Pathfinder 2E Looks like I will be running a PF2e game in a few weeks...suggestions?

[Thomas Shey]

The way that form of “skilled play” gets held up as an ideal is one of the things I really dislike about OSR-style play. I don’t think that the game should be about cleverly avoiding rolling skills or scores just because they’re terrible. It’s an overreaction to a particular style of adjudicating skills that people associate with 3e+ D&D, and thus must be “bad”. I’m more of the fan of the Alexandrian’s approach: player skill unlocks character skill. You have to search the right place to get to make a skill check, but you don’t have to be exceptionally precise about it. If you are, then I see no reason not to give the player the thing they found, but if not, they still get to make a roll.

Honestly, the examples I've seen seem to often resent there being anything but coarse physical skills at all. The fact that OD&D and early AD&D effectively let you pull off anything you could sell your GM on doesn't seem a great virtue to me, though I think your other post addresses a failure of the application of skill systems that may have reinforced the attitude (i.e. some applications of a lot of skills should be such that they're pretty easy for anyone to do. If you still resent having to roll for it, well, that's part of the gig of a big linear die roll system.)

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I can’t remember. Did we ever discuss what you were doing for wilderness exploration? Is that even a thing in a West Marches game? I posted a procedure over in the WWN thread and would love to get more feedback on it. Our next session is the 25th, so I’m antsy about it because we won’t be able to test it until then (assuming we get back to wilderness exploration).

Wilderness exploration exists in the Ben Robbins west marches as described on Ars Ludis, which was a fascinating read when I realized it talks up the benefits of using 3e specifically and how he handled the built in level scaling.

We're using hexploration from the GMG, but I'm def down to take a look at your procedure. Mine involves a system of 'Leads' (could be a job posting put up in town by a GM, could be something a player noticed or received an item pointing at, or even backstory presented to a GM) which represent a goal for a voyage, players leave town, they hexcrawl to where they're going using the normal hexcrawl rules our custom charts and key, and then get the treasure safely back to any settlement they have a writ to do buisness in-- I have a meeting with my 3 volunteer GMs tomorrow to finalize the procedure and software.

We're breaking up the hex map into regions of the islands to drop the hex mapping required at any given time, with sea charts to other regions of the isles being dropped as treasure or via NPC when we've got a new one prepped up. We didn't want Proficiency without Level, so the current plan is loosely leveled zones and leads.

But yeah, I wouldn't mind taking a look at your procedure and giving feedback at all, I'm eager to see what you're working on.

Edit: in fact screw it, here's the current status of the procedures I'm using in FAQ form for the purposes of our meeting @kenada.