Organized Play at PaizoCon 2018!

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Convention planning involves lots of juggling, starting with what scenarios to offer. As an organizer, you want to schedule games players can participate in. The need for schedule juggling amplifies when we look at the Paizo-sponsored conventions—PaizoCon, Origins, and Gen Con. For those, we need several spotlight events, new scenarios, and a balance of the current season's offerings. At one of the organized team meetings a few months back, we decorated a white board with products releasing by August 2018 and started shuffling things around.

One of our top considerations is what the season meta-plot looks like and making sure we have coherent story paths. For Year of the Serpent, we included all the meta-plot scenarios at both PaizoCon and Gen Con. For Year of the Stolen Storm, we tried to make sure we had a variety of elemental scenarios together so that con attendees could see each of the elemental planes. This year, for Year of the Faction, there wasn't an overarching meta-plot outside of the factions helping the Pathfinder Society, and there weren't multi-scenario arcs in the vein of #8-18: Champion's Chalice Part 1 and #8-21: Champion's Chalice Part 2. So we looked at each factions' story arc and tried scheduling them together.

For PaizoCon, we offered the newest scenarios, including previews of #9-20: Fury of the Final Blade and #9-21: In the Grandmaster's Name. I'm especially excited to see the reaction to the latter, as Grandmaster Torch's name elicits such varied responses from our playerbase. Plus, the premier of the third installment of our modular special on Sunday night! 50 tables running the same event—#8-99C: The Solstice Scar—Version C! Come see what has befallen Medda and crew in the past year!

Speaking of premiers—join GMs John Compton, Linda Zayas-Palmer, Lyz Liddell, Leo Glass, and Chris Sims as they preview the first of the Pathfinder Society Playtest Adventures—#1 Rose Street Revenge. These are lottery events using pregenerated 1st level characters. Look for them in the catalog when it goes live. A small teaser from the soon to be product page:

Less than a year has passed since the Fiendflesh Siege, in which Absalom fended off an invading coalition of demonflesh constructs and the living dead. The siege lord offered freedom to any slave in Absalom willing to aid in the city's defense, and since that grand manumission, the city's slave trade has practically disappeared. The Pathfinder Society is one of many organizations that opened its doors to Absalom's newest citizens. However, several of the ex-slaves have been turning up dead, in other cases disappearing entirely. The Society doesn't often investigate serial killings, but one of its newest recruits is the latest victim. It's time for a band of Pathfinders to follow the clues, uncover these crimes, and end this threat.

On the Starfinder side, we have most of the recent catalog and previews of #1-14: Star Sugar Heartlove!!! and Save the Renkrodas. Who doesn't love some Strawberry Machine Cake?

To help you schedule your convention to the fullest, here is the full list of offerings for PaizoCon:

System	Scenario #	Title
PFS	#6-10	The Wounded Wisp
PFS	#7-10	The Consortium Compact
PFS	#8-16	House of Harmonious Wisdom
PFS	PSA	Pathfinder Society Academy
PFS	#9-09	Beyond the Halflight Path
PFS	#9-14	Down the Verdant Path
PFS	#9-15	Bloodcove Blockade
PFS	#9-16	Fallen Family, Broken Name
PFS	#9-17	Oath of the Overwatched
PFS	#9-18	Scourge of the Farheavens
PFS	#9-19	Clash in Kaimuko Wood
PFS	#9-20	Fury of the Final Blade
PFS	#9-21	In the Grandmaster's Name
PFS	#8-99C	The Solstice Scar, Version C
SFS	SFQ	Into the Unknown
SFS	#1-01	The Commencement
SFS	#1-09	Live Exploration Extreme!
SFS	#1-10	The Half-Alive Streets
SFS	#1-11	In Pursuit of the Scoured Past
SFS	#1-12	Ashes of Discovery
SFS	#1-13	On the Trail of History
SFS	#1-14	Star Sugar Heartlove!!!

Besides scenarios running in the ballroom, there are many other special events featuring the organized play crew. There are panels on Starfinder Society, Pathfinder Society (with bonus Pathfinder Society Playtest information) and Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. In addition, the 10,000 Lakes Gaming Crew (those Minnesota people!) have sponsored an afternoon's worth of games. If you wish to add a game to the schedule, follow this link for more information.

Interested but haven't gotten your tickets? Here's a handy link to the main PaizoCon 2018 page for all your ticketing and informational needs.

Volunteer Opportunities

GMs should have received their PaizoCon schedules last week. There are a few GMs that are "waitlisted" pending schedule acceptance. We had more volunteers than scheduled games. This is mixed result, as I hate to turn volunteers away, but I'm pleased we won't have empty tables.

Gen Con is a different matter. We still need volunteers! While we filled the demo team and XX, there is still room to run Pathfinder Society Playtest Adventures, Starfinder Society fare, or Pathfinder Society Year of Factions' Favor and the soon to be announced next season! Volunteers receive benefits based on how many blocks they contribute. Rewards include 4-day badges, ¼ hotel rooms in the downtown Westin, credit to paizo.com, a copy of a Paizo print product (choices include Pathfinder Playtest Standard Hardcover Edition, Pathfinder RPG Planar Adventures, Starfinder RPG Armory, or a bundle of 3Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Add-On Decks. Interested? Check here for more information and to complete a volunteer questionnaire.

So I thought there would be room to cover Origins' offerings as well as PaizoCon, but looking at the length I think this blog is long enough. I'll save the Origins' information for another blog.

Tune in next week when we preview April's Starfinder Society and Pathfinder Society scenarios.

Until next time—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge


Organized Play Manager