PaizoCon 2016 Pathfinder Society Announcements

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

PaizoCon 2016 has come to a close, but the Pathfinder Society team is gearing up for tons of new programs and material that we showed off at the Paizo Preview Banquet Saturday evening. Organized Play Coordinator Tonya Woldridge announced these to a packed ballroom, and today I'd like to share the news with you.

Pathfinder Society Academy

What better way is there to begin a blog than with a great way to begin one's roleplaying experience? Back in January, Tonya first announced Pathfinder Academy, an expansion of the "Kid's Track" games offered at Gen Con for the past several years. We've since contracted authors for new scenarios, worked with Venture-Captains Michael VonHasseln and Lucas Servideo to create new lesson plans, and have a complete set of new quests on the way for eager young gamers to play. These will debut at Gen Con, and afterward we're exploring ways to distribute these adventures to convention organizers to provide kid-friendly content at events worldwide. In addition, we are working on a scenario rating system that identifies adult themes and ways to adjust the scenarios for our younger players.

As a sign of things to come, we're excited to share the new product's temporary logo (still a work in progress)!

Adventure Card Guild

There's a lot in the pipeline for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Guild. A few weeks ago, Tanis announced the upcoming Season of the Goblin (or, We Be Card Goblins, as it's affectionally referred to in-house), which not only provides use two months of goblin carnage but also ties into the upcoming Goblins Fight! and Goblins Burn! Class Decks. Tanis tends to giggle evilly and then show off preview art every time we bring up this topic, so it's only right that we introduce you to one of the upcoming goblin "heroes," Zibini, the Great and Goobly. As you might guess from her art, she's a powerful diviner able to foretell what goblins will fight and what they will burn—which is to say everything. Season of the Goblin will combine Tanis' dastardly mechanics with story from author Jason Keeley, whose work most recently featured in #7-23 Abducted in Aether.

Illustration by Roberto Pitturru

As the Season of the Goblin winds to a close, the long-anticipated Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Mummy's Mask will be hitting the shelves. Once it does, we'll be launching the Season of the Mummy, sending Pathfinders into the tombs of Osirion to do battle with the evils that sleep beneath the sands.

Finally, PaizoCon was an excellent opportunity to refine and introduce special convention rewards for playing the Adventure Card Guild at conventions. For about five years, the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild has offered special "convention boons" at registered events of 15 sessions or more. Last year Tanis and I worked together to create a handful of similar rewards—can't quite call them boons, as that's an existing game term—to distribute at Gen Con, and we've since honed the process to present a set of special rewards for each season of Guild play. We're especially proud of not only the smaller page format (much easier to pack alongside your Class Deck) but also of the thematic tie-ins to the season. At PaizoCon you may have spotted the Thassilonian Ritual rewards, which allow your character to gain a long-term benefit at the cost of leaving her vulnerable to that sin's foibles. We're designating several of these for distribution to events worldwide, and several are going to be special rewards available at only a handful of conventions such as PaizoCon, PaizoCon UK, Gen Con, and Origins.

Roleplaying Guild

Finally, we announced the next season of the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild: Year of the Stolen Storm. The organized play program has always been an excellent way to present adventures in a wide variety of places, including those yet to be seen in Adventure Paths or Modules. With this mission, the Society has extensively—but not exhaustively—explored the Inner Sea region over the past eight years, but beyond regular visits to Tian Xia and the Hao Jin Tapestry demiplane, it has traveled beyond this region only rarely. For years I've looked for ways to dabble in some extraplanar travel, and for Season 8 I proposed not just dipping the Society's toes in the water but diving in completely.

During the Year of the Stolen Storm, the Society turns its sights to the Elemental Planes of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. There, agents can not only recover extraordinary treasures but also embroil themselves in extraplanar politics and clash with otherworldly organizations. Over the course of the season, we've planned at least two adventures in each of the Elemental Planes, and in defiance of what I consider the conventional wisdom of planar adventures (i.e. it's only for high-level PCs), we've found some fun ways to let PCs of all levels get in on the action. In anticipation of the adventures to come, Paizo's releasing Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Planes of Power in August 2016, expanding on the current elemental lore many times over as well as providing new character options that could come in handy while traveling so far afield.

Even as we send Pathfinders to distant realms, we'll still have business at home to handle. Look forward to exciting adventures on the Material Plane that continue ongoing stories, travel to unseen lands, and uncover forgotten secrets. The Year of the Stolen Storm is looking to be the best season yet!

John Compton
Pathfinder Society Lead Developer