Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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Hello wonderful OrgPlay Leadership Team!
I've been waiting for a thread to show up about this, but I haven't seen one yet. I believe there's a typo in the sanctioning document for Little Trouble in Big Absalom. It suggests that Little Trouble in Big Absalom is a quest that gives only 1XP, 1 reputation and 2 days downtime. But quests are much shorter than Little Trouble is.
Your average quest / bounty has 1 skill challenge and/or short roleplay section and 1 combat. It's meant for parties to get in and out of in about an hour. But the more that I look at Little Absalom, the more I am certain that it is a four hour adventure deserving of 4 XP, 4 Rep and 8 days downtime.
6 encounters, 3 of which are solvable in non-combat ways, 2 social encounters, 2 traps.
We fixed the table counts for Starfinder Free RPG day products to be in line with a scenarios, and we fixed the amount of money that the Commencement gave. Can we please fix this? A post in the product thread (and here) could be a start until the sanctioning document and the ACP calculations can be fixed.
Hmm
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Per this post it is not a typo.
https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6shcm?Free-RPG-Day-adventures-now- on-paizocom#13.
That said, I agree with you, it should give full instead of quest/bounty.
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Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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Okay, I can see why you read Tonya's post that way. I saw her post as being more about conflicts between blog and sanctioning documents. If it's not a typo and intentional... Then, I am really confused.
Why are we discounting a free RPG day adventure so much over other scenarios? Will we be doing this to all free RPG day adventures going forward? It doesn't make sense to me. I think it's going to cause problems down the line for schedulers. If a scheduler looks at the sanctioning doc and assumes that it's a quest, they won't give it enough play time. If a scheduler gives it the full four hours, players will be disappointed.
I think this misdesignation will either cause problems, or will cause a number of OrgPlay venues to decide not to schedule it until those problems are sorted. Either way, this is a shame. It's a delightful adventure that should be played. I am hoping that we can get a fix for this.
Hmm
Venture-Captain, Australia—NSW—Greater West
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I would like to echo Hmmm's concerns on this.
The understanding that we all have around Sanctioning of Non-Org Play Adventures is that it is 1xp, 1 reputation and 2 days downtime for approximately each hour of play. It would be nice to be consistent with this, and the current Free RPG Day sanctioning isn't.
I hadn't even thought around the issues with Scheduling, but that is a really good point also.
Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
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We haven't run this locally yet, but if I did and the players found out it was only worth quest rewards, I'd have a bunch of angry players on my hands. So, until its more that just a quest, I guess we won't be running it locally, which is too bad since I've heard its a good adventure.
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It’s also sad that people are choosing to play or not play an adventure solely based on the rewards. That says a lot about where our community has progressed and speaking just for myself, it’s not encouraging. I didn't get a chance to play this on Free RPG day but I’m hopping to soon(tm) and then run it for others who haven’t, regardless of the rewards. YMMV
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It’s also sad that people are choosing to play or not play an adventure solely based on the rewards. That says a lot about where our community has progressed and speaking just for myself, it’s not encouraging. I didn't get a chance to play this on Free RPG day but I’m hopping to soon(tm) and then run it for others who haven’t, regardless of the rewards. YMMV
Get over yourself.
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Hmm Ok....
It's not that hard to understand.
RPGs are inherently rewards based. Kill the monster, get XP. Do the quest, get GP. Roleplay with the NPC, get favors.
Society simply packages those up into a neat bundle and puts them on a collectable Chronicle. It's a genius business model.
Declaring that motivation to be "sad" or "not encouraging" is insulting and divisive.
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Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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I don't see myself as someone who just GMs or plays for rewards. But I admit that some rewards are fairly important to me as a GM -- table count being chief amongst them. If I'm going to invest the time, I'd like to get credit for it.
My bandwidth is super thin right now, but I agreed to run Little Trouble in Big Absalom for PBP gameday assuming it was a scenario. Then I read the sanctioning document and decided it was a quest. "Oh, even better. I'll be done with it in a couple weeks! This will be short and fun!" Then I read through it and realized it was not a quest. It will take time for me to GM (the time of a full scenario) but it will not provide me the table count recognition that I would expect for a scenario.
It's still a fun game, but some of my enthusiasm for it dimmed.
I love roleplay, storytelling, setting. I'm a great GM. But I am motivated also by numbers, and I'd like the table count (and for my players, XP and ACP) designation to fit the effort and time expended. We all have weird things that motivate us. This is one of mine.
Hmm
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Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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Hey everyone, while I was typing my response to Bob -- which took a while because I'm distracted today -- I didn't notice everyone else's replies.
Can we all tone it down, please? This conversation has suddenly become a lot more heated. Let's not make this about personal attacks. It's important to realize that people can be motivated in many different ways.
You can want fair rewards and excellent roleplay.
You can want to game with friends and have your chronicles reward you correctly.
But part of what also motivates me in Organized Play is the ability to discuss problems with leadership and sometimes get answers. They may not always be the answers that I want, but it's a chance to speak and be heard. When we snipe at each other, the conversation becomes unpleasant, and the message gets lost.
It's okay for us to disagree. Let's do so civilly, please.
Yours,
Hmm
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Get over yourself.
I’m entitled to my opinion just like everyone else is. If I’m disappointed that there are people who place more importance on the reward than the game experience, so be it. I’m certainly not alone in that thought.
Declaring that motivation to be "sad" or "not encouraging" is insulting and divisive.
As I said, we are all entitled to our opinions. I even included YMMV. I did not disparage anyone. I merely said that I was disappointed with the situation. If a person’s personal disappointment is considered divisive and insulting, maybe I’m not the one with the problem. Feel free to play and feel how ever you want, and I will do the same.
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Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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I am more in Bob's boat than Nefreet's boat. I like to play. Rewards are a bonus.
I agree with Hilary. Let's not jump on each other (consequences??) just because they have a different opinion. Enough "cancel culture" is happening outside of these walls.
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"I am disappointed that you don't play the way I play so I had to weigh in on a thread about an adventure which is demonstrably miscategorized as a 'quest'..."
I think "get over yourself" was a pretty polite response to the need to chide others about how their fun is wrong and bad, really.
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Back on topic...
This is the first Free RPG Day release that wasn't worth a full 1/3 of a level, including all the way back to Master of the Fallen Fortress.
And, Skitter Home, this year's SFS release, is just as long, yet it still offers 1/3 of a level. Why wasn't it categorized as a "Quest"?
I'm beginning to think that someone unfamiliar with the 12xp/level of PFS2 thought that the Chronicle should award the same XP as Skitter Home, and wasn't aware of the difference in scaling.
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I think "get over yourself" was a pretty polite response to the need to chide others about how their fun is wrong and bad, really.
And you are welcome to think so. I did not say anyone's fun was wrong or bad. I am merely personally disappointed. I cannot control what meaning someone will take from that word and equate it to other words. Nonetheless, I stand by my commentary.
I love dogs and dislike cats. If my dislike of cats hurts you personally, I really don't care anymore than I would if you responded that you disliked dogs. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, unless those opinions are factually wrong—which is certainly not applicable here.
Further, I did not say I am against the rewards for this adventure being increased to match those of scenarios. I honestly don't care either way. I am simply commenting on my feelings about the community, in part, refusing to play it based solely on rewards despite public reviews and commentary being almost entirely positive. But again, YMMV.
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if it was intended with quest rewards...
It wasn’t. Free RPG day adventures are not written for org play. They are written as stand alone modules to showcase the game system and to some extent the Golarion campaign. Using it as a sanctioned adventure for org play is stamped on it after that fact and is always going to be an imperfect science. It is certainly arguable if it should be equated as a quest or a full scenario, but either way, the text does not need to be errata’d to fit org play. Quite the opposite.
Organized Play Manager
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Time for a breath and a step back.
Paizo’s Organized Play department publishes a series of adventures with metaplots, storylines, recurring NPCs, and established locations. The campaign is written by the Org Play Developers, overseen by the Org Play Manager, and aided by the Org Play Associate (who gets our paperwork done!). Collectively, we are the Org Play Team, and we act as the House GM for the campaign, producing a packaged experience called Organized Play.
Paizo also publishes many other adventures. They range from a one-off story taking a couple of hours to years-long campaigns spanning continents and decades. For these adventures, House GMs are the ones sitting at the table with the players, not staff at Paizo HQ.
Not everything that fits well in an adventure fits well in Org Play. This doesn't make the adventure less. It doesn't make Org Play wrong. It is just like making French toast with orange juice. Different kind of mixture. Different kind of experience.
In the past, to give Organized Play participants more content, we granted Chronicle Sheets for anything you could play. But the launch of Pathfinder Second Edition gave us a chance to revisit how we did things. And one of those things we revisited was the interaction of non-Organized Play adventures with the Org Play campaign.
Free RPG adventures are not part of the Org Play campaign series. They come from the non-OP side of Paizo and are meant to provide stores a way to incentivize their player base through celebration and swag. They are points of origin into the experience that is Pathfinder/Starfinder, not parts of the ongoing story of the Societies. So, we decided to not allocate them the same experience weight as a scenario. Instead, they open up character options in the form of a background and a ship. Rewards, but of a different type than progression.
We hope people enjoy their playing of the Free RPG adventures, just as we hope people enjoy the ongoing Organized Play storylines. For they are different paths on the same journey.
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We've been used to 'adventure progression = character progression' for so long that the paradigm shift was unexpected. It will take some time to transition to that concept of 'organized play progression = character progression'. Likewise the concept that 'reward progression =/= character progression'.
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This really does illustrate the somewhat recent phenomenon of "stealth" rule changes. Examples, this instance of how rewards are given for this category of adventure but which we didn't find out about until after people had played the adventure and the change in boons such that fame is going away in some form in season two again which occurred after many people had played the scenarios in question.
For much of the community the issue isn't the changes in rules, the issue is the seemingly intentional "gotcha" nature of how the rules are being published. We are nearly six weeks into season two of PFS and updates to the Guide are still pending. We are more than two months into season three of SFS and the Guide is still pending (though there seems to be a twitch of movement on that in the database). There is a portion of the community that believes Paizo knows these rule changes are not going to be well-received and that is why discussion of them is being delayed as long as possible. In general, communication really needs to be improved.
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Organized Play Manager
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We've been used to 'adventure progression = character progression' for so long that the paradigm shift was unexpected. It will take some time to transition to that concept of 'organized play progression = character progression'. Likewise the concept that 'reward progression =/= character progression'.
It is a change. We will look on improving our communication going forward.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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We've been used to 'adventure progression = character progression' for so long that the paradigm shift was unexpected. It will take some time to transition to that concept of 'organized play progression = character progression'. Likewise the concept that 'reward progression =/= character progression'.
I don't know. Is this really any different from an AP spanning 3 levels per book, but only granting a chronicle for a single level?
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The fractional XP makes me wonder whether my 8th Level +1 XP character will forever be stuck at +1 XP.
Also worried he won't qualify for anything similar to how Eyes of the Ten required you to have an exact amount of XP.
You can apply Little Trouble to any level, that and assign a scenario, or Plaguestone or AP at slow and it'll get you back on track.
Also I think we've learned our lesson from EotT exact XP requirements.
Honestly, if the reward is just the boon, I'd just as soon take 0 xp and gold. The fractional xp drives me crazy. Can we make that an option?
Technically, since the boon can be transferred from the character who earned it to any one of your characters with the correct ancestry, you could just assign the chronicle to a throw-away character and not worry about the xp at all.
Or maybe don't throw it away, just keep it at lvl 1 in case you want to try the bounties for now...
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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It is just like making French toast with orange juice. Different kind of mixture. Different kind of experience.Wait... I never heard of this... Anyone have the recipe for this? ;)
I have been informed that Tonya has a recipe for everything.
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Venture-Captain, Utah—Utah County
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I have been informed that Tonya has a recipe for everything.It is just like making French toast with orange juice. Different kind of mixture. Different kind of experience.Wait... I never heard of this... Anyone have the recipe for this? ;)
french toast with orange juice.
2 to 4 tablespoons butter, melted
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 large eggs
1/2 cup orange juice
1/8 teaspoon salt, optional
6 slices bread
Additional honey, optional
1. Preheat oven to 400°. In a small bowl, mix the butter, honey and cinnamon. Pour into a greased 13x9-in. baking pan; spread to coat bottom of pan.
2. In a shallow bowl, whisk the eggs, orange juice and, if desired, salt. Dip both sides of bread in egg mixture.
3. Place in prepared pan. Bake until golden brown, 15-20 minutes. Invert onto a serving platter; if desired, serve with additional honey.
*DO NOT PAN FRY THIS.. THE SUGAR CARMELIZES BEFORE TOAST COOKS THROUGH AND MAKES FOR A VERY BURNT FLAVOR*