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