June Stars, Volunteers, Conventions & More!

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

When we got back from PaizoCon, I asked the team to write blurbs about the highlights of PaizoCon. Unfortunately, Linda failed her will save and wasn't in the office when I asked, so we will have to include her perspective in a different blog. For me, my favorite part of the event is interacting with all the players and volunteers. No matter how many long hours go into planning and preparing for a convention, seeing attendee's enjoyment makes it all worthwhile. But my collegues are more eloquent in their summaries, so I turn the blog over to them.

This was my seventh PaizoCon and sixth as an employee (goodness), filled with all sorts of great moments. Friday morning opened with the traditional round of Golarionender, a Pathfinder-inspired reimagination of Mythender RPG. The PCs successfully Ended Aroden, but in the process a new deity of avarice rose from the smoldering ashes of the Isle of Kortos. We counted it as a win!

We also debuted a series of four Pathfinder Playtest quests called The Rose Street Revenge. I ran one set of it, and several of my colleagues ran their own renditions over the course of the weekend. The story ran pretty smoothly, and I look forward to having it as a demo starting at Origins 2018 and beyond. My players for both this and the PaizoCon delve were lovely, including one player (a familiar face and recent freelancer) who took it well when I had to end one delve a little early in order to make it to a panel—in the process clobbering his character Seelah and then continuing to attack the collapsed PC to "show off how the dying rules work."

Trivia went beautifully, even with the heckling of a growing table of Paizo employees, freelancers, and honored observers who survived the ballroom bar's extraordinarily potent tequila-soaked pineapples. The winners were Tonya's Tots (briefly Tonya's Orphans when she had to leave and then later Tonya's Champions). You can find Painlord's transcription of the trivia questions on the PFS Bloggery thread.

On Sunday night I gathered a group of Utter Jackals for Pathfinder Society Special #8-99C: The Solstice Scar, which went pretty smoothly. Although we had lost a few members of our team from last year, we easily recruited a few more to give our GM Andrew Geels a bit of a scare. We may not have completed a lot of encounters, but our primary goals—sassing each other, howling like maenads, and not getting kicked out by Tonya—were a success. I learned from some of the Tier 10-11 tables that there's one encounter in particular that needs some tweaking, so keep an eye out on the product page for an update.

My best experience all weekend, though, was easily the pick-up game of Starfinder Society Scenario #1-09: Live Exploration Extreme! that I ran on Friday night. Normally PaizoCon's Friday evening is my opportunity to play at a random table, but I learned in the afternoon that the slot was sold out but might have an unused table. Figuring my only way to be in a game would be to run one, I pulled together a few folks as players (Lyz Liddell, Thurston Hillman, and Jenny Jarzabski) and then left the other three slots open to accommodate walk-ups. We got three buddies wanting to play together (Jeff, Brad, and Paul), and none of them had ever played Starfinder Society before. It turned out beautifully with five of the table playing 4th-level Obozaya (a large set of siblings) and the other playing 4th-level "O-bo-Raia." Our newcomers jumped into the game and the weird party composition almost immediately, and the Raia player was an absolute saint in putting up with the vesks' shenanigans. Apparently we were audible across the busy ballroom every time we put out hands in the middle of the table and shouted "O-BO-ZAYA!" as if hyping ourselves before a sports match.

I'm partway through a lengthy summary for the 2018 PFS PaizoCon Bloggery thread, where you'll be able to find many of the frightful details. Again, heartfelt kudos to those three strangers who helped make the game so amazing.

John Compton
Organized Play Lead Developer

Despite the conventions' best attempts to take him out, Michael managed to overcome all adversity and emerge from the experience victorious:

This was my first PaizoCon as an employee and oh my goodness, what an adventure! Several adventures, really. I got to meet PFS officers and agents from around the country and beyond Thursday night to kick off the convention. Friday was an opportunity to stuff swag bags for the attendees, run and assist with the Pathfinder Playtest delve, and join the master of monsters Adam Daigle and special guest Taylor Fischer for a Concepting Monsters panel, and that evening I ran my lottery game, Broken Lattice, for an amazing group of players who slew vrocks, rode half-celestial unicorns, and slew a qlippoth in its home on a magma-ridden level of the Abyss. Saturday was fairly similar, but I had more opportunities to hang out in the PFS room and chat with some of the players who had traveled from all over to be there, which was fantastic. Unfortunately, I was struck down with some as-yet-undiagnosed-but-probably-food-related illness that left me out of commission for most of Sunday, but I did manage to climb my way to the Cascade rooms for my second and final lottery game. Despite my being under the weather, everyone was game to tackle the adventure and I once more had an excellent time taking some fantastic players on a tour of the planar causeways.

To sum up, I had an amazing time, ran a delve, participated on a panel, played games with awesome people from around the world, and was then devastated by wracking illness. I'm told that this means I had a pretty standard PaizoCon, so hopefully I'll get to do most of this again next year!

Michael Sayre
Developer

Campaign Coin

Traveling around the world allows me to meet and interact with lots of our players and volunteers. It also means I hear lots of stories about fantastic members of our community who give of their time and labors to plan organized play activities in their areas. It is my pleasure to recognize some of these society stalwarts! The first three were given at PaizoCon the last weekend of May. I announced the other two at UK Games Expo, but we are withholding their names until their RVCs can deliver the coins and make the announcements. Once that is done, I will reveal them here.

Jack Brown	788
Keith Apperson	789
Louis Manko Levite	790
Simon Kort	791
Sebastian Hirsch	792

If you know a deserving member of your community, please email me at organizedplay@paizo.com with their name, location, and the reasons you feel they should be recognized for their service. If you are able, please include what events they may attend in 2018. This is especially helpful if they will be at an event with a member of the organized play team (see further down the blog for that list of events.)

Stars and Novas

With convention season underway, the opportunities for GMing abound and the ranks of 5-star GMs grows. Huge congratulations to all those that achieved their fifth star over the past month!

To achieve this milestone, GMs facilitate 150 games, of which at least 50 must be unique scenarios and 10 are special scenarios, as well as run a game for a venture-captain. A conservative estimate of time needed to reach 5-stars is 650 hours! To the GM listed below, thank you very much for the time and energy you spend running Pathfinder Society games! Your efforts are greatly appreciated.

• Robyn Allen
• Walter Chao
• Vincent Sarah
• Scott Sinclair
• John Freida
• Hillary Moon Murphy
• Robyn Nixon
• Harald Schlang
• Valery Kormanovsky
• Richard Loh

Volunteer Opportunities

We still have badges and rooms available for Gen Con volunteers. If you are interested in volunteering to run Pathifner Socity or Starfinder Society events, please visit the Gen Con 2018 volunteer questionnaire for more information and to register.

Gen Con Event Update

I submitted the last of the games and all the seminars for Gen Con and they should post soon. We also pulled the ticket sales data and I'm working with Bob Jonquet to figure out if we can add more tables to any of the events. If you tried to get into a game and found it sold out, please check back next week to see if more seats are available.

Conventions

Want to attend a convention this summer? Check out the list below! I've updated the list with all the event support requests I've received to date. If you see one missing, ping the organizer and have them submit a request for support or email me at organizedplay@paizo.com to discuss their event. All of the conventions on the list maintain some type of web presence, be it website, social media page, or Warhorn listing, so if you are interested in attending in either capacity, check out their websites or contact the local venture-officer for more information!

Convention Name	Location	Start Date
Die Con 18 (2018)	Collinsville, IL	6/8/2018
Magic City Con	Birmingham, AL	6/8/2018
NordCon 2018	Hamburg, Germany	6/8/2018
Multi-Zone Gatineau Mini-Con	Gatineau, Quebec, Canada	6/9/2018
Origins Game Faire 2018	Columbus, OH	6/13/2018
All Star Comic Con 2018	Tysons Corner, VA	6/15/2018
Anime Mid-Atlantic 2018	Norfolk, VA	6/15/2018
Rol Gratis Spain 2018	León, Spain	6/15/2018
3XP Summer 2018	Ely, Cambridgeshire, UK	6/22/2018
Q-Con 2018	Belfast, N.Ireland, U.K.	6/22/2018
RAGECON 2018	Reno, NV	6/22/2018
ClearwaterCon 2018	Eau Claire, Wisconsin	6/29/2018
SoDak Anime Convention 2018	Rapid City, SD	6/30/2018
Toy&Geek Fest 2018	Puyallup, WA	6/30/2018
VrockCon 2018 - Are You Thursty?	Flat Rock, NC	6/30/2018
Dexcon 21	Morristown, NJ	7/4/2018
Convergence 2018	Bloomington, MN	7/5/2018
Dice Tower Convention	Orlando, FL	7/5/2018
InConJunction 2018	Indianapolis, IN	7/6/2018
Milwaukee Summer Revel 2018	Brookfield Wi	7/6/2018
Pathathon 2018	London, KY 40741	7/6/2018
Cards Against Gnomanity	Online	7/9/2018
ConnectiCon	Hartford, CT	7/12/2018
Gaming Marathon for Charity	Colorado Springs, CO	7/14/2018
MidSummer ConQuest	Sacramento, CA	7/20/2018
QuinCon 33 (2018)	Quincy, IL	7/20/2018
Summerfest 2018	Richland, WA	7/20/2018
Portland Gameday: The Scoured Stars Invasion	Portland, OR	8/11/2018
Burg Comics Con 2008	Harrisburg, IL	8/18/2018
MegaMooseCon 2018	Richburg, SC	8/24/2018
DragonCon 2018	Atlanta, GA	8/31/2018
Your Pathfinder Con I	Fredericksburg, VA	8/31/2018
CornCon	DeKalb, IL	9/1/2018
Saluki Comic Con	Carbondale, IL	9/28/2018

2018 Organized Play Staff Travel

No real changes to our travel itinerary, but I wanted to repost it! If you're at any of the events listed below, please stop by the booth or organized play room and say hi!

If you are an event organizer and want to invite us out at your event in 2019, drop an email to organizedplay@paizo.com before next summer. We review our schedule in the fall and try to get all decisions wrapped by the end of the year.

Convention Name	Location	Start Date	OP Staff
Origins	Columbus, OH	6/13	Tonya, John (+Paizo staffers)
PaizoCon UK	Birmingham, England	7/20	Tonya (+Paizo staffer)
Gen Con	Indianapolis, IN	8/2	Tonya, John, Linda, Michael (+Paizo staffers)
DragonCon	Atlanta, GA	8/30	John (+Paizo staffer)
Fan Expo	Toronto, Ontario, Canada	8/31	TBD
SkalCon	Minnaepolis-St. Paul, MN	9/14	Tonya
Hurricon	Tampa, FL	9/27	Tonya
PaizoCon AP	Brisbane, Australia	10/19	Tonya
U-Con	Ann Arbor, MI	11/16	Tonya
PAX Unplugged	Phiadelphia, PA	11/30	Tonya (+Paizo staffers)

Until next time—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge


Organized Play Manager