OPM Musings

Our last blog looked at 2019 and some of the team’s best memories of our year. Between then and now, I took a few weeks off over the holidays to visit family and recharge my batteries. I arrived back in the office on Monday, ready to tackle our outstanding tasks and get things completed.

While out of the office, I remained in contact with our tech team as we worked to resolve the outstanding issues with the Achievement Point program. The good news is we have a pile of fixes ready for quality assurance testing and we hope to have them rolled out over the next few weeks. Some of the pending items include downloadable paper copies of Playtest Point/Achievement Point boons, Achievement Point scaling for Premium/Premium Plus events, and correct values for Pathfinder Society (second edition) Quests. I’m optimistic we have the light at the end of the tunnel on this issue.

Better news than the Achievement Points is our movement on sanctioning. The organized play developers finished their pass on several of the books and now we are working on getting them formatted for publication. This is another task I hope to have completed by the end of the month.

Hard to believe, but there is one more piece of news even better than Achievement Points and sanctioning updates. I’m pleased to announce the organized play team is growing by one – we are adding an operational administrative assistant working directly with me to support our programs. The job posting should go up shortly and I encourage our community members to appy!

Campaign Coins

Taking a few weeks off of convention travel led to not awarding any campaign coins over the past month.

Stars

The end of 2019, while thinner on conventions, was thick with GMs qualifying for their 5th star. This is a great achievement, as to reach the 5th star milestone a GM must 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! Thank you to all our GMs who committed time and energy to the campaign and a resounding cheer to the GMs on the list below that earned their 5th star.

• Conor McClure
• Adam Kessler
• Steven Mombourquette
• Kyle Hallberg
• Michael Petlicke
• Jon Haight
• Edward Kabara
• Derek Blakely
• Mike Welham

Novas & Glyphs

In taking care of backlog items, we got the nova icon updated on the website and are working to get the glyph icon added. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as me just putting the image somewhere and needed some behind the scenes tech assistance. We anticipate having the Glyphs up and running in the next few weeks. For those running Pathfinder Society (second edition) games, thank you and we will get your recognition out asap!

I’d like to list the first 5-nova GMs in the February Spotlight blog! While we wait for the online nova evaluation tool, which is part of a greater tools overhaul, we’ve made an online form for logging evaluation games. Venture-Captains, please use this form to submit evaluations.

Convention Listing

Only 10 days into the new year and already have an impressive list of conventions! Community event organizers submitted their events for support, which is awarded to all conventions that meet minimum criteria (15 blocks of games over 3 days and publicized to the public). If you don’t see an event on the list below and know they are running Society games, ping the organizer and have them submit a request for support or have them 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	Location	Start Date
Midwinter Gaming Convention 2020	Milwaukee, Wisconsin	1/9/2020
Moosebear Con 2	Salt Lake City, UT	1/10/2020
Arisia 2020	Boston, MA 1/17/2020
MarsCon 2020	Williamsburg, VA	1/17/2020
PAX South 2020	San Antonio, TX	1/17/2020
SCARAB 2020	Columbia, South Carolina	1/17/2020
Polar Vortex 2020	Lisle, IL	1/17/2020
PlayDis Con 2020	Online	1/20/2020
ConTIngency 2020	Hunstanton, Norfolk, UK	1/22/2020
Gaming Marathon for Charity Part 2.5	Colorado Springs, CO	1/25/2020
PFS/SFS@Cancon2020	Canberra, ACT, Australia	1/25/2020
BayCon 2020	Geelong, Victoria, Australia	1/25/2020
LodgeCon 2020	Peotone, Illinois	2/8/2020
GenghisCon 2020	Aurora, Colorado	2/13/2020
BASHCon 35 (2020)	Toledo, OH	2/14/2020
Con of the North	Plymouth MN	2/14/2020
DunDraCon 44	San Ramon, California	2/14/2020
Radcon 8	Pasco WA	2/14/2020
Capricon 40	Wheeling, IL	2/14/2020
Dreamation 2020	Morristown, NJ	2/20/2020
TotalCon 34 (2020)	Marlborough, MA	2/20/2020
4th Annual Omaha Pathfinder Charity Con	Bellevue, NE	2/21/2020
Gad Con	Aberdeen MD	2/28/2020
COSCON 2020	Lyndora, PA (USA)	3/20/2020
CogCon Spring Revel 2020	Rolla, MO	3/27/2020
CODCON 2020	Glen Ellyn, IL	4/3/2020

Organized Play Staff Travel

While we aren’t ready to announce our full year of convention travel quite yet, we can confirm a few appearances during first quarter 2020. For those proactive organizers out there, please note the deadline to request Paizo staff attendance is 1 June 2020.Organizers may email your interest to organizedplay@paizo.com.
Note: staff do not attend conventions that conflict with Paizo-sponsored shows.

Convention	Location	Start Date	Paizo Staffers Scheduled to Attend*
SCARAB 2020	Columbia, SC	1/17/2020	Linda
MarsCon 2020	Williamsburg, VA	1/17/2020	Tonya
OwlCon 2020	Houston, TX	2/28/2020	Thurston
GenghisCon 2020	Denver, CO	2/13/2020	Tonya
Gama Trade Show 2020	Reno, NV	3/9/2020	Staff TBD
Emerald City Comic Con 2020	Seattle, WA	3/13/2020	Staff TBD
CogCon 2020	Rolla, MO	3/27/2020	Tonya

*Staffers scheduled to attend may change without notice.

Don’t forget to come back next week for the scenario previews!

Until next time—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager