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Hello friends. I'd like to pose a question to the floor. Do you feel that the schedule for Season 1 appears to have too many Tier 3-6 scenarios?
I ask because I'm the primary organizer of SFS in my area and I'm finding myself running out of Tier 1-4 scenarios to run (without having to run the same scenario over) and have at the moment maybe 3 players in the area that actually are level 3. Granted I know that if EVERY player makes it to every game they'd be within the 3-6 tier by now but most players I run for generally don't make it to every game.
It looks to be pretty ambitious on Paizo's part to have as many 3-6 tier scenarios slated as they do in Season 1 but I honestly don't see the need to have so many in a system that is just starting out. Especially since some of the later ones are slated to be 5-8, so there's even less space for the 1-4 Tier.
So what do y'all think on this? Does Season 1 have too many 3-6 Tier scenarios?
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As the primary organizer of SFS in my area, I haven't found there to be too much tier 3-6 content, although my group definitely has had to run the same scenario multiple times (some three times, and I think we've run the commencement six times!). I think the solution to your problem isn't that there needs to be more 1-4 scenarios, but if your group shows up infrequently you or other members of the group need to be willing/able to rerun scenarios for the half of the group that missed it the first time. This could lead to scheduling headaches, but as a group organizer that's been sort of a side effect of the position in my experience.
I've had a good number (~4-6) PCs who have made most Starfinder nights since SFS was launched last August, and we've run a few "make up" The Commencement or Into the Unknown sessions for newer or more infrequent players. In the past few months we've also gotten a second group of 4-5 regulars that's started showing up, which has allowed some of the normal regulars to start GMing the older scenarios that they've played in. Up until February we had to play SFS once every two (or three, around the holidays) weeks, but now that we have more (newer) players and the scenario output is kicking up to 2/month, we've been able to run at least one SFS table per week since the first week of February.
I've relied heavily on warhorn for organizing and also keep track of which scenarios everybody's played so I know what I can offer for a second time that most people are eligible for, so it takes some work, and unless you have other players who want to GM step up you're almost certainly going to be running scenarios for no credit. If only half of your player base played Yesteryear's Truth the first time you ran it - grab one of the players who player it the first time (ideally) or, if there isn't anybody else, you can run it again. On the plus side if you're a part of the regional support program (and if you aren't, you need to be), even if you're re-running scenarios you're accumulating credit to cool racial boons (like the elebrian in 2018) so you're rewarded even if you have to "eat" a scenario for no credit when you run it a second time.
Looking at the numbers, right now (through the release of 1-11) there are eight scenarios playable for level 1-2 characters (seven tier 1-4, the commencement 1-2; not counting applying Claim to Salvation to a level 1) and the Into the Unknown quests for level one characters, meaning that in order to get to play at a tier 3-6 scenario without a pre-gen a player would essentially have to play 2/3rds of the available content. If we include the first part of the sanctioned Dead Suns adventure path, PCs have access to 12 XP without ever playing a tier 3-6 scenario. On the other hand, there are three tier 3-6 scenarios, not including the AP's part 2 (tier 3-4), part 3 (5-6), and Claim to Salvation (level 4 pre-gens). I don't think that's an unreasonable ratio. At this point, given paizo can only write and release so many scenarios each month, I think we've had a good balance of tier 1-4 and 3-6 content, especially including the APs.
Venture-Agent, Georgia—Atlanta
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Especially including Dead Suns Part 1: Incident at Absalom station is repeatable. I try to get every character to have all of the repeatables, as best I can. With the repeatables + 1 more scenario, you can get a character to 3rd. With Ashes of Discovery coming out at the end of the month, you will be able to get characters to 3rd with repeatables only, which is exciting.
I run every Tuesday at a FLGS, and I have players chomping at the bit for the 3-6 scenarios so that they can get XP to prepare for the 3rd part of the Dead Suns AP.
Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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In my area, when A 3-6 comes up, those players without a character in range will play a Pre-Gen and and hold the credit until 4th or assign to a 1st level character. Most of the players are 1 or 2 adventures away from 3rd anyways and will catch up quickly when they hit 4th.
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My 6th Level Android Soldier is having to break out the Rust-Oleum from sitting for so long.
I complained earlier that I thought some of the 1-4s should have been 3-6s. When you have a sequel, it shouldn't be the same tier (or lower) than its predecessor.
My –702 is one game away from 3rd Level and I'd like her to have 3-6s available as well.
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I have three characters at the L1-2 range, nobody at the 3-6, haven't played Salvation's Something (the L4 pregen one), which is holding up one of the 3-6's when I get a character into that range because I want Salvation's Something/First Man-Date/Live Exploration (This time with added 'TRCH' Flavor) to be on one character and the timing really hasn't been all that great for other characters...
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Venture-Lieutenant
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So what I do is when I schedule a 3-6 I also schedule a 1-4 along side of it as a rerun. When I moved to 2 game days in a month in January I reran the quest and The Commencement. This weekend I am actually rerunning a 3-6 scenario because of demand. So people are slowly starting to get to the level they want to see them.
With the repeatable scenarios 1-12 and 1-16 coming soon you should be able to get more variety in scenarios.
I think A Night in Nightarch was too soon for a 3-6. If that one was a 1-4 I think we would be just right. Since you needed to play every scenario up to that point to qualify it was a bit of a scramble to get players when it first came out.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I think it comes down to whether scheduling works out. There's enough material to get 1-3 characters into the 3-6 region. That's including the evergreen first chapter of the AP. However, to make that happen, scheduling has to work out just perfectly. If your group is small and you miss a few scenarios, and you don't have enough players to run a second table, then you feel the pinch.
I think this is going to gradually sort itself out as the scenario catalog grows and new players join up with people who missed something. Doing active scheduling tailored to players using for example the session tracker and Warhorn can help resolve it faster.
Starfinder Society Developer
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To address some of the concerns here...
The two May scenarios are both 3-6s, that's correct. This is because we're trying to make sure our faction mission storyline scenarios end up at 3-6, so players don't "level out" of ongoing storyline content (a huge complaint we've received from previous PFS attempts to mess with stories and Tiers.) Second, this batch of scenarios is getting released at PaizoCon, which typically represents some of our most dedicated playerbase (routinely running higher level content) so we wanted to make sure we addressed that.
Prior to that, we're releasing a new repeatable 1-4 scenario, which should help alleviate some of the woes of getting new players involved.
Following May, the June selection has 2 out of 3 scenarios appropriate for lower level players: a quest pack and the interactive special.
Following that, each of our announced monthly releases includes a new Tier 1-4. Which should augment the ongoing stable of low-level content. It's also safe to assume that the release of the new Adventure Path will get sanctioned, opening even more low-level play options.
I can certainly respect the concern about the release schedule of low-level content, but internally we balance on a tightrope with lots of different considerations. For example, my inbox is often assailed by PMs from people asking how soon they can expect more level 5+ content... :)
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Sooooo.... How soon *can* we expect more level 5+ content? ;-)
Right now announced scenarios at tier 5-8 are 1-17 in June and 1-19 in July, in addition to the Origins/GenCon/etc. exclusive that supports level 1-8. If you go to the Starfinder Society page in the store (http://paizo.com/store/starfinder/society), you can now pre-order/read the descriptions of scenarios and their level ranges through 1-21's release in August.
Some (minor) spoilers in the scenario descriptions, if you consider those spoilers.
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Prior to that, we're releasing a new repeatable 1-4 scenario, which should help alleviate some of the woes of getting new players involved.
Following May, the June selection has 2 out of 3 scenarios appropriate for lower level players: a quest pack and the interactive special.
News of quests and a 1-4 repeatable in the offing are both very welcome!
Locally, some players (myself included) are planning on playing Starfinder Adventure Paths in their entirety once our schedules free up to do so, and as such aren't playing them for SFS credit ("module mode") right now. With only so many people comfortable GMing Starfinder (and thus earning chronicle sheets that way), my area is split almost 50/50 between players who have level 3 characters and those struggling to get past levels 1-2.
(The biggest woe currently is for those who hit level 2 before being reminded that Into the Unknown could only be played at level 1)
But, again, two big thumbs up from me here!!
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Here in Portland, many of the regular players -701 are level 5+ now and started separate PCs to play new tier 1-4. I know some people may to be private about where they live, but it'd be nice to have an idea of where SFS is being successful from these sort of threads.
100% agree about AP1, and remind players that GMs get credit for running scenarios as if they had played it but with guaranteed survival and the best possible outcome. See previous posts on this thread regarding how the GM can make the final combat more survivable, too.
At the current pace it won't be long before -701 PCs start leveling out of tier 3-6, so its nice there's two tier 5-8 scenarios planned.