SFS Journal Entries

Coming across two annoyances in entering Journals for organized play.

The first is that sorting by Real Date is a bad system for it. If pregen credits are used, then the chronicle is 'held' until the character matches the level of the pregen. This results in 'real date' games getting inserted further down the list from when they were played.

Secondly, the real date sorting doesn't work properly. Well it does, but it requires a leading zero before the month for February thru September. Otherwise they get places after December. Which is just annoying.

Ah, I got to January and it got worse. It moves it back up to the top without looking at the year.

Please report this as a bug. https://herolab.online/bug-report

Will do. Was hesitant to do so as it's technically working correctly, just that correctly was (imo) a bad system.

I think we'd also welcome any general ideas on how to sort journal entries. The dates are tricky because they're plain text rather than a regulated field (sorting ad hoc real-world dates is straightforward enough, but not so much Golarion ones), but we also don't want to only put them in the order they're added instead.

For SFS, on our chronicle sheets, we put a number on them, as to the order they are done for that character.. So, each chronicle sheet is always going to have character, Society number-character number, then chronicle sheet #.. So, adding a Journal number field, and we could sort on that...

Another issue is that only 1 faction is allowed when entering. Starfinder Society Scenarios make it possible to get Reputation with up to 4 factions on a single chronicle (01-05 100% success played online with a Dataphiles boon. That will give you Acquisitives, Second seekers, Dataphiles via boon, and either Exoguardians or Wayfinders by slotting their champion boon.)

I will have to reread documentation. Thought you could only slot one champion boot. Thus only one faction rep.

You only get one for your champion boon, but sometimes the scenario itself gives bonuses. In this case though, that's not a problem. Once you access the journal entry, input the first faction and hit add. Then write the info for the second faction and hit add again. Both factions will be shown in the journal entry.

thistledown said:

You only get one for your champion boon, but sometimes the scenario itself gives bonuses. In this case though, that's not a problem. Once you access the journal entry, input the first faction and hit add. Then write the info for the second faction and hit add again. Both factions will be shown in the journal entry.

Click to expand...

It's a bug if it's allowing you to do this. If this is happening, that means that if the journal is deleted, not all the reputation added through that journal is removed - only the reputation attached to the currently selected extra faction would be removed.

Add additional journal entries if you need to add reputation to more than one faction.

At the time the reputation journals were coded, 1-05 hadn't been published, so there were no examples of ways to get more than one faction's worth of reputation per chronicle (other than the special boons, which are rare enough that they're not worth special handling, and can be handled through extra journal entries).

Mathias said:

At the time the reputation journals were coded, 1-05 hadn't been published, so there were no examples of ways to get more than one faction's worth of reputation per chronicle (other than the special boons, which are rare enough that they're not worth special handling, and can be handled through extra journal entries).

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Before 1-05 came out in October, 1-04 had the Faction tag (Exo-Guardians) in September, and 1-03 had the Faction tag (Wayfinders). The Faction tag and how it works is laid out in the SFS Guide.

SFS RPG GUIDE said:

Faction: Scenarios with this tag list one or more associated factions. For example, “Faction (Acquisitives)” would indicate a scenario that is of some importance to the Acquisitives faction. Similarly, a scenario with the “Faction (Exo-Guardians, Wayfinders)” tag would indicate a scenario that would be of interest to characters championing the Exo-Guardians or Wayfinders faction. This tag generally corresponds to scenarios with additional Reputation awards for the association factions. More information on factions, Fame, and Reputation is provided in Appendix 2: Factions.

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Now, I'm not trying to add fuel for an unnecessary discussion, I know that you were 110% focused on having the CRB ready for consumption and not the SFS splat books for us Society feeders =)

But what I would like to argue against, is to have to add different Journal Entries for the same adventure (again), you already fixed the XP issue that we had on PFS where we needed to make 3 journal entries for a module simply by adding a numerical entry instead of the checkbox. That was a step in the right direction, so let's find a way to not take a step back =)

Has this ever been fixed? Every time I try to add reputation for different factions in the same entry--or even reputation for a faction that is slotted but isn't my initial faction--it keeps adding it for the original faction.

What is the name of the field you are entering your reputation award in? There are two fields on the journals for reputation. The first is "Fame and reputation awarded" - this is for the 1 or 2 reputation gained for successfully completing a scenario, and will always be assigned to the faction who's champion boon is slotted. The second is "reputation awarded". That is for scenario bonus reputations, and will be assigned to the faction chosen in "faction for reputation awarded".

In the Character/Profile tab, you should make sure to add any other faction you want to assign an award to, so that you can choose that faction on a journal entry as the faction to receive the additional bonus. You may just want to add all of the other factions to a character once you have chosen your first one, if this is a character you intend to play in a variety of scenarios that will grant a variety of bonus reputation awards.

Also on Character/Profile, you can edit your boons to control which Champion boon is currently slotted, which will change the faction that the main award is granted to.

For the scenarios that have bonuses for more than one faction, for now you will need to add a second journal entry that only uses the "faction for reputation awarded" and "reputation awarded" fields to add that extra award. Adding a second pair of these options is a planned improvement.

We might need Up to (maybe 5...)
Let us use an example:
You slot "Second Seekers (Jadnura)" as Your Faction boon. You are playing in a different Megaregion and you brought a friend to play Starfinder for the first time.
You play 1-23 Return To Sender and get all the Reputation:
That lives you with:
2 Reputation for "Second Seekers (Jadnura)" (Slotted Faction)
1 Reputation for "Acquisitives" (Extra Scenario reputation)
1 Reputation for "Dataphiles" (Extra Scenario reputation)
1 Reputation for "Wayfinders" (You are playing in a different MegaRegion and got the "Worldwide Expert" boon)
1 Reputation for "Second Seekers (Luwazi Elsebo)" (You bought a friend to their first game, so you get the "Society Shepherd" boon)

I would much rather create special journal entries whenever one of my special boons that grants extra reputation triggers, so that the journal names can reflect that special circumstance and say why I've gotten that bonus reputation. The extra space required to show 2 more drop-downs and 2 more fields is not worth the confusion it will create, so unless there's a scenario that has three different bonus reputations, I think we currently only need to show 2 drop-downs/fields.


Also, please re-read my post #13. Your example is calling for a drop-down for the slotted faction, but that's handled with the normal "reputation and fame award" field on the journal, not by selecting the slotted faction in a drop-down on the journal.

I can totally understand your point about creating separate journal entries for special boons that grant reputation ("Worldwide Expert", "Society Shepherd", etc).

Then we get to the current design/layout of the UI of the journal. I feel like some of the functionality of the journal has changed, and that it now works different than it did before (but I lack documentation and proof of that), so let us get down to the current design paradigm:


The problem is that the way that it is laid out, it is "obvious" (but wrong) that you would select a Faction in the "Faction for reputation awarded" dropdown, and the "Fame and Reputation Awarded" field would be awarded for the selected faction. In the above example, my character has only the Exoguardians faction chosen, but this is communicated nowhere in the Journal UI.

There have definitely been improvements here, because Reputation used to show up correctly in an individual journal entry if you did not have the faction on a character, but would not work properly for the character, but now it appears to work properly after you add the faction, so that is good.

Perhaps we could add a Field that showed the currently represented faction in this window, and move the "Faction for reputation awarded" dropdown down to just before the "Reputation Awarded" field. Also, it would be nice if the [Add Wealth or XP] button would clear the contents of the fields of the window after it was clicked. (Reported x2)

TheMaskedFerret is correct.
A journal entry for a single Chronicle really needs to be able to capture and display the reputation for various factions that has been gained. And while it can certainly reasonably require that a dropdown be used multiple times, it should just add reputation for the indicated faction. Linking it to the addition of fame, and to whichever faction is slotted, just adds unnecessary complication at this step.
Please just simplify it.

The new drop-downs for assigning bonus reputation to facts on the journal entries is great, but the bonus reputation awarded is not reflected when I click through on the Profile page to the faction that received it. At least, that's how I am seeing it on my character who should have bonus reputation for both Second Seekers (LE) and Acquisitives.