October Update—Know Direction, Spotlights and Conventions!!

Thursday, November 8, 2018

I'm amazed how quickly this year's flown by. It seems only yesterday I booked my tickets for MarsCon and now we are rapidly approaching my final convention of the year. The events this year provided many opportunities to meet and interact with members of our community. I look forward to U-Con this weekend and visiting more Society members. Hanging out with our players and GMs is one of my favorite parts of being the Organized Play Manger.

Besides conventions, another favorite part of my job is the program planning aspect. Over the past few weeks, the team's done quite a bit of brainstorming on the wrap-up to Pathfinder Society version 1 and the launch of Pathfinder Society version 2. On the Starfinder front, we're well into Season 2 program planning and have even glanced at Season 3. So many storylines! For those of you looking to plan convention schedules, it is our intention to launch the new season of Pathfinder Adventure Card Guild at PaizoCon, Starfinder Society at Origins, and Pathfinder Society version 2 at Gen Con.

If you want an update to our thoughts on the future of Pathfinder Society, Organized Play Lead Developer John Compton and I were on Know Direction yesterday. We discussed many of the topics posted on the Paizo.com blogs over the past few months, as well as answered questions from the community. Visit Know Direction's website to watch the interview!

Campaign Coins

While in Australia at PaizoCon Asia-Pacific, I left two coins in the care of one of the area's Venture Officers and asked him to present the coins on behalf of the organized play team. Until this is done, I'm keeping the recipient's name quiet. Hopefully we can announce the worthy inductees in the first of December blog.

If you know a deserving member of your community, please email me atorganizedplay@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 2018/2019 so that we can either make awards in person (preferred) or make arrangements for deliver.

Stars and Novas

All the conventions over the past months gave lots of opportunities for GMs to achieve the requirements and qualify for their 5^th star. To achieve this milestone, GMs run 150 games, of which at least 50 must be unique scenarios and 10 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 GMs listed below, thank you very much for the time and energy you spend running Pathfinder Society games! Huge congratulations on your achievement!

• Gregory Ison
• Sam Sampson
• Bruce Legge
• Dennis Muldoon
• Nicholas Ruchlewicz
• Terry Kaden

The organized play team formulated their first draft of the 5-nova qualifications and are soliciting feedback from a variety of sources. We should have an update next month!

Looking forward to Pathfinder Society version 2, I've seen suggestions for using either Glyphs (using the Symbol of the Open Road) or Sigils (using the Sihedrion) for the GM designator. Thanks to those that have voted! I'd like one more month of data gathering before we make a decision. You can find the pollin the following blog. If you haven't voted, you have until 1st Dec to do so.

PAX Unplugged

The organization team is in the process of sending out volunteer schedules, but we still need a few volunteers to run Pathfinder Playtest demos in the Exhibition Hall and some scenarios in the Organized Play room. We have a few hotel spaces left for out-of-town volunteers. If you are interested in volunteering, we still have a few spaces available. To sign up, complete the volunteer questionnaire.

For players, there are still a few seats available for pre-registration on warhorn.net . To facilitate both advance signups and onsite attendees, we allocated the first 4 seats at every table to warhorn, with seats 5&6 available for signup onsite daily from 8 am. Visit https://warhorn.net/events/paizo-org-play-pax-unplugged to register for games.

Convention Listing

Want to attend a convention in the next few months? Check out the list below! The list includes all the event support requests received to date. If you see one missing, ping the organizer and have them submit a request for support or have them email me at organizedplay@paizo.comto 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
Contraflow VIII (2018)	New Orleans, LA	11/16/2018
Game-itoba 2018	Winnipeg, MB, Canada	11/16/2018
Mepacon Fall 2018	Scranton, PA	11/16/2018
SNAFUcon 2018	Reno, NV	11/16/2018
Beacon 2018	Belfast, N.Ireland, United Kingdom	11/17/2018
Dreieichcon 2018	Dreieich, Germany	11/17/2018
Extra Life 0maha 2018	Bellevue, NE	11/17/2018
GobbleCon 2018	Burlingame, CA	11/23/2018
SP "The Hao Jin Cataclysm" DAU'18	Barcelona, Spain	11/23/2018
WinterWolfCon'18	Chicago, IL	11/23/2018
Becario's Tyranny	Madrid, Spain	12/1/2018
Dragonmeet 2018	London, United Kingdom	12/1/2018
Georgia PFS Holiday Party 2018	Winder, GA	12/1/2018
Winterfest 2018	Pullman, Washington	12/2/2018
NerdLouvia 2018	Louisville KY	12/8/2018
SFS Jax Special	Jacksonville, FL	12/8/2018
BDG SFS Christmas Special!	Concord, CA	12/15/2018
Toys For Tots Charity Game Day 18	Fairfax, VA	12/15/2018

2018 Organized Play Staff Travel

Wrapping up the last of 2018's travel, so only a few entries left on the roster. The Org Play travel schedule for 2019 is pending and I hope to have the list ready to post the beginning of December. Looking forward, if you are an event organizer and want to invite us out at your event in 2020, drop an email toorganizedplay@paizo.com before next summer, as we put our schedule together in August.

If you're attending any of the following events, please stop by the booth or organized play room and say hi!

Convention Name	Location	Start Date	OP Staff
Hal-Con	Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada	10/26	Linda & Mark Seifter
U-Con	Ann Arbor, MI	11/9	Tonya
PAX Unplugged	Philadelphia, PA	11/30	Tonya (+Paizo staffers)

Next week brings another discussion regarding Pathfinder Society v2 and what changes we are looking to make in the program to support the new edition of Pathfinder.

Until next time—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge

Organized Play Manager