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This never even occurred to me! Thanks for the idea!
If this is something you want to do, more power to you. I'm sure the players would love that extra touch.
It's not for every GM, however. Nor should it be.. every player that picks one of the 'new' factions knows full well what the deal is should he find himself playing a pre-season 3 scenario. It's not always the GM's job to accomodate player choices- players have a responsibility to find a way to fit their square peg of a PC into an adventure when the writers only left round holes.
In this case, in the context of PFS, I think using some imagination to fill in faction-specific details/flavor for missions written before their factions existed isn't asking too much.
But again, nothing wrong with providing faction-specific handouts. If you have that sort of desire (not to mention lead time) prior to game day, players certainly would love that extra touch.
With all due respect, this conversion wasn't about (didn't get thread-jacked about) a GM's job. It's about fostering role-play. If a GM wishes more RP at his/her table, then choosing to do this is a good idea and good advice.
Wasn't trying to say I expect this. Just posting it as a solution for the lack of role-play at some tables.
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every player that picks one of the 'new' factions knows full well what the deal is should he find himself playing a pre-season 3 scenario.
Really? There are no newbies in your games? I find that hard to believe. I think I was up to level 3 before I found out that the faction I picked for my first character didn't exist in older adventures.
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I wasn't complaining. I was just pointing out that deusvult's comment that everyone knows this stuff is inaccurate. The game is tough enough for newbies to learn without having to know all these details. They're usually more interested in learning about their class, spells, skills, feats, etc when they start out than about the details of factions, and the history of which ones didn't exist in early adventures.
As they play, they'll learn. But it would be nice if the scenarios could be refluffed so that they're not thrown by getting a scenario for the "wrong" faction when playing an early season adventure. I understand that Paizo's staff doesn't have time for that, but I also understand Jiggy's complaint about not liking to get faction missions for the wrong faction.
As I imagined. Why not just do an Open Call?
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With all due respect, this conversion wasn't about (didn't get thread-jacked about) a GM's job. It's about fostering role-play. If a GM wishes more RP at his/her table, then choosing to do this is a good idea and good advice.
Wasn't trying to say I expect this. Just posting it as a solution for the lack of role-play at some tables.
Actually, the thread was started to try to find if there are any skills that anyone thought that a player should not be getting help on in any situations (such as the ones I listed in the first post), or if they all seem to be kinda case by case, which was the general consensus.
However, yes, it has evolved into fostering roleplay.
I blame Jiggy.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Really? There are no newbies in your games? I find that hard to believe. I think I was up to level 3 before I found out that the faction I picked for my first character didn't exist in older adventures.every player that picks one of the 'new' factions knows full well what the deal is should he find himself playing a pre-season 3 scenario.
Considering it's in the guide to organized play, you are absolutely supposed to know it. Maybe not for a green behind the ears newbie, but if you haven't read the guide after nine sessions you really should.
Considering it's in the guide to organized play, you are absolutely supposed to know it. Maybe not for a green behind the ears newbie, but if you haven't read the guide after nine sessions you really should.Really? There are no newbies in your games? I find that hard to believe. I think I was up to level 3 before I found out that the faction I picked for my first character didn't exist in older adventures.every player that picks one of the 'new' factions knows full well what the deal is should he find himself playing a pre-season 3 scenario.
Six sessions. And it is totally possible and quite feasible to be 3rd level without having interacted with a faction:
First Steps series + Godsmouth Heresy
I'm not saying I agree that it is wise to be ignorant of the way the FPS rules work. I'm simply pointing out that if a GM starts a group in this manner, the players might still be surprised to find out 5 factions were recently added.
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Considering it's in the guide to organized play, you are absolutely supposed to know it. Maybe not for a green behind the ears newbie, but if you haven't read the guide after nine sessions you really should.Really? There are no newbies in your games? I find that hard to believe. I think I was up to level 3 before I found out that the faction I picked for my first character didn't exist in older adventures.every player that picks one of the 'new' factions knows full well what the deal is should he find himself playing a pre-season 3 scenario.
Really? The "core assumption" for organized play consists of 3 books, totaling nearly 700 pages. What percentage of Society players would you estimate have read all 3 of those books from cover to cover? If it's more than 5%, I'd be very surprised.
And how many PFS players have no plans to ever be a GM? You do realize that the GM section is the only part of the Guide that mentions what we're talking about here, right?
I was probably more thorough in reading the Guide than half the players in my local group, yet I stopped reading when I hit the GM section the first time around. Even after finding out that my faction didn't have missions in older scenarios (around the time I hit level 3), I didn't realize that the translation of which factions to use for missions in older adventures was in the Guide until after I decided to become a GM.
You know, Organized Play seems like it should be the "outreach" arm of the game, trying to get new players into Pathfinder. But with as much as there is to learn to play this game, it's really not very newbie friendly. And the prevailing attitude of "you should know that" on these forums really makes me wonder how/if any of you ever actually recruit new players.
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And the prevailing attitude of "you should know that" on these forums really makes me wonder how/if any of you ever actually recruit new players.
I would hardly describe it as "prevailing."
Do I believe that everyone should read all of the core assumption material? Yes
Do I think everyone does? No
In my experience, most new PFS players have at least some Pathfinder RPG experience or at least 3.5. Very few people read the Core Rulebook from cover to cover. Hell, I haven't. At least not in that sense. So I am not expecting someone to immediately pick it up and read it through.
But since the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play is the foundation for our campaign, it is the first, and primary thing I encourage all new players to read. From beginning to end. It is really no more taxing that reading the Sunday newspaper.
But, of course, we have strayed from the OP.
Fair enough.
Sounds like we handhold the newbies in our local group more than you get in your region. Our group is about 70% new to PFS and 40% new to RPGs. So we kind of walk them through a lot of this.
I see no problem with this. I used to teach 3.5 to gaming groups when I was head of the local gaming club where I used to live. Players had a wide variety of experience.
Where I am now, we just throw new players into the fire and we've never had trouble. Must be something in the water, but as soon as they've played a session or two they get a voracious appetite for knowledge about the game and the world. Honestly, I think it's because we have a diversity in our experienced players that cause a new member to undergo a deep rules-lawyering debate, avid descriptions of places in Golarion, interesting build quirks and combination, advice from Painlord's 176 threads, and instructions on building terrain/painting miniatures all within their first session or two. I think all the different aspects of what makes Pathfinder fun and interesting overloads their brains causing them to hit the ground running.
They give our VC a run for his money. :D
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Fair enough.
Sounds like we handhold the newbies in our local group more than you get in your region. Our group is about 70% new to PFS and 40% new to RPGs. So we kind of walk them through a lot of this.
I didn't think I could reply without provoking the same responses Mr Baker got.
But since we've gone down that road..
What he said.
With regards to the OP.. I suppose this isn't a total tangent. The PFS Guide doesn't lay out any expectation whatsoever about whether or not 'cross faction' cooperation on missions is encouraged or not. Seems to me that it's pretty common that players play under the assumption that full cooperation is encouraged, if not expected.
Example: I've had a mission where the BBEG was supposed to be captured alive and delivered to the local magistrate for justice.
My character was incapacitated at the start of the BBEG fight, and ended up watching the party rogue sneak-attack the NPC from positive HPs to dead dead. The GM looked to me sadly and offered his consolations about my lost PA, and the rogue's player insisted on taking his action back and merely knocking the BBEG to negative HP instead. And I got chided for not sharing my mission with everyone ahead of time. :D
So.. yeah. Personally, I believe that's probably not what Paizo intended, but I can say with experience that it's what we have.
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Fair enough.
Sounds like we handhold the newbies in our local group more than you get in your region. Our group is about 70% new to PFS and 40% new to RPGs. So we kind of walk them through a lot of this.
I'm not really sure what you mean by that. Our percentage of PFS newbies here is higher than that, given that our area didn't have a PFS group 3 months ago. The two people who had played PFS at conventions (Whiskey Jack and his fiance) started a local group, and they've done a great job of introducing the rest of us to it.
But the fact that some factions are newer than others isn't exactly a crucial piece of information that comes up immediately, when there's so much else that's more important than that. And we've got plenty of newbies to either Pathfinder or RPGs in general, including myself as an old school 80's D&D/AD&D player just returning to RPGs a few months ago, who are too busy learning the game mechanics to worry about minor details like this.
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The PFS Guide doesn't lay out any expectation whatsoever about whether or not 'cross faction' cooperation on missions is encouraged or not.
Actually it does. From page 9 of the Guide under the heading Faction Secrecy,
"Most loyal faction members keep their alliances to themselves, sharing faction-related missions and information only with other members of their faction."While it doesn't explicitly say you cannot help other factions complete their missions, it surely implies that, as a general course, you shouldn't.
I think the hazy part is if you can get someone to complete your mission for you without knowing that is what they are doing. Unfortunately, I see too much of just sharing missions, even showing each other the faction missive, almost like its a group project for school. That does not hold true to the intention of how factions are supposed to work.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Bob,
As a GM I've seen the same thing, and as a player I do similar things, depending on the character I'm playing. One of them is an enthusiastic agent of his faction and happy to use his status as a Pathfinder to promote his faction leader's agenda. Another hates his faction. Others are luke-warm members of their factions but happy to help their fellow pathfinders.
One of my PCs is always happy to share the information that he receives in the faction missions -- "guys, somebody thinks we're on our way to meet a crime lord, and that we may end up underwater; dress appropriately" -- but not his assignment.