Starfinder Society Chronicle, Updates from the Organized Play Team

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Mega-Regions

Back in mid-October, Starfinder Society Developer Thurston Hillman gave a sneak peak into Starfinder Alien Archive and the organized play team's plans to introduce more alien species as player character options. We put our heads together and developed the Mega-Region plan!

Over the past weeks, we worked on implementing our idea, writing boons, developing regions, and identifying upcoming conventions running Starfinder Society. The only thing left is to announce the regions to our community. Please note, the Mega-Region is only a unit of accounting. It doesn't change anything about how our organized play volunteers are structured or the Regional Support programs. The first iteration of this plan will start with conventions this weekend. Sometime in March or April, we will rotate the boons around, so that each region has new rewards for their GMs. Future rotations will occur on roughly a 3-month timeframe, so that each region will get all the boons over the course of a year.

Mega-Regions Divisions

• Mega-Region 1—Africa-East Eurasia (AEE) and Asia-Pacific
• 
Mega-Region 2—Central Europe, Northwest, and Southeast
• Mega-Region 3—Western Europe Middle East (WEME), Northeast, and Southwest
• Mega-Region4—Midwest and Great Lakes

But a list of regions is bland, without the races to accompany them. So without further ado, here's the news you need to start planning trips around the globe:

Mega-Region Starting Boons

• Mega-Region 1: Kalo & Verthani
• Mega-Region 2: Draelik & Witchwyrd
• Mega-Region 3: Maraquoi & Nuar
• Mega-Region 4: Formian & Ikeshti

Illustrations by David Franco Campos, Connor Sheehan, Matthias Kinnigkeit, and Pixoloid Studios

When deciding how to handle the regions, we were left with our newest region, Online, as a bit of an oddity, as it encompasses all the physical regions. After putting their heads together, Thurston and John came up with a solution. Instead of being part of the rotation, they would get their own racial boons from a source other than the Alien Archive. In Thurston's words, "The online region gets something unique, while the value of physical regional boons won't be seem devalued by online availability. We think this is a good way to include the new online region in our program, and hope to review it in the future to see what other unique boons might be appropriate for distribution through our online region."

So Online will be Mega Region 5 and GMing a game online will open access to the Ferran & Woioko races, both of which are available Starfinder Adventure Path #2: Temple of the Twelve. Like the races in the Alien Archive, a player needs to own the resource and have the boon to play the race.

Starfinder Season Launch

When the team looked at the summer convention schedule and what spinning up new seasons on two organized play programs meant to our timelines (and sanity), we decided a split release would work better. So we went looking for an event that our players could get to, that had the size and scope of a premier event, and that would welcome the profile of a new season launch. Our choice is Origins Game Faire, June 13-17 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio. In past, the Ohio Pathfinder Society planned games at Origins. The same leadership team of Mike McNerney and associates will work with myself to bring you a quality, Paizo-sponsored event. Watch this space in early 2018 for the blog calling for GM volunteers.

Starfinder Society Scenarios

Since we rolled the Starfinder Society out at Gen Con 50, players clamored for more content. We've evaluated a number of factors in-house, including available organized play resources and current project commitments (more on this in a future blog). It brings us great pleasure to give our players a treat. To once more quote Starfinder Society Developer Thurston Hillman:

"Two is a pretty cool number. I hear a lot of people talking about two in recent months. Lots of questions and comments about the word two. What is two? What does two mean to you? The dictionary defines two as "equivalent to the sum of one and one." Did you know that two is the smallest and first prime number? Two is also the only even prime number. Did you know that a honeybee must tap TWO million flowers to make one pound of honey!

There's just so many interesting and fun facts about the number two..."

As you may have guessed by Thurston's fixation on the number two, we are pleased to announce an increase to two Starfinder Scenarios a month, starting in March 2018.

Scenario News

We are deep in plans for 2018, so I asked John and Thurston if we could give a few snippets of information about upcoming scenarios. In Thurston's words, "April sees the release of a new Tier 1-4 repeatable scenario. We've received great reviews on Starfinder Society #1-01: the Commencement, and knew we wanted to get another repeatable scenario out. As an added bonus, this scenario is also slated to include starship combat, making it a suitable teaching tool for players just learning Starfinder.

June brings us the release of a new Quest Pack. This should help the summer conventions out by providing further introductory material for bringing in new Starfinder players.

Our first Tier 5-8 scenario debuts in June. This scenario is the capstone for our ongoing Scoured Stars storyline, which began in Starfinder Society #1-05: The First Mandate, and continues until Origins.

June (a popular month) also sees Starfinder Society debut its first interactive special, starting at Origins, with later appearances at Gen Con and conventions across the world. While this event is still being planned out, we are ready to announce that it will be a Tier 1-8 event!

While June is popular, we also want people to know that PaizoCon 2018 is getting closer. This year not only debuts Starfinder Society events at the convention, but also debuts a very special product. Four words: Strawberry Machine Cake Scenario.

*mic drop*

On that note, and given I can't top Strawberry Machine Cake, I'm signing off for this week. With so much Starfinder Society goodness in this blog, we are going to take a break next week, and return on December 20th. Next week's blog will feature some upcoming Pathfinder Society tidbits, since we can't give the Starfinder Society all the shiny new toys!

Until next time—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager