OPM Musings
Tonya’s busy getting ready for her vacation, so I’ve taken over her musings for the month! Do not be alarmed. Last week, Linda and I did an interview with Know Direction, talking about the future of Organized Play and conventions this year. It was a really great time and I definitely encourage you all to watch or listen to it, but there were a few big announcements I wanted to republish here to make sure everyone sees them:
- Pathfinder Society Year 3 will premiere at PaizoCon Europe Online, August 19-22! In the interview we referred to this event as “an unnamed event in August,” but we’re allowed to say the name now.
- The interactive specials for Pathfinder and Starfinder Society will premiere at Gen Con, September 16-19. These interactive specials are linked specials; the events of the Pathfinder special will affect the Starfinder event, so we encourage convention organizers to schedule both. Thurston and Jenny gave our authors a great concept to work with, and we’re excited for them to tell you more!
- Finally, Linda dropped some exciting teasers for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Society special at PaizoCon Online: Ron Lundeen is the author, and it’s going to give players a chance to experience a new facet of the PACS stories they’ve enjoyed over the history of the program.
We hope you’re looking forward to what we have in store over the next few months! Convention season is nearly upon us, which is both exciting and terrifying. But enough of my rambling, let’s see what else we’ve got to announce.
Events
We hope you all enjoyed the Double Points weekend for the new Pathfinder One-Shot, Sundered Waves! We had over 150 tables reported during that release weekend and are very pleased with the response. We’re looking at our release schedule to see when our next special event of this type might be, so stay tuned to the blog for future announcements.
Tonight at 6pm Pacific time, player signups for PaizoCon Online will open! Don’t forget to join the Discord server(direct link = paizo.events) for the latest news and updates. The PaizoCon Warhorn also includes our stream schedule; you’re free to sign up as a “player” to help plan your schedule for the event.
Sanctioning
The big sanctioning news this month is for our Starfinders: we have a brand new Starfinder Society Character Options page! This page updates the look to match the Pathfinder Society page and make it more user-friendly. In addition, Alien Archive 4, is now sanctioned for play! While you will need a boon to use any of the new races to build a PC, the equipment and class options contained in the book are now available to you. You’ll also notice that we’ve expanded the Core Sources to include the Starfinder Alien Archive.
On the Pathfinder side, we’re sanctioning Abomination Vaults and expect to complete it in the next two weeks, but no later than the end of April. We’ll post about it when it’s done!
Both of our Character Options pages have also added links to the errata for books which have had errata released. We hope this change will make the pages even more useful to our players. We’ll be looking at sanctioning the two One-Shots scheduled for release at PaizoCon next so that they’re ready for the event. After that, our upcoming sanctioning schedule includes the Devastation Ark Adventure Path for Starfinder, Bestiary 3 and Malevolence for Pathfinder, and have started working on Tyrant’s Grasp and Return of the Runelords for Pathfinder (first edition).
GM Achievements
Whether stars, novas, or glyphs, achieving a 5 ranking in any program involves a substantial amount of time. To achieve the 5th milestone, a GM must run 150 games, of which at least 50 must be unique scenarios and 10 special scenarios, as well as run between one and three games for venture-captains (program dependant). A conservative estimate of the time needed to reach the 5th milestone is 650 hours!
Two GMs received their fifth star in the past month. We have no new 5 Nova or 5 Glyph GMs to announce.
5th Star (PFS1): Juan Sanchez and Andrew Torgerud
Congratulations to our new 5 Star GMs, and thank you for your dedication! If you believe you have achieved your 5th rank but haven’t been announced, email us at organizedplay@paizo.com.
Conventions
In addition to PaizoCon Online, we have a number of conventions offering Pathfinder and Starfinder Society!
| Convention | Location | Start Date | Status | Interactive Events | Staff Attendance |
| River Raiders | Lindfield NSW, Australia | 4/2/2021 | Online | None | |
| Farmageddon VIII | Farmer City, IL | 4/23/2021 | Online | None | |
| CritterCon IV | Cosmic Crittermander Discord | 4/23/2021 | Online | SFS 3-00 The Last Bite | Alex |
| Chupacabracon 2021 | Austin, TX | 4/30/2021 | Online | PFS2 2-00 The King In Thorns, SFS 3-00 The Last Bite | |
| Sac OPF TakeTwo Con 2: The Return | Sacramento, CA | 4/30/2021 | Online | PFS2 2-00 The King In Thorns, SFS 3-00 The Last Bite | |
| POPCon 2021 | Fenton, MI | 5/7/2021 | Online | None | Alex |
| PaizoCon Online | Seattle, WA | 5/28/2021 | Online | PACS 7-99 | Yes |
| Con Summer Drain 21 | Gulf Region | 6/11/2021 | Online | SFS 3-00 The Last Bite | |
| ConCurrent 2021 | Columbus, OH | 6/11/2021 | Online | PFS2 2-00 The King In Thorns, SFS 3-00 The Last Bite | Alex |
| PaizoCon Europe Online | Online | 8/19/2021 | Online | TBA | TBA |
| GenCon | Indianapolis, IN | 9/17/2021 | Hybrid | PFS 3-99, SFS 3-99 (Titles TBA) | TBA |
As a final note, tune into Paizo Live! this Friday at 4pm PDT, where our own Mike Kimmel will be a featured guest. He’ll be talking about the Pathfinder Bounties, as well as our Organized Play products
We’ll see you next week for a special preview of our PaizoCon releases for Pathfinder Society! Until then: Explore! Report! Cooperate!