Paizo will be doing server maintenance this afternoon, March 28th, starting at 4pm PST. The Paizo website will experience outages during this time. The maintenance window is expected to last a few hours. Regular service is expected to resume following the maintenance.


Starfinder Society Chronicle, Updates from the Organized Play Team

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Mega-Regions

Back in mid-October, Starfinder Society Developer Thurston Hillman gave a sneak peak into Starfinder Alien Archive and the organized play team's plans to introduce more alien species as player character options. We put our heads together and developed the Mega-Region plan!

Over the past weeks, we worked on implementing our idea, writing boons, developing regions, and identifying upcoming conventions running Starfinder Society. The only thing left is to announce the regions to our community. Please note, the Mega-Region is only a unit of accounting. It doesn't change anything about how our organized play volunteers are structured or the Regional Support programs. The first iteration of this plan will start with conventions this weekend. Sometime in March or April, we will rotate the boons around, so that each region has new rewards for their GMs. Future rotations will occur on roughly a 3-month timeframe, so that each region will get all the boons over the course of a year.

Mega-Regions Divisions

  • Mega-Region 1—Africa-East Eurasia (AEE) and Asia-Pacific
  • 
Mega-Region 2—Central Europe, Northwest, and Southeast
  • Mega-Region 3—Western Europe Middle East (WEME), Northeast, and Southwest
  • Mega-Region4—Midwest and Great Lakes

But a list of regions is bland, without the races to accompany them. So without further ado, here's the news you need to start planning trips around the globe:

Mega-Region Starting Boons

  • Mega-Region 1: Kalo & Verthani
  • Mega-Region 2: Draelik & Witchwyrd
  • Mega-Region 3: Maraquoi & Nuar
  • Mega-Region 4: Formian & Ikeshti

Illustrations by David Franco Campos, Connor Sheehan, Matthias Kinnigkeit, and Pixoloid Studios

When deciding how to handle the regions, we were left with our newest region, Online, as a bit of an oddity, as it encompasses all the physical regions. After putting their heads together, Thurston and John came up with a solution. Instead of being part of the rotation, they would get their own racial boons from a source other than the Alien Archive. In Thurston's words, "The online region gets something unique, while the value of physical regional boons won't be seem devalued by online availability. We think this is a good way to include the new online region in our program, and hope to review it in the future to see what other unique boons might be appropriate for distribution through our online region."

So Online will be Mega Region 5 and GMing a game online will open access to the Ferran & Woioko races, both of which are available Starfinder Adventure Path #2: Temple of the Twelve. Like the races in the Alien Archive, a player needs to own the resource and have the boon to play the race.

Starfinder Season Launch

When the team looked at the summer convention schedule and what spinning up new seasons on two organized play programs meant to our timelines (and sanity), we decided a split release would work better. So we went looking for an event that our players could get to, that had the size and scope of a premier event, and that would welcome the profile of a new season launch. Our choice is Origins Game Faire, June 13-17 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio. In past, the Ohio Pathfinder Society planned games at Origins. The same leadership team of Mike McNerney and associates will work with myself to bring you a quality, Paizo-sponsored event. Watch this space in early 2018 for the blog calling for GM volunteers.

Starfinder Society Scenarios

Since we rolled the Starfinder Society out at Gen Con 50, players clamored for more content. We've evaluated a number of factors in-house, including available organized play resources and current project commitments (more on this in a future blog). It brings us great pleasure to give our players a treat. To once more quote Starfinder Society Developer Thurston Hillman:

"Two is a pretty cool number. I hear a lot of people talking about two in recent months. Lots of questions and comments about the word two. What is two? What does two mean to you? The dictionary defines two as "equivalent to the sum of one and one." Did you know that two is the smallest and first prime number? Two is also the only even prime number. Did you know that a honeybee must tap TWO million flowers to make one pound of honey!

There's just so many interesting and fun facts about the number two..."

As you may have guessed by Thurston's fixation on the number two, we are pleased to announce an increase to two Starfinder Scenarios a month, starting in March 2018.

Scenario News

We are deep in plans for 2018, so I asked John and Thurston if we could give a few snippets of information about upcoming scenarios. In Thurston's words, "April sees the release of a new Tier 1-4 repeatable scenario. We've received great reviews on Starfinder Society #1-01: the Commencement, and knew we wanted to get another repeatable scenario out. As an added bonus, this scenario is also slated to include starship combat, making it a suitable teaching tool for players just learning Starfinder.

June brings us the release of a new Quest Pack. This should help the summer conventions out by providing further introductory material for bringing in new Starfinder players.

Our first Tier 5-8 scenario debuts in June. This scenario is the capstone for our ongoing Scoured Stars storyline, which began in Starfinder Society #1-05: The First Mandate, and continues until Origins.

June (a popular month) also sees Starfinder Society debut its first interactive special, starting at Origins, with later appearances at Gen Con and conventions across the world. While this event is still being planned out, we are ready to announce that it will be a Tier 1-8 event!

While June is popular, we also want people to know that PaizoCon 2018 is getting closer. This year not only debuts Starfinder Society events at the convention, but also debuts a very special product. Four words: Strawberry Machine Cake Scenario.

*mic drop*

On that note, and given I can't top Strawberry Machine Cake, I'm signing off for this week. With so much Starfinder Society goodness in this blog, we are going to take a break next week, and return on December 20th. Next week's blog will feature some upcoming Pathfinder Society tidbits, since we can't give the Starfinder Society all the shiny new toys!

Until next time—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager

More Paizo Blog.
Tags: Alien Archive Community Connor Sheehan Conventions David Franco Campos Matthias Kinnigkeit Organized Play Pixoloid Studios Starfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Starfinder Society Starfinder Society Scenarios
1 to 50 of 62 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>
Wayfinders 4/5

*ahem* Spoilers.

Grand Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Captain, Minnesota

5 people marked this as a favorite.

Two scenarios a month! Yay! I also like that online is its own region as far as boons are concerned.

Excellent.

Hmm

The Exchange

As someone who regularly attends Origins and cannot afford the time or money for GenCon, I'm really happy Starfinder will premier it's new season at Origins! I now have a fair idea of what I will be doing with my time at Origins 2018!

Grand Lodge 4/5 5/55/5 ***

6 people marked this as a favorite.

You had me at Strawberry Machine Cake ❤️

4/5 5/5

I like!

Second Seekers (Luwazi Elsebo) 4/5 5/5

6 people marked this as a favorite.

Strawberry Machine Cake? They used to be good... I guess...

I’m into Thunder Belly Behemoth now. Have you heard their Inferno Knife release? It’ll scour your stars!

3/5 5/55/55/5 *** Venture-Lieutenant, Ohio—Dayton

Holy [expletive deleted, expletive deleted]. This is amazing news.

4/5 *

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber

I am mega-regionally excited.

Scarab Sages 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Captain, Isles—Online

woot :)

Sovereign Court 3/5 5/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Kelvin Niner wrote:

Strawberry Machine Cake? They used to be good... I guess...

I’m into Thunder Belly Behemoth now. Have you heard their Inferno Knife release? It’ll scour your stars!

Hah! My group came up with those as a perfect band name and their first release, as well!

Scarab Sages 5/5 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Netherlands

1 person marked this as a favorite.

*impressed*

Scarab Sages 5/5 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Washington—Spokane

1 person marked this as a favorite.

So...much...awesomeness!!

Paizo Employee 5/5 Starfinder Society Developer

7 people marked this as a favorite.

So... it looks like people seem to be OK with our latest announcements? :)

Wayfinders *

Thurston Hillman wrote:
So... it looks like people seem to be OK with our latest announcements? :)

Still in shock at the awesomeness!!!

The Exchange 1/5 5/55/55/55/5

Starfinder Charter Superscriber

This is awesome, time to go create my -722 to -731 characters, I'm a bit surprised, however, that draelik made the cut of allowable races due to their background (sort of ditto Witchwyrd). This means that there are currently boons out there (or at the very least announced) for every race that has stats in a released starfinder product except Dragonkin, Elebrian, Goblin, Reptoid, Shobhad, and Urog and one of those hasn't even been officially released yet.

The Exchange 2/5

It's a little unclear from the description, but it looks like you've 'mottled' the regions, rather than making them big geographical blocks - giving people an achievable incentive to head out to a CON they might not have otherwise gone to. Nice work!

Rather than using terms like 'Southeast 
Mega-Region' (based on RVC locations?), would it be simpler to use timezones? Most people know what timezone they are in without checking the guide to organised play.

Not criticising, just far enough into 'test the Christmas beers' to get all brainstormy. Loving SFS so far.

Edit: To clarify my lack of clarity - when you say 'Central Europe, Northwest, and Southeast 
Mega-Region'. Is that 'Central Europe, and the Northwest and Southeast of America'?

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

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Kelvin Niner wrote:

Strawberry Machine Cake? They used to be good... I guess...

I’m into Thunder Belly Behemoth now. Have you heard their Inferno Knife release? It’ll scour your stars!

My group listens to Mango Nano Brownie.

Sovereign Court 4/5 * Organized Play Manager

2 people marked this as a favorite.
brock, no the other one... wrote:

It's a little unclear from the description, but it looks like you've 'mottled' the regions, rather than making them big geographical blocks - giving people an achievable incentive to head out to a CON they might not have otherwise gone to. Nice work!

Rather than using terms like 'Southeast 
Mega-Region' (based on RVC locations?), would it be simpler to use timezones? Most people know what timezone they are in without checking the guide to organised play.

Not criticising, just far enough into 'test the Christmas beers' to get all brainstormy. Loving SFS so far.

Edit: To clarify my lack of clarity - when you say 'Central Europe, Northwest, and Southeast 
Mega-Region'. Is that 'Central Europe, and the Northwest and Southeast of America'?

Brainstorming is great! Brainstorming on beer even better.

Each of the regions is listed on the Coordinators' Page. All of the directional regions encompass a part of North America (cannot forget Canada here). The five non-directional (Asia-Pacific, Africa-East Eurasia, West Eurasia-Middle East, Central Europe, Online) encompass too many time zones to list. I suggest if people want to find their closest mega-region, they check out the coordinators' page linked above and then look for adjacent states/countries.

Grand Lodge 4/5 5/55/5 ***

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Thunder Belly Behemoth and Mango Nano Brownie are nice. Don't get me wrong, they have their place, but Strawberry Machine Cake is The Beatles of the Pact worlds. :-D

Grand Lodge 2/5 5/55/55/5

There is nothing in this post that does not make me extremely excited for the next several months....

1/5 5/5

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Okay, I'm suffering from FOAO*.

It's almost like every single holiday rolled up into one happy package and it's talking to me!

*:
Fear Of Awesome Options

EDIT: No, it's not counting backwards in Federation Standard.

Second Seekers (Luwazi Elsebo) 4/5 5/5

James Krolak wrote:
My group came up with those as a perfect band name and their first release, as well!

I think I might be in that group.

Second Seekers (Luwazi Elsebo) 4/5 5/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Bob Jonquet wrote:
Strawberry Machine Cake is The Beatles of the Pact worlds. :-D

Thunder Belly Behemoth are the Stones.

Shadow Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ****

Amazing news and thumbs' up all around from my area!

Grand Lodge 4/5

Ramping up impressively, looking forward to see where Season 1's stories lead.

Grand Lodge

So I missed how these regional boons are gotten?

The offline regions are only given out with large conventions right?
How is the online region then handled?

The Exchange 1/5 5/55/55/55/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Starfinder Charter Superscriber

Was Thursty channeling his inner poppy with this:

""Two is a pretty cool number. I hear a lot of people talking about two in recent months. Lots of questions and comments about the word two. What is two? What does two mean to you? The dictionary defines two as "equivalent to the sum of one and one." Did you know that two is the smallest and first prime number? Two is also the only even prime number. Did you know that a honeybee must tap TWO million flowers to make one pound of honey!

There's just so many interesting and fun facts about the number two...""

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n06FqMYa3eI

Liberty's Edge 3/5 5/5 **** Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha

Looking forward to all the fun.

1/5 5/5

Varun Creed wrote:
So I missed how these regional boons are gotten?

Seconding this question. Are these "You GM'd at a convention" boons, or "You GM'd at a Regional Store a lot of times" boons?

Sovereign Court 4/5 * Organized Play Manager

3 people marked this as a favorite.
EwokBanshee wrote:
Varun Creed wrote:
So I missed how these regional boons are gotten?
Seconding this question. Are these "You GM'd at a convention" boons, or "You GM'd at a Regional Store a lot of times" boons?

For physical regions, if you GM at a convention, you will have access to the boons distributed to that Mega-Region. This is consistent with the PFS GM Boon distribution model.

For online, the Online VO team and the Org Play team are looking at which of the online events will qualify as conventions and receive gift certificate and boon support, which will qualify for the Regional Support program and get boons, and which will be classed as independent events. For example, AetherCon may be classed a Convention, PbP Multi-table special as RSP, and TerraCon as an independent event. This is to enable us to keep event support and boon dissemination roughly equvilant to the physical regions.

Once we have a list of online events receiving support, we will post it in the blog, so that our community knows what level of rewards are available from particular events.

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

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber
Thurston Hillman wrote:
So... it looks like people seem to be OK with our latest announcements? :)

The masses seem agreeable.

Grand Lodge 3/5 5/55/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Yissssss... just getting SFS play going in Kissimmee, FL, and I'm madly in love with the product thus far. Just put that content right inside my upgrade slots.

4/5 5/55/55/55/5 ****

10 people marked this as a favorite.

♫ Thurston Hillman was there as SFS flared
All our ships started to land
We gave it our best, took off in the quests
The Scoured Stars were out of hand
With glee partaked Strawberry Machine Cake
As our filkers started to jam
Then at a deadly pace it came from outer space
And this is how the message ran

We want a Science fiction (uh uh) double feature
Mega Regions (uh uh) to pick your creature
See androids fighting
The bony Corpse Fleet
Meet crazy plots that can’t be beat
Oh oh oh oh
At the late night double feature picture show ♫

___
Source: Rocky Horror Picture Show


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Personally I think the whole "you have to have a boon to play a race" is stupid. Boons should not be used to gate potential characters but to add a benefit to existing ones. All this does is turn me off from ever playing SFS.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Conversely, boons allow you to play characters you might never get to play in OP otherwise.

1/5 5/5

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Compared to other options I've seen used in organized play campaigns, it's the best method.

I used to dislike it, but even a modest commitment to the campaign now can change one's perspective.

Explore. Report. Cooperate.

:>


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
TOZ wrote:
Conversely, boons allow you to play characters you might never get to play in OP otherwise.

I play OP one weekend a year, I will never get the chance to play a race gated by a boon with this policy, seems like a bad policy overall.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Toblakai wrote:
I play OP one weekend a year, I will never get the chance to play a race gated by a boon with this policy, seems like a bad policy overall.

Never say never.

Lantern Lodge Customer Service Manager

3 people marked this as a favorite.

Removed a post.

Starfinder scenarios can be used for a variety of reasons including many outside of the organized play program. If you choose to participate in the organized play program, you do so accepting the rules of the table, including the Guide to the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild, the Additional Resources, and the Campaign Clarification. Espousing rule-breaking within the context of the Organized play campaign is inappropriate.


What region is Texas in? My sad, little state doesn't seem to be listed on the organized play/coordinators page.

Grand Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Captain, Minnesota

2 people marked this as a favorite.
S. J. Digriz wrote:
What region is Texas in? My sad, little state doesn't seem to be listed on the organized play/coordinators page.

Eric Brittain is your RVC, SJ! Texas is in the Southwest Region.

Hmm

Verdant Wheel 4/5

Central America and South America are considered Southwest Region ?

The Exchange 1/5 5/55/55/55/5

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Hebert Ricardo Magno wrote:
Central America and South America are considered Southwest Region ?

According to this http://paizo.com/organizedplay/coordinators : "Southwest (Eric Brittain)—California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, all of Mexico, all of Central America and all of South America" (emphasis mine.), yes.

Sovereign Court 4/5 * Organized Play Manager

3 people marked this as a favorite.

Apologies to those players in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. They were absorbed into neighboring regions when the South Region went away last year, but weren't added to their new regions.

Arkansas went to the Southeast region.
Oklahoma went to the Midwest region.
Texas went to the Southwest region.

2/5 5/5

Starfinder Charter Superscriber

Are the Convention specials something that will be later released for regular play? I'll be a bit bummed if there's stuff I can't GM for my regular group.

Liberty's Edge 3/5 5/5 **** Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha

The SFS special 1-00 Claim to Salvation is open to play, just with pre-gens.

PFS is different however.


I couldn't help but notice that Texas is not listed in any of the regions - or both my 'Find' functionality in Chrome, and my eyes, have failed me.

EDIT - Perhaps I should have searched this page too.

The Exchange 1/5 5/55/55/55/5

Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Jhaeman wrote:
Are the Convention specials something that will be later released for regular play? I'll be a bit bummed if there's stuff I can't GM for my regular group.

If they follow the same standards they do for the PFS interactive specials, they will be available for other conventions which meet whatever criteria they normally apply to those but not for one off tables for your regular group (due to the nature of interactive specials.)

2/5 5/5

Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Shaudius wrote:
Jhaeman wrote:
Are the Convention specials something that will be later released for regular play? I'll be a bit bummed if there's stuff I can't GM for my regular group.
If they follow the same standards they do for the PFS interactive specials, they will be available for other conventions which meet whatever criteria they normally apply to those but not for one off tables for your regular group (due to the nature of interactive specials.)

Yeah, that was what I was afraid of. I wish it was at least available as a PDF so I could read it (I'm big on the world lore and continuing story) or even run it "unofficially" for my home group so they don't miss out on the epic capstone scenario after playing everything else in the season month by month.

1 to 50 of 62 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Organized Play / Starfinder Society / Paizo Blog: Starfinder Society Chronicle, Updates from the Organized Play Team All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.

See Also: