Question on trading boons - may need VO adjudication on this one

[FiddlersGreen]

If 2 players want to trade boons, but are on opposite sides of the globe, will it suffice for them to send each other scans of their boons, or will they need to pay for postage to send each other the physical copies?

[Avatar-1]

Scans are fine.

Just put a note on it along the lines of "Traded to John Doe PFS# 12345 on 28/3/2014" and have John do the same.

[Dragnmoon]

Actually, I think that is incorrect, I don't think scans are fine. But not my call. If they were fine it would make boon trading a lot easier though.

[Alex McGuire]

Maybe get VO's on both sides to scan and send them, then tear them up?

[Sior]

If people were actually trustworthy, I would say it would be allowed. I mean, I have sent a scan of one of my boons from Gen Con to a VC across the world in return for a scanned boon from them. Just follow what Avatar-1 says above and you should be fine.

[pauljathome]

Why would a scan conceivably NOT be acceptable? It is exactly as easy to cheat with a photocopy as a scan (at least in the practical sense of "passing an audit")

[Red-Assassin]

Why not just pay for the shipping?

[Andreas Forster]

Here's another thing: If someone got a boon at an online convention/game day, he doesn't have any physical copy if he didn't print it out (and if he wanted to trade the boon, there would be no reason to print it).

If someone wants to cheat, they will find a way to do so. But then, that's probably the kind of player you don't want to play with, anyway. (cheating with boons might not be the only cheaty behavior of such a player.)

[Robert Smythe]

Its $1.15 to mail a piece of paper from the US to an international location. I just mailed a boon to the Netherlands last week. Personally I see any form of electronic copying (whether scanning or copier) as too close to cheating for me. (Sadly last year's GenCon boons were all badly made copies, so it made it that much easier for people to cheat by copying them).

[Jeff Way]

Sadly enough, too many people will do what they can to get an edge in the game. In the past, I have had players erase chronicles that were written in pencil and reassign them to new characters. So having a scanned or copied boon would prompt me to have to audit all that players characters to make sure there were not multiple copies.

I know there are online conventions and there is only a couple of solutions that I could think of. First is that the GM/organizer mail out a physical copy. Second is if the GM/organizer fills out a physical copy fills out everything on the sheet and then scans it in and sends it. The second method would basically eliminate it from being traded.

I know that for the most part people are honest and would not reproduce sheets, but because of the few many have to be inconvenienced.

So on just trading boons, mail them. Con boons are suppose to be special and somewhat rare. Wet signatures only.

[TetsujinOni]

Jeff Way wrote:

So having a scanned or copied boon would prompt me to have to audit all that players characters to make sure there were not multiple copies.

I know there are online conventions and there is only a couple of solutions that I could think of. First is that the GM/organizer mail out a physical copy. Second is if the GM/organizer fills out a physical copy fills out everything on the sheet and then scans it in and sends it. The second method would basically eliminate it from being traded.

I know that for the most part people are honest and would not reproduce sheets, but because of the few many have to be inconvenienced.

So on just trading boons, mail them. Con boons are suppose to be special and somewhat rare. Wet signatures only.

Jeff, I stack up boon tokens at local cons and cash them in at GenCon or PaizoCon. I frequently wind up with multiples of the same boon (I'll have to grab my stack of unassigned boons to see how many of what I've got in multiples...) My boons from PaizoCon and GenCon 2013, both from turnins and GMing, have multiples which could be applied across multiple characters and were not wet-signed.

Online play has venture officers to support first-class participation in a growing segment of our player base. Adding $.50-$1.50 per boon granted starts to be an onerous cost for the online VO or event organizer very quickly, and is a topic which I'm confident that Joe Caubo and Mike Brock discussed before the first online boons were granted. I know that I discussed the manner in which the GM boons were going to be filled out with Joe, and he started from your position and ended with mine: the boons were sent out as scans with instructions to be honest GMs. Many of us who GM would rather have stacks of boons to hand to interesting players, apparently.

When Mike Brock doesn't wet-sign boons and doesn't tell his VOs and con organizers that's the rule... I'd suggest you not attempt to invent that rule. Your trigger condition and conclusion of appropriate action seems based on looking for wrongdoing, rather than dealing with the wrongdoing that you might come across in a way that can improve the play experience for your region. Since you've suggested a metric which incorrectly assesses the appearance of wrongdoing... I'd further suggest a step back from your position.

Regarding the OP: Scan, destroy, send to not risk destruction of your documents transitioning the vagaries of international post seems like a creative solution. I'm inclined to think that the end result (2 unique boons in the hands of players) would be acceptable.

These aren't holy relics, legal documents, or stock share certificates. Play honestly and be excellent to each other and Explore, Report, Cooperate.

[Exiel.]

I was advised by my local VC that since it was a policy issue, his opinion did not matter and that he would ask the right people for me. Guess I'll just have to wait.

[Avatar-1]

To have to pay postage to send paper boons instead of scanned boons, for the reason that cheaters exist, is absurd.

There's plenty of people who do the right thing. This game is based on the honour system and people who are cheating are going to find a way to cheat. We shouldn't take convenience away from the innocent players because of them.

For online play (and often even for in-person play), we generally don't even sight these boons unless we're doing an audit - we trust the players. This isn't any different.

Less work, more fun guys.

[Feral]

I had a conversation with Mike about this fairly recently. I believe the rule is that boons must be physically traded to be transferable.

[balakus01]

Per Mike Brock, Global Organized Play Coordinator

Michael Brock wrote:

If you have a "standard" boon, then they can be scanned and emailed.

If you have a "special" boon (and they are all signed by me personally), with a raised seal and signed in metallic ink by me, then they have to be mailed via postal service, fedex, whatever. These are very few, including the goblin boons, auction boons, etc...

[Feral]

Sounds good to me.

[Exiel.]

Thanks Derek! My VC informed me of the same earlier today of that as well. Good to have this on the boards as an official statement. =)