Is Organized play just not for me?

[ahayford]

I have recently stepped back into organized play after many years. I used to run a PFS1e game at my local workplace for myself and my co-workers. I always GM'd and we'd have a crew of rotating players. I have recently gotten really interested in PF2E and Starfinder after getting kind of tired of 5e. With the advent of VTT's and online play, I decided to come back to PFS and SFS as a player to get some play time under my belt to help me learn the rules. I'm not great at picking up rules myself and thought getting some playtime in would help boost my confidence and help me learn the rules. I went to a few discords and have played in about 6 PFS and 5 SFS games.

So far, the experience has been less than ideal. I really want to be diplomatic and kind, because GMing is hard and anyone that has the confidence to do so instantly gets my respect. I struggle myself with social anxiety issues and self confidence problems that can make the anticipation of an upcoming session difficult. However, all the games I've played in seem to take the same general formula.

1) Players introduce their characters, maybe do a little RP (cool).
2) Mission intro with story NPC that tells us what we are going to be doing (a little slow getting started but cool)
3) Then GM just tells us what all the skills we can use are and asks for rolls. There is typically very little player agency here, just DM asking for rolls. (not super interesting)
4) Mission starts, very railroady...not in the sense that there is a given plot to follow, but just very little openings for ways to do things.
5) Combats are stupid easy and barely worth even playing. Party frequently takes no damage or very little. A lot of time is burned on combats where the outcome is pretty much known from the outset.

I can get behind the idea of the scenario and playing within the restrictions of a pickup game/time limit. However, the whole experience has been largely unsatisfying to me. GM typically whisks us away to each point, with very little options for what/how to do things, and things that could be interesting, just seem to devolve into a series of rolls where the DM tells us what we can use rather then people coming up with creative ideas or solutions. Almost no roleplaying, or if there is it tends to be from gimmick characters that play the same joke over and over.

Now, I am no expert or amazing DM, but I just haven't been enjoying myself as much as I'd hoped to. Maybe its just PF2E and Starfinder are a bit more rules heavy than I'm used to and the Society encourages rigid adherence to the rules. Maybe I've just been in games with less experienced GMs or have played modules that aren't the greatest. I don't know.

In contrast, I recently played in a short playtest for a module being written for another system. There was no pretext that our characters would have any use after the adventure we were running. The session lasted 4hrs, about the same length as a PFS/SFS game, and I had a blast. The session as a basic, go find the dungeon, do a short crawl, defeat a boss...but it didn't feel like we were just picking from a rigid set of available options like my SFS/PFS scenarios have felt.

Is some of this because of people replaying scenarios just to level up?
Is some of this because of GMs trying to make sure players get all the rewards from a scenario?
Are the play tiers where tier 4's play with 1's at low tier trivializing the game?

Should I keep trying? Should I try and GM? Is PFS/SFS just not to my liking or have other people had different experiences?

Please, I really don't want to offend anyone and am asking this with the utmost sincerity.

[Pirate Rob]

I hate to just throw your GM under the bus without context and both sides of the story, but it sounds like

"3) Then GM just tells us what all the skills we can use are and asks for rolls. There is typically very little player agency here, just DM asking for rolls. (not super interesting)"

is a GM problem and not an Organized Play or scenario problem.

Now my experience is unlikely to be universal but I've found the average quality of VTT games to be lower than the average quality of live games. So it sounds like a lot of your problems are: VTT GM was low effort and not engaging. So it's possible it's some combination of medium and system that's not for you.

The level spread is an OP issue though. PF2 is built assuming all characters are the same level and the spreads in PFS can be problematic.
Some levels more so than others. (That level 4 fighter with +13 to hit and a striking weapon feels pretty absurd compared to say the level 1 warpriest with +6 to hit, doing a 1d8+3).

A skilled organizer will put some work into trying to minimize that sort of spread, but it's impossible to completely avoid and requires either a larger player pool or particurally cooperative players.

If you're just finding random OP games on discord, you're probably scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of potential quality.

I don't know what your local scene is like, or your potential health/safety issues look like, but I've found PFS as a community is where it works best. Where people work together and help each other make the games as awesome as possible. Not this one-shot almost transactional means that VTT OP frequently feels like.

So my suspicions are it's not OP that's inherently generating the problems you're having.

[Tomppa]

I think a lot of the issues you describe are related to the organized play and how it is structured, but they are also highly dependent on the GM, and the scenario being played.

As there is typically just 4-5 hours to finish the scenario and you kinda need to finish it in one go, GMs tend to be predisposed to hurrying the players along because often players don't necessarily move the adventure forward on their own. Likewise, some scenarios have way too much story (and/or combats) stuffed into them to nicely fit into a 5 hour slot, and I've had games where the GM flat out tells us that this is going to be a long scenario, so they are going to keep up a good pace.
Personally, I've also told one table that the scenario will be way too long, and asked how much time everyone had and was willing to dedicate to it - and then we played it for... I think 9 or 10 hours, and I let the players push the plot onwards and RP with the NPCs.
The thing here is though, that the skills of the GM make all the difference in whether you feel hurried and whisked along, or whether you feel like you're actively participating in the scenario.

The lack of roleplay stems kinda from the same issue, but I think this is specifically an issue in online games where the typical 'banter' between characters gets cut out because you can't really throw comments or talk on top of anyone due to how VTT voice works.

Quote:

3) Then GM just tells us what all the skills we can use are and asks for rolls. There is typically very little player agency here, just DM asking for rolls. (not super interesting)

[4) mission starts...

That just sounds like the normal "after the briefing, here's what you remember about these places/people/topics" roll, given how you structured those points, and yes, there's not much player agency because it kinda literally is just "what does your character know that's relevant to the scenario" roll.

That being said, the same may repeat in the actual adventure when you're faced with a problem or encounter - a GM might just tell you that "you can use athletics to break it or thievery to disable it" but remember that you can always try to justify creative solutions if there's something else your character might want to try. It's then up to the GM's skills on how they might respond to your idea. The scenario typically spells out the obvious solutions, so it's natural to a lot of GMs to just hand them to the players too, but it depends on the GM.

Number 4 can also depend on the adventure, but also on the GM.

5 is definitely not true. There are more than a few scenarios that have a reputation of being potentially deadly, I've killed PC or two, I've heard the adjacent table TPK to an encounter while our table was struggling to keep everyone alive (and I later nearly killed two PCs while running the same adventure) and I bought my first Second Chance (resurrection) boon for my investigator after the last game, as they were miraculously the only one dead in a boss fight that the rest of the team just barely clutched.
That being said, again, it depends on the GM. Some GMs run enemies less effectively, some run them more effectively, and it can vary from game to game based on a variety of factors such as running for new players vs running for veterans, what level the adventure is, and how well the GM prepped the combats.

I have to admit that some adventures I'm also more excited for than others, and if the plot seems particularly interesting/relevant (I always read the short scenario descriptions before deciding on my character) I may postpone playing the scenario until I can secure a spot at the table of a GM I know from before. Playing with random GMs and random players isn't Bad, but you just can't always guarantee that the game is as Good as it could be.

I would say that PFS OP can be for you, if you're looking to play games when it fits you and finding a stable group seems difficult - but it is definitely better when you get to know the people from the community and strangers around the table become more familiar to you.

I'd also be interested in hearing which adventures you played in 2e, to get a better idea on what may have influenced your perception of the game?

[ahayford]

****Possible Spoilers***

#1-06: Lost on the Spirit Road
-> This one was very railroady. I didn't really feel like we made any decisions the entire time. There may have been a spot where we could decide to attack or be diplomatic.

Intro #1: The Second Confirmation
-> This one had some interesting stuff, but also had some dungeon hazards that were kind of boring to deal with.

Intro #2: United in Purpose
-> I get wanting to introduce the factions, but I felt like the mini-mission approach just leads this one to be kind of a incoherent slog. I would change this one to maybe meet all the leaders at once, each one telling a little about themselves and maybe giving a separate mission in the same dungeon or something. Or just have a unique mission for each faction? I don't know.

#5-07: Sewer Dragon Crisis
-> This one was actually kinda cool. Thinking back on it I enjoyed this one.

Intro: Year of Unfettered Exploration
-> Probably the one I enjoyed the least. This one largely made no sense, and I still don't understand what we were doing in the garden, who the people were we met there, or what the riddle had to do with anything. Giving red herrings in a short play slot like this is horrible. I went back and read the module after playing and still don't think it makes a lot of sense. The module itself doesn't clarify what the riddle is suppose to be hinting at.

Starfinder Society Scenario #1-32: Acts of Association
-> This one just doesn't feel very heroic or adventurous. You are escorting a diplomat through absalom station. No real decisions or investigations. Fights were trivial. Possibly suffered from tier spread. (1s and 4s)

Starfinder Society Intro #1: The First Test
-> Hints at a larger mystery but doesn't really explain or answer anything. Heroes go to this planet, do stuff, and then I kept expecting there to be more but there wasn't.

Starfinder Society Scenario #1-24: Siege of Enlightenment
-> Starts with a starship battle, which I was excited for, but it was kind of lame. Rest of the mission didn't make a lot of sense to me.

Starfinder Society Scenario #3-09: Frozen Ambitions: Freeing the Herd - This one was ok, but again, we didn't really make any decisions on our own. There was an investigation that I thought was interesting and we did have a little bit of freedom entering the lab. This one might have promise.

Largely it feels like all the dungeons are mostly straight shots or straight shots with dead ends. There are a lot of spots where I feel like the GMs, instead of asking "What do you do?" say "You can roll Diplomacy, Acrobatics for some reason, or Intimidation". I'm trying to balance my expectations with the limited time slot.

Maybe someone could suggest a module I should try and get a seat at that they enjoyed. When I was initially excited about DMing Society I looked at The Mosquito Witch and thought it read like a more open ended adventure that seemed like it would be fun to play.

[Kate Baker]

One thing that might help your experience is to avoid repeatables unless the GM is limiting sign-ups (at least at first) to players who haven’t played that scenario yet. It sounds like you generally had more fun in the non-repeatable scenarios that you played. I know I haven’t enjoyed the experience very much if I’m the only person playing a repeatable for the first time while the other players have played it a bunch of times already.

Did you take note of who GMed the games that you enjoyed the most? Different GMs have different styles, and as you find GMs who you enjoy playing with, you may have better luck with signing up for games that you’ll like.

I think in particular, different GMs have different comfort levels with how to handle modifying the scenario for outside-the-box thinking from the players.

[Pirate Rob]

Kate has a great point. Playing a replayable as the only fresh player tends towards being a not great experiance.

One other specific note:

#1-06: Lost on the Spirit Road (I've talked about this one a few times)

I love GMing this one, but don't particularly enjoy playing it.

As written it's got some really dry here are the checks you need to make in this town to get the reward.

I like to take those and weave them into a story, giving players NPCs to interact with and weaving the checks naturally into the story.

That said it is totally on rails, there's no meaningful branches based on player decision making but sometimes that's okay.

Here is a sample from a pbp I ran of it (Obviously spoilers for 1-06)

[Tomppa]

Yeah, most of those were repeatables. 1-06 Lost on the Spirit Road can be absolutely awesome with a good GM and a good group and it is one of my favorite scenarios, but if the GM/Group is "just running it for experience" (basically, most if not all of the players are playing repeatables not to experience the stories for the 3rd or 4th time but just to get their new characters a level or two), it'll certainly affect the experience.

The GM and how well you mesh with the group, in addition to your expectations, do much of the heavy lifting in making a good scenario Excellent.

You could try some of the 1 hour quests (quests 1-13) or 2-3 hour quests (quests 14-16). My personal experience has been that since they are shorter, they give more room for roleplay and don't feel quite as rushed, but that may be just our local group - I haven't tried them online with random groups.

As for suggestions, here's some of my favorites:

#1-08 Revolution on the riverside is more open-ended and should allow for a bit more freedom on what to do

#1-11 Flames of Rebellion. One of my favorites, and offers challenging combat to the point that I really recommend you stock up on those elixirs of life!

#2-23 An Agent's Obligation has a more serious tone than the scenarios usually do. I loved it, but it may partly be because my character was super invested in society as organization. Level 3-6.

#3-08 Foundation's Price and the follow up #3-12 Fury's Toll were very enjoyable, and I Think they were slightly less railroady?

(#1-13 Devil at the Crossroads and #1-18 Lodge of the Living god were absolytely excellent scenarios, but both of them require 6 or even 8 hours to really shine. I would definitely recommend playing them at some point, but I definitely can not recommend them with a random new group and at an 4-5 hour slot. Lodge of the Living God also had some weird issues regarding ambigious minigame system and the associated rewards, not sure if the PDF got updated for it, but it's another reason to play it with a familiar GM).

[ahayford]

Thank you for the suggestions!

[GM Fair Wage]

For PFS2:

1-06 has been a mixed bag, with about a 50-50 split fun/slog between GM and player issues (resolved but still jarring during play).

I have only played this one on-line, but have prepped it to run in-person and on-line (but the tables didn't 'fire' so I haven't had a chance to run it yet)

Some GMs will take the barebones, run it like so, and then either expect players to roleplay to fill the gaps or are in 'speedrun' mode. It is also heavily dependent on the level mix of the party, as L1 characters will struggle and L4 characters tend to blow things up (again, based on play experience).

For SFS:

1-32 is one of my absolute favorite scenarios, both as a player and a GM, online or in-person.

The GM is empowered in that one to create a diplomat (if desired) and it is often fun to see what the players assume is a 'boring milk run' turn into a mad chaotic mess as their 'escort mission' turns out to be CR INAPPROPRIATE FOR ENCOUNTER and the party is battling to calm their mission down to prevent an outright slaughter.

Intro: The First Test can be a bit 'clunky' online, and run fast with a well-prepared GM. If the suggested route is taken, it can be done rather swiftly even with starting characters (kind of the point -- it's DESIGNED to have 'slack space' so the GM can walk new players through different aspects of play, while still having enough flexibility to tell a story.

That being said, one should feel able to mention to the GM concerns about pacing (in private message/via note/during break) during play.

Odds are it is either a 'blind spot' the GM has developed OR other RL factors occuring on the other side that are causing distractions. It often gets forgotten when folks are online that the other location may have pet/family/work aggro in addition to running the game.

That gets missed because it's 'invisible' to the other players, whereas in-person it'd be a person coming up to the table/table being too loud for GM to communicate/crushed time slots/etc.

Given that one has played a few, the suggestion would be to keep at it.

Admittedly, due to health reasons I've cut back significantly or I'd offer to run something of the above for you to give a contrast, hopefully.

[Alison-Cybe]

Just a question for the OP; have you tried any other org play scenarios since your post, or with another GM? I am curious to see your feelings and if they've changed at all.