Reflections on Origins Game Faire!

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

My travels take me to many conventions during the year. I enjoy them all, mostly because I get a chance to meet our volunteers and fans. But Origins holds a special place in my heart. I had never attended Origins before joining the organized play team at Paizo, but I'm glad it is now a staple of my convention tour.

Why do I enjoy it so much? Several key reasons, I think. First, while it is one of the biggest conventions in the United States outside of the Comic Cons and PAX events, it still has a small convention feel. I believe this is due to the compact nature of the hotels and convention center that make up the core of the event. It is a 5-minute walk from my hotel room to the Franklin Ballrooms, where we hold most of the Paizo events. I can get to the food court in 5 minutes. Ditto to getting to the Exhibit Halls, where the vendors and open gaming tables are located, to the Drury meeting rooms for GAMA meetings, and to the show offices. Oh, and the Starbucks is just across the hall from the Org Play space. Great for my coffee needs!

My second reason is the volunteers. Our volunteers at Origins are among some of the best. We had a few scheduling issues and the volunteers stepped up every time to cover tables. They flexed on what games they ran, which allowed us to respond to shifting demand for Starfinder and Pathfinder games. The HQ staff works well together, using their skills to compliment each other and support the GMs.

Finally, I love the convention attendees. I view our players as friends I haven't met yet and love the fact I got to add a few more names and faces to my friends known list. We talked characters, scenarios, likes, and dislikes, favorite things… this list goes on. Getting to talk to our players recharges my batteries and makes the hours of back office planning and work worthwhile. Thank you, everyone, who came and shared your stories. I look forward to continuing our conversations at events in the future.

I'm not the only staffer that attended Origins 2018. We had a team of 5 running games and introducing the Pathfinder Playtest to attendees. Cosmo went on to the American Libraries Conference the weekend after and so didn't get a chance to chime in and Thurston put his thoughts into last week's Starfinder Society scenario preview blog, but both designer Mark Seifter and organized play lead developer John Compton share their thoughts.

From Mark:

This was my first Origins ever, and it was quite an exciting show! With nonstop Pathfinder Second Edition demos layered on top of runs of The Rose Street Revenge, Origins gave me my first chance to show the new game to gamers of wildly disparate gaming backgrounds and play experiences (as opposed to the deeper Pathfinder fans who tend to attend PaizoCon) and to learn…they all like this new game I've been working on, they like it a lot. The universal excitement was contagious, and an important reminder to me of just why I love what I do. One of my highlights was hearing from our crack team of volunteers (who did an amazing job!) how their demo runs had turned out, only to discover that they and their players were as excited as I was; in fact, one of the volunteers for 3 out of 5 days enjoyed the Pathfinder Second Edition demos so much that she asked to fill up the rest of her days with demos instead of playing.

Finally, as Owen pointed out when I returned to the office, Starfinder's victory as fan favorite at the Origins Awards means I am now an Origins Award-winning designer. I hadn't thought of it because to me, the ultimate reward is having people love the games and books I work on, and the award is just a manifestation of that.

John's thoughts on the event:

This was my first Origins since 2006, which was far before I knew anything about organized play. Columbus puts on a fun show with a great community, and it was a delight to meet the Ohio crew as well as Paizo enthusiasts from many states beyond. I split my time between running shorter demos of Pathfinder's second edition, running preregistered tables of the 5-hourRose Street Revengesecond edition quest experience, and wandering the Franklin ballroom to check out the action. Particularly impressive was all of the Starfinder Society energy, especially when we debuted the first ever Starfinder Society multitable interactive special #1-99: The Scoured Stars Invasion by Mikko Kallio. He and Thurston Hillman put together a great experience, and the Origins GMs and HQ volunteers made it all possible.

So if you haven't been to Origins before, I suggest you consider coming out to Origins 2019! If you're already planning on attending, I'll see you there!

Check back next week for our first of the month "Stars, Cons, and More" blog!

Until next time - Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager

Origins—Launching into a New Starfinder Society Season

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

From the first, the organized play team envisioned Starfinder Society as a stand-alone campaign. So when discussing season rotation, we looked for a way to give the event spotlight focus. Putting the launch at Gen Con would overload the team and possibly diminish the impact of the Pathfinder Society season rotation. So we looked to another large event that would have the scope to handle a season premier. Origins Game Faire, June 13-17 in Columbus, Ohio, met our desires. Thus we brought Origins under the umbrella of Paizo-organized conventions. But not only Starfinder Society benefits from the expanded Paizo focus. It also brings an opportunity to play Version C of the Solstice Scar ongoing interactive event and the chance to participate in some Pathfinder Playtest demos. Another benefit is added rewards for GMs, namely store credit for the paizo.com webstore, volunteer t-shirts, and a copy of a Pathfinder or Starfinder hardcover book, in addition to rewards offered in previous years such as hotel rooms and boons.

With 35+ tables of scenarios and 5 tables of Pathfinder Playtest demonstrations running each 5-hour block, and 8 blocks scheduled between Wednesday and Sunday of the event, we need a goodly amount of GMs to run games and demos at the event. Anyone interested in volunteering should check out the Origins 2018 GM Application for a list of benefits and a questionnaire to register interest in volunteering. For GMs interested in running Pathfinder Playtest, please mark PFS Demo on the questionnaire.

For those community members not interested in GMing, I invite you to join John Compton, Thurston, myself, and a couple other Paizo staffers at Origins to experience the adventure first hand.

Now onto a less logistical note, I'll turn the blog over to Starfinder Society Developer Thurston Hillman to discuss specifics for the Starfinder Society launch and what to expect from our ongoing storylines...

Quoting Thurston Hillman, Starfinder Society Developer:

In the wake of all the excitement surrounding the announcement of the Pathfinder Playtest, there have been some questions about the future of Starfinder Society. Specifically, the team's been hearing a lot of questions about our plans for our upcoming interactive special and the transition into our next season. How about we dive into some answers?

We're proud to announce our first Starfinder Society interactive special: Starfinder Society #1-99: The Scoured Stars Invasion. This event is Starfinder Society's first exclusive scenario, running at select events starting at Origins 2018 up until the end of Gen Con 2018. Shortly after Gen Con, we'll be making this special available to organizers and events across the world. To help with making sure our first Starfinder interactive is one to remember, we've brought onboard veteran freelancer, Mikko Kallio, to tackle this project. Mikko's had experience with writing interactive specials (with the well-received Pathfinder Society #9–00: Assault on Absalom), and the team wanted to get him on this project to help ensure we get a good start with our first Starfinder interactive special. I've been personally working with Mikko on this project and I can already tell that it's going to be a very memorable event!

So with that announcement, you can probably tell that our interactive special is touching on some major elements for our ongoing storyline for Year of Scoured Stars. One important caveat, is that "The Scoured Stars Invasion" is not the end of the Year of Scoured Stars. Instead, we'll be going back to some of the earlier days of Pathfinder's organized play campaigns and extending our inaugural season into 2019. That's right, the Year of Scoured Stars will be getting a full additional year of content behind it. When the team sat down to discuss how we'd end the Scoured Stars storyline, we recognized that the abbreviated season made it difficult to give the full story that we thought the players deserved—something that changed when our schedule adjusted to 2 scenarios per month! We all agreed that extending the season by another year gave us the ability to really tell this defining introduction story for many Starfinder Society players.

Looking ahead, players, GMs and organizers can view "The Scoured Stars Invasion" special akin to the mid-season finales that have become popular in modern media. This event will have some major repercussions that the campaign will explore into the second half of its now-extended season. To maintain a cohesive narrative and not punish players who don't have the chance to attend the events debuting the special, we won't be directly following-up on these events until at least a month after the exclusive window ends. This gives local lodges a chance to run the interactive prior to delving into any scenarios that touch on the ramifications. To give us that buffer, many of the scenarios following Origins will go back to some growing fan favorites. While the details on these scenarios aren't entirely finalized, our current "schemes" involve some of the following:

• Finishing the "Tour of the Pact Worlds" by exploring some of the remaining planets (sorry Aucturn, you'll have to wait a bit longer.)
• Providing a second Tier 5–8 scenario (this time with starship combat!)
• Returning to the false moon of Salvation's End (with a very special guest author appearance.)
• Yesteryear's Sorrow. (... nope, I got nothing else to say about that one.)

I wish I could say more, but I'm going to remain silent as there's a lot of major changes coming with "The Scoured Stars Invasion." Sufficed to say, the second half of Year of the Scoured Stars is going to be just as big, if not bigger, than the stories we've told over the past months. Now more than ever, the Starfinder Society needs new field agents; if you haven't had the chance to try out some Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild games, I highly suggest taking a look. Between local games and our thriving online community of play-by-post and virtual tabletop games, there's probably never been a better time to get involved and experience the living campaign that is Starfinder Society!

Time for me to get back to scheming. There's a lot more stories to tell and the Year of Scoured Stars is only just getting started!

Convention season is ramping up and I'm working diligently to get everything scheduled and delivered as needed. If your expecting something for any convention, keep an eye on your inbox.

Tune in next week for an update on GM stars, upcoming conventions, and other topics of an organized play nature.

Until next time—explore, report, cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager

Final Countdown to PaizoCon 2017!

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Everything is coming together for PaizoCon, which starts in a little over 2 weeks. The office is abuzz with final preparations as all of our departments pull together to bring this convention to our fans. Schedules posted on paizo.com last week and the signups are ongoing. Hurry and make your selections, as tomorrow is Lottery Day, how exciting! Some of the games on offer:

• Sewer Dragons of Absalom—an Adventure Card Game adaptation where you play kobolds using pregenerated character decks. Brought to you by David Jacobson and Tyler Beck.
• Skeleton Moon—a retired Pathfinder Society Season 0 scenario ran by the Master of the Dark Stephen Radney-McFarland.
• Out of Retirement—a to be named Season 0 retired scenario hosted by Pathfinder Society developer Linda Zayas-Palmer.
• Season 0 Reborn—Lead developer John Compton offers players the chance to chose which of the retired Season 0 adventures they would like him to run, but no matter the choice all will be challenge filled at his hands.

Besides the lottery games, the Grand Ballroom will once again ring with the sounds of all things organized play. We have tables of Adventure Card Guild, including some demonstrations of the Mummy's Mask Base Set, occurring in the morning and evening slots. Players may check out a base set for use during the afternoon slot, so you can play Adventure Card Game all day long!

Mid-Season 8 adventures are the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild offerings, as well as tables of some of the replayable scenarios such as PFS 5-08: The Confirmation, PFS 6-10: The Wounded Wisp, and PFS 7-10: The Consortium Compact. Sunday evening sees the world premier of the new multi-table modular special PFS 8-99: The Solstice Scar. There are also non-Paizo hosted Pathfinder Society games available in the middle slot. The quest series "Honor's Echo" will run during the hours the Grand Ballroom is open for games, for players wanting to learn about Pathfinder Society or play shorter, 1-hour adventures.

For the mid-day slot, we close the doors on the Grand Ballroom so that attendees have the ability to attend our numerous panels. Want to know more about building Starfinder aliens? You're in luck! Have a question for the Paizo designers? We have that covered too! As well as panels on planning organized play, how comics can make you a better GM, using props in your games, and a myriad of other topics.

Finally, back by popular demand is Quiz Night hosted by John Compton. Join us in the Grand Ballroom on Saturday after the banquet to test your knowledge and see if you can rise victorious. This is a team-based competition, so gather some friends and join us!

Also returning this year is the Pathfinder Society scavenger hunt. A sheet should be in your welcome packet, otherwise stop by the Grand Ballroom and pick one up from the headquarters table. Collect signatures while you meet and greet people at the convention and unlock a reward for your Pathfinder Society character.

Ohio Pathfinder Society Looking for Origins Volunteers!

Venture Captain Michael McNerney is looking for a few individuals to fill some slots at the upcoming Origins Game Faire in Columbus, Ohio, from June 14 to 19. Interested volunteers should sign up using the following links: Roleplaying GM link and Card Guild Organizer or by sending VC Mike an email at ohiopfs@gmail.com.

That wraps up my PaizoCon summary. I'm off to print boons, pack up supplies, and shift focus to Gen Con tasks. Next week, I'll return with a peek into the Gen Con offerings, including a hint of the upcoming Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Season 9.

Explore—Report—Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Coordinator