April 2023 Organized Play Monthly Update

OPC Musings

Happy spring, everybody! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, or at least I assume they are. I live in Seattle. That’s not how it works here.

We’ve got a busy few months coming up for Organized Play! I’m going on my honeymoon at the end of April, PaizoCon is in less than 60 days, and after that–well, you’ll see. We’re hard at working churning out the next few months of scenarios. I think you’re really going to like what we’ve got planned for you!

Digital Adventure Releases

These adventures will be available on April 26, 2023.

Pathfinder Society

Pathfinder Society Scenario #4-12: Negotiations for the Star Gun*
Pathfinder Quest (Series 2) #14: The Swordlord’s Challenge

Starfinder Society

Starfinder Society Scenario #5-16: To Catch A King*

*part of a subscription

Getting Started Pages

One of the consistent problems we’ve had in Organized Play is that there’s no one-stop overview of how our programs work to give to new players. Well…not anymore! Thanks to some help from Josh Foster, our Organized Play Developer, as well as Maryssa Lagervall and Andrew White on the tech team, I present our brand new Getting Started pages for Pathfinder and Starfinder Society! These pages are intended to give new players everything they need to get started and find their gaming group. We hope you find them useful and informative! If you see any errors or have suggestions for improvement, don’t hesitate to let us know.

Sanctioning Update

This was a big month for Organized Play sanctioning!

Pathfinder Society

For Pathfinder Society, the Gatewalkers Adventure Path recently released its final volume. Chronicle Sheets and sanctioning documents are now available on the store pages.

The big news, of course, is the sanctioning of Lost Omens: Firebrands. As I announced on the forums last week, we’re trying something new by listing the reasons why certain options aren’t permitted in the campaign. This is an experiment to see if the community can handle this feedback without using it as an invitation for debate, or as ammunition against our designers, editors and writers.

Starfinder Society

This month saw the release of the Drift Crisis Case Files! We broke from tradition slightly on this book as well by sanctioning each case file as a double-length scenario. Our hope is that doing so provides organizers with some additional content to be run at events with longer slots or over multiple weeks at a retail location. Let us know how it works for you!

Upcoming

Looking ahead, the next books on our radar are the Drift Hackers Adventure Path and Ports of Call for Starfinder. It’s likely that, due to internal issues, the Drift Hackers AP will see a slight delay from street date, but we should have it (and Ports of Call) ready by PaizoCon Online. On the Pathfinder side, the next adventure release is The Enmity Cyclein May, and we won’t have another hardcover until June with Lost Omens: Highhelm, but right now we’re on track for both of those. We’ll also be working to ensure the documents for the Free RPG Day adventures for both systems are available in time for the June 24 event!

Updates

We’ve also just pushed a couple of minor changes to the Treasure Vault items on the Pathfinder Character Options page. We added a missing access condition to the polytool to bring it in line with Lost Omens: Gods and Magic, permitted the black tendril shot thanks to errata, and removed the cassisian helmet from legality. Any character who purchased the helmet can sell it back for full price.

GM Recognition

Campaign Service Coins

While at GenghisCon at the end of February, I was able to award a Campagin Coin. We award these coins to members of the community who have gone above and beyond to provide an exceptional program to the community at large. Campaign Coins are awarded based on nominations; if you believe someone in your community is deserving of this award (whether or not they are a Venture Officer), send an email to organizedplay@paizo.com with their name and reasons.

Congratulations to:
Zach Armstrong, who now holds a Campaign Coin and Organized Play ID #883

GM Ranks

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 dependent). A conservative estimate of the time needed to reach the 5th milestone is 650 hours!

This month, we had one GM earn their 5th Star for Pathfinder Society (first edition) and two earn their 5th Glyph for Pathfinder Society (second edition).

5th Star (PFS1): Jerry Wayne
5th Glyph (PFS2): Doug Hahn, Michelle Moniz

Congratulations to our outstanding GMs and volunteers!

Convention News

Convention season is in full swing! Our Convention Calendar is chock-full of events from around the world, and we encourage everyone to go out and support their local shows.

PaizoCon

On the PaizoCon front, tickets for the show went on sale yesterday, and we're excited to see you all! Game signups will begin on April 10 for our GMs and April 17 for all attendees. Make sure to register on our Warhorn beforehand so we can get you set up to sign up!

We’re also excited to be partnering with KublaCon in California for PaizoCon @ KublaCon! If you’re interested in playing in physical space with the community, they’re our exclusive partner for a physical event this year. You’ll be able to play all the new PaizoCon releases, including the Starfinder Special on Saturday morning, and watch the panels from their viewing space. Tickets and hotel rooms are available now on their website, and signups for games are already open on their Warhorn.

Gen Con

This week we began signups for GMs at Gen Con Online 2023! All the information is available in our blog, but GMs will be able to run the new scenarios and be rewarded as if they were attending the event in Indianapolis, all from the comfort of their home! We look forward to seeing you all virtually, we expect a great turnout for our events this year.

For Gen Con Indy, while GM applications are still open, at this stage we may not be able to offer new volunteers badges or hotel rooms. We welcome all GM volunteers, we can always use more people interested in running tables or filling in for last-minute drops!

UK Games Expo

Finally, I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be attending UK Games Expo this year! I’ll be running a few games in our Organized Play space and otherwise just visiting the show to make connections. If you’ll be at the show as well, feel free to reach out, I’d love to say hi to our UK community!

Until next time - Explore! Report! Cooperate! and show your flair with a Pathfinder pin!

Alex Speidel
Organized Play Coordinator