Monthly Roundup!

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

30 Arodus 4717

Back in the office after an exciting Gen Con 50! We came, we saw, and played lots of Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society. The demo tables of Starfinder kept busy, with lines out the door. Pathfinder Society packed the Sagamore Ballroom on Friday night to see the debut of Pathfinder Society Scenario #9-00: Assault on Absalom. We even added a few extra tables to seat more players! Thanks to the Venture Officers, GMs and HQ volunteers that made the event possible. We could not deliver the high level of programming without your assistance.

If you attended Gen Con and want to leave us feedback as we start planning 2018, please post in the official feedback threads on the messageboards by September 14th. If you prefer to give your feedback privately, please email genconpfsvolunteers@paizo.com. The org play team, leads, and I are processing all the information received to see where we can adjust processes and improve the Gen Con 2018 attendee and volunteer experience.

Quests

As we did with the Silverhex Chronicles and Phantom Phenomena in July 2016, from here on out, the requirement to the Pathfinder Society Quest series Honor's Echo with pregenerated iconic characters is rescinded. Any 1st level character may be used to complete this arc. At this time, Pathfinder Society Scenario #8-16: House of Harmonious Wisdom is considered both a scenario and a series of Quests. If using as Quests to introduce players to the Pathfinder Society, pregenerated iconic character use is highly suggested, as this gets new players to the table and immersed in the game faster and easier.

Website Updates

We updated the Faction Journal Cards for the Year of Faction's Favor and they are now available for download. Our content management liaison is still working on getting other items up on paizo.com, such as the Starfinder Society pages. Until this happens, we've stickied several posts in the Organized Play messageboards with links and updated policies, to keep the org play machine running smoothly.

Campaign Coin Recipients

During my travels, I've had the opportunity to give out campaign coins at events other than PaizoCon and Gen Con. This led to my only awarding one at Gen Con. Please congratulate Glen Shackleton on his long service to our community. He is now Org Play number 783.

5* GM Recognition

With so many special scenarios running at Gen Con, many GMs ran the last of their required 10 special games and achieved their 5th star. Besides 10 special events, they need to 150 games, including at least 50 unique scenarios. Our dedicated GMs spend hours and hours preparing to deliver a quality experience to the players. To those listed below, who earned their 5th star in the past few weeks, welcome to the club and thank you for your dedication to our Society.

Hunter Balduf
Danny Braddock
William Cleveland
Joe Ducey
Doug Edwards
Matthew Hudson
Tom Mcqueen
Zack Nagel
Jeffrey Reed
Glen Shackleton
Roger Sidebotham

Conventions

Over the past few months, we feature the upcoming conventions with organized play activities. This list generates from the convention organizers' requesting support from Paizo and may not be complete. Especially when a flood of requests arrives in my inbox or when I am travelling.

The question I have for our player base—does this list help? Do you want me to continue posting events? If you would prefer to have it in a different format, or at a different time, please let me know. Constructive feedback is always appreciated!

PacifiCon 2017	Santa Clara, CA	9/1/17
SacAnime Summer 2017	Sacramento, CA	9/1/17
B-Con 2017	Aurora, CO	9/1/17
DragonCon 2017	Atlanta, GA	9/1/17
Gateway 2017	Los Angeles, CA	9/1/17
Gateway to Golarion II (2017)	Kutztown, PA	9/1/17
Portsmouth PFS Summer-Con 2017	Portsmouth, VA	9/1/17
Tracon 2017	Tampere, Finland	9/7/17
SibCon 2017	Butler, PA	9/8/17
Phantasm 2017	Peterborough, Ontario, Canada	9/9/17
San Diego Pathfinder Miramar MCAS Charity Play	San Diego, CA	9/9/17
Traveling Pathfinder's Convocation	Houston, TX	9/9/17
CogCon 2017	Rolla, MO	9/15/17
CoNfUsIoN 2017	Gouda, Netherlands	9/15/17
GrandCon 2017	Grand Rapids, MI	9/15/17
Skål Con 2017	Roseville, MN	9/15/17
Granite State Comic Con 2017	Manchester, NH	9/16/17
AB-Con Winter 2017	Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, Germany	9/22/17
Viking Summer Lodge 2017	Taastrup, Denmark	9/22/17
HMGS-South Hurricon 2017	Kissimmee, FL	9/28/17
RinCon Games 2017	Tucson, AZ	9/29/17
BrisCon 2017	Brisbane, QLD, Australia	9/30/17
DBQ Con 2017	Dubuque, IA	9/30/17
SPSX 2017	Glasgow, Scotland, UK	9/30/17
SydCon 2017	Sydney, NSW, Australia	9/30/17
Cincitycon 2017	Cincinnati, OH	10/6/17
AtomiCon Mini I (2017)	Durham, NC	10/7/17
Pathcon 4.0	Salt Lake City, UT	10/13/17
Asheville Scarefest 2017	Montreat, NC	10/19/17
Skycon 2017	Kitchener, Ontario, Canada	10/28/17

Contests

Today is the deadline for the Leaders in Liberty contest. All entries must reach us by midnight Pacific Time. For more information, check out the contest criteria blog.

In August, we noted that our next competition would be for best terrain. So dig through your photos and get ready to send us your best one. We'll start accepting them September 1st and stop on September 21st. So if you haven't built something yet, you still have time.

The contest requirements are that the photo be of a piece of 3D terrain made by the submitter in the last 6 months. Once submissions are closed, we will review the photos, pick the top contenders, and post them on paizo.com for a community vote. The winner will receive $30 in store credit. The number and value of prizes for runners up will be based on the number of submissions received and will be posted at the time of voting.

The next few weeks should be a flurry of Venture-Officer additions, convention support processing, and planning meetings for Seasons 10/5/2. Three programs mean triple the planning and lots of coordination. I am not travelling again, until October, so now's the time to pull things together.

The next Paizo attended show is PAX Unplugged in November. We should have more information in the next few weeks regarding our presence at the show.

Until next week—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager

The Best 4 Days of PACG

Thursday, August 24, 2017

The Paizo and Lone Shark teams just got back from an exhausting exhilarating Gen Con, and much Pathfinder Adventure Card Game was played!

We ran our third ACG Open! Our valiant leader, Mike Selinker, wove a grand tale called "The Vampire Devolutions," focusing on the Pathfinder Tales Character Deck characters Radovan and Varian, and their would-be nemesis, the vampire Prince Kasiya. Thank you to all our teams who made it to the Open! I know our final two teams had fun, since I got a chance to chat with them, and we'll put up some pictures of our finalists in a future blog post. (In previous years, the Opens had complicated designs that made them very difficult to release to the public. This time, the Open is much easier to set up and publish. I'm hoping to do a couple minor tweaks, then see if we can get it played at a lot more venues after the Tales deck comes out next month. Keep an eye out: we don't want to let the vampires win.)

Gen Con also featured our second Adventure Card Guild Interactive Special, 9-00: Assault on Absalom, kicking off the storyline for Season of Factions' Favor. This year's special inextricably wove the Adventure Card Guild and Roleplaying Guild together, with each guild tackling many of the same encounters in their own fashion, with each contributing jointly to the success of the endeavor. I wasn't able to see the Special last year, so I snuck onto a table to see how things went. This was a complex event, and there were some hiccups that we hope to improve on. That said, when there was an announcement of an achievement and we all got to pull extra cards from the box, or another table sent Reinforcements to our table, it felt awesome. It's very different playing PACG as a collaboration between many (many, many) tables! I encourage you to check it if it comes to a convention or game day by you: it's got some great stories and scenarios.

We've taken cooperation to the next level—or at least to the next table.

Season of Factions' Favor also premiered at Gen Con, with our fine Pathfinders chasing after one of the villains from Assault on Absalom. Your travels take you to Katapesh's harbor city of Okeno, where you join up with members of the Liberty's Edge faction to infiltrate a group of slavers. Each adventure in this season highlights a different faction within the Pathfinder Society, so we've introduced a new type of support card that gets shuffled into the blessings deck. Adventure 4-1 is rolling out to Venture Officers and participating retailers now, and will be available for sale in mid-September.

Wait, you mean good things can happen when we discard a blessing!?

After that, we're doing something completely different to support our upcoming Hell's Vengeance Character Deck 1 and Deck 2. The characters in Hell's Vengeance are not the nicest kids on the block. They do somewhat mean things to their comrades, like play with their discard piles, or discard cards from the top of their deck, or maybe they just enjoy standing around drinking in the sweet screams of their pain. You know: usual evil stuff. So we're going to release some special promo scenarios that help explain why the Pathfinder Society might want to work with these characters. On one hand, they're generally evil folks, but on the other hand, you're going after some specific evil folks, and they're really looking to get their vengeance on. Maybe you can stick together for a few adventures, for the greater good. At least till they (predictably) betray you.

Finally, on Sunday, John Compton, Mike Selinker, and I stumbled gamely into the PACG panel to make some announcements and talk to our fans. Unfortunately, Vic Wertz—the guardian and keeper who keeps this line sane, wasn't there to help out. Fortunately for you, he also wasn't there to keep us in line observing secrecy protocols. So what did we let slip?

• The Pathfinder Tales Character Deck is chock-full of all-new allies, and they have some amazing synergies when you get characters from the same Tales together.
• The Hell's Vengeance Character Deck 1 and Deck 2 characters love Corrupted boons like those in Wrath, and benefit from a few unfriendly mechanics that synergize well together.
• The Hunter Class Deck covers the wide spectrum from tree hugging to rampaging through nature and includes some hard-to-pronounce savage weaponry, plus dinosaurs to ride. Dinosaurs! To! Ride!
• The Occult Adventures Character Deck 1 and Deck 2 use some of our most crazy inventive mechanics yet, including new awesome uses for Fortitude and Perception and wild mechanics for Erasmus and Mavaro.
• Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Intrigue, and Ultimate Equipment follow those, and are filled to the brim with boons to complement other class decks. The iconic characters in these decks are the samurai Hayato, the arcanist Enora, the vigilante Aric the Red Raven, and the ninja Reiko.

The terbutje. Don't even try to pronounce it. Certainly, don't make Mike try.

That release schedule takes us just about to Gen Con 2018. Now, Mike was very clear that these next two products are going to take us a while, and they may or may not be ready for that show, and may not even appear in 2018 at all. There's still a lot undecided about them. But this is what we're playing with now.

• We are looking at a new core set that serves as a starter set for every adventure path going forward, providing a baseline of banes, boons, and locations that every set (and every PFSACG season) needs. We'll be looking to optimize your experience with this set, but in no way, shape, or form will it invalidate any existing product.
• The first Adventure Path we're working on for that new core set is Curse of the Crimson Throne. The Crimson Throne RPG Adventure Path is dear to me, as I've run it three times, including a game I ran for PACG designers Chad Brown and Tanis O'Connor, and I've been itching to work on a PACG version of it for ages. It's full of Harrowing deeds and dire investigations all set in your (morally grey) home base of Korvosa, and we'll talk a lot more about it... down the road.

They may claim to be the good guys, but Fantasy Rules of Fashion beg to differ.

It was great getting a chance to meet and play with some of you at Gen Con, and I'd like to again thank our volunteers and Venture Officers for all the work they do to make PACG events happen. Thanks for reading, and if you're in Seattle next week, look for our team members at PAX!

Keith Richmond
Adventure Card Game Designer

P.S. Season of Factions' Favor doesn't lend itself to an immediately obvious shortening the way Plundered Tombs turned into PluTo, so I've seen all kinds of options. In the comments below, please tell us your favorite. I've heard so far: SoFF, SoFa, SoFac, FaFa, and Susan.

Starfinder Cheat Sheet!

Friday, August 18, 2017

Starfinder just launched! We know that a lot of you are excited to start playing. We also know that the Starfinder Core Rulebook is 528 pages long. That's a lot to digest in a day.

Fortunately, you don't have to! While Starfinder has a ton of differences from Pathfinder, both glaring and subtle, one of the things we shot for in the design was making sure that if you know how to play Pathfinder, it's a fairly easy switch over to Starfinder. Toward that end, Starfinder Design Lead Owen K.C. Stephens, Organized Play Lead Developer John Compton, and Starfinder Society Developer Thurston Hillman have teamed up to craft this handy one-page "cheat sheet" to help you jump straight into the action. While these notes on key rules and differences between the two games is by no means exhaustive, and no substitute for actually reading the Core Rulebook, it should provide some helpful reminders and make it easier for your gaming group to dive in and start adventuring right away.

Illustration by Jose Parodi

Download the Quick Reference Sheet (919 kb zip/PDF)

James L. Sutter
Creative Director

And So It Begins

Thursday, August 17, 2017

It's about time we wrap-up our previews for the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Gen Con 2017 releases. Moving away from the quest pack and special we previewed in our last blog post, today we're going to talk about scenarios #1-01, 1-02, and 1-03!

I've previously gushed about Eleanor Ferron's work on Starfinder Society #1-01: The Commencement in some of our faction blogs. This scenario follows in the footsteps of many Pathfinder Society "evergreen" scenarios, like The Confirmation and the venerable First Steps (wow, now I feel old). Like those well-known introductory Pathfinder scenarios, The Commencement is a repeatable scenario for characters in Tier 1-2 where the PCs partake in some missions for four of the Society's primary factions—sorry Second Seekers, but you get a whole season metaplot dedicated to your missions! The Organized Play team agreed that The Commencement would be an introduction to the Starfinder Society and our initial factions, so we knew we wanted someone who could really take the skeletal outlines of our faction leaders and run with them. If you've been reading the faction blogs, you can get a sense of these faction leaders. When you play The Commencement, you'll see exactly how superb a job that Eleanor Ferron has done in bringing each of these major NPCs to life.

Illustrations by Tawny Fritz and Tom Ventre

One scenario we haven't had a good chance to spotlight, at least until now, is Starfinder Society #1-02: Fugitive on the Red Planet. Let me be blunt: this adventure takes place on Akiton and is our first attempt at telling a "space western". Jim Groves, a longtime friend and longstanding Adventure Path and organized play freelance author, took up the challenge of writing this scenario. I knew Jim had really nailed the theme when I found myself humming a tune during my development pass—a tune about "a hero from some place" and "a man they call something". Beyond these obvious homages to western stories, there are some strong connections to the greater Starfinder setting. This is our first view of Starfinder's rendition of Akiton, as well as the introduction of some key Starfinder Society issues brought forth by the disastrous Scoured Stars incident. My favorite aspect of Fugitive on the Red Planet is the introduction of a particular shirren NPC. I have noticed a lot of fans referring to Keskodai as "bug dad" in conversations; well, this new NPC quickly became known as "business bug" during my development pass.

Starfinder Society #1-03: Yesteryear's Truth is our final Gen Con 2017 Starfinder Society release. I have a strange professional relationship with the author of this adventure, the incredibly talented Jason Keeley. It seems that over the past year, Jason and I have been leapfrogging on developing each other's work. Since Jason had just recently finished developing some of my text from the Starfinder Core Rulebook, I figured I needed to return the favor and offer him one of our launch scenarios so I could get back in the development seat. The result is a scenario that I think a lot of people are going to be talking about for quite some time. In Yesteryear's Truth, the PCs set foot on a previously unexplored world wracked by a nuclear war. This scenario has it all: starship combat, exploration, social encounters with alien species, and even some archaeological discoveries with some hefty moral quandaries. On top of all those things, this is our first scenario with a special faction opportunity (denoted by the Faction tag on the adventure's credits page). The Wayfinders, being a faction about exploration and peaceful first contact, understandably have some vested interest in the PCs' success!

That's it for Gen Con previews! I'm now in Indianapolis and getting ready for "the best four days in gaming." If you spot me at the convention—likely in the Sagamore Ballroom—please feel free to say hi! Otherwise, we'll be back soon to talk about the Starfinder Society its base of operations, the Lorespire Complex.

John's Note: Need more playable Starfinder Society content? We've also finished sanctioning the first volume of Starfinder #1: Incident on Absalom Station! Take a look at its product page for a link to download the sanctioning document. We (okay, admittedly it's more Thursty) will be sanctioning subsequent volumes closer to their respective release dates.

Thurston Hillman
Starfinder Society Developer

Fortune Favors the Bold

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Gen Con 50 is just about to start, and the convention's 50th anniversary promises to be bigger than ever. Here on the organized play team, we've been pulling out all the stops.

John and Thurston talked last week about our big specials and quests for Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society, so if you haven't had a chance to check that out, take a look! I'm here to talk about this year's other brand-new Pathfinder Society RPG offerings to kick of the Year of Faction's Favor, starting with our August scenario lineup.

First up, by Katherine Cross, we have the Tier 1-5 adventure #9-01: The Cost of Enlightenment. Katherine has a knack for painting vivid settings and memorable characters to draw your characters right in to an idyllic scene in a cosmopolitan city in Qadira. Of course, the Pathfinder Society wouldn't just send its agents to relax and enjoy a festival. Members of a formerly peaceful cult have become criers of great discovery that has left them preaching nihilism and ruin. If the PCs can earn the favor of some influential locals in the bustling trade hub, they can journey to the source of the revelation, face those who curse the appearance of outsiders in a sacred space, and discover their own perspectives on a complicated truth.

Illustrations by Josef Kucera

Our next new scenario, #9-02: A Case of Missing Persons, by Alex Greenshields, begins on the threshold of an international incident. Masked mercenaries have abducted two members of Andoran's top government body, the People's Council, and taken them to the revolutionary and bloody nation of Galt. Worse, these assailants are affiliated with Galt's force of secret police and executioners. When magical means to locate these prisoners fail, it falls to a group of enterprising Pathfinder agents to uncover a dark conspiracy, rescue a powerful Pathfinder Society ally, and reveal the mastermind's true identity. Can your Tier 3-7 PCs get to the bottom of this situation before the trail goes cold? My favorite part of this scenario is probably the creative encounter that Alex put together for when the PCs set off to rescue the Society ally, but I'll leave the details for you to experience for yourselves.

Last but certainly not least, we have the Tier 5-9 scenario #9-03: On The Border of War, by Crystal Malarsky. In Brevoy, the specter of civil war always lurks on the horizon, as scheming noble factions jostle for power. Two of these factions both have strong claims for the copper mining town of Zmeyka, and conflict seems almost inevitable. If war breaks out, an ancient keep on the outskirts of town that holds yet-undiscovered secrets of Brevoy's past could be lost forever. It falls to the PCs to quickly uncover the keep's secrets. They must also decide if they wish to throw the Pathfinder Society's weight behind one of the conflict's sides, stay out of the struggle entirely, or undertake the daunting task of attempting to negotiate for peace. Crystal did an excellent job presenting the participants in the rising conflict and the wealth of historical information that lurks in the ancient keep.

On top of these three scenarios, Paizo has teamed up with Games & Gears and Gen Con to produce a new module, Heroes for Highdelve, which will be premiering as a special event at Gen Con and available for sale at both the Games and Gears booth and the Paizo Booth at Gen Con. It will be available for download on paizo.com in the near future. This adventure, written by Paizo developer Amanda Hamon Kunz, charges 1st-level adventurers with the task of recovering a precious amulet and preventing mayhem from descending upon their home.

For those of you who have signed up to play in this event at Gen Con, we are pleased to announce that you can receive credit for one of your Pathfinder Society characters. You can now download the sanctioning document from the product page and soon the Additional Resources page.

If you're be attending Gen Con, I look forward to seeing you there!

Linda Zayas-Palmer
Developer

To Indy, And Beyond!

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Wait, it's already August again?! It's almost time for crowds of gamers to converge in Indianapolis for Gen Con 50 and Paizo officially releases our newest roleplaying game, Starfinder! If you're on your way to the show, we've gone ahead and collected a list of all things Pathfinder and Starfinder that you'll be able to check out over the weekend.

What's at the Paizo Booth?

First, you should definitely stop by our expansive booth in the Exhibitors Hall (#103), where we'll be featuring all of our new Starfinder and Pathfinder summer releases and a wide variety of other Paizo products to choose from.

Illustration by Victor Manuel Leza Moreno

If you're going to be purchasing a Starfinder Core Rulebook from the Paizo booth, you can also get a PDF copy added to your paizo.com for just $5! We'll also be handing out collectable pins, a new design each day, available on a first come, first serve basis. And, attendees who make a $50 or more purchase at the booth will receive a free Pathfinder Battles promotional figure (limit one per customer, while supplies last).

Looking for a fashion bonus? We'll have the brand new Starfinder Logo, Starfinder Space Goblin, Starfinder Society: Year of Scoured Stars, and Pathfinder Society: Year of Factions Favor t-shirts at the ready. Plus, we've teamed up with Scotty's Brewhouse bring Gen Con attendees a Starfinder themed pub menu and special Space Goblin t-shirt, exclusively at Scotty's over Gen Con weekend. You can get more information on their website.

Gimme the Books!

We're also providing Gen Con attendees another way to get their hands on Starfinder with a Grab-and-Go kiosk just outside of the Sagamore Ballroom. This card only kiosk is will be selling all the initial Starfinder launch products. There are no subscription pickups at the kiosk, and it will not be carrying our "merch" items (like lanyards or t-shirts).

Our Partners

A number of Paizo's partners are also in attendance! Ben Loomes of Syrinscape (booth #343) is proud to announce they'll be launching their Starfinder sounds at Gen Con, making Starfinder the first tabletop RPG to launch with a full audio companion on day one. Syrinscape will be giving away a free Docking Bay 94 SoundSet with Starfinder Core Rulebook purchases while supplies last. All around Gen Con, you'll be able to hear their epic sounds and music, including at the Friday night special in the Sagamore Ballroom, the Music & Ambiance in Gaming panel on Sunday. Plus, if you top by the booth on Sunday, you (and your voice) can get a chance to become immortalized as Lovecraft's insanity-inducing Shoggoth.

You'll also get a first look at Ninja Division's line of Starfinder miniatures in both the Paizo and Ninja Division booth (#2827). The first wave of miniatures are planned to land this fall. We plan to show off some previews over the weekend, so stay tuned!

And, we can't overlook that this year is a big year for Gen Con! To celebrate the 50th anniversary, we teamed up with Games & Gears and Gen Con to bring you Heroes for High Delve by Paizo author, Amanda Hamon Kunz. You can pick up your copy of Heroes for High Delve from Games & Gears at booth #2402, and the companion Flip-Mat, Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Cavernous Lair from the Paizo booth.

Be sure to also check out offerings our friends from Black Book Editions, Q-Workshop, Ulisses Spiele (including a peek at the Aventuria Card Game), and WizKids! There's a lot to see over these four days, so don't miss out!

Organized Play

Y'all are ready to play some games right? Head up to the Sagamore Ballroom where we'll be hosting the weekend's launch of new Pathfinder Society Roleplaying and Adventure Card Guild seasons and of the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild. Get the full schedule of Organized Play events on Gen Con's website.

Many updates for Organized Play have also been trickling their way onto paizo.com. This is a big and exciting time for our world-wide campaigns, and we appreciate your patience and incredibly valuable feedback as we expand these programs.

Wait, There's More?!

You bet! Paizo is also hosting an array of panels and seminars over the weekend in room #212 (that's next to the Sagamore Ballroom). These include topics covering both Pathfinder and Starfinder, and include all sorts of great information about the universe of both games.

Additionally, we'd like to take a moment to recognize the Gen Con Industry Insiders of the Paizo staff: Developer Crystal Frasier and Editor Lyz Liddell! Congratulations, you two! Be sure to keep a look out for their events on the schedule.

Not Going to Gen Con?

Follow along on Paizo's Facebook and Twitter! You can also track the tags #starfinderrpg, #pathfinderrpg, and #gencon50.

UPDATE, August 17: The Grab-and-Go Kiosk has sold out of its stock of Starfinder product and has packed up for the weekend. Additionally, we have sold out of our convention stock of the Starfinder Core Rulebook. If you are a Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber, and opted-in for Gen Con pickup, we do have your copy reserved at the booth.

Chris Lambertz
Community & Digital Content Director

Guides, Characters, and Conventions!

Monday, August 14, 2017

Well, I'm at Gen Con in the middle of the Sagamore Ballroom. Spent the morning sorting banners and getting them ready for hanging. This afternoon, the team put the final touches on Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Guides. So without further ado, the Guides!

Season 9 of the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Guide doesn't see the upheaval of last year's changes. Instead, we reviewed forum threads to find questions and clarifications. As a result, this is a buff and polish job. The biggest changes are in formatting. Our graphic designer, Emily, changed up some layout and made a stunning product. I really like the coloring and design she put together for Season 9 and am interested to hear your thoughts.

Season 1 of the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Guide borrows heavily from the Pathfinder Guide. Which makes sense, since many of the items included in the guide are organized play pieces. Much like Starfinder, you'll find many similarities. But where things are different, they are different. Some of this appeared in preview blogs over the past few months, like boon slots and infamy. We've also included the two Starfinder Society base class ships, the Pegasus and the Drake. An expanded Faction chapter outlines faction boons for each of our five factions. So while you could skim over the guide and get the bare bones, I encourage you to delve deep and enjoy the new campaign.

Both Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Quest: Into the Unknown and Starfinder Society Scenario #1-00: Claim to Salvation utilize pre-generated iconic characters. It is our pleasure to reveal these today. Starfinder Designer Owen K. C. Stevens took point on turning our iconic characters—Altronus, Iseph, Keskadai, Navasi, Obazaya, Quinn, and Raia—into playable characters. As with the Pathfinder pregenerated iconic characters, they're now available for download as a Community Use Package.

My closing bit of information is about a change in our convention attendance schedule. After some deliberation, we decided to forgo our attendance at PAX West. Instead, this November, several staffers are attending PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Of all the PAX events, Unplugged is most aligned with our products and goals and as such, we wish to focus our efforts there.

But Seattleites' should not despair. There are still a number of local conventions with Paizo organized play activities: Dragonflight in August, Geek Girl Con in September, OrcaCon in January, and Norwescon in March. In addition, after Gen Con ends, we will take a look at the schedule of organized play activities at Emerald City Comic Con next March and get more information out to potential show attendees. Of course, you can always come to PaizoCon 2018, which is scheduled for May 25-28th in Seatac, Washington!

On Wednesday, the team will continue previewing our Gen Con releases. Until then, I bid you happy reading!

Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager

Here There Be Aliens

Monday, August 14, 2017

Amid our preparations for Gen Con, we here at the Paizo offices are strapping ourselves in for the launch of the Starfinder Core Rulebook and all of its related material (in less than a week!), including the first volume of the Dead Suns Adventure Path, Incident at Absalom Station. You've already seen a preview of the adventure, but I'm here to talk about the exciting new aliens and other threats that appear in the back of the book!

Much like how Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes present new monsters, every volume of the Starfinder Adventure Path will come chock full of new creatures in a section we are calling the Alien Archives. Many of these aliens will be found within the accompanying adventure, and some will present rules for playing them as characters, but all of them will help to flesh out the wider Starfinder universe. For the first volume, we presented ourselves with a unique challenge: we asked artist Allison Theus to draw two new aliens of her own design, and we would then write statistics and words to match! Feast your eyes on what she provided to us.

Pretty cool, right? Here's where I came in. Starfinder creative lead Robert G. McCreary asked if I wanted to be the one to write up these new aliens. Of course, I jumped at the chance to contribute to the first ever Starfinder Adventure Path volume. And since I had created adversaries for the playtest and the Free RPG Day product Starfinder First Contact, I was already familiar with the system we were using to build NPCs.

Let me walk you through some of my thought processes as I got my first glimpses of the art, starting with the rauzhant—that's the purplish-blue flying creature. We didn't yet have plans to introduce any new types of dragons into the game, and this beast has some wyvern-like qualities, so I started with the dragon creature type. The next thing that drew my attention was its face… or lack thereof. I figured it would have some form of blindsight (perhaps even being completely blind without it), and it really had to be able to do something with all those extra teeth and fangs, as well as those little hook-shaped claws. I decided it would have the ability to clutch on to its prey after succeeding at a bite attack and then rake with those claws in subsequent rounds. In the process, a rauzhant folds up its wings so that it and its victim begin plummeting through the atmosphere of Liavara, the gas giant the creature calls home. Once its prey is dead, it resumes flight while feasting on the corpse. A Large creature, the rauzhant is CR 6.

Next, let's look at the vracinea—that sort of plant-spider hybrid. With its wood- and grass-covered exterior making for good camouflage in jungle environments (especially those of Castrovel), this plant creature seemed like it could be an ambush predator of some kind, using its bright-purple blossoms as a lure. I followed this train of thought for a bit, making the lure a supernatural effect, turning the creature into a kind of aboveground plant-based anglerfish. I decided that, as a plant, the vracinea isn't very fast, so I gave it a paralyzing scent that freezes its prey in place, giving the creature enough time to approach and begin chomping with its many sharp-toothed maws. Also a Large creature, a vracinea is CR 4.

Look for more exciting new aliens in the upcoming Dead Suns Adventure Path volumes and the Starfinder Alien Archive, all coming soon!

Jason Keeley
Developer

Free Starfinder Character Sheets Download!

Friday, August 11, 2017

Maybe this comes as no surprise, seeing as we already offer a free PDF download of the Pathfinder character sheets, but you can now download the Starfinder character sheet and Starship sheet for free as well!

Illustration by Alexandur Alexandrov

While Starfinder doesn't officially hit shelves until the 17th, we wanted to make sure to get these sheets up early, while those of you headed off to Gen Con still have time to print some out and stash them in your carry-on. (Though of course you can also play at the show by grabbing a pregen from Starfinder Society in the Sagamore Ballroom, or picking up a copy of the Starfinder Player Character Folio.) For everyone else, we can't wait to get back from the show, hop on the forums, and hear what you think of the game!

Download Starfinder Character Sheet — 1.2MB zip/PDF

Download Starfinder Ship Sheet — 655kb zip/PDF

James L. Sutter
Creative Director

The Maze Doesn't Sleep

Friday, August 11, 2017

Hello, and welcome to this week's Pathfinder Battles: Maze of Death preview! The march to Gen Con continues, but we've taken a break from preparations to show off six new sculpts from November's Pathfinder Battles set. This week we begin with three undead creatures that are sure to give your players (and their characters) waking nightmares. To start, we have the Juju Zombie, medium uncommon, based off of artwork from the Strange Aeons Adventure Path.

The Witchfire is far and away one of my favorite undead creatures. The ladies will bring the pain, and look awesome doing it. The Witchfire is also a common medium figure in this set, and is based off of artwork from the Mummy's Mask Adventure Path.

Easily one of the creepiest undead we have published stats for, the Penanggalen is an uncommon medium figure in Maze of Death. Based on artwork from the Bestiary 3 Pawn Box, this gruesome creature will have a gloss on all the entrails, to give it that grossly fresh look which is all the rage these days.

DRAGONS! Pathfinder Battles: Maze of Death boasts these three new dragon figures to pit against your players. First, we have the Medium Copper Dragon (rare medium) and the Large Blue Dragon (large rare) with awesome scale and wing textures that I love.

And finally, we have the Large Nightmare Dragon, a large rare, which first appears in the Strange Aeons Adventure Path. The eyes on the same side of the head, and the neck frills are what do it for me with this miniature.

Sleep tight, and we will see you next week!

Michael Kenway
Director of Licensing

Pathfinding to Starfinding

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Since the announcement of the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild, us members of the Organized Play team have been getting a lot of questions about the differences between Starfinder Society and Pathfinder Society. So, we agreed that it was probably a good idea to do a blog on some of the major changes. And awaaaaaaaay, we go!

Starship Combat

Let's start with something big. Spoiler Alert: Starfinder has starships. In fact, starship combat is a major part of the Starfinder Core Rulebook, and it's something that the Organized Play team was keen on incorporating into Starfinder Society play. We're aiming to keep starship combat a fairly relevant part of the campaign and look to include such encounters at about a "one out of every four scenarios" ratio. In fact, three of our five Gen Con release events include starship combat.

While Starfinder has robust rules for creating and customizing starships, those rules don't necessarily translate well into an organized play environment. It can sometimes take a lot of time to introduce yourself and your character, let alone spending time customizing a completely new starship for every scenario you play! To alleviate some of this stress, the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild employs a duo of robust starship frames that players can select during the course of play: the Drake and the Pegasus. In a scenario involving starship combat, the PCs select one of these two starship frames at the same time they would slot their boons. Once selected, the PCs can further modify the Drake and Pegasus with additional modifications via the starship boon slot.

The Pegasus is a ship in line with Starfinder ideals, as it includes expansion bays that house a science lab and a tech workshop for out-of-combat assistance. It's also a faster ship, capable of quick speeds and easy turning during starship combat. The Drake is a different breed of starship, capable of filling the stars with missiles. We wanted to give players two distinct options: a lighter faster ship with some added expansions, and another ship that was all about taking a beating and retorting with overwhelming firepower. Given that missiles have a limited firing capability, you might want to consider taking a look at the Abundant Ammunition boon we previewed in an earlier blog.

The Organized Play team is excited to see how starship combat turns out in the campaign. John and I have both run playtest games to test out the system, and it really proved to be quick to pick up for our players, but also had a lot of intricacies for players to really dig into. And for those of you who are on the hunt for super unique boons... suffice it to say, I don't think the Drake and Pegasus will be only the available starships in the campaign for very long.

Alignment & Infamy

Alright, let's just get it out of the way right away—you can't play an evil character in the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild.

The Organized Play team knows that many players want to dance around the darker ends of the alignment spectrum, but we also know that it can be a real detriment to the enjoyment of other players at the table. One thing Starfinder Society let us experiment with is the idea of letting PCs make ignoble decisions. To that end, the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild tracks alignment infractions into a new system that we refer to as Infamy.

A PC can have anywhere from 0 to 3 Infamy. A character starts with 0 Infamy, but that score rises it if the PC partakes in any evil actions. Wanton acts of destruction, murder, and even unsanctioned thievery are all potential sources of Infamy. Since Starfinder lacks an atonement spell, Infamy acts as a means of tracking a character's progression towards evil. Each point takes the PC a step closer to becoming irredeemable and ineligible for future missions within the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild. Luckily, Infamy is not permanent, and can be bought off using Fame. The cost for such expenditures is fairly steep (about two scenarios worth of Fame), but some faction boons help assuage the cost. If a PC (NOT player) has 3 Infamy at the end of a scenario, she's barred from participating in the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild unless she spends Fame to reduce her Infamy score at the end of the session. If that character can't afford to pay off the Infamy, then that character is permanently retired from play.

Some of you folks out there might be thinking of ways to maximize this system, and you might be thinking "So I can accrue Infamy up to 2 and then just buy off whenever I decide to be a jerk after that?" While this is certainly an option, there is one last part of Infamy that's going to keep the wise PC away from accruing it. Infamy directly impacts PC purchasing power; the more Infamy a PC has, the lower her effective level is for the purpose of acquiring gear. A PC touting 2 Infamy will find that she can only purchase equipment listed on a Chronicle sheet at a reasonable level, while ordinarily available gear suddenly becomes nearly impossible to find!

Like all of our new systems, the Organized Play team is excited to see Infamy in action. Personally, I've been enjoying seeding in some Infamy situations into scenarios, and I think it's entirely possible that we'll end up with NPCs and boons that change based on how much Infamy a PC has collected.

Lightning Round!

Finally, I wanted to give some quick overviews of other pertinent changes between the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild and the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild.

Scenario Tags: Each scenario now has a tag, located on the table of contents page, that details some key rules associated with the scenario. This is where you'll be able to tell if a scenario includes starship combat, is repeatable, if it has a faction mission, and several other options!

Registering Characters: The Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild will use the same player numbers as Pathfinder. The only difference is that your character number will start with in the 700's, such as -701, -702, et cetera.

Adventure Path Play: Since Starfinder Adventure Paths are shorter than their Pathfinder counterparts, the entirety of the Starfinder Adventure Path adventures are sanctioned for Organized Play. Our first sanctioned adventure is Starfinder Adventure Path #1: Incident at Absalom Station, which should be ready in time for Gen Con!

Purchasing: As hinted at above, purchasing works a bit different in Starfinder. Since most equipment is based on item level, PCs will have access to equipment based on their relative level compared to the item. Items found on Chronicle sheets will be accessible sooner than items from the Starfinder Core Rulebook or alternate sources.

That's it for our first Gen Con release previews. We'll be posting a few more in the coming days, so stay tuned!

Thurston Hillman
Starfinder Society Developer

That's No Boon...

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Gen Con's only about a week away—I'm sure my colleagues' fainting away is out of sheer excitement—and Paizo's organized play team is bringing a huge amount of new content to debut. It's too much to share all in one blog, so we're saving our six new scenarios (three Pathfinder Society and three Starfinder Society) for next week and starting off with our special events.

From Thurston:

In our last Starfinder Society blog, you may have already heard a bit about Starfinder Society #01-00: Claim to Salvation, written by organized play veteran freelance author Larry Wilhelm. While this scenario acts as background to the eventual formation of the Acquisitives faction, it also serves to introduce the universe of Starfinder to a wide audience. Players take on the roles of our iconic Starfinder characters in their 4th-level iterations, showcasing some of the abilities and skills each class gets after a few levels of play. The special starts in the Pact Worlds and quickly moves into the unexplored reaches of space, getting into starship action, and eventually ending up on the false moon of Salvation's End. As you can see by the impressive artwork, Salvation's End is a pretty big location, and the PCs get their first look at it in our opening Starfinder Society special. One thing that really excites me, both as a developer and writer, are locations that can service multiple visits. Sufficed to say, Salvation's End is something we expect to regularly see in the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild campaign. We hope it develops into something like the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild's own Gloomspires or Absalom Siege Castles. The first tables of Claim to Salvation open on Thursday evening, and I'm excited to see the result of Larry's stellar (bad pun) work.

Before Claim to Salvation debuts, players have an opportunity to learn the Starfinder rules with Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Quest: Into the Unknown, by an author who probably doesn't need any introduction: Ron Lundeen. Ron's credits include too many adventure path installments to list and one of my favorite Pathfinder Society scenarios, Pathfinder Society Scenario #3-21: The Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment. After working with Ron on several projects, I knew I wanted him to tackle this very important introduction to Starfinder. I can honestly say that he knocked this quest pack out of the park—maybe into orbit... ok not that... oh, he knocked it to the Drift! Into the Unknown takes the PCs from Absalom Station out to the depths of space, but does so in a way that really showcases what it means to be a Starfinder Society field agent. This quest pack provides a cohesive narrative spaced over the course of five distinct quests, including two introductory starship combat encounters. I'm eager to see GMs across the world get a chance to run these quests and introduce players to the science fantasy setting of Starfinder!

From John:

Multi-table interactive specials are something of a tradition at Gen Con, and this year's only difference is one of scope: we have two such specials. If you attended this year's PaizoCon, Origins, PaizoCon UK, or UK Games Expo, you've no doubt experienced Pathfinder Society Special #8-99: The Solstice Scar Version A by the talented Andrew Hoskins. We'll be running this excellent tale of museum curating gone tragically wrong on Saturday night. If you haven't heard, we'll be updating The Solstice Scar about twice a year to cycle in new content and advance the storyline. Gen Con 2017 marks not only the point at which you can start scheduling this for public events, but also celebrates the occasion by our running more than 180 tables of the adventure simultaneously.

We're also debuting Pathfinder Society Special #9-00: Assault on Absalom by Mikko Kallio. For millennia, warlords of all stripes have dreamed of conquering the City at the Center of the World. These sieges are central to Absalom's history and remain a prominent archaeological scar on its surrounding lands. For the first time in decades, someone has dared to besiege the city, and unless the Society's ready to aid Absalom's defense, this familiar conqueror might succeed. Not only has Mikko done an excellent job of presenting an exciting adventure and incorporating Absalom's flavor, but we've also worked with Keith Richmond from Lone Shark to provide an Adventure Card Guild component. Join us on Friday night for the tremendous event! Absalom may never be the same, and we may be hearing the repercussions of this epic battle for months to come.

It's gonna to be big—like, "towering battle golem with...is that a cannon arm?" big.

And of course, you'll be able to find all of us either in the Sagamore Ballroom or at booth 103 in the exhibitor hall. Come by and say hello. Also be sure to check back here next week, when Linda tells us about the upcoming Pathfinder Society scenarios.

John Compton and Thurston Hillman
Organized Play Lead Developer and Starfinder Society Developer

Pathfinder Races in Starfinder

Friday, August 4, 2017

With less than two weeks to go until the launch of Starfinder, the excitement around here has reached a fever pitch! In the past few months, we've shown off all the new races and classes, introduced you to iconic characters and new rules systems, and more. Yet as excited as we are for all the new stuff, we're just as excited to show you some very familiar things...

While Starfinder has its own "core races"—humans, lashuntas, kasathas, androids, vesk, ysoki, and shirrens—that doesn't mean we've forgotten about Pathfinder's core races. After all, what would Golarion's solar system be without elves and dwarves, or gnomes and halfings? That's why the Starfinder Core Rulebook has the Pathfinder Legacy chapter, in which it presents—among other useful information—complete racial stats for all of Pathfinder's core races, as well as updated details describing the races and how they fit into the vast ecosystem of the Pact Worlds. So while we aren't going to spoil the surprise and list all of their racial abilities or cultural details, here's a taste of what Pathfinder's core races look like in Starfinder!

Illustration by Hugh Pindur

Dwarves

+2 Con, +2 Wis, -2 Cha
Hit Points: 6

Dwarves in Starfinder still feel a keen connection to lost Golarion. They're most commonly found on Absalom Station or cruising through the void on their city-sized Star Citadel ships. Many of them are heavily involved in asteroid mining in the Diaspora, while others explore far from the Pact Worlds in what they believe is a second stage of the legendary Quest for Sky that led them to Golarion's surface. Of course, these traditional spiritual beliefs have been dealt something of a blow by the fact that Torag went missing during the Gap...

Elves

+2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Con
Hit Points: 4

Elves in Starfinder were hit hardest of all the Pathfinder legacy races by the Gap, as they proved slower to adapt and recover than shorter-lived races. After all, many modern elves were already alive when the Gap ended, and thus still have large holes in their memories where those early centuries have been burned away. What's more, their leaders have long since concluded that their race was betrayed during that mysterious period—they just don't know by whom. All of this has led many elves to retreat to Sovyrian on Castrovel, or restrict themselves to all-elven settlements or crews, their government diplomats even going so far as to wear masks when forced to interact with other races. Pushing back hard against this isolationism is the steadily growing cohort of elves called Forlorn, who choose to live among other races. Yet regardless of cultural group, whether at home or abroad, many elves gravitate toward magic, seeing in its practice a connection to their ancestors.

Gnomes

+2 Con, -2 Str, +2 Cha (feychild) or +2 Int (bleachling)
Hit Points: 4

In the age of Starfinder, gnomes have split into two distinct groups. Thos called the feychildren remain much the same as they were in Pathfinder: brightly colored, whimsical, otherworldly, and occasionally bizarre in the pursuit of their passions. Bleachlings, on the other hand, are a subrace of gnomes who split away from others when—through freak mutation or deliberate genetic editing—they somehow survived the Bleaching that still plagues feychildren. As a result of this racial split, its details shrouded by the Gap, bleachlings are more even-tempered than their mischievous cousins, highly intellectual and able to sate their search for novelty with purely intellectual pursuits. While researchers have yet to isolate exactly what protects bleachlings from their kindred's dangerous racial disease, this immunity breeds true, and so their minority is slowly growing in gnome communities.

Illustration by Hugh Pindur

Half-Elves

+2 to any one ability score
Hit Points: 4

Half-elves place in the setting has changed little over the millennia. Thanks to Sovyrian's Blood Right policy, they're welcome to live among their full-blooded kin, and account for much of that nation's trade with other races, yet plenty of half-elves feel stifled by their traditionalist relations. Many can be found operating as traders or homesteaders across the galaxy, with recent half-elven settlements including new townships springing up just outside of Verces's terminator region, or on the tropical colony world of Shanavan.

Half-Orcs

+2 to any one ability score
Hit Points: 6

While full-blood orcs are rare in the Pact Worlds, found primarily on drow-controlled Apostae, half-orcs are significantly more common, nearly always the children of other half-orcs. Sadly, not even the Gap could completely stamp out traditional prejudice against their people, and other races still often regard half-orcs as brutes, best suited to criminal or mercenary work. How the half-orcs respond to this varies. Some "steelskins" reject conventional society and seek to set themselves even farther apart from the mainstream with extensive cybernetics or other body modifications. Others decide to push beyond the established boundaries of civilization and found new colonies. While some of these colonists are content to settle permanently, others are professional pioneers, forming companies that land on new worlds as first-wave colonists, enduring the most dangerous and difficult period of a colony's founding, then selling off their land rights to "softer" colonists and starting fresh on a new world. In this fashion, some of the roughest and toughest half-orcs are also some of the wealthiest individuals in the Pact Worlds, acting as venture capitalists and patrons investing in other half-orc adventurers.

Halflings

+2 Dex, +2 Cha, -2 Str
Hit Points: 2

Like gnomes, halflings have gotten faster in Starfinder—no more speed penalty just for being short! Add in their natural luck, keen senses, and stealth, and they make superb operatives, though many are also charming envoys or pilots in their wandering caravan fleets. While the public image of halflings as athletes and celebrity daredevils may not perfectly describe the average homebody halfling, their cheerful, even tempers in the face of danger can turn even a workaday halfling into a hero when circumstances demand it. Of all the common races, halflings are perhaps the least likely to use obvious cybernetic or biotech augmentations, generally feeling that halfling physiology is pretty much perfect as it is.

James L. Sutter
Creative Director

Cheers, Contests, and Conventions

Friday, August 4, 2017

As Season 8 of the Pathfinder Society winds down and we prepare to launch three new seasons of organized play at Gen Con 50, it's time to say thank you to some of the folks who make our games and programs fantastic. Whether you are a dedicated GM, running games in your community every week, or a convention organizer, who puts together the large shows, your efforts are seen and appreciated. We cannot have a community our size (84,000 players and growing) without having the volunteers to support it. To all of you, our team sends kudos and thanks.

5 Star GMs

For some of our GMs, they hit the milestone of running 150 games, with 10 of them being specials. These 150 games must be include at least 50 unique scenarios, so they cannot just run the same thing over and over. They spend countless hours in preparation and deliver a gaming to their needs. I wish to recognize the following individuals for achieving the top goal in the GM recognition program.

Joseph Blomquist
Janice Piette
Daniel Pink
Hjal Nelson
Carol Tierney
Tom Mannering
Zrinka Znidarcic

Campaign Service Coins

Some of our volunteers go above and beyond the expectations of the role they fill. These volunteers usually organize some portion of organized play. A common belief is that recipients must be part of the Venture-Officer team. This is not the case, though many of those achieving the campaign coin recognition do belong to the venture corps. If you know an individual deserving of acknowledgement for their efforts in promoting organized play in your area, please email me and tell me why.

Over the past few months, I've had the opportunity to award campaign coins to the following individuals. I've listed their new Organized Play number as well as the convention they received their recognition at. There are two redacted names on the list. We announced them at PaizoCon and their Regional Venture-Coordinator will award the coins to them in person. I don't want to spoil the surprise their receipt will bring, so I'm holding off on announcing the names until the recipient receives the coin.

Alison Ooms—777—Who's Yer Con
Chad Newman—778—Origins
[Reacted]—779—PaizoCon UK
[Redacted]—780—PaizoCon UK
Nils Janson—781—PaizoCon UK
Ian Hawthorne—782—PaizoCon UK

Three cheers for these hardworking individuals. Hip, hip, huzzah!!!

Conventions

Though the summer convention season reaches the peak at Gen Con, that doesn't mean the end of conventions to attend. Starting with GardenCon and MegaMoose this weekend, we never truly slow down. Those conventions after August 17th may contain a Starfinder component as well as Pathfinder Society RPG and ACG, as we launch the newest organized play campaign.

GardenCon 2017	Geneva, Switzerland	8/3/17
MegaMooseCon 2017	Richburg, SC	8/4/17
2D Con 2017	Bloomington, MN	8/11/17
Pre-GenCon Scotties	Indianapolis, IN	8/16/17
Gen Con 50	Indianapolis, IN	8/17/17
Convocation 2017	Winnipeg, MB, Canada	8/25/17
Coulee Con 2017	La Crosse, WI	8/25/17
Dragonflight 38 (2017)	Bellevue, WA	8/25/17
Play-by-Post Gameday VI	Online Region	8/25/17
Québec PFS Mini-Con 2017	Québec City,Québec, Canada	8/25/17
Shadowcon UK 2017	London, UK	8/26/17
PacifiCon 2017	Santa Clara, CA	9/1/17
SacAnime Summer 2017	Sacramento, CA	9/1/17
Granite State Comic Con 2017	Manchester, NH	9/16/17
Traveling Pathfinder's Convocation	Houston, TX	9/9/17
SydCon 2017	Sydney, NSW, Australia	9/30/17
Gateway to Golarion II (2017)	Kutztown, PA	9/1/17
San Diego Pathfinder Miramar MCAS Charity Play	San Diego, CA	9/9/17
Gateway 2017	Los Angeles, CA	9/1/17
DragonCon 2017	Atlanta, GA	9/1/17
Tracon 2017	Tampere, Finland	9/7/17

For those of you wanting to attend Gen Con, we STILL HAVE SPACE for all Tiers of GMs, including those that provide hotel space. To join us, check out the volunteer call blog and complete the questionnaire linked at the bottom.

Contests

Currently, the team requested community participation in the "Leaders in Liberty" contest. Deadline for submissions is August 30, 2017. For more information, check out the contest criteria blog.

When the "Leader's in Liberty" contest closes, we are opening one for the Best Terrain. We'll spill the details in next week's blog, but we wanted to give those preparing for their conventions as much time as possible to make terrain and get photos. Basic requirement is a piece of 3D terrain made in the last 6 months. So pull out the foam, glue, and flocking and let's see some fabulous creations!

The team remains hard at work pulling the edges together for Gen Con. For those of you attending, stop by and say hi!

Until next week—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager

Your Guide to Adventure!

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Getting ready for an expedition to the lost continent of Azlant to lend a hand at founding a colony across the ocean, you've packed your bags, said goodbye to friends and loved ones, and forwarded your mail, but what else do you need? Right! A map would be handy. In this case, you need to pick up the Ruins of Azlant Player's Guide—your map to creating an exciting and engaging character!

As the first volume of the Ruins of Azlant Adventure Path starts hitting store shelves and subscriber mailboxes, I know many of you are eager to get started with this Adventure Path. Pick up this guide to learn more about the upcoming campaign and get some suggestions for making characters that fit the themes of this Adventure Path and are able to handle its challenges. This free download get you ready for adventure on a remote island and introduces you to some of the other settlers who also joined an expedition to a wild and untamed land.

Don't wait! Download the Ruins of Azlant Player's Guide now!

Adam Daigle
Managing Developer

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Strategy #12—Complementary Powers

Thursday, August 3, 2017

This is the twelfth installment of our strategy blog written by game historian Shannon Appelcline. You can read all the installments here.

Building a party of adventurers for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game is about more than just selecting your warriors, your healers, and your disablers. You also have to consider the characters' most notable aspects—their unique powers—and how those powers interact.

Choose powers that work together

Powers work best when they allow characters to support each other. There are many ways to do this. They can be directly additive, or they can be supportive in several different ways. Each of these methodologies requires some discussion of its own.

Corollary #1: Don't assume that complementary powers must be used together. Even if you build your party so that certain powers help characters work together, they don't always have to be used that way. You'll usually want to put the best co-op characters, like Lem, with someone else, but you don't necessarily need to group together your other power combos until the going gets tough.

Choose powers that are additive

Some powers are directly additive, meaning they each provide bonuses to the same action. This makes them both powerful and easy to use. For example, Lem can give others bonuses when he has cards to recharge, and Lini can give herself bonuses when she has animals to reveal. This combination can make Lini able to succeed at almost any check because she'll start with three dice, and after a few power feats on their role cards, she may even have a +7 on top of that!

Lem + Lini = Lemmy? Insert joke about Lem's sideburns here.

Choose powers that support powers

Powers can also support other powers in less obvious ways. For example, Lem and Valeros can help characters at their locations, while Amiri can move characters around at the end of her turn. These powers aren't directly additive, but they're still complementary: When Lem and Amiri are at the same location, Lem can take his turn, then support Amiri during her turn. At the end of Amiri's turn, she can take Lem to another location where he can help out whoever's there.

Corollary #1: Turn order is important. The order in which players go can have an impact on how powers interact. For example, Amiri must go immediately after Lem and before other players for their particular combo to work optimally.

Choose powers that support weaknesses

Good power choice isn't just about creating power combos. You can also choose powers that benefit other characters in other ways. Best of all, powers can support other characters' weakness. For example, without spending resources, Lini's combat checks are typically limited to a couple of smaller dice, so building a party that also includes Harsk or Valeros can help to overcome that weakness.

As another example: many role cards offer improved abilities for acquiring certain types of cards. They can be used to help other characters who want those types of cards but aren't very good at acquiring them. For example, Sajan is great at using blessings efficiently, and in her Healer role, Kyra is great at acquiring them.

Count your blessings. If you don't have enough, ask Kyra.

Corollary #1: Also consider card gaps. When a character's cards list precludes them from having cards of a particular type, that can be a pretty grave weakness. So, support those too! For example, Ezren, Lem, Sajan, and Seoni don't tend to have much in the way of armor in hand. This makes them particularly vulnerable to powers that deal damage before you act, which can make them unable to fight. You can support that weakness by teaming them up with Valeros in his Guardian role, which lets him reduce damage to other characters.

Choose powers that support card usage

Another important aspect of characters is how they use cards. Are they likely to discard, recharge, bury, or banish? You should assess these patterns, and then give your party powers that support them.

Corollary #1: Link discarders with healers. Some characters discard a lot. For example, Harsk tends to discard his weapons and Seoni discards for fire blasts. A healing power like Kyra's or Seelah's can support this.

Corollary #2: Link buriers with acquirers. Amiri can be tricky to play because she buries cards to generate bonuses, reducing the size of her deck over time. Pair her with someone like Lini, who is good at all low-level acquisitions due to her animal companions, or characters who get better at acquiring cards when they adopt their roles; they can feed Amiri's burial customs.

Consider the ranges of powers

There's one last thing to consider when choosing powers. What range do they have? Do they work better if characters are together or apart?

Corollary #1: Pick a few characters who benefit from being alone. PACG generally rewards you for splitting up so that you can cover as many locations as possible. The fastest way to win is to close two locations and then sit on all the rest until you hit the villain. So, characters who benefit from being alone are quite valuable, whether that's Merisiel, who can fight better while alone; or ranged characters like Harsk and Lirianne, who can support others from afar.

Corollary #2: If you pick one character who works well with others, pick a second. Don't leave a helper on their own! Lem and Valeros are an example of a great combo: Valeros can help Lem fight and Lem can help Valeros do everything else.

Corollary #3: Don't overspecialize on either loner or group characters. You don't want too many characters who benefit from being at the same location, else you'll be discouraged from spreading out; and similarly, you don't want too many characters that are penalized when they're together, else you'll often have problems when facing the final villain, if you've closed most of the locations.

Corollary #4: Be especially thoughtful about ranges if you're playing with just two characters If you only have two characters, don't pick a pair where one player works well alone and one works well with others. Merisiel and Valeros would be a poor combo, as would Lem and Harsk.

Of course, character roles and complementary powers aren't the only thing to consider when putting together a party. There's a lot more, as the next article will discuss.

Shannon Appelcline
Game Historian

Faction Overview: Acquisitives

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Illustration by Josef Kucera

True to their history, Acquisitives are the most mercenary of the Starfinder Society factions. Their goals often involve promoting the Starfinder Society to the extent that it will increase the personal reputation of all members. They stockpile funds and resources, believing that by maintaining such a treasury, the faction can make itself indispensable to other factions within the Society. Indeed, many Starfinders pledge themselves, to varying degrees, to the Acquisitives faction for access to these assets. This influx of recruits is the direct byproduct of the Acquisitives' existing cache of resources, not to mention their preference of sending Starfinders on missions leading to personal glory and monetary enrichment.

All right. It is time to start dropping some major bombs in these blogs—oddly fitting, because at their core, the Acquisitives are mercenaries who have probably dropped a lot of bombs in their time.

When the Organized Play team started assembling our all-star faction team, we wanted to make sure that the factions catered to a variety of character builds. We wanted to avoid a situation where a player who made a "lawful good paladin" felt compelled to pick one faction over another because that faction was the only right choice. (Note: there are no lawful good paladins in Starfinder). The character themes present in Starfinder lined up perfectly with our intent, and many of our internal talks revolved around asking questions like, "Ok, so this faction is going to be something interesting to Ace Pilots and Priests?" It was an iterative process between all members of the team and helped us create factions where every character should have a place. Perhaps none of our factions better exemplify this design style than our final announced faction: the Acquisitives.

The Acquisitives faction is a direct result of mercenaries and other externally hired operatives recognizing the gains made from an alliance with the Starfinder Society. Several of these "hired hands" came to realize that there were plenty of credits and fame to be had from forming a more permanent contract with the Starfinder Society. So, rather than wait for their contracts to run out once the Society's latest recruitment drive concluded, the Acquisitives faction formed to give any outside contractor a fast track into the Starfinder Society. Basically, the Acquisitives are like a "union" (but NOT of the shadow variety) that promotes Starfinders, effectively creating intergalactic celebrities within the Society. Acquisitives characters are all about gaining personal fame and wealth, while working within the strictures of the Starfinder Society.

Players are going to get a chance to feel what the Acquisitives are about in Starfinder #1-00: Claim to Salvation, written by Pathfinder Society and Pathfinder Adventure Path veteran (as well as notorious knife-fighter—ask me sometime), Larry Wilhelm. This is because Claim to Salvation is a prequel to the events of the Year of Scoured Stars. In this adventure, the players take on the roles of the iconic Starfinder characters, employed as mercenaries by the Starfinder Society. Wait… why does the Starfinder Society need mercenaries? Oh, that's right! Something went terribly wrong in the Scoured Stars system. In order to keep the Starfinder Society together, First Seeker (Luwazi Elsebo) went to some radical lengths to keep things going until a new generation of Starfinders could finish training.

Illustration by Sebastian Rodriguez

Radaszam "The Dealmaker" (N male vesk operative) is the official Acquisitives liaison to the Starfinder Society. He spends equal time managing the Acquisitives as he does operating his own independent mercenary outfit, the Obsidian Spiders. Most of Radaszam's administration focuses on helping Acquisitives become celebrities, both within the Starfinder Society and without. He recognizes the importance of creating modern Starfinder icons for the public to recognize, and knows that such celebrities will only encourage further generations of Starfinders to step forward. Similarly, he recognizes the need for cutting any loss-leads, giving him a somewhat vicious edge when it comes to his administrative decisions. I'm really looking forward to exploring Radaszam, as well as the Obsidian Spiders, in some of our earliest scenarios following the Gen Con release!

Now it's time to talk about some boons (and if you're forgetting the boon types, be sure to look back at our blog about Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild's boon system). One boon type we've yet to highlight is the Starship boon, so how about we show one off?

Abundant Ammunition (Starship Boon)

Your faction provides you with ample starship ammo for important missions.

Prerequisites: Acquisitives: Tier 1

Cost: 1 Fame

Benefit: When this boon is slotted, select one starship weapon with the limited fire special property on the group's starship. The selected weapon increases the value of the limited fire value by half (rounded down). For example, a limited fire 5 weapon would become limited fire 7. This boon can be used to improve weapons gained as a result of other Starship boons.

Special: Multiple copies of this boon can be used on a starship, but each copy must affect a different weapon.

I understand that it's hard to recognize the significance of this boon without seeing the full starship rules. But from the playtests John and I have run, I think it's safe to say that any starship with missiles… well, that starship really likes having more missiles! Also, the Abundant Ammunition boon serves as an appealing low-cost boon for starship customization. Given how many starship boons can only be applied to a starship once, having this boon around is an excellent backup to ensure you can maximize the number of starship boons your ship can bring into battle!

We really wanted to showcase a Starship boon, just to give an example of what players can do to further modify their starship. But why stop there? So, for this final pre-Gen Con faction blog, how about I show off another boon?

Sponsorship (Social Boon)

The Acquisitives have connected you with an organization interested in using you to promote its brand and merchandise.

Prerequisites: Acquisitives: Tier 2

Cost: 2 Fame

Benefit: By slotting this boon, you gain an additional Promotional boon slot. This allows you to slot up to two Promotional boons as long as you meet all the prerequisites for those boons, such as possessing the appropriate product or having the necessary volunteer recognition. You cannot slot the same Promotional boon multiple times, nor can you slot two Promotional boons that offer the same effect (such as two boons that both provide rerolls).

Normal: You can normally only ever have one promotional boon slot.

Ok, so this boon is just fun. The Organized Play team got a good chuckle when we brainstormed several of the boons listed in the guide, but this one was one of our favorites. The immediate thought that comes to mind when a character takes this boon is that of a NASCAR race driver, bedecked in "flair" from corporate sponsors. Another example, closer to my interests, would be something like Captain Amazing from the movie Mystery Men (also bedecked with appropriate "flair"). I bet that some players out there are going to have a ton of fun with the themes behind this boon.

By taking this boon, a character can benefit from multiple Promotional boons by sacrificing his or her Social boon slot. This means that a player coming to the table with a Paizo T-shirt and a Starfinder Character Folio could benefit from both the Promotional boons associated with those items. We're planning on including several different Promotional boons for the launch, including service coins, pins, and even something for the convention crowd. Expect to see a bit more on this when the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Guide officially releases.

And that's a wrap on our factions' reveals, but not a wrap on Starfinder Society blogs. Stay tuned for next week, where we provide some more information on two of our exciting Gen Con releases, Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Quest: Into the Unknown and Starfinder Society Scenario #01-00: Claim to Salvation.

Thurston Hillman
Starfinder Society Developer

True Masters of Elemental Power

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Pathfinder Player Companion: Elemental Master's Handbook is just about to coalesce from the elements to land in your hands, so it's time to let you know what it's about! This book is a player-focused look at wielding elemental powers. Whether your PC studied elemental forces as a route to power, was born with an inherent connection to these primordial forces, or became cursed with an affiliation to one entity at the expense of vulnerability to another, this book is for you. Whether or not your GM plans to provide you with planar adventures, such by using the recent Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Planes of Power, you'll find this book to be invaluable!

Elemental Master's Handbook is broken up into several sections. First up are four long sections about air, earth, fire, and water. Each of these sections provides one or two new archetypes, such as the firebrand gunslinger archetype, who uses dragon pistols effectively but recklessly, or the storm caller summoner archetype, who can hurl lightning. These sections also present a variety of additional rules elements like new magic items, rogue talents, and bloodlines. All these rules are infused with elemental flavor: for example, desperation is a new spiritualist phantom focus to reflect a death by drowning or suffocation. Tragic? Yes. But also cool. Each elemental section concludes with a look at a few places on Golarion where your PC may have been steeped in elemental power, including a new feat for each. For example, the following new feat fits characters with a connection to the dwarven Sky Citadel of Kraggodan.

Kraggodan's Stance (Combat)

You have learned one of the secrets of Kraggodan's defenders and can lock your armor and shield into an impenetrable barrier.

Prerequisites: Con 13, proficiency with heavy armor and shields.
Benefit: As a move action when wearing heavy armor and using a heavy shield or tower shield, you increase the bonus to AC granted by your armor and your shield by 1 each until you move or are moved from your current square. You must be in contact with solid ground to gain this benefit. You can never increase an armor or shield bonus to AC by more than 1 each in this way.

"Good? Bad? I'm the kid with the stick."
Illustration by Graey Erb

The rest of Elemental Master's Handbook contains several shorter sections, each touching on a different facet of elemental mastery. There has been some public speculation about whether this book will have kineticist content—of course it does! In addition to rules items scattered throughout the book that kineticists will find invaluable, there's an entire section devoted to kineticists alone. This section includes new infusions, utility wild talents, and feats—like this one.

Mobile Gathering

You can gather elemental energy while walking slowly.

Prerequisites: Kineticist level 7th, kinetic blast class feature.

Benefit: While taking a move action to gather power, you can move up to half your base speed, and while taking 1 full round to gather power, you can move up to half your speed on the turn you begin the full round of gathering power. This movement provokes attacks of opportunity, and you can't use Acrobatics checks or other abilities to attempt to negate them, as you're concentrating on gathering power (nor can you use Acrobatics to balance, jump, or do anything else that requires a skill check). It's harder to concentrate on gathering power while using this feat; if you take damage during or after gathering power and before using a kinetic blast that releases it (including from an attack of opportunity provoked by the movement), the concentration check DC to avoid losing the gathered power increases by twice the blast's effective spell level.

An advantage—or a curse, I suppose, depending on how you look at it—of being in one of my home games is that I'll sometimes introduce new rules items I'm writing or developing. The kineticist player in my Hell's Vengeance game already uses some of these rules items to blast paladins and angels with wanton abandon.

Another section of Elemental Master's Handbook presents elemental augmentations, which permanently alter a portion the recipient's body by infusing it with primordial powers. An augmented body part is forever altered; the elemental augmentation remains until the body part is removed, which can have some unfortunate side effects. Elemental augmentations come with some powerful advantages, but also carry some corresponding weaknesses that tend to be more flavorful than debilitating. What? You don't follow? Is this some trick to get an example out of me? Okay, done.

"My master wishes you some serious harm, and I'm pleased to grant it."
Illustration by Kent Hamilton

Quicksilver Blood Price 62,000 GP

Slot none; CL 9th; Weight —

Aura moderate transmutation

This recipient's blood is infused with liquid metal that is magically bound to the recipient's system. When the recipient bleeds, the metal clings to itself and turns a bright silver color. The recipient automatically stabilizes when at negative hit points and is immune to continuous damage from bleed attacks (including weapons with the wounding special ability) and ability damage from blood drain. The recipient is considered a ferrous creature for the purposes of spells and effects such as rusting grasp and a rust monster's attack.

This elemental augmentation cannot be applied to a creature without blood.

Construction Requirements Cost 31,000 gp

Craft Wondrous Item, adhesive blood^ACG, lesser restoration, creator must have 9 ranks in Knowledge (planes)

There's more neat stuff here than I can get into, such as a new oracle mystery that blends elemental powers together, the aether elemental school for wizards, and the new genie eidolon subtype that can improve its own powers only in response to its summoner uttering a wish. Elemental powers for any PC can be yours!

As a final note, the first bardic masterpiece has a missing title. Although I briefly considered inviting readers to propose their favorite name for this masterpiece, I'll just tell you: it's Blazing Rondo (oratory, percussion).

Ron Lundeen
Contributing Developer