to come visit Mpls/StP. Not. Once.
If theses regional con/not-con scenarios are offered, it will be simply another arms race that people with disposable income will win. See: Assassin; Assassin, Red Mantis; 12 OG Goblin boons, fetchling boons, et al.
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To use myself as an example:
Air fare to The Netherlands: ~$700
Lodging: ~$1000, maybe more
Incidentals (beer): more than I am willing to admit...Another
Paizo Con air fare: $507
Lodging: $550
Incidentals: See above
Total: plus or minus, over $1500Another
Gas to drive to, oh let us say... Chicago: $60, both ways so $120 total
Lodging: Imma posit around $120/night, likely more so four days equals $500
Incidentals: See aboveHow can you tell me those are not totals that equate to paying to win or simple faith for adherence to or execution of writing standards?
There is nothing stopping you and yer buddies getting together to do this on the regular as it stands right now. It should just never be sanctioned.
Its not like you don't pay these prices for conventions anyways. And for the couple you stay local with, you just save on travel expenses.
Any model that gives rewards for going to conventions is going to have the same argument. As long as its not permanently locked (I'm looking at you Convocation 4712 and Race for the Runecarved Key, Part 2), and eventually anyone, anywhere, gets to play it from the comfort of their own home (if they want), then I don't think it should be a huge issue.
And yet there are people that still air their displeasure at needing to travel to get to play the cool shiny race boon. When will those race boons be delivered to the comfort of their home?
A lot of convention logic is predicated on paying to get stuff. I understand that in order to get people to pay the badge fee and potential other expenses, a new shiny object must be dangled in front players. Which when combined with changes to boon allocation, a player could still walk away empty handed. Just using our own boon dispersal method, Andy, it was/is possible for me to attend all of these cons and go home with nothing. This potential escalates if one removes Paizo/Gen Cons from the list. Having never attended Origins or Winter Fantasy...
I'm certainly not sure that locking anything behind the "must go to a con" is necessary anymore.
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How would a Regionally Exclusive Scenario scheme play out for the online community?
Good question. Not sure.
Perhaps the whole scheme wouldn't be locked to a region for play like Living Greyhawk was, but rather its just 1 or 2 scenarios a year that each region produces for everyone to play, developing a specific storyline. Perhaps its exclusive to that region for 3 or 6 months, and then opened to everyone.
But this is all probably a moot point, for if it were to have the organization and vetting necessary, then it would need to be approved by Paizo as kinda a license (not just OGL, cause you'd be using IP) to do so. And I haven't seen them willing to do that very often.
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I would not support a regional exclusive scenario program. As Jon said, that creates the same problems as we already had with con-exclusive content like race boons. We are working that out of the system. I would support a regional scenario system where the material was restricted for a limited time, say 6 months, a year, whatever where it could only be run in the designated region. After that, it would be available everywhere. That would encourage some travel for those who can afford it and want to play right now, and also allow the rest to still enjoy the material.
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Assuming Paizo allowed the regions to produce said content Tallow's idea sounds pretty cool. For those with the disposable income to travel to Cons or other region's game days you could go and play their scenarios during the restricted period(possibly even with the author as your GM), and then once the time had elapsed everyone would have the opportunity to experience it. No one's being left out because every region would have their own scenario during the exclusive period. Done right that could strengthen the community as you would not only get to interact with the members of other regions on the boards/online play/Cons, but would have the chance to see what kind of content people were passionate enough to create. Wei Ji is also correct that it would take a lot of work, and the VO's from each region would have to be on board to work together to establish a set of guidelines to ensure quality and so things like the "button of Torch killing" didn't show up on chronicles unless all the regions were on board. Definitely a cool idea.
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Indirectly (and man, some good cohesive thoughts above) it also becomes 'pay to play(win)' when the folks who CAN afford to hit every region do so and those who cannot continue to lag behind.
I never played LG, but the concept of "geographical luck" (where you happen to live) is one that I've heard older players reminiscing about. Usually with lots of griping.
One guy who lived in Wichita Falls, TX, had to drive at least 4 1/2 hours to get to another region. Another guy who lived in Toledo could bop up to Detroit in less than an hour or cross the bridge into Windsor, Ontario in a few minutes more. He would occasionally make the "long" (1 hr 45 minute) drive to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Giving him pretty easy access to four different regions.
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Regional Scenarios could look like how Adventure League does their community created content. It could get created for small events, and local conventions and then after a short time it could be sold to whomever wanted to buy it. So you'd have a regional exclusive for a short time, 6 months maybe, and then after that it'd be available for purchase and play anywhere.
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...we have enough of a time in Organized Play with getting materials vetted in a timely fashion, with no offense to the hard-working people in Organized Play.
Adding another item to that requiring administration is not the simple matter that some folks may feel it is, and having it be revolving/available for everyone after that would require even more vetting.
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To my mind, PFS already had those "regional"-specific boons and one specific scenario in the past; the example for scenario that comes to mind would be the 2012 Gen-Con exclusive Race for the Runecarved Key, part 2 and the example for boons would be stuff like the convention charity auction boons (there being others besides GenCon?)/the Kickstarter Emerald Spire PFS boon (in a manner of speaking... if being online was considered a region in and of itself).
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region locked content
Actually, that is not what we proposed. The idea was to allow community-created scenarios that would only be legal in the region it was created for a period of time, say 6-12 months. After which it would become available world-wide. That would allow the scenarios to be featured events at local conventions to encourage attendance by those outside of a small geographic footprint. However, it also allowed those who could not travel from half-the-globe away from said content to get access to it at a future date. We thought it would be a win-win for all involved.
There are A LOT of other factors to consider for a program of community generated content, some of which turned out to be non-starters for Paizo and they shelved the idea. Many of the people who had objections are still in the same position at Paizo so I doubt their opinion of this concept has changed much in the few years since it was seriously considered. I'm happy to be proven wrong if Paizo wants to comment otherwise.
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region locked contentActually, that is not what we proposed. The idea was to allow community-created scenarios that would only be legal in the region it was created for a period of time, say 6-12 months. After which it would become available world-wide. That would allow the scenarios to be featured events at local conventions to encourage attendance by those outside of a small geographic footprint. However, it also allowed those who could not travel from half-the-globe away from said content to get access to it at a future date. We thought it would be a win-win for all involved.
I understand that on paper it isn't full "region locking" but I am concerned that it would be in practice. If we have a 6-12 month waiting period, we might see interest in the scenario drop off due to the fact that it would be most likely be a different season plot at that point. That makes it hard to get on the schedule, etc etc etc.
There are A LOT of other factors to consider for a program of community generated content, some of which turned out to be non-starters for Paizo and they shelved the idea. Many of the people who had objections are still in the same position at Paizo so I doubt their opinion of this concept has changed much in the few years since it was seriously considered. I'm happy to be proven wrong if Paizo wants to comment otherwise.
I'm actually totally on board with user generated content.
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That makes it hard to get on the schedule, etc...
Not any harder than any other prior season content. Older scenarios are routinely offered at most events. And remember. The assumption would be that your region would have its own content being produced. So, even if you have to wait a bit for stuff from other regions, you should still get more content to play. And with it being exclusive to you region initially there will be an incentive for players to travel to play them which is part of the point of the program
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That makes it hard to get on the schedule, etc...Not any harder than any other prior season content. Older scenarios are routinely offered at most events. And remember. The assumption would be that your region would have its own content being produced. So, even if you have to wait a bit for stuff from other regions, you should still get more content to play. And with it being exclusive to you region initially there will be an incentive for players to travel to play them which is part of the point of the program
Not to mention, you wouldn't tie it to a current season's storyline, much like Solstice Scar. Each Region might have their own storyline going that gets expanded on extremely slowly assuming they only get 2 or 3 scenarios a year.
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I could see doing a Regional Program for scenarios that would expand outward after a short amount of time (and possibly editing) - especially if there was an overarching team that would review before general release. What might be even more interesting would be the possible background info / development for the local lodges that might make their way a bit further out into the world. Adaptable regional quests would probably be the "tamest" and easiest to handle. Something akin to the 3-7 evergreens with static encounter possibilities, but with one or more regional encounters and a regional VC to give the mission.
If this did not go through the normal RVC tier of things, I might even be interested in assisting via writing / editing / creating templates, but I doubt I'd be interested supporting it for anything other than general play / GM unless there was an online region as it would likely fall in with the current RVC tiers of things.