One thing I realized we didn’t communicate very effectively ahead of time was our sanctioning process for Starfinder (second edition) adventures other than scenarios. We do not intend to issue chronicle sheets for these adventures, outside of special exceptions like Free RPG Day adventures and other single-session adventures. Players are still free to use the character options in these adventures, provided they own a physical or PDF copy of the product, but there won’t be Organized Play credit for playing or GMing these non-Society adventures.
Proposing the Generic Society Chronicle for Longer Adventures
I have seen posts in the past from developers about the challenge of writing chronicles for Sanctioned Adventures. In order to create such a chronicle, the dev needed to:
◈ Read the adventure from beginning to end (a chore for Adventure Paths)!
◈ Find fun and unique equipment to list
◈ Come up with an enticing boon.
I agree that the workload for this is heavy, requiring a bunch of cognitive heavy lifting for something that is not connected directly to Society Play. So I would like to propose a Generic Society Chronicle for longer content. 12 XP, 30 Treasure Bundles equivalent for every longer adventure, whether Adventure Path or for delightful modules like Murder in Metal City. The only unique thing about the chronicle would be the title and product number of the adventure in question. No special equipment or boons included.
Your GM Corps Wants to Run these Longer Adventures
Yes, we want the shorter society content for our late night venues that close early. But we also want longer content that might go over multiple sessions. We're an eager and devoted market and fan base.
◈ Encourage us to purchase your adventures
◈ Encourage us to market them for you
◈ The adventures are already written, published and have finished art. Let us run them, please!
"But these will level your characters too soon for Society Play!"
You already have rules in place to allow people to start characters at higher levels, and most society players enjoy the process of creating multiple characters.
"But these adventures were not written with Society Play in Mind!"
We know. We've been handling APs and modules in Pathfinder and SF1 for ages. I often lovingly craft a society connection and mission briefing, and I know other Society GMs who do the same. We can handle the occasional cultural disconnect, I promise.
Final Plea
With Pathfinder 2E allowing sanctioning and Starfinder 2E not allowing sanctioning, it makes Starfinder seem like the lesser program. Please... Let us offer your longer creations for Society credit!
The streets of the Shipyard district swelter in the sultry heat of the Augustana summer, and all around you the industry of the Shipyard District rumbles. As you climb the hill, you can see not only the largest shipyard in the inner sea, but also beyond it to the deep blue waters and tall ships of the Great Salt Harbor.
Up ahead is your destination, the Brine Shark Bistro. The sign features a shark rising triumphantly out of the sea foam with a crab in its mouth. Smells of frying crab waft towards you as you get closer. Not only is this restaurant famous for its crabcakes, but it's where you expect to get your mission briefing from Venture-Captain Brackett.*
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* That mission briefing will start when PBP Gameday XIV begins on September 3rd. But for now, feel free to pause on this hill, admire the view and chat briefly with one another. There's even a menu posted outside if you want to consider and plan ahead for what dishes you will order on Venture-Captain Brackett's tab.
Having received a summons from Venture-Captain Amara Li, you have all spent the night in the Three Gates Lodge of Kayajima, Minkai. Kayajima is a tidal island*, connected to the mainland at low tide and separated by water at high tide. The Three Gates Lodge is elegant, with gardens that have winding paths, a burbling creek, a meditation area, a library, and rooms for training and meditation. The rice paper walls are thin, and can be opened to let in the breezes from outside.
In an hour or so, it will be time for your breakfast mission briefing with Venture-Captain Amara Li.** But for the moment, you have a little bit of time this morning to explore, meet each other and talk.
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* This is Hmm's head cannon to explain certain lore inconsistencies in the maps and prior descriptions of the 'island' of Kayajima.
** This is a PBP GAMEDAY XIV adventure, and so our official start will be September 3rd, 2025. I won't be running official box text for the scenario until that point. But you are all welcome to get in some pre-gameday roleplay until then.
I am still trying to wrap my head around the class and how it comes together, but I like the idea of the intelligence-based martial with a banner, and so I would like to try out a commander.
Ancestry - open, though I am partial to size small characters.
Hello Everybody, it's Jinglemane reporting live after the biggest convocation of Pathfinder Agents anywhere, GenCon! As the lead reporter and publisher of the Mane Event: Your Guide to Lairs, Dares and Hair Cares, I'm going to ask the question that will be on the minds of Venture-Gossips everywhere:
"How do the Venture-Gossip and Pathfinder Agent archetypes interact?"
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Context:
This lucky lion won a boon for the Venture-Gossip dedication. Venture-Gossip dedication requires Pathfinder Agent dedication as a prerequisite, and allows a Pathfinder Agent to take the Venture-Gossip dedication without taking 2 other feats in Pathfinder Agent. So now I have TWO dedications going on my character sheet. Do feats from Venture-Gossip count as feats from Pathfinder Agent for the purpose of satisfying dedication requirements? Likewise, do feats from Pathfinder Agent count as feats for the Venture-Gossip?
Jinglemane pauses to bat his eyelashes at Campaign Leadership, as Venture-Gossips do everywhere.
I recommend running #3-04 Devil Wrought Disappearance and #3-07 Locked Lodge before running #6-12 Burning of Greensteeples. There are lots of links between #3-04 DWD and #6-12 BoG.
Prep notes:
This is more difficult than normal to prep.
I recommend reading through the whole infiltration chapter of GM Core and printing out page 199 (200 in the PDF) of GM Core as a player (and GM) handout to assist with the infiltration sequence. This infiltration sequence will be challenging / quite difficult for parties without a good skills person to provide the Follow the Expert exploration activity.
(If your party includes Rogues and Investigators, remind them of 'Follow the Expert' and let them shine!)
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Remember that some obstacles are Group and others are Individual. The Overcome entry lists whether the PCs need to overcome an object individually or as a group.
For individual obstacles, each PC needs to earn the required number of Infiltration Points themself.
For group obstacles, all PCs working toward that obstacle pool their Infiltration Points toward it together.
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Also, the official handouts include the DCs of the Infiltration, which I thought that perhaps the players should not see. So I've redone the Burning of Greensteeples Player Handouts with the intent that handouts 1 and handouts 2 + 3 can be printed on one double-sided page with no spoilers for players from handout 4.
Assorted Spells reprinted for GMs - I did this because I'm GMing at a convention and am unsure of the wi-fi connection. Use or ignore if you know them all already.
Top Secret Optional Handout for the Closing Credits:
Seriously, don't read this spoiler unless you are GMing the scenario or have already played it.
Spoiler:
There is talk within the scenario of the 'True Queen of Cheliax' and a surprise sapphire bracelet for Zarta. Since the context of this involves a storyline from before Pathfinder 2nd Edition, I prepared a deep lore dossier on Zarta that might answer some player questions.
Treat this as a post-credits Easter Egg!
I want to name a Chelaxian outcast from a noble family, and I'd like to get close to the style. I figure that in amongst the various Chelaxian APs there has got to be a good backmatter article that I can access.
(As a VC from Organized Play, I have all Paizo content in my downloads... somewhere. I just need to be pointed in the right direction.)
I made a Gear Handout for all the strange equipment in this scenario and I included a bonus handout of the partial letter which the party is supposed to find (but for which we had no handout.)
All in all, I liked this one. Mike Bramnik captured the personalities of the Pathfinder Leadership as more fully themselves than we have seen in ages. The lab was appropriately creepy, and the story is great. As a bonus, it runs fast. My party of five got through in four hours. Not bad at all!
Plus, I loved all the PF1 callbacks. This one was a pleasure to run.
I am taking over as interim GM for the party of a family member of mine, and they were tracking strange happenings with animals.
This will not be for Organized Play, but as an Organized Play VC, I own all the Paizo Adventures and I am happy to steal from all of them. So... tell me what I should be looking at!
I am planning a few Society Scenarios for fodder, including:
* Lions of Katapesh
* Blooming Catastrophe
* Perennial Crown 1 and 2
Are there any adventure paths that I should be looking at? If so, which ones? Should I be looking at Kingmaker or Quest for the Frozen Flame? Give me fodder that I can build with.
I'm the author of Heidmarch Heist, and I'm happy to answer any questions that GMs might have for running this scenario. Thanks to my amazing developer, Josh Foster, this mystery adventure turned out so well. I GMed three author tables of it at SkalCon last weekend, and it was so much fun watching my players try to figure out what was going on.
The most useful thing in there is a copy of the Map of Heidmarch Manor that I used when writing this adventure, but there are also treasure sheets with descriptions of some of the stuff found in the adventure. I also created versions of the handouts that I find a bit more readable and attractive if you have access to a good color printer.
Some cool tips: If you can, run the Old Fang fight on two levels with a separate area for the underwater fight. You can do this with two side-by-side flipmats. I literally ran one level on top of the other with a raised platform, and that turned out great.
My other piece of advice is position bad guys on top of crates or in the loft to make the warehouse fight feel multi-level as well.
This thread is a spin-off of the How do you recruit & keep GMs thread, and I'm giving it its own thread, so that we can keep the discussion of GM recruitment more focused, but I do realize this problem can affect the happiness and success of a venue -- and thus impact GM recruitment!
One awful player can ruin the gameday for everyone. I had personal experience with this, having a toxic player who loved sabotaging the plans of other players and just doing things that were 'ooky' and questionable at the gaming table.
Soon, all our regulars would change their RSVPs to 'nos' if he showed up, and we had no one bringing the fun anymore. Sometimes you can rehabilitate your problem players, but if that does not work, sometimes you just have to ban them.
It can be extra hard to decide what to do, though.
What if the 'problem' is related to a player's youth, disability or neurodivergence?
Is there a way that you as a GM or Organizer can work with the player?
Would better accessibility or a less stressful environment alleviate the problems?
How do we balance being both inclusive and firm?
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The original comments from the GM thread:
Purple Dragon Knight wrote:
You want more GMs?
Tell players to stop arguing with GMs and crack down on broken character builds.
There's zero point preparing a game for a group of folks to have fun only to see one player show up and solo all fights in one round.
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TriOmegaZero wrote:
This is why I left the PbP community.
I have no time or energy to spend on people that don't make the game fun for everyone at the table. I'm as guilty of bad attitudes as the next, but when someone comes at me confrontational about rules, it makes it that much harder to be graceful and explain where I was coming from.
Build a better community by rehabilitating the bad elements or cutting them loose.
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I'm guessing that these problems occured in a PF1 game, though it is possible that they happened in a PF2 game with one higher level player playing amongst a lot of lower level players.
One thing that has improved with Pathfinder Second Edition is that teamwork is absolutely needed, and that it is more difficult to have severely over or under-powered builds.
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What is your process for dealing with players whose behaviors are problematic? How do you communicate with them, and with your other players?
A recent scenario suggested that the reclusive strix and the owl-folk syrinx of Arcadia are in fact the same people. If I picked up a strix boon and chose to be from Arcadia, could I play an awesome owl person?
Whooooo* can be better than owls? Whooooo?
Hmm
* Let's not get into grammar of Whooooo vs Whooooom when I'm making owl noises.
I was there when Ranginori was freed in Cosmic Captive, and was always hoping to be part of the adventure that frees the other elemental lords. Does anyone know when they were freed?
To me, this was more galaxy-shaking even then the Starfinder Second Edition announcement. So... Here is where we can share all our Zon-Shelyn theories.
What do you think happened here? What do you think of this merged deity and its painglaive? How will this affect Songbird Station?
MY PERSONAL HEAD CANON
Shelyn is my favorite goddess. I have loved her for forever. Still, we all can evolve and grow. I think that Shelyn has finally redeemed her brother by accepting him for whom he is, and acknowledging her own dark side. This has allowed the two twins who were separated for so long to merge and become one.
I also created one-page cheat sheets for Pregen abilities that you can print. We laminated them back-to-back with the pregen character sheets to make an easy reference guide for our players.
This was a fun little advanture. I especially appreciated the first combat with its secret doors and sneaky little gremlins. It made for a lively first combat, one the party had to truly think their way through.
So I have a Tome Thaumaturge Kashrishi named 'Tourist', with the Time-Traveler background for PFS. (I unlocked the Time Traveler background via a Chronicle.)
I know most of what I want for Tourist. He's got both Diverse Lore feat and an all-encompassing Tourist Guidebook (aka, his Tome Implement.) But I haven't decided what three lores I want for the Time Traveler background! Diverse Lore is going to take care of most of my Recall Knowledge needs. Tome is going to let me pick up other skills on the fly when I need them.
So... what I want is three fun lores that will involve things that I can *do* in game. I think that Sailing Lore should be one of them -- it's a great skill for a Tourist to have. What should be my other two Lores?
Suggestions welcome, but I am playing him next week and would like to nail down this final aspect of his character.
I found the recently released Cost of Annoyance, or the Hidden Cost of Changing a Game to be a fascinating watch. Yes, it is talking about updating video games rather than tabletop RPGs, but everything discussed here felt so pertinent to the changes happening with the remaster.
It discusses the 'but I don't want to change' feeling that many customers go through, but also why change is often necessary. It discusses how to make a change that become more welcome to your player base, or how to highlight the benefits of a given change.
As an aside, one section discussed the problems that happen when designers must make a change not to benefit the player base but to please corporate overseers, which made me think of the WOTC OGL debacle, and then of PF2's need to excise exclusive OGL content from its newer products in response.
Hello, I’m GM Hmm! What can you expect from a GM Hmm game? A fast pace, whimsy, and a whole bunch of roleplay and discovery.
More discussions will be happening here, but first I'd like to ask if everyone is up for having an associated Discord channel for this game in order to enable notifications of GM posts and such. I've found having a discord channel makes it easier for side conversations or quick check-ins with other players, while speeding up the flow of the game.
Initial Homework
If you are interested in having an associated Discord channel for notifications of GM Posts, please befriend me on Discord at Hmm#4360.
Also, please fill out your character information on RPG Chronicles for this PaizoCon game.
When looking at forums that include sub-forums like Pathfinder Second Edition, I an seeing the most receent threads all jumbled together rather than sorted by sub-forum as I prefer. Can this be fixed? It's made it harder to navigate the conversations.
Many of our favorite legacy D&D monsters will not be reprinted in Monster Core, which means that they will likely not appear in future Paizo adventures, and I'm mourning a few of them.
In PF1, one of my PFS characters, Baroness Bobbi, had an adorably incompetent pet Owlbear named Hoot. (The Owlbear was incompetent because it was based on the underpowered bear companion -- thank goodness PF2 fixed up many of the less optimal animal companions!) Hoot accompanied her everywhere, and ran into battle with a cry of "Hooooooooot!" whereupon he'd miss every single enemy. As a result, I'll always have affection for Owlbears.
I'm also going to miss Otyughs for their Oscar the Grouch, kings of the trash quality. One of the best PFS NPCs of all time was Hats, an Otyugh who truly loved his headgear and would balance hats on his tentacles and manipulate them like puppets. I had really hoped at one point for an otyugh ancestry in PF2, and once considered writing a Starfinder adventure involving a revolution on a space station starting with an Otyugh trash union because managemement would not let them have their slam poetry night.
What are your favorite OGL monsters? Who will you miss and why?
I wish that we could have had this start in Paizo Organized Play. Yes, I know that we could join in, but it would be nice if it had started in coordination with our program, so that we could use it to pull in new players and GMs.
Also, could we do something live and simultaneous to this at our in-person venues?
Could we just make all PF2 quests repeatable? Looking at some of the older non-repeatable quests, they don't seem any different in content and structure from the fully repeatable bounties. They also don't seem to have anything especially noteworthy in the boon department, in case we were worried about repeatable adventures with boons.
I would love if some of these early quests became repeatable so that I could run them again for conventions and game days.
I've been looking through the Lost Omens Firebrands book and there is so much amazing lore that I keep thinking I should make a Firebrand, I love that their lore has them including every ancestry from all over Golarian. But since I'm still just noodling ideas around in my head, I'd love to hear other people's character concepts.
I'm looking for anything, especially consumables, that would help a master thief for levels 10 and below. Uncommon items are fine. I'd love to hear your crazy suggestions!
My character, Jinglemane, loves his Leiomano, which he got from an ACP transfer from a relevant chronicle. But now treasure vault has a revised Leiomano, that is available (also for ACP.)
If I like Treasure Vault's Leiomano better, do I need to spend ACP (again) to acquire it? Or should I consider the second version a revision of the first?
Let's take a look at this skill item bonus chart from Archives of Nethys. Where are the low-level Religion items? Almost every other skill has a level 3 or Level 4 item that boosts all uses of the skill. The Staff of Providence at Level 6 boosts Survival, and only boosts Religion for Recall Knowledge. After that, players have to wait until Levels 9 for their first Religion Skill item.
I thought that it would be fun to purchase a Cart for a merchant character that I had in Society play, but alas, Carts are not Society-legal because they're an option from the GMG, and no options from the GMG have been sanctioned for Society characters.
Can we please have the ability to purchase simple vehicles like the Cart? I am trying to think of how this might disrupt a game, other than the possibility of having to find parking for the cart once you leave a road.
I just realized that I am halfway to 150 tables in PF2, so I really should look at getting those specials locked down. I thought I would ask though if there are other scenarios that count towards the specials requirement, the way there are in Starfinder and PF1. While I have some specials already, I admit I've had a more lackadaisical approach to GMing PF2 specials. So... are there any scenarios other than the multitable specials that count towards this requirement?
A month ago, I built a sylph gnome named Bitty Blue, a gnome from the Mwangi Expanse with a grandfather who's a Cloud Dragon. But as I was watching Nonat1's video on Multiclass Archetypes for every class that I came across his idea for fighter with the wyrmblessed sorcerer dedication. I've never built a fighter before, but the idea of one with a sorcerer dedication intrigued me -- especially since this fighter could also be descended from Cloud Dragons and be Bitty's brother, Barak Blue.
What I already know of the character
Ancestry: Sylph Gnome
1st Level Ancestry Feat: Gnome Weapon Familiarity for the Gnome Flickmace
I also know that I will be spending his 2nd and 4th level class feats on Sorcerer Dedication and Basic Sorcerer Spellcasting.
But I'd love your suggestions on everything else, especially that all-important first level fighter feat.
More discussions will be happening here, but first I'd like to ask if everyone is up for having an associated Discord channel for this game in order to enable notifications of GM posts and such.
This is also where I'll be announcing pre-game homework, so stay tuned!
So you have found my stolen casefiles and think that you can unravel them? Mirror duplicates. Temporal anomalies. A book neither living nor dead, with a mind of its own? Each topic presenting enough questions to fill a library, and each a mystery I was unable to solve. I know there must be something more behind them. Perhaps you will have better luck...
K.H.W.
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Eando Kline, head of the Vigilant Seal faction, pauses in his reading of the book's forward. He peers up at Tess, the duskwalker elf who brought him this disturbing book. He raises a sceptical eyebrow. "And you say you found it... in the Boneyard? Pharasma's Boneyard?"
Hello. My oracle, Tess, has a primal witch dedication feat. Is this enough for her to be able to trigger a longstrider wand, or do I need to put Trick Magic Item skill feat on her?
Is there a scenario that has a good description of Vigilant Seal Head Quarters?
I am running some Dark Archives casefiles in PBP for Outpost, and I'd like Eando to be the main quest giver. It's nice to be able to provide some setting detail in PBP.
(And if he doesn't haven an office, that would be good for me to know. So far I have seen him operating out of field tents and briefing rooms in other lodges.)
Hello, I’m GM Hmm! What can you expect from a GM Hmm game? A fast pace, whimsy, and a whole bunch of roleplay and discovery.
Welcome to my recruitment for the Dark Archives Duology, a game for the Play-by-Post convention, OutPost VI.
What is the ‘Dark Archives’ Duology?
(In this case, it is for two of the Dark Archives Case Files.)
Eando Kline, the head of the Pathfinder Society Vigilant Seal faction, has gotten hold of a strange book: The Dark Archive Folio. Found within the book’s pages are the last mysteries of the Lone Archivist. It’s a book of unsolved mysteries filled with dangerous phenomena, and Eando Kline wishes his most trusted agents to follow up and resolve them.
The casefiles we are tackling in this adventure are:
The Lady’s Harvest for four Level 7 characters.
Tomorrow’s Feast for four Level 10 characters.
The plan is to tackle these mysteries back-to-back, giving the characters a chance to ‘level’ between adventures.
Do I have to apply with an actual PFS character? I have so many ideas!
Nope, but I have a strong preference for characters that have a history, and whom players have built over time. It’s good if you know your PC’s personality, history and quirks. I also want characters who have the ideals of the Pathfinder Society: Explore, Cooperate, Report!
So you can apply with a different character, but know that I will be scrutinizing non-PFS characters harder, and I will expect them to be considered members of the Pathfinder Society for the purpose of this game.
Will this be for PFS credit?
Absolutely. These two adventure each offer half a scenario’s worth of PFS credit.
So are these SHORT adventures?
Nope. Each are as long as a PFS scenario in play-time, which is why we’ll be moving at a fast pace for this one.
What do you mean by ‘fast-paced’?
Here’s my pacing expectations:
Approximately two posts a day, including weekends
Open communication about vacations, conventions and busy work days if you know them in advance. Real life happens to everyone, but if you can predict your schedule, that’s great. (For example, I have very busy Wednesdays, and may only get a single post in on those days.)
Posts that interact with your fellow players.
A willingness to be botted by others
A ‘bot me’ spoiler on your profile that includes dice expressions for your most common attacks and spells.
What Level does my PFS character have to be?
Because we are running this in Adventure Mode, the exact level of your actual PFS PF2 characters does not matter, so long as you can temporarily adjust them to the correct level for each chapter. These adventures can apply to characters of any level.
Can this be a variation on my PFS character? I’d like to try out a different feat, weapon, archetype, heritage.
Since we’re already going to be messing with the character’s level, I’ll likely allow small variations. Just talk to me about them!
How will you be choosing players?
I’ll be looking for a team that might go well together, as well as players that enjoy roleplay and cooperative style play. I will try to make my decisions quickly.
When will you be choosing players?
GMs for Outpost can apply on February 7th. Everyone can apply on February 10th. I will likely be making my decision by February 12th, though I reserve the right to make it earlier if I get four excellent applications.
Can I ask you questions here before applying?
Sure, ask away. Do know that I am planning on posting the actual application form later.
My misreading of a recent thread title in this forum led me to great disappointment when it turned out to NOT be a discussion of tailed ancestries and heritages. I really love ancestries with tails -- so much so that I was delighted when I realized that my mwangi gnome sylph who is descended from Cloud Dragons could actually have a draconic tail because all geniekin have access to the feat, skillful tail. Yes, her tail is non-functional, but I love to roleplay with it.
What tails do you love? Are there tail weapons you use? What classes do you use for your tail? I am tempted to make yet another thaumaturge with a ganzi just so that I can have fun whacking people with the biggest tail in the game. Tell me about your character's tails!
The new ORC agreement seems to be generating a lot of interest in Pathfinder 2nd Edition from the 5E crowd. Is anyone planning any events to welcome new players or teach PF2? I was considering this, but we have Con of the North in a month, and maybe that will serve as our place to welcome newcomers.
