OPC Log—2 Arodus 4716

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Hi everyone! Writing to you from the Sagamore Ballroom in the Indianapolis Convention Center. Flew in the night before last from the United Kingdom to start setting up for Gen Con, which kicks off this Thursday. Yesterday morning, the Sag was empty, with three lonely pallets of stuff shipped from Paizo home offices. At its busiest, there were 30ish people bustling around, hanging banners, moving tables, and getting the basics set up.

I really enjoyed attending PaizoCon UK. At roughly 180 attendees, it is large enough to offer a good variety of games but small enough to know many of the attendees. Seeing old friends made me smile and I met many lovely new friends. Started pre-convention gaming by running Pathfinder Adventure Card Guild Season of the Runelords, but got pulled away for meetings and left subsequent games in the able hands of con attendees. Over the course of PaizoCon UK, I ran two tables of the retired Third Riddle, joined the Aspis in Serpent's Ire, put my characters social skills to the test in Bid for Alabastrine, and thwarted thieves in The Sun Orchid Scheme. The opportunity engage with players/GMs and interact over Pathfinder Society was delightful and I hope to do so again very soon.

Roleplaying Guild Guide

As Year of the Serpent draws to its close and we prepare to launch Season 8: Year of the Stolen Storm, it's time for a new Roleplaying Guild Guide! I've given it a final look over now and turned it over to Chris Lambertz to work her magic and get it uploaded. Those familiar with past guides will note this the reworked format. It is designed so that you only access the information you need, with separate chapters for players & GMs. As you use the new guide, please send feedback to the team at pathfindersociety@paizo.com on what works well and what you would like to see changed for the next version.

The setup at the Sag is ongoing, the banners slowly transforming the space from plain hall to Pathfinder Society Headquarters. Today, Gen Con leads Jon Cary and Bob Jonquet arrived and we started unloading pallets, building shelving, and emptying boxes. Lead Todd Morgan arrives tomorrow and will assist in putting the final touches on the event. Extra hands are always appreciated, so if you're in Indianapolis and have a few hours, come on by, say "Hi!" and help us set up for the best four days in gaming!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Coordinator

OPC Log—4 Erastus 4716

Monday, July 4, 2016

Hello Pathfinders! I hope this blog finds you hale and hearty, having enjoyed a weekend of sun, and fun. Hopefully, the fun involved some roleplaying, particularly the next installment of the Seeker Arc, #7-26 All for Immortality, Part 2: All the God's Beyond. We are currently busy in the office wrapping up July's adventures, prepping for Gen Con, and generally surviving the chaos of the con season in full gear.

Necessary Headgear

At the PaizoCon banquet, I had the pleasure of modeling a knitted cap with the Year of the Stolen Storm logo. Lead Editor Extraordinaire Judy Bauer developed the pattern and knitted me a cap. An awesome gift from Judy, as my knitting skills don't extend past holding the needles and looking at the yarn. It is our pleasure to share the pattern with you. Please, if you do make one, remember to give creative credit to Judy!

Download the Hat of the Stolen Storm Knitting Pattern— 163kb zip/PDF

For those that weren't at the banquet, here you go:

Gen Con Events Going Fast!

For those that haven't decided yet whether to attend Gen Con in Indianapolis, Indiana, from August 4-8, I'll add an incentive to the pot. You can still purchase tickets for Pathfinder Society events.

Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild offers quite a few of the Season 7 scenarios, as well as premiers of two special events and the first three scenarios in Season 8's Year of the Stolen Storm. As an incentive for getting up early, anyone attending the first session of Pathfinder Society game every day (8:00 AM on Thursday/Friday/Saturday and 9:00 AM Sunday) will get an extra token to use at the prize table. Prizes this year include gift certificates to paizo.com, hardcover rulebooks, Map Packs, boons, and a few surprises.

Some of our early morning offerings:

• Thursday—#7-21: The Sun Orchid Scheme (Tier 1-5)
• Friday—#7-13: Captive in Crystal (Tier 5-9)
• Saturday—#7-15: The Deepmarket Deception (Tier 3-7)
• Sunday—#7-22 Bid for Alabastrine (Tier 1-5)

Or check out Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild's Season of the Runelords. Grab some tickets, start first thing Thursday morning, and play through the ENTIRE season's adventures in one go. To help you out, click here to see the event event on the Gen Con website.

Also on offer, lots of seminars and panels featuring Paizo staffers. A list of these can be found by searching "Paizo" on the Gen Con website. Featured events include Pathfinder Adventure Path Q&A, The Art of Pathfinder, Aunty Lisa's Story Hour(s) and Pathfinder in Space (Starfinder Panel).

Upcoming Pathfinder Society Pawn Set

The Pathfinder Society Pawns Collection releases at Gen Con and includes art for many of the character archetypes for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Class Decks, as well as frequently occurring monsters in the Roleplaying Guild scenarios. A few of the pawns are for NPCs and monsters that haven't had art before.

Illustration by Ekaterina Burmak

My favorite pawn is Raheli, the samsaran witch from the Adventure Card Game Witch Deck. With her flowing gowns and blue skin, she presents an otherworldly creature with awesome power. Go team witch!

Illustration by Ekaterina Burmak

Tanis' favorite is Angban, from the upcoming Gunslinger Deck. In her words, "He's dope. He is a portable turret and the ultimate expression of dwarves artifice."

Illustration by Dion Harris

Linda's favorite is Valais Durant, a memorable character from two different Pathfinder Society scenarios. I don't want to spoil anything, but her personality is as eclectic as her appearance. She's one of my all-time favorite NPCs, and with the new art on this pawn, she's sure to make a memorable entrance.

What pawn do you want to see most?

Until next time—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Coordinator

PaizoCon 2016 Pathfinder Society Announcements

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

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

Pathfinder Society Academy

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

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

Adventure Card Guild

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

Illustration by Roberto Pitturru

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

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

Roleplaying Guild

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

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

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

John Compton
Pathfinder Society Lead Developer