New Table Size Limit


Pathfinder Society

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Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

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[Total Tangent]

I just drove through Omaha the other day! Was sad the Henry Doorly zoo was closed. Been wanting to visit there for years. Don't know why I just noticed you were there. Next time I drive through let's do lunch ^_^

[/Total Tangent]

5/5 5/55/55/5

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Gary Bush wrote:


PaizoCon is going to be interesting...

Some people will be asleep during their games. Some tables will have people double booked. Some people will have roll 20ers showing up on fantasy grounds, some people will have simple sheet players trying to play on official sheet tables and vice versa.

Someone somewhere will mess something up. We'll deal.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

5 people marked this as a favorite.

That sounds like a regular week in online play.

5/5 5/55/55/5

TOZ wrote:
That sounds like a regular week in online play.

yeah but going on every hour...

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

Dang.

PaizoCon schedule be nearly full.

Liberty's Edge 3/5 5/5 **** Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha

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Continue Tangent

Nefreet wrote:

[Total Tangent]

I just drove through Omaha the other day! Was sad the Henry Doorly zoo was closed. Been wanting to visit there for years. Don't know why I just noticed you were there. Next time I drive through let's do lunch ^_^

[/Total Tangent]

Absolutely!!! Just let me know! And Henry Doorly Zoo is the #1 zoo in the country.

End Tangent

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 ****

Nefreet wrote:

Dang.

PaizoCon schedule be nearly full.

You mean for GM signups?

Plenty of options for PFS1, and I found 4 sessions to spurn for PFS2.

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

Jack Brown wrote:
You mean for GM signups?

Yeah, for PFS2.

Honestly, though, I'm not a stellar online GM. My forte is clearly tabletop.

I'm currently practicing with what was my homegroup for Dawn of Flame (and even that's only 3 people), but for this PaizoCon I think I'll just play.

Jack Brown wrote:
I found 4 sessions to spurn for PFS2.

Ha! Which scenario?

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 ****

I am running 1-15 The Blooming Catastrophe Wed & Thurs at 6AM, and 1-01 Absalom Initiation Sat 6PM, and 1-12 Burden of Envy Sun 6AM.

There's still a few sessions here or there, especially the Thursday 6AM (gladly that's 8AM to me).

Dark Archive 5/5 5/5

About damn time.

I’ve run one seven player table at a major con once. It was for a scenario I’d run multiple times, was a favorite of mine to run, and felt confident I could keep everyone on track. I still let the player know the table would need to ok it. They agreed, both player with my caveats, and the table to let the seventh person play. For which I am glad as I made another friend in this crazy little hobby of ours.

Spoiler:
#3-21: killed one, almost killed three. Mentioned this to Ron at the banquet and we laughed at how much fun and lethal that scenario is regardless of player numbers.

Most people here know of my attitude towards regions/lodges that do not pre-reg their game days or tell people there is no room at the inn.

3/5 **** Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro

Blake's Tiger wrote:


I did, as an aside that you did not even cite, mention that a possible solution would be to open your VTT events to the larger online audience but only in the sense of addressing possible problems with having enough GMs willing to run sessions on VTTs. And I even acknowledged a large limitation of my own suggestion

The fact that you suggested this was the reason why I said what I said in the first place. Your post didn't even acknowledge what the major issue is which is why I said you don't know what your talking about. To be blunt the larger tabletop community is still a raging dumpster fire and I don't want anyone to get burned pulling random bits trash out.

Also, there are no rules for distributing scenarios online which is effectively what sharing prep can cross over into.

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 ****

Adam Yababoski wrote:
Also, there are no rules for distributing scenarios online which is effectively what sharing prep can cross over into.

Ok, I never said that you should share your PDFs, or that you should "distribute scenarios".

What I was talking about was sharing you google slides, or sharing the scenario you created in Roll20.

If you were feeling generous as a GM, you could gift the scenario to the new GM.

Adam, please do not read into statements.

Me, 2020-05-09 at 11:10 AMCDT wrote:
If you are GMing and see the same players over and over, you could offer to let them use your prep materials (sharing out google slides or Roll20 maps and tokens), to help them transition.

How does this statement lead to "distributing scenarios".

Dark Archive 5/5 5/5

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Adam Yakaboski wrote:
To be blunt the larger tabletop community is still a raging dumpster fire...

Can you please explain what you mean with this statement?

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

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I'm guessing it means Adam's lodge hasn't spent any time cultivating, teaching and training new GMs to take over when there's an inevitable shortage.

Which, obviously, isn't the *community's* fault...

Grand Lodge 4/5 5/55/5 *** Premier Event Coordinator

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Adam Yakaboski wrote:
raging dumpster fire

I think we would all agree that there are some bad apples. Every social community has them, but that’s a far cry from your assessment. The VAST majority of our community are fun, cooperative players, GMs and organizers. If you have had some bad experiences in your local lodge, or with the greater community I’m sorry that happened. We’ve all experienced it from time to time but it is relatively rare and not representative of the whole. If you disagree and your experience truly is that of a “raging dumpster fire” than I would recommend you stop beating your head against that wall. Life is too short to be unhappy.

Explore! Report! Cooperate!

Liberty's Edge 3/5 5/5 **** Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha

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To follow-up on Bob's comments, here in Omaha, we have transitioned to online. We now regularly have players outside our immediate area. None of them had any problems and I have received nothing but praise for how the tables have been ran.

As Nefreet points out, please don't judge the larger community on your own local experiences. At not without evidence.

***

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Gary Bush wrote:
I think the limit is good. Leadership did not make this decision lightly.

What were the options that leadership considered, exactly?

I posted this in the blog thread, but I think one of the things that is notably missing is a distinction between PLANNING for 7 players, and allowing 7 players in some sort of EMERGENCY scenario.

Nobody should plan to have 7 players at a table. And, to my knowledge, exceedingly few people do.

In a F2F setting, there's miscommunication, or double-booking, or a new player that walks in. And whatever the reason is, you've got 7 players at 6:31 pm and you have to (a) turn someone away, (b) rush to find someone who can GM (and make sure the FLGS can accomodate another table), or (c) let 7 play. And it's really not an obvious choice, not at least to me. I know others will just turn someone away (especially a new player) without a second thought, but that's just awful for the community.

In a PbP or VTT setting, there's still miscommunication and double-booking and new players straggling in, but there's a much larger player pool - it's much easier to turn someone away when you can say, "There's another game starting in 15 minutes." It's a lot easier to send out the Batsignal and get someone to volunteer to GM a second table. It's pretty clear, at least to me, that 7-player tables are the worst choice in an online setting. As a matter of fact, I've seen GMs limit their PbPs to 4-5, which is fine, and I might even start doing that myself. There's no reason that PbP and VTT and F2F should all have the same table limits, and maybe even better if they don't.

To that end, the end of the 7-player table as people transition online is well-timed, not poorly timed. Yay! Nobody has to deal with 7-player tables for a while! Windmill high fives!

But, when F2F play re-opens, I think the umbrella policy should be softened. 7-player tables should be allowed so long as it's annoying enough to report them that the organizers only do it as a last resort - e.g., you can't report it online, you have to put the handwritten reporting sheet into a mailbox and send it to your RVC. This allows some flexibility for people struggling with the awkward player pool size, while making it clear that it's not a step to be taken lightly.

Long term, of course it's best to have flexible player-GMs and, of course, the best solution is to have 1-2 people at every table CAPABLE of GMing on short notice. But the real key is to establish an unselfish culture around the whole thing - having a few people willing to repeat-GM for no credit because they know the next time someone else will "take one for the team", or have a critical mass of players who will volunteer to go play the evergreen scenario 3-handed with the new player that just walked in. If you have a selfish culture, it really doesn't matter if your policy says to split 7 to 3/3 (one of the players has to become a GM) - every player is just going to fold their arms and say, "I signed up 4 weeks ago, tough luck," and the organizer is going to send the new player away with a bunch of instructions about Warhorn and Paizo that they're not even going to remember by the time they get to their car. (Or, more likely, when they get to the Settlers of Catan or DDAL table that's running in the same store and welcomes them.)

4/5 ****

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If needing extra space for flexibility is important cap your signups at 5 and allow 6 in an emergency.

Grand Lodge 4/5

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Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

I greatly prefer 5 player tables anyway.

Scarab Sages 4/5 5/55/5 *

Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Agreed

***

Robert Hetherington wrote:
If needing extra space for flexibility is important cap your signups at 5 and allow 6 in an emergency.

6 players + 1 GM can't be broken into two PFS legal tables.

7 players + 1 GM can be broken into 2x (3 players + 1 GM) with one player converting to GM.

A hard cap at 5 is no different than a soft cap at 5 - there's only one option either way.

A hard cap at 6 IS different than a soft cap at 6 - the latter allows more options.

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

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Watery Soup wrote:
Robert Hetherington wrote:
If needing extra space for flexibility is important cap your signups at 5 and allow 6 in an emergency.

6 players + 1 GM can't be broken into two PFS legal tables.

7 players + 1 GM can be broken into 2x (3 players + 1 GM) with one player converting to GM.

A hard cap at 5 is no different than a soft cap at 5 - there's only one option either way.

A hard cap at 6 IS different than a soft cap at 6 - the latter allows more options.

This doesn't make any sense.

Cap your game at 5. Allow 1 wait list.

If that wait list shows up for some reason, you have a table of 6.

No need to break up the table.

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

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Assuming that was even correct, it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand.

4/5 ****

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Especially since there's no current need to maximize players at a table for efficient physical space usage at my frequently sold out venue...

For the venue I run I've moved warhorn's table limit to 5 for June and the rest of May. Going forward this will allow us some flexibility in an emergency. Also I suspect on average the 5 player table experience is superior to the 6 player table experience, especially with the way PFS2 handles scaling.

In some cases this likely means we'll need another GM but I've got faith in our local community that we can handle it.

And if not I'll shanghai Nefreet and make him GM all the slots. I've got that power right? right?

***

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Robert Hetherington wrote:
In some cases this likely means we'll need another GM but I've got faith in our local community that we can handle it.

I do too, especially for your venue. And I actually know with 100% certainty that people would give up a seat for a new player. I was that idiot noob once, showing up without having registered on Warhorn, and someone gave up a seat for me.

If I'm in the room when you need an extra GM, ask me. I printed out 1-06, and have it in the bag I carry around. And that's not an accident: last year at Kublacon, me and two brand new players were standing around gameless and OG3 whipped out The Confirmation that he carried around in his bag, plopped down at an empty table, and ran it for us.

I don't worry about our local community. I know people are super generous.

But subtract that one person's generosity, or put one fewer table in that room, and there might be 3 fewer PFS players in the pool (actually, 6, because I went on to GM a game with 3 walkins).

Allowing a 7th gives an option. It's a worse option than getting an emergency GM and playing another table, but it's arguably a better option than sending a new player away.

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

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Robert Hetherington wrote:

I've got faith in our local community that we can handle it.

And if not I'll shanghai Nefreet and make him GM all the slots. I've got that power right? right?

I mean, I'm not doing anything else in the foreseeable future, and you know I'm no stranger to driving a couple hours for a game, so...

4/5 ****

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Nefreet wrote:
Robert Hetherington wrote:

I've got faith in our local community that we can handle it.

And if not I'll shanghai Nefreet and make him GM all the slots. I've got that power right? right?

I mean, I'm not doing anything else in the foreseeable future, and you know I'm no stranger to driving a couple hours for a game, so...

We're online at the moment so you don't even need to drive anywhere. If you're interested in GMing PFS2 1-10 this Sunday at 4 let me know and I'll walk you through our standard procedures, we're generally extremely chill.

1/5 5/5

I currently wouldn't do it for PFS2, but if I'd run something in PFS before and had adequate prep on hand I can and have stepped up there.

Note: Adequate prep is NOT a hard-to-read photocopy and a blank map, under ideal circumstances.

Grand Lodge 4/5 ***** Venture-Captain, Missouri—Columbia

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The GMs at our Columbia lodge and I had a real issue with a time crunch that was negatively impacting our monthly event. We had an eight hour window to run two sessions plus get something to eat in between the sessions quickly. I suppose we had gotten a bit jaded by PFS1. We also wanted to attempt to prevent seven player tables. So, we decided to limit tables to five players while at the same time agreeing to GM more sessions and to seek out, cultivate, and train more GMs.

We had a lot of success with this. Players were happy with it because we were able to get the games in the window of opportunity while also getting some food. The main GM pool pretty much all have a glyph now with a few of us sitting at two glyphs or higher. We pass on tips to the newer GMs who usually get the luxury of playing the scenario first before running it. If any scenario looks to be one that will go more than four hours, we plan its running to address that.

The five player limit also allows us to add a sixth if necessary. This way we don't have to turn anybody away. We were doing pretty good just before the pandemic hit with four tables in each slot for certain and a standby fifth table GM/bonus player if needed. Everyone is happy and hopefully we will get everyone to come back and pick up where we left off next year when we get the vaccinations.

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 ****

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What we did for Con of the North was to print out all of the PFS2 quests (we had a bunch of stuff for pfs1 and SFS already printed).

We made maps on standard letter paper, so that they will fit into a hanging file, and I also made laminated paper pawns for all of the critters in each of these.

The good thing about quests is that they don't require a ton of prep... and if you've read through them beforehand they are easy to pick up with a few minutes of review.

In the past we've had copies of The Confirmation, etc., ready to go for GMs to pick up on the fly.

This is always a good thing to have on hand, and as an organizer doesn't take a huge amount of effort to set up.

Scarab Sages 4/5

The repeatables definitely help. It can, however, sometimes be difficult to convince 2 players to leave the table they signed up for to play The Confurmation for the 10th time or to start yet another new character. 2E at least has removed the level 1 only restriction, which I think was a large part of the issue with the 1E repeatables. Tome of Righteous Repose and Beyond the Half-light Path have become part of the plan for a lot of people, and there seems to be much more willingness to replay those over and over than the others. The level 1 modules are more popular, probably because of the full level of xp.

5/5 5/55/55/5

Ferious Thune wrote:
The repeatables definitely help. It can, however, sometimes be difficult to convince 2 players to leave the table they signed up for to play The Confurmation for the 10th time or to start yet another new character. 2E at least has removed the level 1 only restriction, which I think was a large part of the issue with the 1E repeatables. Tome of Righteous Repose and Beyond the Half-light Path have become part of the plan for a lot of people, and there seems to be much more willingness to replay those over and over than the others. The level 1 modules are more popular, probably because of the full level of xp.

Since we had 5 +/- 1d4 players a fair bit of the time, we would usually try to have someone on deck with another low level scenario from season 1. So we don't play Delirium's Tangle. Someone reads it and keeps it prepped.. ish. Then we have a game to fall back on.

PFS2 not having a backlog of scenarios probably makes that harder though

Scarab Sages 4/5

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If it’s not a repeatable, then unless it’s the same scenario that was on the schedule, you then run into issues of whether or not the players at the table have played the other scenario. Which then narrows down who could switch tables. Which then means those players have to be willing. The sudoku just gets more complicated from there.

What I like about lowering the limit to 6 is that it takes the pressure off organizers/GMs to accept a 7th player. Which hopefully makes it easier to ask someone else to GM or people to leave the table, since there’s not an option to just let the other person play.

But I also hope it doesn’t go the other direction and people start being turned away. Especially new players who show up as walk-ins.

5/5 5/55/55/5

Ferious Thune wrote:
If it’s not a repeatable, then unless it’s the same scenario that was on the schedule, you then run into issues of whether or not the players at the table have played the other scenario. Which then narrows down who could switch tables. Which then means those players have to be willing. The sudoku just gets more complicated from there.

Most of the cause of the +1d4 was new people showing up. So playing the scenario or caring about the differences between one scenario and another were pretty rare. Sometimes the higher leveled players grumbled (usually the ones who had benefited from us being willing to turn on a dime for a new guy when they were the new guy)

Liberty's Edge 3/5 5/5 **** Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha

Watery Soup wrote:
Gary Bush wrote:
I think the limit is good. Leadership did not make this decision lightly.

What were the options that leadership considered, exactly?

What I know is because I am a VC and I don't think it is my place to speak for leadership.

What I can say is that I found their reason to be a good one.

And I am sorry you have had such a poor experience with your local VO corps. Not all VO corps are the same.

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

They're not actually talking about their region:

Watery Soup wrote:
I don't worry about our local community. I know people are super generous.

I imagine it's just mathematical conjecture.

***

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There are a few places I've played that would benefit from the flexibility. Very specifically, they're places with smaller player pools and small locations.

Rob's location gets 18 players plus 3 GMs regularly; there's also a healthy number of players in the pool who are capable of GMing on short notice, and the venue probably has enough tables to give a 4th table. Other locations, even ones within driving distance (perhaps even one within walking distance!), have 5-6 players and 1 GM in a small venue with zero extra tables. There's a much higher barrier of breaking into two tables.

It's that 1-table to 2-table transition that's the hardest - it's more likely that there's only 1 person prepared to GM; it's more likely that there's only 1 physical table available. The 2-table to 3-table transition is easier, and 3- to 4- even easier yet. And the 7-player flexibility is most valuable to the 1-table venues.

Playing a 7-handed table is like amputating a limb. It shouldn't be done willy-nilly, but banning it entirely under any circumstance is overkill.

Ban it online? I'm on board.

Ban it at conventions? Meh, but probably fine.

Ban it at Rob's location? Sure.

Ban it at a 1-table FLGS with a 5-10 player player pool? Gonna cause problems. Has caused problems (just some of the problems, such as telling a new player to go onto Warhorn and sign up for a game in 4 weeks, aren't recognized as problems).

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

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This is where consistent cultivation of GMs comes into play.

If you have 5-10 regular attendees, you shouldn't have just one GM.

If you do, then a ban on 7-player tables isn't the problem.

Sovereign Court 4/5 * Organized Play Manager

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I've removed posts related to personal attacks and situations unrelated to the original post. I ask folks to keep to the topic and HIGHLY caution folks against personal attacks and/or allegations. Public message boards are not the correct forum for these discussions.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled forums


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Myself I would prefer to play at a 7-person table than a 3-person table. I don't remember too many 7-player tables, mostly home games where there everyone had a +1 or +2 (significant other or child/children) and not easy to tell someone to go home or sit on their hands.

Grand Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Captain, Minnesota

Thank you, Tonya!

Hmm

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