Pathfinder Society 3: Organized Playtest

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

The past few months have been busy for the organized play team, from many of us traveling to give fans sneak peaks of the Pathfinder Playtest to our developing a huge number of scenarios to launch at PaizoCon, Origins, and Gen Con (more on those Gen Con adventures in several upcoming preview blogs). We've also been discussing many of the features in a Second Edition Pathfinder Society campaign, as we introduced in our initial playtest blog as well as the blog that followed. We'll be getting into some of our ideas—including some possibilities for incentivizing special events without gating material—and takeaways from your feedback shortly after Gen Con.

In the meantime, I want to confirm and reinforce what you'll be seeing at Gen Con and beyond for the Pathfinder Society Playtest.

1: What to Play

Paizo has created 11 different adventures for you to playtest, and we're including them all in the organized play playtest.

Pathfinder Playtest Adventure: Doomsday Dawn (August 2nd): The biggest playtest adventure resource by far is this series of 7 adventures that span a wide range of levels. Some of these are "traditional" adventures, whereas others are designed to stress-test different parts of the game. A common estimate is that each of these adventures runs about twice the length of a Pathfinder Society scenario, though it will vary by your group, play style, and familiarity with the rules.

Pathfinder Society Playtest #1: The Rose Street Revenge (August 6th): This is a series of four quests (short adventures intended to take about 40-;60 minutes each). Explore Absalom, clash with a variety of foes, catch a murderer, and emerge as heroes.

Pathfinder Society Playtest #2: Raiders of Shrieking Peak (August 6th): This is a scenario (about 4-;5 hours) for 5th-level characters, taking the PCs into the Isle of Kortos's wilderness to rescue a missing comrade and recover a lost relic.

Pathfinder Society Playtest #3: Arclord's Envy (August 6th): This is a scenario for 5th-level characters that takes place in the wondrously arcane nation Nex. Solve a murder in the capital city, where mages, golems, and elementals rule.

Pathfinder Society Playtest #4: The Frozen Oath (September 26th): This is a scenario for 10th-level characters, taking the PCs into the frozen Crown of the World. There they'll fight with all manner of arctic menaces while uncovering an ancient ruin. We'll have a product page up for this scenario soon.

Beyond that, Paizo's also excited to receive any homebrew adventure data. Just keep in mind that 1) that style of game doesn't earn any organized play credit (see below) and that 2) one big advantage of having printed adventures to playtest is that they control for more variables in the playtest process and thus provide information that's easier to process and compare.

Valeros is pumped and ready to playtest!

2: Characters

The playtest experience is distinct from the current Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild campaign. That means you aren't bringing your existing Pathfinder Society characters to the table—at least not directly. There are two different ways we're handling player characters.

Build Your Own Character: In Pathfinder Society, you have to play a certain number of times to reach a particular level. In order to playtest a wide range of levels, we're not using that organic character growth model in the playtest. Instead, each of these adventures is made for characters of a particular level, and you get to build a character of that level and just show up.

Play a Pregenerated Character: The organized play team is providing a set of pregenerated characters (we're currently working on six of them with a possible seventh character) at both 1st and 5th levels. That's perfect for Pathfinder Playtest Scenarios #1-3, especially when running The Rose Street Revenge as a demo or when playing these adventures at conventions. You can also use the 1st-level pregenerated characters for the first Doomsday Dawn adventure with some minor modifications—or your own home games, if you like.

Doesn't that leave plenty of adventures in which there won't be a pregenerated character option? Yes. We're providing a good array of pregens for our first few adventures, but creating pregenerated characters for all of the levels represented isn't practical. Paizo's also really interested to hear about the character-building process—if it was easy, intuitive, hard in places, et cetera. This does make it important to factor this into your playtest schedule, though (see the General Advice below).

3: Earning Credit

Back in March, we introduced a "prize table" method of earning playtest credit (see the end of the linked blog). The more we discussed and refined the concept, the more we liked it.

Playtest Points: At the back of each Pathfinder Society Playtest scenario, you'll find a pair of half-page tracking sheets. Each asks you to record the adventure you played, the date completed, the GM's organized play number, the GM's initials, and a reminder to fill out that adventure's survey (see below). That means that instead of receiving a different Chronicle sheet for each adventure, you'll just fill in a single line of information. If you fill up your tracking sheet, just grab a new one and starting filling it in, too. Just keep these sheets together, much like you would your character's Chronicle sheets!

In addition, for each of these adventures you will earn a number of Playtest Points (PTP). 

• Earn 1 PTP for each playtest quest played. It's absolutely fine to play all of The Rose Street Revenge in one sitting and record it as a single event.
• Earn 4 PTP for each playtest scenario played.
• Earn 4 PTP for each chapter of Doomsday Dawn
• For every 4 PTP someone earns by being a GM, they'll receive 1 bonus PTP.

As we approach the launch of Pathfinder Society's Second Edition campaign, we'll post the different ways that you can redeem these points for special character options. These aren't intended as major power upgrades but rather as fun tools, backgrounds, and other options to thank you for contributing to the playtest process.

Replay: You can freely replay these 11 playtest adventures for credit; in fact, you'll likely learn something new about the game each time you play an adventure. Just be sure your foreknowledge of any story and encounters doesn't ruin the experience for others at the table. We expect there will be plenty of playtest rewards, so by replaying some adventures and gaining extra PTP, those points aren't going to go to waste.

Reporting: How are we tracking how many PTP you've earned? Although your tracking sheets are a handy record, you'll be purchasing rewards using your accumulated PTP reported on paizo.com. Yep, reporting is important. Think of this as a trial run for how we can provide ongoing rewards once we launch the new campaign, so help us report events dutifully so that we might distribute, say, ancestry boons in the future.

But what's your character name? Your character number? Your faction? Go ahead and make up a name used in playtesting. For your number, use XXXXX-15XX (for example, 11300-1501 for a first character, 11300-1502 for the second, etc.). It's easy to go overboard in creating characters by making loads of characters, so you might want to stick to just a few numbers or one character number per playtest class. Whichever strategy you choose, the playtest points you earn are cumulative to the campaign; you don't need to assign credit to the same character.

4: Surveys

Surveys are going to be a major vector for soliciting feedback during the playtest process, and that includes the organized play events. In addition to several general-purpose surveys, each of the playtest adventures will have associated surveys—often including a different survey for the players and for the GM—that seek scenario-specific information. Once the playtest launches at Gen Con on the first weekend of August, you'll be able to find these surveys at paizo.com/pathfinderplaytest. Keep in mind that Paizo will periodically add more surveys to that site to secure more information and better pace the playtest feedback.

In particular when running chapters of Doomsday Dawn, keep in mind that there might be specific numbers to track during gameplay. If you are the GM, please take a look at the survey beforehand so that you can record these values and report them accurately later.

5: General Advice

Plan for Building Characters: In the Characters section above, I noted that there will only 1st- and 5th-level pregenerated characters available. This comes with a really important consideration: plan for building characters AT or BEFORE your playtest events. That might mean gathering your group together the day before the event to run a character-building session. It might mean scheduling the event to start an hour earlier to build in time for this process. If someone shows up without a character for Pathfinder Society Playtest #1, 2, or 3, they can always grab a pregenerated character. For #4, though? It's important to have that character ready to go. Work out with your group, your store, or your community what makes the most sense.

How much gold does your higher-level character start with? Each PC should be built using the character wealth numbers for their respective levels found on page 348 of the Pathfinder Playtest Rulebook (see Table 11-2).

Plan for Teaching Rules: I've now run many hours of our convention demo and the Rose Street Revenge quests, and I've found it's possible to convey a nice overview of the rules in about 10 minutes. However, I could readily stretch that out to three times that length, especially in answering questions. As with planning for building characters, you'll want to schedule a little time for teaching the rules.

Assess Your Area's Needs: Just figure out what's best for your region, your gaming space, or your home group. It might make sense to run a few big events, meet regularly to run part of a scenario at a time, or create temporary playtesting groups to tackle the larger Doomsday Dawn adventures. Take the time to discuss it with your community. There's no one right answer.

We're excited to see what you think of the new edition and our excellent new adventures! Next week we'll provide previews of the upcoming July and August Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society scenarios, and the following week we'll preview the increasingly imminent Pathfinder Playtest scenarios.

John Compton
Organized Play Lead Developer