OPM Musings
While the past month brought lots of confusion and chaos to our lives, we’re grateful to our communities for providing some safe harbor in the storm. A huge shout out to the entire venture-officer team and the local GM crews who supported the FLGS until they closed and then moved the games online. For those of you that haven’t joined us in virtual, consider this an open invitation to do so! Come play, socialize, and stay strong!

Also, a huge thank you from our team to the community for their patience and understanding. As we scattered to the winds and socially distanced ourselves, we found everything taking more time and more energy. From getting remote offices set up to putting together this month’s scenario releases, it all was a bit wonky. We thank our community for coming together, helping each other, and supporting our hobby. You are awesome!

Unfortunately, not all of our community avoided their encounter or rolled a success on their fortitude save. We have several community members, and adjacent community members, who are dealing with the disease. Please keep them in your thoughts! If you have a bit of cash to spare, consider purchasing the Humble Conquer Covid-19 Bundle, whose entire proceeds go to fighting Covid-19 and rescuing lives.

Finally, if you’ve been waiting to stock up on some Paizo pdfs, consider getting them now during the Paizo Spring Social Sale!

Sanctioning

We have no sanctioning in the pipeline this month, as the transition to work-from-home put some wrinkles in our plans.

Achievement Points

This month, our tech team was forced to shift focus for several weeks as they ensured we all had the equipment necessary to work from home in the fact of the COVID-19 pandemic. As we finish settling into this new way of doing business, we are hopeful that their attention will be able to move back to getting this system up and running.

Campaign Coins

With no travel to conventions, we awarded no coins in the past month. As conventions continue to cancel, alternative awarding methods will be devised so we don’t have a prolonged gap in recognizing the communities’ volunteers.

Stars, Novas & Glyphs

The move to virtual games slowed some of the GM achievement progress. Thus, we have no new five-nova or five-star GMs this month.

Several of our community noted that they’ve seen their stars/novas disappear in different parts of the forums. This is due to our continual upgrade to the website and splitting of how the site accesses data. We’d ask for our GMs not to worry. The data remains in the database and we will re-hook in all the items as we get the new pages established.

Venture-Officers

Over the past month, one of our primary tasks has been updating the venture officer rosters so that everybody has access to the scenarios they need to run games. We are fast approaching the point where the system will be fully updated! At this point, all but one region’s current rostered venture-officers should have received emails. If you are volunteering and have not received an email, please contact your regional venture-coordinator. Their contact information appears here.

Charity Boons

Early in the month, we sent out all outstanding charity boons to their respective owners. Anybody whose information had been submitted should have received theirs by now! If you have not, check with the convention’s event organizer and confirm they submitted your info. If you aren’t sure who the organizer was, send an email to organizedplay@paizo.com and we will help you get records updated.

Online Resources

In the face of the current pandemic, our online venture-officers have stepped up and done a tremendous job of getting the rest of us up and running with online play. Our VTT and PBP communities are now larger than ever! They’ve shared a number of resources with all of us, as detailed in two blog posts last week. Here are links to part 1 and part 2 of the blog.

Be sure to check Warhorn, local meetups, and other community pages for online games supported by local lodges.

Conventions

Convention	Location	Start Date	Status
Tekko (2020)	Pittsburgh, PA	4/2/2020	Postponed
CODCON 2020	Glen Ellyn, IL	4/3/2020	Cancelled
Save vs Hunger 2020	Maryville, TN	4/3/2020	Cancelled
AtomiCon VIII: Story and Song (2020)	Durham, NC	4/3/2020	Postponed
AnimeDetour2020	Minneapolis, MN	4/3/2020	Cancelled
Gryphcon 2020	Guelph, Ontario, Canada	4/3/2020	Cancelled
MAG Con 2020	New Caney, TX	4/4/2020	Postponed
NORWESCON (2020)	SeaTac, WA	4/9/2020	Cancelled
EyeCon 20 (2020)	Sydney, NSW, Australia	4/10/2020	Online
MDog 2020	Kalamazoo, MI	4/10/2020	Online
WonderCon 2020	Anaheim, CA	4/10/2020	Postponed
Who's Yer Con 2020	Indianapolis, IN	4/11/2020	Cancelled
GameOn-Icon 2020	Plymouth, NH	4/11/2020	Cancelled
Crittercon 3 (2020)	Online - Cosmic Crittermander Discord	4/17/2020	Online
Cheyenne Gaming Convention (2020)	Cheyenne, WY	4/18/2020	No Change
KoboldCon 2020	Colorado Springs, CO	4/23/2020	Cancelled
RavenCon (2020)	Williamsburg, VA	4/24/2020	Cancelled
Pretzcon 2020	Ralston, NE	4/24/2020	Cancelled
SacOPF TakeTwo Con	Sacramento, CA	4/24/2020	Online
Ragnarok XP (2020)	Kitchener, Ontario, Canada	4/25/2020	No Change
Chupa VII (2020)	Austin, TX	5/1/2020	No Change
JP Lodge Con GW	Japan	5/3/2020	Online
C4 2020	Acme, MI	5/22/2020	No Change
KublaCon 2020	Burlingame CA	5/22/2020	Cencelled
LexiCon 2020	Lexington, KY	5/29/2020	No Change
UKGE 2020	Birmingham, UK	5/29/2020	Postponed
Huntsville Comic and Pop Culture Expo (2020)	Huntsville, AL	7/18/2020	No Change
1D4 Con 2020	Shepherdstown, WV	10/30/2020	No Change

Premier Conventions

As we announced last week, PaizoCon2020 has been cancelled; see the announcement here for more details on refunds and rolling over tickets. UK Game Expo has been postponed until August 21-23, 2020. Origins posted their intention to announce a decision on or before May 1. At this time, Gen Con continues as planned, though the convention aims to assess the situation closer to the show dates. We look forward to seeing you all when conventions resume!

Check back next week for more Society news!

Until then – stay safe and Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager

Alex Speidel
Organized Play Assistant