Organized Play Lead Developer
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In May 2017, the organized play team tried something new: we released the first three parts of a new multi-table interactive special called Pathfinder Society Special #8-99A: The Solstice Scar, which included three chapters of 90 minutes each (Parts 1, 2, and 3). The idea was to release an new version twice a year, each time removing one of the parts and replace it with the next piece of the story. In May 2018 we released Version C (includes Parts 3, 4, and 5), and the story is set to conclude in January 2019 with Version D (Parts 4, 5, and 6).
There’s just one big complication: the format of this adventure has room for improvement. When I first proposed this idea, 90-minute chapters seemed like a good idea. In practice, they’ve been pretty choppy because there’s some much story we’re trying to fit into that time period. We’ve also seen really good results with slightly shorter multi-table interactive specials; participants’ energy levels during that fifth hour tend to fade dramatically, whereas Starfinder Society and Pathfinder Society both released their most recent specials that both run a little over 4 hours each. Finally, there’s the ongoing critique that replacing only 1/3 of the content with each version isn’t quite enough to keep the story fresh.
We want to finish out the story, but we’d rather do so in a way that evolves the format, tests new possibilities (in the event we try something like this again), and hopefully delivers a better play experience overall. That means I'm implementing one big change: Version D is expected to include only two parts, not three.
What are your thoughts?
In addition to this structural change, I'd like to make any tweaks necessary to Part 5. Expect to see some modification of a somewhat infamous encounter with immense creatures. If you know of any other changes that would be good to make, please post those here or link me back to an earlier post that I should be considering.
From here on, assume that there might be some adventure spoilers regarding Part 5, in the event you're reading this but haven't yet experienced the latest version of The Solstice Scar.
Thanks!
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Yarrr.
I love trying new things out, and I'm excited to have been part of this experiment and am excited that we are still making changes and refining things.
It was really nice to have specials that felt fresh mid year for those of us that attend multiple conventions a year, unfortunately none of the parts past version A really felt as fresh as they should have been.
Considering we've already played part 4 twice, I'm glad to not see it a 3rd time. Bringing back part 2 that we only played once also seems like an acceptable solution.
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Expanding the final 2 parts and just running them longer seems great, especially after having encountered part 4 a few times already.
Also the timing for the shorter Hao-Jin special felt great (some problems with choppiness but that's for a different post)
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It really feels like the problem was that there was enough content for 2 specials, not presented in a way to keep things fresh over 4 specials. Swapping out 1/3rd each time just wasn't enough. Maybe there needed to be slightly more content, or cycling the content in more creative ways.
Also P1 felt especially stale playing it a second time, since the surprising nature of the conflict was a cool reveal, one that was totally uninteresting the second time around.
I think I was expecting more different stories to come out of it instead of chopped up bits of the same story.
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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Great! A while back I GMed Part B, after GMing and playing Part A once each. Part B felt really stale for the first two thirds, because everyone at my table had already played A at least once, and was trying not to metagame the story. The surprise reveal of the Blakros part really loses impact when it's not a surprise anymore, and the following part just felt like a slog. I noticed an immediate change of atmosphere when the new part arrived and players were in unfamiliar territory.
I wouldn't mind a second repeatable special, but please have more changing parts. Doing two-thirds of the same adventure again, especially if it's supposed to be a special, doesn't feel special-worthy. Three hours of repeated content isn't worth one and a half hour of new content. Switching those around feels better to me. A bit of familiar ground to show that it's still the same story, but then lots of new content to explore feels much more rewarding.
Also, if you're repeating parts, please change some box text to reflect that part. I'm okay with repeating the same encounters, but an (in-universe) acknowledgement that we're going through this again would be nice. Copy-pasting the entire first part, without any changes, just felt... lazy.
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I think the 2/3 repeat burned a lot of people out on the special. I think when people sat down for B and realized they had already gone through most of it, they walked away with a bit of a disappointment. That said, the less repeating on Part D the better. I like the idea of tying part 2 back into it since it was only ever done once, but I'm not sure if the story could be written in a way to give a natural flow from part 2 all the way to part 5.
I'm also not sure how I feel about expanding on Part 5. Putting in new content is a good idea, but I'm not sure how that would translate to the players. Will players recognize the new content compared to when they played through C, or will they instead feel like they are repeating 2 hours instead of 90 minutes?
Personally, I think I rather see more development into Part 6, maybe even split that into two parts. With a multi-table special storyline branching out over two years, I think players who've played through A-C will get more benefit from having that last part be more of a climatic ending.
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I'm firmly in the camp of 'less is more'. when it comes to GMing, ESPECIALLY with Specials and the like.
One of the more fun things at a Special is the chance to *enjoy the story*.
Sadly, a few of them don't allow anything NEAR that, and it's a mechanical slog for both GMs and for players, even when characters are up to the challenge and the GM is on top of their game.
Building in the slack and allowing more of the story to be *seen* is crucial.
Also, whatever happened to all those *redacted* giving away all those *redacted*? Could it be a two-way street, with *redacted* being called due (or back for 'renewal'?) Particularly if the Pathfinders have essentially built a superhighway through the *redacted* lands to get all these people through?
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While the structure of which segments you reuse and all of that in Solstice Scar could stand a tune-up, there's a much bigger problem with the structure of all the multi-table specials in the last several years.
The first time I played Solstice Scar A, it was fun. Since then, it's been an exercise in repeated frustration; the last time (part C) had me swearing off PFS specials forever, unless the structure fundamentally changes. Here's what has happened, GMing twice and playing twice. The table I'm at starts an encounter. We get partway in-- perhaps never even that far in. The room leader announces that the encounter has been passed, and we should move on to the next session. We move on, not completing the encounter. We completed well less than half of the encounters that we started in each case. I don't think I've completed the final encounter of any part of Solstice Scar -- the room got called before I got through it. (Indeed, I think that the only reason I survived the last two or three encounters the last two times I played it was because the room declared the scenario over before we had time to TPK.) When I GMed it at GenCon, only one member of the party even managed to make it across the map to where the action was before the scenario was declared over.
It's intensely frustrating. It is true that I was at the highest subtier the last three times I ran or played Solstice Scar (once each A, B, and C). And, people say that high subtier is more complicated and takes longer, so yeah, no surprise that it's the table that gets cut off. But this is a design flaw! If everybody expects that the high subtier tables aren't going to be able to finish the scenario, then why is the scenario designed that way?
(At GenCon last year (2017), on the elevators up to rooms after that Special, I heard a number of other people saying that they were never going to run one of those Specials again. I know that this is, or at least seems to be, a minority opinion, because they keep being very popular events. But I also know I'm not alone in finding them increasingly frustrating.)
It happens in other scenarios. I'm running the Scarab Sages encounter for the first part of Assault on Absalom. I'm coming up to the big cool reveal where I drop the gigantic pawn down on the table... and the announcement comes over to the whole room about it before my encounter gets there. Undercut.
The scenarios are designed so that some fraction of the room is guaranteed to have this sort of frustrating encounter-ending anticlimax. When a success is declared, and the announcement is made to the room that this encounter is over and here's the big reveal for it, when only a fraction of the tables have completed it, then there's no way for some tables to ever finish it.
The design of the multi-table specials is fundamentally flawed. Any tune-ups to which pieces of Solstice Scar get put into version D are going to be small patches compared to the nature of the overall problem that transcends just Solstice Scar.
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I’ll start off by saying that I definitely agree with rknop that a lot of tables are getting cut off mid-encounter. The “final encounters” of parts 4 & 5 of Solstice Scar are particularly egregious. 30 minutes and 35 minutes, respectively, is just not enough. Especially if the GM takes some time to wrap up the previous encounter instead of jump-cutting. These encounters need to be 50-60 minutes.
I do think the overall design of the specials is pretty good. For most modern specials, even if your table’s current encounter has achieved the required number of succeses, you can still continue. It just counts as a success for somewhere else. Does it feel anticlimactic? It can be a little bit, but if the table GM handles it well it’s not.
The nature of a multitable special is that someone is going to get cut off in the middle of an encounter. Whether it’s the slowest tables not beating the boss or the fastest table breathing a sigh of relief during their 5th wave of the same enemies, it’s going to happen. After the season 2 and 3 specials - where my tables fought the same enemy multiple times - I much prefer the current setup.
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I was very happy to see this experiment! Unfortunately, not all experiments will return positive results, and locally versions B and C were not terrifically well-received.
Concerns
Version A was actually received quite well from what I saw, although it suffers from all of the typical "interactive special" flaws as pointed out by rknop above. So there will always be a certain amount of transference, where how you as a player (or GM) feel about interactive specials in general will strongly inform your experience with 8-99.
Subsequent versions were met with some groaning as the amount of content we'd be replaying became clear. That Version B began with Part 1 (Blakros Museum) was a big problem for a number of our players. Not rewriting the bulk of the flavor text also made things less exciting for some of our local player group. (Specifically, treating each section as though it's your first time through, even though it might be your third! Separately, hello part 3. We've seen you too much.)
I've overseen a table of this (8-99C, specifically) and when I scheduled the parts out, we expanded the timing of the final encounters in each of the three parts. Even stretching them out by 10 or 15 minutes was not quite enough, and I ended up cutting the 10-11 table off not once but twice: the first time in part 4 after we'd overrun the scheduled time by 15 minutes and the second in part 5 after we'd overrun the scheduled time by a few minutes and I needed to get players to a charity auction. Part 3 was very well-developed in that the players can go straight to the final encounter should they choose to, and it was disappointing to not have that as an option when replaying part 4. This directly led to tables not being able to finish the dragon encounter.
Additionally, the opening encounter in Part 4 ran very long for some tables, taking up more than 45 minutes in some cases. It was definitely not ideal.
Strengths
Parts 1, 2, and 3 were all tied together very well. Parts 4 and 5 were less integrated--while that might be expected given that there was a natural dénouement in part 3, the justifications did feel somewhat arbitrary to some of our GMs.
I'd like to call out parts 1, 2, and 4 in particular for being excellent fun. My favorite was part 2, frankly, and it was disappointing when we didn't get to replay it!
The added difficulty was nice and having defined rest periods between each act was welcomed by a lot of the players. It's tough to do a multi-table special as a low-level spellcaster and having defined breaks really helped.
Version D
If more than half (say... 2/3rds?) of the content in Version D is new, I think the players could respond well to it. Breaking things up 50/50 would give more time for the final encounter in Part 5 but replaying the section might not earn a lot of player excitement.
If you could give the players an option to skip past some of the encounters in part 5 (a la part 3) that might really help.
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I have run all parts of 8-99, Part A twice, and so far I have liked them all. I do think that B was my least favorite though. I want to run part D so I can follow the story to its conclusion.
I thought all specials were full speed ahead slash fest to see how much you could finish before they called TIME! Until SFS 1-99, I thought that was GREAT! Allowing tables to finish stages and till contribute to the house success was brilliant! I would like to see more of that type of thing in future specials. Loved running the Hao Jin special as well.
I also heard mutterings that people will be glad to see Part D so it will be "over". But to each their own, my tables had fun, I had fun and that to me is what it is all about.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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I have played and run Versions A and B, and we are offering it locally at the end of the month, but to be blunt I ran a lot of multitable specials in the last couple of months, I might be a bit burned out, but the flaws are becoming very apparent.
Let's look at 8-99 first, I actually enjoyed running it the first time, though to be brutally honest, the changes mentioned above would have helped Version A a lot, there really is no time to characterize the NPCs properly (even though I am not super happy with how the characterization develops in part 1....), everything is at such a breakneck speed, that the already limited options for RP (a rare but consistent comment from players or those scenarios) are hardly useable.
Part B was interesting, but since a lot of players decided (based on the information given) that defending the caravan was the best move, it took forever for successes to trickle in, the RP part with the Orcs was a good idea (again also included one mechanical decision I intensely disliked) but again, with the perceived/real-time pressure of an interactive special you don't really have time for it.
Personally, I was extremely happy to not have to do part 2 again, but that was before I actually played it (the table I was scheduled to run did not happen), part 1 works amazingly the first time (it kinda show that the author understood his audience) but falls flat the second time.
If you are looking at a good argument against replay here is it, unless you have a fair number of new players (and at least locally, that is not too likely) it kinda ruins the very good parts of part 1 (though giving it a year or more between replays would help).
Part 3 was where it got dangerous, or rather were the GM gets a couple of confusion effects and debuffs, locally the most dangerous thing you can usually find in a scenario are confused player characters. The debuffs tended to suck a bit of money out of players, and I think I managed to kill a companion creature once... to be fair the final fight is a bit underwhelming.
As originally written, players start way too far from the enemies, and at least in subtier 7-8 the custom enemy is just alone.
Combined with the fact that the monsters are not too willing to move from their starting location, kinda turns this one into a slog.
Part 4, that "easy" opening encounter really takes to long to resolve, and starting locations/terrain play a really big role here. I have never seen a group who felt like they wanted to do the RP here since usually everyone feels the time constraints and would rather have a better chance to finish the final encounter. The maze encounter really depends on the players, it might "work" but personally resolving it takes a massive amount of time, players aren't really enjoying. The final fight was rather meaty which I enjoyed, but depending on the system mastery of your players.... well we used to try to get 5-6 player tables for specials like this one.. now we are going for 4.
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To be fair I'll do my best do avoid part C completely.
I have related feedback to other more recent, multi-table events but this is not the place for it.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16
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I am happy to see the shift to 4-hour slots. I find specials extremely exhausting both as a player and as a GM. Especially when they're traditionally run late at night after a full day of gaming and the Sagamore Ballroom gets unexpectedly cold at night. On more than one occasion I went to my hotel feeling ill after a special.
Specials can be so taxing that a Venture Lieutenant once bribed me with a 5-Hour Energy to fill a high tier table.
Venture-Agent, Virginia—Newport News
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I am happy to see the shift to 4-hour slots. I find specials extremely exhausting both as a player and as a GM. Especially when they're traditionally run late at night after a full day of gaming and the Sagamore Ballroom gets unexpectedly cold at night. On more than one occasion I went to my hotel feeling ill after a special.
Specials can be so taxing that a Venture Lieutenant once bribed me with a 5-Hour Energy to fill a high tier table.
I must agree that 4 hours plus mustering feels like the sweet spot for a special. I don't know who else feels this way, but I'm drained by the end of the longer specials even doing them in a morning slot with a break for lunch as is tradition at Owlcons now.
This will also hopefully make it easier to fit both Solstice Scar and Scoured Start Invasion in at some cons.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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I am happy to see the shift to 4-hour slots. I find specials extremely exhausting both as a player and as a GM. Especially when they're traditionally run late at night after a full day of gaming and the Sagamore Ballroom gets unexpectedly cold at night. On more than one occasion I went to my hotel feeling ill after a special.
Specials can be so taxing that a Venture Lieutenant once bribed me with a 5-Hour Energy to fill a high tier table.
I must agree that 4 hours plus mustering feels like the sweet spot for a special. I don't know who else feels this way, but I'm drained by the end of the longer specials even doing them in a morning slot with a break for lunch as is tradition at Owlcons now.
This will also hopefully make it easier to fit both Solstice Scar and Scoured Start Invasion in at some cons.
We used to do 2 specials per day, but have shifted to doing 3 slots on Saturday and 2 on Sunday, with a multi-table event in each last slot. The usually start and we try to give people a bit more time with the final encounter, but going for shorter slots is absolutely a positive development.
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The biggest complaint I have heard is how much of the previous material is repeated. Most feel it would have been better to only repeat one part as a refresh to the story and then have two new parts, meaning a preference for “A” (1,2,3), “B” (3,4,5), “C” (5,6,7), “D” (7,8,9). This of course would significantly increase the development time and writing requirements, so a reduction to only three versions, over four might be more tenable. Generally speaking players want new content over replay and having 2/3 repeated reduces the impact of the event. They are so tired from the slog through the repeated content that they lose interest before then new part.
The conflict between 4 and 5 hour sessions is always going to be a problem. For major events like Gen Con, we want our money’s worth so only producing 4 hours of content diminishes the value. Likewise, having to squash five hours into less than four for the riding windows for local conventions is problematic. Perhaps there is a way to produce an optional encounter of sorts that is both interesting and plot supportive while not being plot necessary. That way it can be eliminated to fit a shorter window without negatively impacting the overall experience?
8-99 runs a bit differently than a standard special so the same design principles may not apply. We cannot have a long “pick your encounter” part that can be simply reduced to fit shorter windows. Which, BTW, works phenomenally well.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Mark me down for hating the repetition. After playing part B I had no stomach to GM it, and I'll probably skip part C entirely, because I only need D to see new content now.
When we played B, the GM was new to the scenario but all the players had played A. So while running he was finding out that the players knew 2/3 of what was going to happen already. Miserable.
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I'm especially disappointed because Part A seemed so promising. Instead of just text repetition, I thought we were going to be playing part B "half a year later, at the next solstice" when we once again have to retrace the paladin's steps through Belkzen to strengthen the dagger (but the orc encounters can be slightly reflavored and problematic ones switched out), and then we have to work our way through the undead to complete the ritual again. Except this time the undead are expecting the Pathfinders and they're ready for us.
Venture-Captain, Netherlands
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The way Lau describes it, I had expected the story to go.
Yes, you repeat the part with the orcs, because we have toncharge the hilt again.
Yes we fight the undead, becauseblast time wr only superficially patched the rift and now its the next solstice and the undead have brokem trough again.
Even with all the encounters the same, adjusting box/flavor text to reflect the evolving story woul have made a huge difference.
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When I first read about this special...
Sounds like you were either given misinformation from another player/GM or made some assumptions about the story that were not explicitly supported. Either way, AFAIK, your understanding was never the intent. Sorry, if that contributed to a less than ideal experience.
That being said, I think your idea of stretching the story out over multiple solar events would have been interesting, though it would have required the developers to deviate from their original vision for each version. It would have been a good foundation for a four-part series akin to what has come before, but not for the modular concept as was originally described. The biggest complaint I have heard is simply that we didn’t realize how much of the previous version would be recycled, largely unchanged, and that only a third of the new version would include new material. If that were reversed, the follow up parts would have been more readily accepted. YMMV
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Baltic
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When I first read about this special...AFAIK, your understanding was never the intent.
I think at one time it might actually have been the intention, but the developers had to make a decision between creating a coherent story for either players who hadn't played part A or for people who had.
Looking back offering both options and having the local communities sort out which way to run might have been best.
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This makes things interesting for me, as replay burnout had me thinking Part D might have been the best one to run next. Now it looks like I have to go forward with Part C and follow with D when available. I appreciate the decision and the early announcement. I very much look forward to the extended act times reducing the encounter cutoffs. (Even if it saved a couple PCs lives in the cast of the dragon fight.)
Edit: Oh, reading too fast. Looks like I have options!
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Venture-Agent, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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One thing that I would like to add is that the new sections for each of the specials were at the end of each special. I think this was a big contributor to the the player fatigue. They had already been playing for a long time before they saw any new content.
I have not yet finished the final section in any of A/B/C as a player. There just wasn't enough time to do it at mid to high level. I have played and GMed all three parts so far.
I agree with everyone saying that cutting in the middle of a battle is extremely frustrating. I would love it if specials would have the transitions be a little more flexible. I love how it was done in the SFS Scoured Stars Invasion special. That solution wouldn't work here, but perhaps you could have a transitional section so that people have time to finish the current encounter they are in the middle of?
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Venture-Agent, Minnesota
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After D comes out of its exclusivity period, how long will it be available?
Do we have some scheduling flexibility here? I would love to run 10-00 for Outpost (March-April 2019), and really don't want to run 8-99D at the same time. If it there's no retirement, I'll happily run it for PBP Gameday in September 2019.
Hmm
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Well, do we have the dates finalized for Retrocon and Outpost?
Incidentally, that document keeps getting updated with whatever our upcoming conventions are. You can find it listed in my GM Hmm header, or on Flaxseed Lodge's campaign information. I don't know if there is any place where RFC has important links, but that might be a reasonable thing to post on a links page if they have one.
So your run will overlap both Outpost and RetroCon, but that's okay. Sometimes these things happen.
Hugs,
Hmm
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Also, how late could I schedule Part C and still organize it?
According to the schedule when part D goes into regular circulation on 2/18/2019, part C will be retired and can no longer be offered (at least not for sanctioned organized play). However, the developers are looking into the possibility of combining the entire series into a single scenario. I would not expect to that until after next Gen Con at the earliest, maybe around January/February 2020, but that is just my speculation based on what we know of the release schedule right now. Its not even official that a complete 8-99 scenario will even be released.
Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
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Locally what I've done with our specials that has worked really well is running them first slot of the day on Sunday. I know this isn't really what GenCon wants, and a lot of cons are in the mindset of "there MUST be a special at the end of the day", but having everyone start off fresh really amps up the energy level of the special and makes for a good start of the day. This also helps draw players in on the last day when many would be more interested in sleeping in and skipping that slot. But that's just what I've done to improve our specials and I know it couldn't be implemented everywhere. :/
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They did try four 'Specials' one year at GenCon: Siege of Serpents, Sky Key Solution, True Dragons of Absalom, Serpent's Rise (respectively on Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights and then Sunday morning.)
The general consensus from players and GMs (and I include myself in this) is that it was too much Special.
What I've been requesting/suggesting -- especially since I GM'd the overnight slots this year and it worked pretty well -- is some of the 'smaller' Specials on the overnight, when things are a bit quieter and things are a bit slower-paced, so that those of us who get overwhelmed with ginormous amounts of folks in Sagamore during the 'evening' slot of Specials. I would be more than willing to run a table of one of the older Specials each of those nights, ones that have been released and have rarely been seen outside of conventions they were released during. I'm pretty sure that there would be others that would be, too.
The other thing, and it was borne out again this weekend with Scoured Stars Invasion (over in Starfinder) is that so much combat is crammed into these things that they are bursting at the seams for a five hour slot, much less a four hour one that some venues require.
Backing off on the perception that it is necessary to jam a Special like a GenCon attendee's suitcase after a weekend of buying stuff in the Exhibit Hall will help extend the sanity, health, and well-being of GMs and organizers. In addition, it will make Specials more 'approachable' for newer GMs, who may be daunted at a double-sized module for one slot of game.
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Starfinder Society Developer
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** spoiler omitted **The other thing, and it was borne out again this weekend with Scoured Stars Invasion (over in Starfinder) is that so much combat is crammed into these things that they are bursting at the seams for a five hour slot, much less a four hour one that some venues require.
Backing off on the perception that it is necessary to jam a Special like a GenCon attendee's suitcase after a weekend of buying stuff in the Exhibit Hall will help extend the sanity, health, and well-being of GMs and organizers. In addition, it will make Specials more 'approachable' for newer GMs, who may be daunted at a double-sized module for one slot of game.
I'm curious on what solutions the community wants to see on this front.
Generally, with #1-99 for Starfinder, we made a concerted effort to trim down the number of flip-mats that were required, by re-using maps and employing both sides. I got a LOT of positive feedback about it. Also, that's about the best we can do at the moment without making some very serious changes to the underlying structure of specials...
1) Trimming down the overall combat encounter count that occurs during an interactive. The problem with this approach, is that combat is something that we know can take up a reasonable amount of time for tables. If we present a large number of role-play only encounters, then we run the risk of tables blitzing through those encounters. That leads to tables who could potentially finish all their content by making a few skill rolls and then have to wait a prolonged period before the story "shoots forward." Even at our current Interactive pace, we end up with times when tables manage to blitz through all the combat encounters and have to wait before the event snaps ahead. While it's nice to say that RP encounters should take up equal time, that becomes heavily dependent on GM/Player composition, which is something that's really difficult to get a sense of at a convention.
2) Time and time again, I hear that people want to make it so interactives have repeatable elements and that we look at opening them up for wider play. This means that we need to include the diversity that exists in the existing structure, if not expand on it. Be it maps or minis or prepping different creatures for encounters, all of those types of interchangeable encounters end up being more of a burden onto the GMs. I don't know a perfect solution that doesn't require a lot of GM prep but also positions itself well for players to replay.
Really, it sounds like the discussion might be better served by talking about what "MAJOR™!" changes to interactives that people would like to see? I know I've tossed around ideas on changing up the formula, but I'm curious what our players / GMs / volunteers think on this matter.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I'm having a hard time thinking of MultiTableSpecials (MTS) and GM-ExclusiveSpecials (GMES) as being really the same kind of beast. I mean, the common factor is that they get called "special" and they count towards a 5-star qualification thingy, and they get used at GenCon as a special draw. But when you look at how the scenario itself works, they're quite different.
MTSs do tend to have a lot of encounters in them. I think Cosmic Captive was about the peak, while preparing the high tier I counted 23 encounters, not including the possibility that the party used a genie's intervention to do some encounter at one tier lower (which I made an executive decision to ignore, because then I'd have had to prep 15 more encounters, but all of them understrength). Yeah, that's daunting. That daunted me, and I tend to see complexity as a challenge. It was great to run though.
I think putting MTSs on a diet is hard. As scenario archetypes go, these have gone through some very radical changes. Year of the Shadow Lodge and Blood Under Absalom were very linear, and that template had serious problems. Beginning with Race for the Runecarved Key, but perfected in Legacy of the Stonelords, one of the defining features of them became that parties had a choice of objectives to pursue. And they were informed choices ("if we go there, we can expect that kind of encounters") and the choices mattered ("this area needs more work, not enough tables are doing it, but if we beat it something cool happens"). But you just can't do that with a diet MTS.
In our lodge, the policy has not been to try to make the MTS smaller; we've increased the size of the slot. I think we typically budget 6-7 hours for the special, not including a proper lunch break. It's basically the whole sunday of the convention, but it means people have the time to "do it right". This is sorta how we've always done it, but it works very well for us. We don't feel like we have to rush through RP encounters because talking takes too much time. We don't have to cut people off (too much) to get them on to the next act.
I think actually that PFS should really look at the possibility of declaring some things double-slot. There's a gap between modules (3+ slots, iffy fit at conventions) and regular scenarios (4-5 hours). There's a significant group of really good, really important scenarios known to take more than a normal slot:
* Most MTSs
* GMES, notably Serpents Rise and Serpents' Ire
* The Waking Rune
* The Hellknight's Feast
* Vengeance at Sundered Crag
* Salvation of the Sages
* Eyes of the Ten #1
* several 2-part scenarios that really should be run back to back
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I'm curious on what solutions the community wants to see on this front.Generally, with #1-99 for Starfinder, we made a concerted effort to trim down the number of flip-mats that were required, by re-using maps and employing both sides. I got a LOT of positive feedback about it. Also, that's about the best we can do at the moment without making some very serious changes to the underlying structure of specials...
1) Trimming down the overall combat encounter count that occurs during an interactive. The problem with this approach, is that combat is something that we know can take up a reasonable amount of time for tables. If we present a large number of role-play only encounters, then we run the risk of tables blitzing through those encounters. That leads to tables who could potentially finish all their content by making a few skill rolls and then have to wait a prolonged period before the story "shoots forward." Even at our current Interactive pace, we end up with times when tables manage to blitz through all the combat encounters and have to wait before the event snaps ahead. While it's nice to say that RP encounters should take up equal time, that becomes heavily dependent on GM/Player composition, which is something that's really difficult to get a sense of at a convention.
2) Time and... time again, I hear that people want to make it so interactives have repeatable elements and that we look at opening them up for wider play. This means that we need to include the diversity that exists in the existing structure, if not expand on it. Be it maps or minis or prepping different creatures for encounters, all of those types of interchangeable encounters end up being more of a burden onto the GMs. I don't know a perfect solution that doesn't require a lot of GM prep but also positions itself well for players to replay.
Really, it sounds like the discussion might be better served by talking about what "MAJOR™!" changes to interactives that people would like to see? I know I've tossed around ideas on changing up the formula, but I'm curious what our players / GMs / volunteers think on this matter.
First off, thank you for the in-depth response and perspective from the design-side, Thursty.
ALSO, HUGE thank you to the team for reducing the map-load down from something like ten-15 flips plus customs of Cosmic Captive to something like 4-5 and a map pack for 1-99.
I like the thought that Lau brings to the table, but it could potentially become a scheduling nightmare at some conventions. I'd much rather have a 'double-slot' special with the current level they are at with a break at the mid-point (and possibly more exp/prestige/etc for effectively being 'module-length' in terms of both preparation and play) than continuing to try and shoehorn it into a space that doesn't support it very well.
Now, admittedly, I don't have five of those Star-thingies next to my name, nor do I have five of those Nova-thingies (I guess that'd put me at the 'entry level' to Specials?) but Cosmic Captive was the first scenario I ran at a major convention... and it was very nearly the *last* scenario I ran after the experience I had trying to get it prepped on short notice.
If GMs had a bit more flexibility to use the scenario WITHOUT making for a horrific play experience, it might help the 'speed run' folks slow down to 'normal speeds'?
ie, if a 1-2 table is brutally mowing through their tier, authorization being given pre-emptively to GMs to allow them to use a 3-4 encounter or two to test how effective the player team is, then 'dialing it back' if it seems to be too much for the table?
Alternatively, if a table is *bogging down horribly* (this happens more the higher a tier is for a Special) permission being given to allow the next tier 'down' for an encounter or two might help some tables catch up/get a breather/whatnot?
This may require too much insight on the part of the GM, but I'm tossing the suggestions out there because it's at least worth looking at?
At the end of the Special, the goal is to have had fun and feel like something significant was accomplished, right?
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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@Wei Ji: I agree about the improvement in map load, and Cosmic Captive was the height of craziness (even though I enjoyed running it).
I don't think the solution is "use other tier encounters" because that would actually increase preparation load: different monster statblocks to study for "how do I use this?" and more different minis to sort.
I could go for a more dynamic "horizontal" scaling: a 4-player newbie table and a 6-player optimizer kill team probably don't need exactly the same quantity of enemies. Leeway and guidelines for the GM to "you can add X more of these mooks" might be a more practical solution.
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And yeah, I realize double-slot scheduling is hard; but so is sticking your head in the sand and pretending those scenarios fit well in a single slot. Some of the stories we want to tell just take longer than 4-5 hours, but they're worth telling. If an epic conclusion to a storyline has to be shoehorned into 1-2 encounters because otherwise it can't be written into a single slot... that's disappointing to me. I think being honest about how long these things take may make it easier to successfully schedule them at events, and also to plan how many double-length scenarios the editor wants to outline for a season.