Using pre-gens as "ghost players" to get to table minimum?


Pathfinder Society

Sovereign Court

So last night we ended up having nine people show up to play Pathfinder Society at the local game store. Nine is a lousy number, because technically you can't set up two tables. You need two GMs, and then you have a table of four players and three players.

The end result was that we had to turn away two players, which is awful if you want the PFS to grow. "Sorry you came out for nothing, hopefully in two weeks you'll be able to get in on the next game!" isn't what I want to say to folks.

Now I wanted to take a pre-gen and just plop it into one of the tables to get it to four. In the latest PFS guide there is the option for event organizers to use a pre-gen to get it up to table minimum, with the caveat that the person running the pre-gen should stay quiet and not spoil anything if they had already played the scenario. I can easily see this extending to having a pre-gen just being an NPC that is there to help bolster the party enough to get them over the edge. No big deal.

Unfortunately the long shadow of bureaucratic RPGA culture hung over the group and too many people fell into the "this does not compute!" zone of rule thinking and so two people went home.

Can we get some clarification on this for the future? Right now technically how it sorts out with people showing up is:

Four - no
Five - yes
Six - yes
Seven - yes
Eight - no (send someone home)
Nine - no (send two people home)
Ten - yes (two tables)

I think we can keep growing our local PFS group. Now that the core books are out people are finally paying attention to the living system again and so over time we've seen more people showing up, but we need enough flexibility to make things work. I have no problem pounding a square peg into a round hole so that fun can occur, but the gaming hobby has a lot of people that are much more comfortable in legalism and so judgments need to be made from powers on high.

Being able to use pre-gens as NPCs will also help in the future as we need two tables because of huge differences between tiers. If eight people show up, but half are 5+ level and the other are just starting out with first level characters then it would be infinitely easier to just have two tables with three players plus a pre-gen npc, rather than negotiating which characters to use, or creating new characters, etc.


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Never, ever, ever, ever send people away. Forget everything you ever learned from other org play environments--our number 1 goal with Pathfinder Society is to get people playing as often as possible.

For last night's game, I would've been okay with the GM running a silent pre-gen just to get that table going. This should NEVER be the norm (always strive for 4 + the GM minimum) but if the choice is between the GM running a silent NPC to make the table happen or sending two players home, I would ALWAYS side with making the table happen.

Sovereign Court

Thanks! That helps!

I passed that along to our local group and one person wrote:

"Another example of Paizo doing it right. I have been very happy with Pathfinder and Pathfinder Society."

Sovereign Court

One question that was raised by another player in the group is how does using pre-gens work in reporting? If you only have three players in a game does the reporting system insist on needing four player numbers, or will it accept less than four player numbers?


Nope. In fact, for Gen Con, there were entire tables of pre-gens sometimes and I reported the tables as having 0 players plus the GM just so the GM could have the record of running that table.

The short answer: you can report the table at any size.

Liberty's Edge

I am now that much more looking forward to OwlCon in February after reading this thread.

:)

4/5 5/55/5

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

This is great. I'm introducing some friends to PFS later this week but we can't get the numbers for a minimum table size. Good to know that we can include some silent pre-gens to make it work. Unless I've missed it somewhere, the Guide really needs updating to talk about how to deal with too few players. It only seems to talk about how to deal with too many.


I'll include language doing just that in 2.2.

Dark Archive

Joshua J. Frost wrote:
Never, ever, ever, ever send people away. Forget everything you ever learned from other org play environments--our number 1 goal with Pathfinder Society is to get people playing as often as possible.

+1

1/5 *

Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

In this same vein, can the GM run two Pregens for a table when only two players show up?


Holy necroposting, a 6 year old thread.

I don't believe so, minimum of three with one NPC filler.

-j

1/5 *

Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

It's what came up in the search I did. Better than starting a new thread.

Shadow Lodge 3/5

Back in the day there was a section in the PFS guide called "Play play play" which was basically saying do anything you can to get a table running, but it was always a bit fuzzier on just far how you could go to do that.

The current version of the guide just says minimum 3 players with 1 pregen, so I don't think that still applies.

1/5 5/5

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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Avatar-1 wrote:

Back in the day there was a section in the PFS guide called "Play play play" which was basically saying do anything you can to get a table running, but it was always a bit fuzzier on just far how you could go to do that.

The current version of the guide just says minimum 3 players with 1 pregen, so I don't think that still applies.

The process works really well. We had a disruptive player at a recent convention who was also the ride for someone else, and when the GM asked a very basic question of mechanics of the player, said player erupted and took the someone else with them, apparently expecting the table to not go off in the absence of enough players.

That took our table down from 5 to 3, so we picked up Intern Seoni, who was amazingly handy and covered our gaps exceptionally well.

We've put a note to her file that she's 'capable of showing initiative and is fully comprehensive of the workplace paradigm in a proactive and synergistic fashion'. Not all situations call for her particular skillset, but our table recommends her wholeheartedly!

4/5 5/55/55/5 *** Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis

Minimum of three players. You can have a pre-gen that the GM runs to bring it up to four characters.

Grand Lodge 4/5

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Avatar-1 wrote:

Back in the day there was a section in the PFS guide called "Play play play" which was basically saying do anything you can to get a table running, but it was always a bit fuzzier on just far how you could go to do that.

The current version of the guide just says minimum 3 players with 1 pregen, so I don't think that still applies.

Does that phrase still do a Summon Dragnmoon?

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Joshua J. Frost wrote:

Never, ever, ever, ever send people away. Forget everything you ever learned from other org play environments--our number 1 goal with Pathfinder Society is to get people playing as often as possible.

For last night's game, I would've been okay with the GM running a silent pre-gen just to get that table going. This should NEVER be the norm (always strive for 4 + the GM minimum) but if the choice is between the GM running a silent NPC to make the table happen or sending two players home, I would ALWAYS side with making the table happen.

In that scenario, which I had at Mepacon last weekend, I generally have one of the players run the pregen along with his regular character. (The players usually ask for a healbot Kyra 9 times out of 10 in such situations.)

Grand Lodge 5/5

kinevon wrote:
Avatar-1 wrote:

Back in the day there was a section in the PFS guide called "Play play play" which was basically saying do anything you can to get a table running, but it was always a bit fuzzier on just far how you could go to do that.

The current version of the guide just says minimum 3 players with 1 pregen, so I don't think that still applies.

Does that phrase still do a Summon Dragnmoon?

Yes. :P

And no, PPP is no longer a thing in PFS.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
BretI wrote:
Minimum of three players. You can have a pre-gen that the GM runs to bring it up to four characters.

Or one of the players can run the character which is usually a better idea.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

A while back we actually ditched Kyra-bot in favour of a Lem-mascot. During the mission briefing we realized that (actually unusually in our meta) nobody had significant face skills or socio-political knowledges. So we brought in Lem, because we were playing The Stranger Within, and the thought of not getting to touch half the plot didn't appeal to him.

He mainly got told to wait outside if fights happened.

Dark Archive 3/5 **

kinevon wrote:
Avatar-1 wrote:

Back in the day there was a section in the PFS guide called "Play play play" which was basically saying do anything you can to get a table running, but it was always a bit fuzzier on just far how you could go to do that.

The current version of the guide just says minimum 3 players with 1 pregen, so I don't think that still applies.

Does that phrase still do a Summon Dragnmoon?

You have to say it three times in a row while lighting a candle made from the remains of retired Season 0 scenarios.

Lantern Lodge 5/5

Ascalaphus wrote:


He mainly got told to wait outside if fights happened.

That's sad, because level 7 Lem is kind of awesome.

Best level 7 pregen.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Jayson MF Kip wrote:
Ascalaphus wrote:


He mainly got told to wait outside if fights happened.

That's sad, because level 7 Lem is kind of awesome.

Best level 7 pregen.

Even level 1 Lem can be a big boost in fights. Inspire Courage, even only a few rounds, can be a big help.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Lem rocked the house in The Technic Siege. He managed to avoid us the boss fight.

Really, Lem's only problem is being originally built for Curse of the Crimson Throne. Or, rather, having to suffer being a bard in 3.5 D&D.

Liberty's Edge 4/5 5/55/5 **

Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

Dragnmoon is too tired to be summoned, and they blocked Paizo at work.

The Exchange 5/5 RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

I almost always have the 3 players at the table direct the NPC's actions, while retaining a veto in case the players understanding of the NPC diverge from mine.

No, Valeros will not sacrifice himself to the were-rats. // No, Seelah will not try to seduce the guard. // No, Kyra will not loan you her spiffy phylactery.

Having said that, acording to the rules for the +1 NPC, the character must be run by the GM. I've been called out a couple of times by players who insist that I be the one to run the NPC. I do so to the best of my ability, but I forget about the NPC a lot.

Silver Crusade 5/5

When I have to run a GM PC I let the players decide who they would like to bring along, and I tell the players to let Kyra/Lem/Seoni/Seelah/whoever know if the PC's need something specific, otherwise they will do what I think they would to help out the party. Sometimes that involves Kyra buffing up and helping keep the front line PC's from crumpling, and healing when necessary. If the PC's ask for something specific "Hey X, could you do Y?" I'll pretty much always have the GM PC do it, provided it's not needlessly reckless or something against that character's nature.

Grand Lodge

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Chris Mortika wrote:

I almost always have the 3 players at the table direct the NPC's actions, while retaining a veto in case the players understanding of the NPC diverge from mine.

No, Valeros will not sacrifice himself to the were-rats. // No, Seelah will not try to seduce the guard. // No, Kyra will not loan you her spiffy phylactery.

Having said that, acording to the rules for the +1 NPC, the character must be run by the GM. I've been called out a couple of times by players who insist that I be the one to run the NPC. I do so to the best of my ability, but I forget about the NPC a lot.

Having played at tables both where the +1 NPC is handled exclusively by the GM and one where one of the players handles the NPC tactics (typically one that already has a simple-to-run PC), having the player goes down a lot better. The GM can focus on running the enemies and a player who might otherwise be active for all of ten seconds at a time in a fight has another chance to shine, and tactical mistakes made by the +1 is the result of player choice, rather than the GMs, which feels like letting the GM get a chance to sabotage the team, even if it was just an honest mistake on their part.

Plus, it had the rather amusing conclusion of Kyra and Seoni sharing a bunk on a boat.

"Seoni likes lighting things on fire, Kyra worships a goddess of the sun, they'd totally be into each other." The player's smile was so precious.


Joshua J. Frost wrote:

Nope. In fact, for Gen Con, there were entire tables of pre-gens sometimes and I reported the tables as having 0 players plus the GM just so the GM could have the record of running that table.

The short answer: you can report the table at any size.

I had this question just recently. A friend GM sent me this:

Legal Table Size.

Grand Archive 4/5 5/55/5 *

Right so, minimum level of 7 and up, the minimum table size (GM not included) is 3.

Minimum table size (GM not included) of minimum level 5 and below is probably 1. Though, I would avoid that as much as possible. Personally, I'd minimum 2 at least.

If there are no players at the table, it is not a table.

5/55/55/55/5 ***** Venture-Captain, Washington—Seattle

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Leomund "Leo" Velinznrarikovich wrote:
Minimum table size (GM not included) of minimum level 5 and below is probably 1. Though, I would avoid that as much as possible. Personally, I'd minimum 2 at least.

1 player + GM is not legal.

PFS2 Guide wrote:
Adventures with a Minimum level of 5 or lower. For these adventures, the GM can run a table of two or three players, and can add additional appropriately leveled pregenerated iconic characters in order to meet the minimum table size of four PCs.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

This original thread is from 2009. It was last active in 2015.

Also, it's quite likely (but I'm not digging out the history books) that Joshua Frost was campaign director at the time and he'd be the one making the rules. So correcting him now with PFS2 rules...

Grand Lodge 4/5 ** Venture-Agent, Colorado—Denver

baconpalacio wrote:
Joshua J. Frost wrote:

Nope. In fact, for Gen Con, there were entire tables of pre-gens sometimes and I reported the tables as having 0 players plus the GM just so the GM could have the record of running that table.

The short answer: you can report the table at any size.

I had this question just recently. A friend GM sent me this:

Legal Table Size.

Just wanna let you know that Joshua's post is from 2009.

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