Pathfinder Society Sanctioning: Strange Aeons

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

I spent several minutes trying to think of a clever name for the blog announcing that we had finished sanctioning the Strange Aeons Adventure Path. However, after talking to the team and reading the posts from players eager to get started playing the adventure path in a PFS-sanctioned environment, I realized that less was probably more. So, as you may have surmised from the title, Strange Aeons is now officially sanctioned and available for Pathfinder Society credit!

Strange Aeons is the first sanctioning project I tackled after joining the OP developer team here at Paizo, so the boons and decisions in the sanctioning document are a combination of my (perhaps overly) enthusiastic ideas tempered and refined by John and Linda's wisdom and experience. We came up with an idea that the boons themselves could tie into the search for identity and purpose that interweaves the themes of psychological and subversive horror found in Strange Aeons, taking fundamental questions about who your character is and why they're on this adventure and turning them into mechanical benefits that enhance an already-awesome story.

But what if Strange Aeons isn't really your kind of adventure? Well, no worries, because there are even more modules and adventure paths queued up and rapidly nearing completion! I'm not going to spoil the surprise, but I will say that the next module sanctioning we've got working its way through the publication process rhymes with "Hearing the Bound Ditty" and I recently sent off a sanctioning document for layout that rhymes with "Druids of Pantsland." So, I guess what I'm saying is, be ready for an awesome year full of newly sanctioned content!

Happy gaming everyone!

Michael Sayre
Developer

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Tags: Organized Play Strange Aeons
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Grand Lodge 4/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

YES! *Daniel Bryan hand signs*

Liberty's Edge 4/5

YES YES YES YES YES.

Michael, as promised, I'm making cookies for everyone in the OP team. I'll try to come by the offices today or tomorrow, but obviously, my schoolwork comes first :)

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5

5 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Hooray sanctioning! This is really exciting.

Related: I'd really like to see the chronicles for Druids of Pantsland. Not the thing that it rhymes with--just for the AP itself.

5/5 5/55/5

Awesome, but I don't see a link anywhere to the chronicle sheets.

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Hmm, I can't find it anywhere, either. Where should we be looking for this PDF? Or do we need to be patient and wait for a release?

Liberty's Edge 1/5 **

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Don't see it on the AR or on the AP page?

3/5 *

I think they forgot to add it. *Facepalm*

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Well, not just that--the file isn't on the website yet. Paizo has used a standard filename for this stuff in the past, with a number indicating which AP it is. In theory, since Hell's Rebels is at 17, that means Strange Aeons should be at 19, but the file itself seems to be AWOL. Hopefully sometime soon the team will have a chance to upload the zipped PDF. :)

Dark Archive 1/5

And not listed under sanctioned AP content on that page either: http://paizo.com/store/pathfinder/pathfinderSociety/pfsrpg/sanctionedAPS

Grand Lodge 4/5

Great news.

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5

Awesome news indeed

Grand Lodge 4/5

Translucent Wolf wrote:
And not listed under sanctioned AP content on that page either.

Fixed the link for you.

To be fair, they haven't listed the Pathfinder Anniversary edition of Crimson Throne, nor Hell's Rebels either. And they probably never will.

Hopefully soon we'll see the chronicles uploaded somewhere and see it announced here.

4/5 ****

2 people marked this as a favorite.

After 1.5 years it'll be nice to finally get Seers of the Drowned City Sanctioned.

Ruins of Azlant sanctioning is exciting as well.

4/5 5/5 * Contributor

1 person marked this as a favorite.

EXCITEMENT INTENSIFIES.

Oh man, NEED those files! Hurry, Sayre! I'm taking sanity damage by the minute!

Scarab Sages 4/5 Venture-Lieutenant, Conventions—PaizoCon

Pirate Rob wrote:

After 1.5 years it'll be nice to finally get Seers of the Drowned City Sanctioned.

Ruins of Azlant sanctioning is exciting as well.

"Seers of the Drowned City" sounds quite similar to "Hearing of the Bound Ditty". This is one I've been waiting for as well, so I'm hopeful that this is what is being referenced.

I've been piecing together prepwork for Strange Aeons for a while now as I eventually wanted to run it regardless of sanctioned state. This just gives a bonus.


At this rate, we'll get The War For The Crown by the second year of 2nd!

Paizo Employee Organized Play Developer

5 people marked this as a favorite.
Alex Wreschnig wrote:
Well, not just that--the file isn't on the website yet. Paizo has used a standard filename for this stuff in the past, with a number indicating which AP it is. In theory, since Hell's Rebels is at 17, that means Strange Aeons should be at 19, but the file itself seems to be AWOL. Hopefully sometime soon the team will have a chance to upload the zipped PDF. :)

We are looking into this right now and I will post again to let you know as soon as we've got it sorted, along with a working link to the sanctioning file.

Silver Crusade 1/5 Contributor

1 person marked this as a favorite.

We're going to start Strange Aeons soon, so this is perfect timing. ^_^

3/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.

This will make me a 3-star gm, yippie!!


Could you talk more about the use of boons in character development? Is there a way to incorporate these boons to enhance non-PFS Strange Aeons campaigns?

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Jason Bush wrote:
Could you talk more about the use of boons in character development? Is there a way to incorporate these boons to enhance non-PFS Strange Aeons campaigns?

If you're running a campaign in PFS "campaign mode"--or just as a home game with no PFS component whatsoever--you can do whatever you want! That includes stealing some of the ideas off of the chronicle sheets, if you like them enough.

Depending on the thing you're trying to give the players, there are a lot of ways of doing it. Timing-wise, you can usually figure out what action earned the boon, and you can give the players the benefit immediately afterward rather than waiting for the end of the book like you would with a chronicle sheet.

Mechanically, you can give people unique items, even single-use ones. Sometimes the benefit makes the most sense as a typeless "trait." Notecards and other visual aids are useful to keep the benefit in front of players, regardless.

Since we haven't seen the sanctioning document yet, it's hard to say anything with respect to Strange Aeons specifically.

Liberty's Edge 4/5

Thanks for getting this out!

Scarab Sages 5/5 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Netherlands

Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

5/5 5/5 ****

The Ineffable One approves of this announcement.

Have You Seen The Yellow Sign?

1/5 *

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Where do we download the sheets?

Grand Lodge 4/5

glasswalker22 wrote:
Where do we download the sheets?

Apparently we have to wait for another announcement from Michael Sayre. They're looking into the trouble and will let us know when it's fixed.

Liberty's Edge 1/5 **

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Can't wait!

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Agent, Georgia—Atlanta

Timing on these things is always challenging.


As someone who has a bad history of Society(And only clicked on it as it was on the blog and I like this AP) what does this mean?

That Society GMs can run it now?

Grand Lodge 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Captain, Minnesota

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Yes, that we can run it now and offer our players credit! It’s exciting to be able to offer APs as a change of pace.

I’m sorry that you had a bad experience with the Society, Merlin. It can be a wonderful experience, but a lot of that can be very dependent on local group culture. If you do ever decide to try us again, I hope you have a lovely experience the next time around.

Hmm
Venture Captain, Online Play-by-Post Region

PS Seers of the Drowned City! Squeeeeeee!!!!


Hilary Moon Murphy wrote:

Yes, that we can run it now and offer our players credit! It’s exciting to be able to offer APs as a change of pace.

I’m sorry that you had a bad experience with the Society, Merlin. It can be a wonderful experience, but a lot of that can be very dependent on local group culture. If you do ever decide to try us again, I hope you have a lovely experience the next time around.

Hmm
Venture Captain, Online Play-by-Post Region

PS Seers of the Drowned City! Squeeeeeee!!!!

Yes it's more a local issue than Society in general(Though I feel the restrictions cause some problems but that's another topic)

Though if I had to give Society another try, It wouldn't be with this AP. HAhahah, I'm sorry I look forward to see posts about book 1 results. Having played book 1 and part of two, it's pretty brutal.

To GMs looking to run this, make sure you're up to date on how some rules work and now some monster effects are. I've seen too many stories of someone doing something wrong and people getting murdered extremely fast in this AP. Good luck people.

3/5

@Merlin: last year we had a F2F GM that didn't bother reading the monster's entries... he'd throw stuff at us and fudge his rolls to just piss off players, and being a frustrated 3.5 GM who never played PFS, we looked for another GM pretty quick. What's beyond me is that some people volunteer to GM stuff when they don't A) seem to like GMing; and/or B) don't have the CAPACITY or KNOWLEDGE or TIME to GM stuff.

No one is perfect either: an excellent GM in one group will be a terrible GM in another group, due to an infinite number of factors.

When it sucks, look for another group. If there's a specific module or AP you want to play, don't rush, and take your sweet time finding the proper GM for it.

Also, if you have a tight group, pass a hat for money, and buy the books for the GM, or give some dough to the GM if he bought the books. Even half the price of the books will be appreciated, trust me. This is an aspect of the game that is overlooked that should be discussed openly.

Emotional/financial/personal time abuse is a thing experienced by too many GMs.

Paizo Employee Organized Play Developer

5 people marked this as a favorite.

I just wanted to give you all an update:
There are issues that need to be handled on the tech side. I don't have the exact details but it seems like there mighrt be some kind of caching issue since the sanctioning docs append to existing pages instead of getting their own original product page. The tech team is working to get these issues resolved but it is taking longer than anticipated. As soon as they let me know that things should be working I'll verify the link and post it here for you all as promised.

Thanks again for your patience everyone, and I'm sorry to hype you up and then make you wait like this.

1/5 * RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

Michael Sayre wrote:

I just wanted to give you all an update:

There are issues that need to be handled on the tech side. I don't have the exact details but it seems like there mighrt be some kind of caching issue since the sanctioning docs append to existing pages instead of getting their own original product page. The tech team is working to get these issues resolved but it is taking longer than anticipated. As soon as they let me know that things should be working I'll verify the link and post it here for you all as promised.

Thanks again for your patience everyone, and I'm sorry to hype you up and then make you wait like this.

As a web software developer who had to manage the tech for websites before, I can vouch how annoying caching systems can be. For nearly two years, they were the bane of my existence.

Sczarni 5/5 * Venture-Lieutenant, Washington—Pullman

Currently the document only has page 1 in it.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Steven Huffstutler wrote:
Currently the document only has page 1 in it.

^This. No chronicles sheets as of yet. Just the initial Sanctioned Key Content page.

Grand Lodge 3/5

yay. running this as a home game, now i just have to make a character to receive the chronicle.

Grand Lodge 4/5

The link says (723 kb zip/PDF) but it's actually 641 kb. This represents the missing pages.

Liberty's Edge 4/5

There's a typo on the bottom of the left column on page 1, the sentence that talks about using a pregen if you don't have a character in tier. As written, the sanctioned portion of "Dreams of the Yellow King" is for character levels 8-10, and there are no pregens in that tier.

2/5 ** Venture-Agent, California—Los Angeles (South Bay)

Wait... so the document is supposed to be 1 page and they haven't finished the chronicle sheets or did they just put up the wrong document?

Paizo Employee Organized Play Developer

Raymond Havili wrote:
Wait... so the document is supposed to be 1 page and they haven't finished the chronicle sheets or did they just put up the wrong document?

The document that became available is the first page of what should be a 9 page document. I'm digging in to what happened to the other 8 pages (which includes all of the Chronicle sheets).

Paizo Employee Organized Play Developer

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Okay everyone, sorry for the delays! You should be able to access the full sanctioning doc (complete with Chronicle sheets) here!

Liberty's Edge 4/5

Rats! It's still giving an error. "The requested URL was not found on this server, or you do not have permission to access this area."

4/5 ****

Worked fine for me.

Paizo Employee Organized Play Developer

Brendan Fallin wrote:
Rats! It's still giving an error. "The requested URL was not found on this server, or you do not have permission to access this area."

Hey Brendan,

I was able to pull the file from my phone without being logged in to my profile and as far as we can tell it should be working. Maybe try logging out and logging back in and/or closing out your browser? You can also try using the download link from the product page, though that is the same url as I linked above. Let me know if this issue persists into tomorrow.

3/5

Thanks! I really like the flavor in those chronicle sheets.

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Brendan Fallin wrote:
Rats! It's still giving an error. "The requested URL was not found on this server, or you do not have permission to access this area."

Probably a caching issue. In many browsers a hard refresh (control F5, or control+shift+R, or on Mac command+shift+R) is enough to force a full reload. If that doesn't work, try opening the link in a new browser or in incognito mode.

Failing that, try clearing your cache!

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Michael Sayre wrote:
Okay everyone, sorry for the delays! You should be able to access the full sanctioning doc (complete with Chronicle sheets) here!

They're heeeeeere! Thank you very much for working on this project. I think we are all incredibly grateful for your hard work and creativity.

And we're also greedy. Go sanction Kingmaker!

/kidding

//okay... you got me. I'm only kind of kidding.

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Agent, Australia—QLD—Brisbane

Finally! And just as we are almost done with Book 3. Thanks, guys!

Liberty's Edge 4/5

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Alex Wreschnig wrote:

Probably a caching issue. In many browsers a hard refresh (control F5, or control+shift+R, or on Mac command+shift+R) is enough to force a full reload. If that doesn't work, try opening the link in a new browser or in incognito mode.

Failing that, try clearing your cache!

Michael Sayre wrote:

Hey Brendan,

I was able to pull the file from my phone without being logged in to my profile and as far as we can tell it should be working. Maybe try logging out and logging back in and/or closing out your browser? You can also try using the download link from the product page, though that is the same url as I linked above. Let me know if this issue persists into tomorrow.

Fixed it! :D Thanks!

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