September Update— Volunteering, Stars, Spotlights and Conventions!

OPM Musings

I joined Paizo’s Organized Play team in September 2015. Looking back over the past 5 years, I’ve collected several happy memories, made wonderful friends, and achieved important milestones. I’ve also learned a few hard lessons in communication and process implementation along the way. I’ve cried with some of you, laughed with more of you, and would happily do it all over again if I could.

Before accepting my position, I served as an Organized Play volunteer for 2 years. Some of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had occurred while volunteering. I met people from around the globe, attended Gen Con—talk about crossing an item off my bucket list!—and sparked enthusiasm among my fellow gamers. I believe that volunteering brings people who love games even closer together. If you want to experience the benefits of serving as an Organized Play volunteer firsthand, check out our blog from last week on how to volunteer with the Organized Play Foundation.

Sanctioning

While no new character options were sanctioned in the past month, you can now earn Organized Play credit for Paizo’s Free RPG Day adventures: Little Trouble in Big Absalom and Skitter Home. Such credit can be retroactively earned from games played on Free RPG Day. GMs should contact their players to issue chronicle sheets.

Last week, James Case also wrote a blog explaining how rarity and access in Pathfinder Second Edition works in Pathfinder Society play. James’s thoughts should help explain our philosophy on less common options.

Looking forward, we are actively working on three Adventure Paths: Tyrant’s Grasp, Extinction Curse, and Threefold Conspiracy. As we finish them, we will update you in future blogs.

Guides

To avoid conflict with the conventions this weekend, we scheduled the Guide to Organized Play: Starfinder Society upload for next week. An upcoming blog post will summarize the changes.

The Guide to Organized Play: Pathfinder Society is being actively revised and has an estimated publication date of September 15th. It will once again be housed online and we intend to provide a downloadable option as well. We will post the links in a blog once they are live.

Finally, the Guide to Organized Play: Pathfinder Adventure Card Society is in the works and should be posted shortly. There are no program changes for Year 7, but we plan to include the adventure deck options first published in blogs so we have all the options in one place.

Achievement Points (AcP)

It’s been three weeks since ya looked at me, cocked your head to the side, and... oh wait, this isn’t the place for singing songs. Focus!

We launched the boon purchase part of AcP just before Gen Con and are busy working out the bugs. The first step was to move the chronicle boons from the Year of the Open Road into the system so that we had digital versions as well as paper ones. This has caused some oddities to pop up, such as Chronicle Boon points appearing in the point total section. We are pausing the input process while we track down some of these number issues. Hopefully, fixing them will resolve the residual AcP challenges as well.

Volunteer Recognition

We awarded one new Campaign Coin at PaizoCon Francia this month. The following recipient is one of the longtime members of the Swiss venture-crew responsible for organizing many events. Congratulations to…

Christopher Clark 839

Thank you for all the effort you put into Organized Play, Christopher!

Stars/Novas/Glyphs

One GM received their fifth star in the last month. Doing so indicates a commitment to Organized Play, as to achieve this 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 the time needed to reach five stars is 650 hours!

Congratulations to Patrick Berndt for earning their fifth star!

All five-star GMs should now see their stars listed by their name on the forums, as well as in their My Organized Play tab. If you are a five-star GM and your status is not visible on the forums, please email organizedplay [at] paizo [dot] com and let us know!

We’re working through some technical snags before we can get caught up on our five-nova GMs, but we hope to have them ironed out soon. We’re also watching the climb to five glyphs with great interest, as many GMs have taken advantage of the online environment.

There’s been some discussion about the requirements for evaluation games, so we want to clarify. Two main points. One, GMs should work with their RVC to get their evaluations completed in a method that works for the GM. If the RVC is not responsive, please reach out to the OP team for assistance. Two, the GM should complete the reviews in their usual medium, but if circumstances don’t allow, then they should choose a different platform they feel comfortable with – VTT, webcam, slides, etc. Any RVC/VC comfortable completing an evaluation in the GMs chosen method may do so. There is one caveat to this second piece. A GM should only ask the Online region RVC/VCs to evaluate one of their games.

We think this will cover most issues, but if it does not, please communicate with either your RVC or the org play team so that we can find a solution to your particular issue. We cannot write rules to cover every corner case, but we can work to find a way around impediments.

Finally, there is a known bug where glyphs don’t display next to a username in the forums. We’ve asked the tech team to address this issue. Thank you to those who reached out to let us know there is a problem.

Convention Listing

If you don’t see a convention on the list that you think should be there, contact the event organizer and ask them to register their event for Organized Play support!

Convention	Location	Start Date	Status	Interactive Events	Staff Attendance
ReaperCon Live!	Dallas, TX	9/3/2020	Online
Displacement Con 2020	Online	9/3/2020	Online
Gateway 2020 Online	Los Angeles, CA	9/4/2020	Online	PFS2 2-00 The King In Thorns
Tracoff 2020	Tampere, Finland	9/4/2020	Online	PFS2 2-00 The King In Thorns
Pandemic Pacificon 2020	Online	9/4/2020	Online	PFS2 2-00 The King In Thorns, SFS 3-00 The Last Bite
Virtual DragonCon 2020	Atlanta, GA	9/4/2020	Online
PAX Online	Online	9/12/2020	Online	None; Acquisitions Event	Tonya, Alex
TPKon 9	Online	9/18/2020	Online	PFS2 2-00 The King In Thorns	Tonya
iSydCon 2020	Sydney, NSW, Australia	9/25/2020	Online	SFS 2-00 Fate of the Scoured God
BostonMetroCon	Boston, MA	9/26/2020	Online	PFS2 2-00 The King In Thorns
Nuke-Con	Omaha, NE	10/2/2020	Online	PFS2 2-00 The King In Thorns
SkålCon Online 2020	Minneapolis, MN	10/9/2020	Online		Tonya, Thurston, Alex
Canceled Con	Online	10/23/2020	Online	PFS2 2-00 The King In Thorns, SFS 3-00 The Last Bite
Midwest Game Fest Online 2020	Kansas City, MO	11/12/2020	Online	PFS2 2-00 The King In Thorns, SFS 3-00 The Last Bite

Don’t forget to come back next week for more exciting organized play news!

Until next time—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager

Alex Speidel
Organized Play Associate