AP sanctioning schedule


Starfinder Society

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

Starfinder Superscriber
Thurston Hillman wrote:


...

... ... ...

*awaits the incoming flood of "But where's Adventures 4/5/6, Thursty!?"*

(But seriously, I adore all of you.)

You've been doing a great job Thurston!

I'm less concerned about AP4/5/6 and since its likely out of your hands at this point nagging you about it has little point, I'm more concerned about what this tells us about future AP sanctioning.

It's been almost a month since you sent your first draft of the sanctioning document into the magic sanctioning machine at Paizo. One of these days the machine will update the website with the sanctioning document and an "additional resources" update.

What I'm looking at is The Reach of Empire and beyond. The book is due for release at the end of August (subscribers will likely have the PDF earlier) but given what we've seen we can't reasonably expect it sanctioned before the end of September, and with games getting scheduled weeks in advance that means it'll be mid to late October before we'll be able to be run at our local SFS venues.

I understand that APs are considered "bolt-on", but with only two new scenarios a month they've been an essential part of running weekly SFS games and keeping players interested. Thanks in large part to you we can plan and schedule scenarios weeks in advance to be run as little as 2 days after the release date, it'd be fantastic if we could rely on AP sanctioning the same way.

My request is with the new monthly AP release cycle, a sanctioning cycle be established with a reliable "expected by" date such that we can plan and schedule them ahead of time the same way as we can now with scenarios.

5/5

Man, you guys must play way more Starfinder than we do in Minneapolis. I'm very lucky if I manage to play Starfinder Society three times per month, and, of three venues for Starfinder Society, only one has offered more than one AP in the five months I've been playing.

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

Starfinder Superscriber

Portland is one of the more active Starfinder cities, but there's certainly other cities running one or more SFS sessions a week.

I'm running the second half of AP1 for our all-ages group tonight and next Friday another GM is running AP1 for our "New Players" table. I've personally run it half a dozen times.

Liberty's Edge 1/5 5/55/55/55/5 ** Venture-Captain, Illinois—Fairview Heights

6 tables a month during the week (every Thursday and every other Monday), plus two tables one weekend a month and a third store possibly starting SFS in the near future.

In St. Louis a player can currently play as many as 10 tables a month before the third store goes active. We slowed down intentionally before a local con in order to make sure people had scenarios other than repeatables to play, but we’re back at full strength.

AP’s are essential for us. We have two groups eager to play book 4+ and awaiting the next AP as well.

Liberty's Edge 2/5 5/5

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I have finished book 4 with my group and start book 5 next game. I guess I will have to hand out chronicles when they are available.

Liberty's Edge 1/5 5/55/55/55/5 ** Venture-Captain, Illinois—Fairview Heights

I offered that up, but nobody here wants to have characters locked out from other scenarios while they wait on a chronicle.

Basically, if they were to play 4, they cannot play 5 or any other scenario for credit, until they receive the chronicle for 4. My players unanimously elected to wait for a chronicle rather than risk lock out or having to play 5 for no Society credit until the chronicle is released.

“Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Guide Version 1.0, pg. 11” wrote:
Roleplaying Guild characters can only played in one scenario or Adventure Path at a time. Characters are considered to be playing in a scenario or Adventure Path until they receive a Chronicle sheet for sanctioned content.

Paizo Employee 5/5 Starfinder Society Developer

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I am planning to have Reach of the Empire sanctioned for its Gen Con release.

I want to STRESS that the delays on adventure 4/5/6 for Dead Suns are not indicative of a trend. It’s the result of convention season and switching to 2 scenarios/month within a very short timeframe of launch. To make sure there was more SFS content, AP sanctioning had to hit the back burner as getting higher level content was not as important as making sure we got our our scheduled scenario releases. Same reason that the Guide revision got pushed back.

I’ve already put plans into motion that should prevent this from happening next year. I suspect things will be back onto a more sane pace / catch-up mode in about a month or so... heck, I may even take a weekend off again!

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

Starfinder Superscriber

Alright! We'll go ahead and schedule running it for early September. It can help cover the gap between the early August release and end of September, and being a tier 1-2 repeatable will help keep the new player tables fresh with new content.

To reiterate though, it'd be great to have an "expect by" date for AP sanctioning (at least for the Aeon Throne). If its done by the time each AP book is released, that's better than great. If not, so long as we can expect it by a certain date after release we can schedule games around it.

Also, you absolutely deserve a vacation.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Agent, Georgia—Atlanta

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And you are doing so much better with the AP sanctioning than the Pathfinder side.

Liberty's Edge 1/5 5/55/55/55/5 ** Venture-Captain, Illinois—Fairview Heights

Thursty, we appreciate all you do for the SFS OP program. I would like to second the idea that we’ve got it pretty good compared to what PFS has. While we eagerly anticipate sanctioning, I think we also eagerly anticipate our monthly scenario drops. I imagine that having to choose which to delay would result in a nearly unanimous agreement that the scenario drops should have priority.

Thank you for keeping active and telling us where things are. No news is worse than bad news and I appreciate your keeping us out of the dark. Except for your evil menacing plots. I spend far more time than I should trying to hypothesize what nefarious plot twist will come from the dastardly duo of Thursty and John.

Thanks for all you do and stay thirsty, Thursty.

Dataphiles 4/5 5/55/5 *

I second every lovely thing said about Thursty and all of Starfinder crew. Would it be possible to know when DS 4 report and chronicle will come out at least, as it is now affecting some people's characters? (It will soon affect some people's ability to play their characters)

5/5 5/55/5

"Dr." Cupi wrote:
I second every lovely thing said about Thursty and all of Starfinder crew. Would it be possible to know when DS 4 report and chronicle will come out at least, as it is now affecting some people's characters? (It will soon affect some people's ability to play their characters)

I agree with this, but I know Paizo workings well enough to know anything but on a back burner will not get a release date. I can see it coming out next week or in September and would not be surprised either way.

We have it scheduled at our local game store to start on July 12th. But at this point it looks like we are likely going to have to cancel the game on that date. We will give it up to about July 5th and then will have to cancel it and will only reschedule once chronicle sheets are released.

I read somewhere that it would be OK to retroactively apply the chronicle sheets but that doesn't work very well, They will play the AP at level 7 and there are also scenarios being released soon with tiers 5-8 and a special that allows up to tier 8. So the characters would be playing a crap load of stuff at level 7. When the chronicle sheet is finally applied they will likely skip over most if not all of level 8.

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

Starfinder Superscriber

... and canceling games has a morale impact, players start second guessing whether a game will actually happen and prematurely pull out as they make other plans.

11th hour game postings are a bit better, but it can still be a struggle to get enough players - especially if your game night is on a Fri night or weekend. Many of our SFS players make other plans if there isn't a game they can play posted at least 2 weeks in advance.

Its better to only schedule a game when you know you can run it - both in terms of sanctioning and available players - and post it 2-3 weeks in advance.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Agent, Georgia—Atlanta

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Also, it would be best to have the chronicles to run the APs so that I can keep ahead of Neils and Arc...

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

Dracomicron wrote:
Man, you guys must play way more Starfinder than we do in Minneapolis. I'm very lucky if I manage to play Starfinder Society three times per month, and, of three venues for Starfinder Society, only one has offered more than one AP in the five months I've been playing.

Hmm waves at a favorite fellow Starfinder! I just figured out who you are, Draco! You were at my table last night, right?

I am trying to push forward with more Starfinder. We’ve been keeping the Starfinder light shining in the Twin Cities at Dreamers, and I’m looking into the possibility of running one of the 3 book APs at Dreamers at some point.

Now that more content is coming out, I think we can expand a bit.

Hmm

5/5

Hilary Moon Murphy wrote:


Hmm waves at a favorite fellow Starfinder! I just figured out who you are, Draco! You were at my table last night, right?

Guilty as charged.

Sometimes they run APs at Lodestone Coffee, but I've never managed to get there due to scheduling, or if I could, I didn't have a character that worked for the book.

The 7th level 3-book AP coming out at the end of the year looks sweet as heck, by the way... but a little too horror-themed for some players' tastes, methinks. I don't think we could Walk Like An Egyptian our way out of "Signal of Screams."

5/5 5/55/5

Arc Riley wrote:

... and canceling games has a morale impact, players start second guessing whether a game will actually happen and prematurely pull out as they make other plans.

11th hour game postings are a bit better, but it can still be a struggle to get enough players - especially if your game night is on a Fri night or weekend. Many of our SFS players make other plans if there isn't a game they can play posted at least 2 weeks in advance.

Its better to only schedule a game when you know you can run it - both in terms of sanctioning and available players - and post it 2-3 weeks in advance.

Normally I would agree but they were so on top of SFS sanctioning things I didn't even consider it wouldn't be sanctioned 5 months after it's release. The store organizer puts up a 3 month schedule at a time. So, if it comes off now it won't back up again until September.

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

Starfinder Superscriber

As I understand the entirety of Dead Suns is already sanctioned by page 1 which defines the level ranges and story content, just awaiting chronicle sheets.

So if I were you I'd keep it on the current schedule but collect everyone's email addresses. Send chronicle sheets out when they become available.

5/5

Maybe an idea for things that are known to be sanctioned, but do not have a chronicle yet, would be for there to be generic sheets that can have the specific scenario written in. Credits, exp and such can all be filled in and are generally consistent across tiers. This would mitigate this issue in the future and basically just mean you are missing out on rewards specific to the AP until the completed sheet is released?

One Q I did have is when the chronicle for DS4 (and beyond) is released, will the download on DS1 be replaced with the new complete sheets for all, or will it be broken up and placed on the product page specific to it?

Liberty's Edge 2/5 5/5

Yeah I doubt you would be punished by starting book 5 and handing out the chrons when they are available. Hell, it is what I am doing.

5/5 5/5 ***

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Dracomicron wrote:
Sometimes they run APs at Lodestone Coffee, but I've never managed to get there due to scheduling, or if I could, I didn't have a character that worked for the book.

Hey! That's us! What level(s) of Starfinder character(s) do you have? We have a couple players who need to gain another level before we start Book III of Dead Suns, and when we offer scenarios we can sometimes get to two tables; we're kinda at a weird point where at our biggest we'll seat 14 players, but then the next week we might only get four RSVPs.

Since this is probably a bad place to schedule our game days, feel free to PM me or reach out to me through the MSP Pathfinder Meetup (or via email, I think that's public on my profile). We'd be happy to add another Starfinder to the Lodestone crew whenever you're available.

Also, while we're not likely to get to Book IV before September, I'm also eagerly awaiting Dead Suns' complete sanctioning. I love that the Starfinder AP is sanctioned in its entirety instead of only sanctioning dungeon sections of it, because it weaves so well with some of the Second Seekers' missions (I've been trying to tie the two together as one cohesive campaign) and hope to see the same sanctioning process and frequency for the PF2 adventure paths.

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

There are so many game stores within a two hour radius of my apartment that I've played everything except 1-00 (because I'm usually the one GMing it) and 1-04 (which I'm signed up for PbP).

We're doing replayables locally just to keep people busy. I'm thankful 1-16 is around the corner. I already have 4 characters with credit from 1-12, and nearly every character has credit from the Quests and Commencement.

Since none of us were around for PFS Season 0 we joke that this is how it must have been for those players!

My –701 just dinged to 7 last night, though, so I'm looking forward to some upcoming high tier play, even if that means I won't play him as much. My –702 dings to 5 soon.

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

Starfinder Superscriber

Each of my PCs has a sheet for what they're going to play or get GM credit for to keep them from leveling out.

My -701 (Lashunta, Ace Pilot, Star Shaman, Skyjockey Wayfinder who speaks Ghibrani) below level 7 so I can play Yesteryear's Sorrow with him. He's 6.0 right now, and he'll play #1-99 next.

My -704 Half-Orc Merc Solarian is at 6.1, next up playing #1-11, #1-13, #1-17. Then at 7.1 for GMing #1-99 and AP4 bringing him to 8.2. I'll get to play him once more before he goes on ice waiting for tier 7-10 scenarios.

But I also have 8 PCs now just from running and playing repeatables.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Agent, Georgia—Atlanta

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14 PCs here

Dataphiles 4/5 5/55/5 *

KapaaIan wrote:


One Q I did have is when the chronicle for DS4 (and beyond) is released, will the download on DS1 be replaced with the new complete sheets for all, or will it be broken up and placed on the product page specific to it?

It normally is replaced with a file of all of them together.

Liberty's Edge 1/5 5/55/55/55/5 ** Venture-Captain, Illinois—Fairview Heights

Arc Riley wrote:

As I understand the entirety of Dead Suns is already sanctioned by page 1 which defines the level ranges and story content, just awaiting chronicle sheets.

So if I were you I'd keep it on the current schedule but collect everyone's email addresses. Send chronicle sheets out when they become available.

Arc, you are correct. All 6 books are sanctioned. The problem is player lockout. Until you have a chronicle for book 4, you cannot legally play that character in anything. At all. Period. Until the chronicle for 4 is received on that player. So while 5 and 6 are sanctioned for play (even though items/races are not) you cannot play 5 if your character is locked out on 4. Neither can you play any scenarios on that character. It's not so much about sanctioning as it is about "multi-session adventures and extended play" per the roleplaying guild guide.

Liberty's Edge 2/5 5/5

That is not really an issue because book 4 ends at like level 8 and I highly doubt too many people are that high to worry about being locked out.

Dataphiles 4/5 5/55/5 *

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Noven wrote:
That is not really an issue because book 4 ends at like level 8 and I highly doubt too many people are that high to worry about being locked out.

The issue is that "according to rules" if you are not playing the AP books in 'campaign mode' then, 'technically', you can't play them in book 5 'SFS mode' because the characters are neither the appropriate level nor have a valid chronicle sheet for 4.

This is however not a problem if you play them in 'campaign mode' as the characters in that are definitetly not SFS characters. And when you report the finished books you apply them to a definitely different character that is an SFS registered character. So, when you run into issues like this you can still play your SFS characters because they are definitely different characters than the ones you play in the AP, therefore they are not locked out from playing other things.

For Example: This character "Dr." Cupi is definitely not the same character I play in my group's run of DS. As such, I can play him in the new 5-8 scenarios and the special at GenCon.

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

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^ I have never before visualized air quotes as intensely as I did just now while reading that post ^_^

The Exchange 4/5 5/5

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Glen Parnell wrote:
14 PCs here

Yes, but you're also the reason they had to start at XXXXX-701 for Starfinder instead of -101 or -201.

:)

Liberty's Edge 2/5 5/5

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Wait, people play the AP NOT in campaign mode? Weird. =P

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

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Starfinder Charter Superscriber

I may or may not have 34 SFS characters.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Agent, Georgia—Atlanta

Kevin Willis wrote:
Glen Parnell wrote:
14 PCs here

Yes, but you're also the reason they had to start at XXXXX-701 for Starfinder instead of -101 or -201.

:)

I just GM a small bit. I only have 31 pathfinder characters.

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

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Starfinder Superscriber
Jacob Rennels wrote:
Arc, you are correct. All 6 books are sanctioned. The problem is player lockout. Until you have a chronicle for book 4, you cannot legally play that character in anything. At all. Period.

I didn't consider that, you're absolutely right.

However, I would still recommend that if someone has AP4 on the calendar that they run it - with the expectation that AP4 chronicle sheets will be available either by the time they run it or, at least, by the time that player wants to play that level 8 PC.

Thurston said he already sent it into the Paizo sanctioning machine over a month ago, that machine has got to provide the chronicle sheets soon - right? Any day now? Next week? Before Gencon and before #1-19 is released?

So at that tier having a locked PC isn't such a big deal.

4/5 5/55/55/5

I understand that creating proper Chronicles with Boons and Items, sanctioning addictional resources from second parts of AP books is a lot of work.

But what about such small thing like Dead Suns 4/5/6 reporting option in Report mechanism on GM/Event Coordinator folder of Paizo Organized Play page? My event coordinator can not properly close event because I can not report session I`ve GM-ed. And I see that huge list of not even released scenarios options for reporting in that mechanism - and cry out loud about Dead Suns 4 three months out

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

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Starfinder Superscriber

I feel your pain. And yea as Jacob pointed out, players who haven't received AP4 chronicle sheets yet have their high tier PCs locked and thus can't play #1-17 #1-19 or #1-99 which hurts us on the coordinator/GM side getting enough players for those scenarios.

Lets keep it in perspective tho, PFS is years behind in sanctioning AP. The SFS team has been very good to us, I'm sure AP4/5/6 will hit the website any day now.

5/5 5/55/5

Arc Riley wrote:

I feel your pain. And yea as Jacob pointed out, players who haven't received AP4 chronicle sheets yet have their high tier PCs locked and thus can't play #1-17 #1-19 or #1-99 which hurts us on the coordinator/GM side getting enough players for those scenarios.

Lets keep it in perspective tho, PFS is years behind in sanctioning AP. The SFS team has been very good to us, I'm sure AP4/5/6 will hit the website any day now.

lol, I would say any day after Gencon. Scheduled releases are going to take priority. Mid August would be my expectation.

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

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Starfinder Superscriber

I highly doubt that. More likely, we'll see AP4/5/6 sanctioned at the same time as Armory. That's likely any day now, subscribers saw the order open today and so PDFs are dropping within 7 days.

Thurston, John, and Tonya know how vital Armory is. Have faith.

Paizo Employee 5/5 Starfinder Society Developer

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Given that I'm on vacation this week and haven't had time to put together all the questions about Armory for our Designers... I suspect and hope that the sanctioning document will be released sometime closer to / at Gen Con.

That being said, the remaining Dead Suns sanctioning documents are written up and going through the other departments necessary to get packaged for online distribution. Similarly, I'm about 80% done the first "Against the Aeon Throne" installment, which I hope to get in a similar state when I return to work next week.

Second Seekers (Jadnura) 5/55/55/55/5

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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Thurston Hillman wrote:

Given that I'm on vacation this week and haven't had time to put together all the questions about Armory for our Designers... I suspect and hope that the sanctioning document will be released sometime closer to / at Gen Con.

That being said, the remaining Dead Suns sanctioning documents are written up and going through the other departments necessary to get packaged for online distribution. Similarly, I'm about 80% done the first "Against the Aeon Throne" installment, which I hope to get in a similar state when I return to work next week.

You are on vacation - stay away from the forums!

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

Starfinder Superscriber
Thurston Hillman wrote:
Given that I'm on vacation this week

You shouldn't be on the forums reading fan rumblings and speculations then, enjoy your vacation!

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

Thank you for the update, Thursty! Also, I am laughing my head off because I tend to read the forums on my vacations too.

Hmm

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Agent, Georgia—Atlanta

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AP Sanctioning went up last night! Also, most equipment from DS4 and DS5 was made available in Additional Resources!

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

Starfinder Superscriber
Thurston Hillman wrote:
That being said, the remaining Dead Suns sanctioning documents are written up and going through the other departments necessary to get packaged for online distribution. Similarly, I'm about 80% done the first "Against the Aeon Throne" installment, which I hope to get in a similar state when I return to work next week.

It took 2 weeks for your finished AP4/5/6 sanctioning documents to get packaged and up on the web, so that's an approximate lead time for 3 AP books to go through that process. You previously said AP7/8/9 are going up at once, so I'd assume it'll take the same amount of time as 4/5/6.

I scheduled to run AP7 on Aug 31 and it'll go up on Warhorn for signups around the 20th, but I'm getting worried that the sanctioning document and chronicle sheets won't be available in time.

I know I'm not alone in biting at the bit to run/play this. Can you update us on the state of the sanctioning documents?

Paizo Employee 5/5 Starfinder Society Developer

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Arc Riley wrote:
I know I'm not alone in biting at the bit to run/play this. Can you update us on the state of the sanctioning documents?

Not at this time. It's in the hands of people down the line from Org Play, who are responsible for the next steps in file distribution. I suspect this will be ready sometime around August 29th, which is when this adventure is slated to become available as a PDF. While I understand the excitement around running these events, due to varying workloads we cannot guarantee when a sanctioning document will go live—there's just too many variables to work with.

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

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Starfinder Superscriber

That's actually an update :-) Thanks!

Is Armory in the same state?

The PDF is usually available earlier for subscribers since we get them as soon as the physical books are shipped, and they seem to aim for subscribers to receive the books within a few days of official release date.

Sczarni 5/5 5/55/5 ***

Just run 99% of the Adventure as you have it scheduled, and collect everyone's emails. Whenever the Chronicles go live, send out an email with their Chronicle that tells them "Oh and by the way that one NPC you never interacted with was named Bill", and then report the event.

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

Starfinder Superscriber

You know when your group is running 1-2 games a week there's a very good reason not to do that.

1/5 5/55/55/55/5

Starfinder Superscriber

AP7/8/9 are now sanctioned with the documents available for download on the product page right now.

Thurston: you were right, I'm extremely happy with the boons on AP7. Though mostly I'm overjoyed that the chronicle sheets are available so there's no stress over whether they'll be out in time.

boon discussion:
Especially since AP7 is repeatable, this is exactly the kind of patch to Starship combat a lot of us have been looking for!

Being able to apply Mysticism ranks + Wisdom mod instead of BAB/Piloting + Dex is great, and its nicely balancing that it only applies to one weapon so most players will want it on the turret.

Power core would have been great too, I personally often find 4-PC tables having only one Int-based PC running double duty Science+Engineering.

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

Thanks for letting us know that AP 7/8/9 are now sanctioned!

Hmm

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