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The other day, I had a pleasant exchange with Kamaloo, a nice person who was curious about Cottonseed Lodge, a gathering place for PFS Playtest games.
Kamaloo was interested, but had concerns about the perceived rigidity & fussiness of Organized Play. I offered to answer Kamaloo’s questions, explaining that some things said about PFS would be true, and others might not be, and I would be happy to help sort the questions and answers.
Kamaloo PMed me the questions, and I’m slowly going to try to answer them here. The answers are being publically posted, so that others can access it, jump in, or disagree if they need to do so.
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Hello! Thank you for your offer to explain organized play a bit! I guess I'll jump right to the things I've heard:
1) That PFS is overly hidebound, with very strict rules in place. I mostly DM rather than play in games, and I prefer to be somewhat lenient. Also: no Hero Points or other alternate/optional rules?
No alternate / optional rules: Absolutely true. We have a single cohesive ruleset.
No Hero Points: Also absolutely true.
In lieu of Hero Points though, almost everyone has an item that grants them rerolls.
In addition, chronicle boons (little advantages that characters can earn through play over time) are really common. Many of those boons are one-time things that can might help out in a single combat or skill check -- so if things are going badly for a party, the boons come out! Think of them as weird and situational hero points!
Is PFS overly HIDEBOUND?!
This is the commonest concern that I’ve heard from newcomers to PFS. There’s a stereotype about PFS that we’re a bunch of bickering rules lawyers who run scenarios exactly as written, never deviating or using any creativity.
The good news is that we’re not robots, and there’s a lot of room for creativity within the constraints of PFS. We can add in setting detail, flesh out NPCs, and build heavily on the bones of a scenario. If your characters go in a direction that the scenario never anticipated... We can let them go off the rails a bit, and then find a way to bring them back to the main story.
Let me assure you that actual play at a table is far more fluid, fun and fast-moving than you might expect.
- Do we have some strictly defined rules? Yes. But we also have plenty of grey areas where table GMs make their own calls.
- Can I be lenient as a GM? This is a complex question. Let me give it the time it deserves.
—If by leniency, you mean ‘Can I cut monster hit points, substitute monsters, completely alter encounters?’ then the answer is no. One of the main reasons for this is story consistency. There are a lot of shared stories in Organized Play, and nothing bonds players at conventions more than sharing stories of how their parties got past a particularly challenging obstacle. “Oh, how did you handle that animate dream? My party freaked when they saw it!”
Another is keeping challenges consistent across the storyline. Some challenges are meant to be epic and scary. Overcoming big challenges tests a party, helps them think, makes them rise to the occasion. That said, you don’t have to be brutal. Help the party find their clues. Drop entertaining hints if you need to, and in PBP, it can be okay to remind them of what’s gone before or survival equipment that they may have picked up. There are other ways to balance challenge or help a struggling party. If your party is struggling, feel free to use sub-optimal monster tactics.
—If by leniency, you mean that you want to be a roleplaying, funny, story-driven GM who shows the party a great time, you can ABSOLUTELY do that. I’ve run 170 PFS tables, and most of the time — even in really challenging scenarios — my players have covered themselves in glory. A couple times, they failed, and at least once I have killed a PC — a raging barbarian NPC that hit a first level summoner with a great axe crit. It happens sometimes, but you can still be a super helpful and friendly GM, in the Organized Play environment. In fact, I encourage it!
Kamaloo, this is your first installment of answers! Trust me, the rest are coming!