DarkWhite's page

William Ronald wrote:

So, is there any word if this is legal for Pathfinder Society?

Hi! After carefully weighing a variety of factors (such as the burden on GMs still grappling with a new set of rules), the Organized Play team has decided that it's not in the best interest of the campaign to have playtest characters participating in official Pathfinder Society games at this time.

If you're interested in earning Pathfinder Society credit for participating in the playtest, I highly recommend playing Fall of Plaguestone and downloading the free sanctioning document for it on the adventure's product page. You can play a playtest character through the adventure and then apply the credit to a Pathfinder Society character of your choice when you're done.

Red Pandas MUST be available as familiars/companions. Owlcats would be cool too.

I seem to have had the misfortune of any character I create, their faction gets retired - Shadow Lodge, Lantern Lodge, Scarab Sages.

If PFS2 characters could have a main faction but flirt with other factions ala SFS, then retired factions, or completely new factions perhaps in response to a current Adventure Path, could make cameo appearances for specific missions.

Minor factions wouldn't play any more than an occasional role in the ongoing campaign, but would throw a bone to characters who were built around these themes.

Endorsing a small number of major factions, while entertaining occasional minor factions, would support one of Pathfinder 2nd Edition's stated goals of "more customisation".

Thanks for sharing, Tonya.

Roleplaying Pathfinder in the Green Dragon Inn, Hobbiton - setting of Lord of the Rings - sounds like an amazing event! I wish I could have been there.

VCs Glen and Paul and the entire NZ Pathfinder community have definitely raised the bar, not sure how any future event can top this experience!

Cheers,
Stephen RVC Asia-Pacific

If there are differences between a creature's stats and the traits of a PC race, I'd encourage players to pick those up as feats or similarly themed character options that might become available as a character levels up, if appropriate for their character.

This interview makes a really good read! So much nostalgia about the various gaming interests that drew many of us into Pathfinder as a hobby.

[ Blog: Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer - Interview with Local Pathfinder Society Venture Agent CJ ]

Cris-Justin Masungsong is a great guy and putting a lot of energy into PFS in the Philippines. I also hear that John Obedoza is also starting up some PFS sessions. CJ and John can both be contacted via the [ Regional Coordinators ] listing - scroll down to Philippines listed under International.

[ Facebook - Pathfinder Society Philippines ]

It's great to hear how PFS is growing in the Philippines and other areas in the region. Whether a resident or travelling, be sure to look up the local Pathfinder community and drop in for a game!

Cheers,
Stephen
RVC Asia-Pacific

I couldn't agree more with MisterSlanky!

As someone who studied Indonesian language for five years in high school, I was really excited to see Wayangs included as a Pathfinder race. We're so used to seeing Japanese and Chinese cultural influences in our fantasy gaming "Oriental Adventures" (ninja, samurai, tengu, white-haired witch etc), but so rarely those of other asian cultures.

Wayang are Indonesian shadow puppets and have a long theatrical and storytelling history. Troupes would travel from village to village, with performances starting at sundown and continue throughout the night, telling stories of an epic nature until sunrise. And while some Wayang do appear as the hunched, twisted characters portrayed by the Pathfinder race, they can equally be strong and noble heroes. An Indonesian friend created a Wayang hero inspired by Arjuna.

Characterising Wayang as a differently flavoured goblin without doing some rudimentary cultural research (eg Google) into stories told by Indonesian shadow puppet shows, is missing the point of this race.

I'm really looking forward to playing (reading / GMing) this scenario.

I'd like to see Wayang, Tengu and the other "always available" PFS races receive more representation in PFS scenarios and Pathfinder Battles miniatures. These races should be as iconic to our campaigns as Warforged and Dragonborn are to others, and should take a step forward.

This looks interesting :-)

Any plans to release a Print/PDF bundle for purchase here on the Paizo store?

Maybe one or two. As there are already a range to choose from, I haven't found the need to produce them as often as I used to, usually only if I'd like to promote an upcoming convention with a fresh look, or usher in a new season.

I'll have a look tonight and see if I have any to upload.

Cheers,
Stephen

Is there a reason that Preorder Colour Softcover is available, Add PDF is available, but Preorder Softcover/PDF bundle is not clickable?

Hey guys,

I have a couple of Pathfinder contacts in Manilla, and I believe there's a local game store that one of them frequents. As is the case in most locations, there are Pathfinder players (or would like to be players) everywhere - it's simply a matter of finding each other. Announcing a Pathfinder Society game at a local store is a great way to get things started. I'll see if I can get you in touch with each other.

Cheers,
Stephen
RVC Asia-Pacific

I was was looking to see if any PFS might be in Hawaii when I visit, and I not only didn't seem to be able to find a PFS game for when I'm there (albeit, they may have one someplace I didn't look), but it doesn't seem to have any one in charge from what I could tell in the PFS lists.

Yet you have a TON of players there.

Hawaii has been allocated to the PFS Asia-Pacific region. If anyone is aware of PFS groups within Hawaii, please suggest they get in touch with me.

Whether Hawaii or any location world-wide where public PFS play appears hard to find, these actually present a good opportunity to start a new local group. It's pretty easy to run PFS sessions within game stores, classrooms, community halls or any suitable public venue.

For assistance, contact your nearest Venture Volunteer, we're here to help. Or check out Pathfinder Society's Get Involved page.

On many occasions, campaign settings have been released under the d20 licence based on already popular computer games or RPGS as Everquest, World of Warcraft, World of Darkness, and yes Diablo.

In almost every case, where a publisher has altered the d20 rules to fit the scaling of levels/bonuses/numbers within the computer game, such as you're attempting with 10% bonuses, I consider these games a fail.

To provide an extreme example, a computer game might level characters up to 30, does that mean you should rewrite the Pathfinder classes to level up to 30? How does that affect every other rule in the game - spell levels, monster challenge ratings etc? What if one of your players really wants to bring an alchemist into your Diablo campaign, but too many rules have changed for that to be an easy option.

The more successful mashups have been those that respect and work within the d20 rules, and simply provide new races, classes, feats, equipment, spells, monsters etc, that reflect those found in the source material.

Let Diablo provide the flavour, let Pathfinder take care of the rules. Don't break the system.

You'll find that Pathfinder already provides rules for many styles of play. For example, the Horaldric Cube expands your inventory space - this sounds a lot like a bag of holding. Gem slots work like ioun stones. There's a ton of equipment in Ultimate Equipment, a frightful number of monsters spread across 5 Bestiaries, archetypes to customise classes, and Mythic Adventures if you're reaching for an epic feel. Use these as a guide to creating your own, or simply reflavour as necessary.

Use storytelling to describe Diablo concepts in Pathfinder terms. You're now playing a role-playing game, not the computer game.

Also look at how other publishers use Pathfinder rules to bring their unique campaign settings to life without breaking the game.

It sounds as though this game is already in progress, so the horse may already have bolted, so I'm unsure how much this helps your current situation.

Hi Tar-Bafiar,

The good news is that anyone can purchase PFS scenarios and run them for their friends, either at home, at a local gamestore, public library, school college university, community centre, or any other appropriate place.

There may already be someone doing this in your area, if so, you can help them out by attending their games, and offering to help GM a few sessions. Here are a couple of places you can look for local games, or your nearest PFS Venture organiser:

http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety/about/regionalCoordinators

http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety/events

If there doesn't appear to be anyone running PFS in your local area, you can get things started by approaching a local game store, or by advertising PFS sessions looking for new players anywhere gamers might frequent, such as online messageboards, store/cafe windows, school college university or supermarket notice boards etc.

If you're looking for some "Join the Pathfinder Society" flyers to print and display details of upcoming gamedays in store windows, you can download some from:

http://pathfindersociety.net/community/pfs-community-downloads/

Providing your contact details: name, email, facebook group, warhorn; on these flyers helps players looking for a game to contact you. You can also print these flyers four or eight to a page, to leave on the counter at game stores for interested players to pick up and take home to contact you later - this really helps!

If you're serious about being a local game organiser, contact your nearest PFS Venture organiser who may be able to help you out. If there's no current representation in Greece, have a look through the PFS "Get Involved" page, and if you think you can meet the requirements in your area, have a shot at applying.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety/getInvolved

That's how most of us got started, simply by running public games, and becoming known by players and game store staff as the guy who runs PFS in my area :-)

Good Luck!

Spoilers?

Oooo, a +7 on a reroll. That's going to leave a mark.

So does Tonya get a +8?

;-)

Note the specific wording of the Reward:

"Treated as 2 stars higher for qualification to run Exclusive events."

Therefore, no additional bonus on re-rolls than you already receive.

As GM, I usually consider the motives of the opponents. Eg, if you have a group of adventurers threatening with weapons and spells, the opponents are likely to target them first, and only worry about "non-combat" pets if they somehow contribute to the combat, eg a Cavalier charging or ride-by-attacks on his mount, then obviously taking down the mount. Otherwise, they're not considered a threat - the opponents have more dangerous and immediate threats to deal with before wasting precious attacks on animals.

Nonetheless, this approach may not cover all situations, eg hungry non-intelligent beasts, or area-of-effect spells.

Any idea whether this Softcover is likely to be restocked?

Congratulations guys, well deserved :)

I pre-ordered the Strategy Guide back in July, along with a number of other products. This order has been "pending" since July ... it's now November. I don't know if the Strategy Guide is what is holding up shipment of everything else in this order. Will the delay of the Strategy Guide mean this entire order won't ship until February?

Note: I can't currently view my Order History, it keeps displaying the login page.

I've noticed some decline in Melbourne, Australia, in recent weeks due to a few reasons:

We've just run two large conventions within the same month.

PAX Aus was the largest PFS event ever run in Melbourne:
- 8 tables per session over three days
- between 200 and 300 pregen character sheets handed out
- over half of players were visitors from interstate
- most players were completely new to PFS and played a single 2-hour Silverhex quest
that's a lot of players.

This was a great result, and we have welcomed new players sign up for our weekly gamedays in stores. However, preparing for events like these takes a lot of effort. For example, to be able to run so many tables of 2-hour Silverhex quests, we had to slot-zero two tables of GMs in the weekends prior to the event. Similarly, we slot-zeroed GMs through new scenario releases leading up to Unicon. While slot-zero sessions are the fastest way to prep a solid number of GMs for new release scenarios, they take six GMs out of public play for those weekends. If you don't have the number of additional GMs required to keep public games running over those weekends, there will be player drop-off. It only takes a week or two with no scheduled games, and players find something else to do with their weekends - it can take a few weeks of scheduled games for attendance to rebuild.

This time of year is also leading up to exam time in Australia, then you have Christmas/New Year break, which slows things down considerably.

I've also noticed a sudden up-take of privately run Adventure Paths, which is actually great that players who met through publicly run Pathfinder Society sessions, now have the friends and connections to join privately run Adventure Paths. This is a success condition! even though it reduces the number of available players for our weekly public store gamedays.

Now that I've caught my breath from having run PFS at two large conventions in the same month, I GMed my first in store gameday again for a while. We all commented at how we used to run three tables per week at this venue, but after the con season, we're down to one. By scheduling more public games, more players will attend once more, but attendance often occurs in seasonal cycles, I've seen it happen year after year. It takes some dedicated effort to keep things running, but it's not something I'm necessarily concerned about - I'm looking forward to attendance building once again. I know the PFS release schedule isn't slowing down any time soon.

It's great to see Pathfinder Society organised play opened up to more regions internationally. Welcome aboard.

Organising a region can be a large task, and some of us have already walked down that road, so if you need advice or a hand with anything you're unfamiliar with or having trouble with, don't be afraid to reach out and ask. I think you'll find the VC community to be a friendly helpful one :-)

It's great to see Pathfinder Society organised play opened up to more regions internationally. Welcome aboard.

Organising a region can be a large task, and some of us have already walked down that road, so if you need advice or a hand with anything you're unfamiliar with or having trouble with, don't be afraid to reach out and ask. I think you'll find the VC community to be a friendly helpful one :-)

I think these are a high priority - they were being used at GenCon, so they're on their way. Just a little more patience may be required.

A few flooded dungeons come to mind.

Echoes of the Overwatched has a partially-flooded tower and might be the one Fromper is recalling?

GMT's hideout in the Puddles District, for which there was never a map provided in the scenario, might benefit from this flipmat to make the approach to his hideout and the encounter itself, feel more thematic to the players.

Wow, that's some praise. Congratulations Lucas, recognition obviously well deserved!

Congratulations guys. Coin well earned.

By my count, that's 68 reported complete, four part EoT sessions with the only remaining "large regions" left to report is Missouri, Boston, Ohio, Tampa, Virginia, two more regions in California and the handful of times it's been run in Austalia. By my estimation, there should be another 21-22 completed EoT that have been reported but not accounted for here, which leaves it short of 100 times as has already been mentioned.

Melbourne, Australia

• Eyes of the Ten (all four scenarios): 1 table
  
• Ruby Phoenix Tournament (10-12): 4 tables
  
• Siege of the Diamond City (12-13): 1 table
  

IIRC, we've had one table at high tier (11+) for each of the yearly Specials.

There's a second table of Eyes of the Ten waiting in the wings, while the first Eyes of the Ten table are about to schedule Academy of Secrets (12-14).

Over the last twelve months we've increased from one store running PFS once a week, to multiple stores running PFS multiple times per week. Players that joined only 12 months ago are already achieving Tier 7-11 characters, some of them have two such characters. I think it's only a matter of time (six to twelve months) before we see another wave of Eyes of the Ten tables.

Which is exactly why groups should use Warhorn ... everyone knows what to expect before they arrive, and can choose not to sign up if it's a game they've already played.

Public gamedays really should use Warhorn to help organise your events.

If players aren't consistently using Wahorn to sign up, try mentioning the signup process at the beginning of each game, or occasionally reminding players on your Facebook group, and even hand out cards with your Facebook group, Warhorn page, and a local PFS organisers contact email address (these could be those of the store you're playing in), so players can't claim ignorance.

Once the policy is in place, players can't complain if they're turned away from a table because it's full - that's what Warhorn is for! They'll soon change their habit and sign up if they're turned away more than once.

Waitlisting helps identify if another table is required. Assign an extra GM before the gameday arrives, if there are enough Waitlisted players to warrant a second table.

In our region, we limit low-tier scenarios [Tier 1-5] table sizes on Warhorn to 5 players max. This way, a spare 6th seat is always available at the GM's discretion for an unexpected new player who might not have signed up on Warhorn yet - because regular players should already know the signup system, but you never want to turn away a new player.

Setting up a Facebook group for your local PFS region is a great way of communicating with your players between gamedays. Contact your local Venture-Captain or Venture-Lieutenant, as there may already be one for your area.

This looks goood ... 160 pages ... 5-part series ... any chance there might be a print/PDF bundle on the way?

Is this race valid for PFS? ;)

Additional Resources page:

If a product does not appear on this list, then it is not considered legal for play. This list will be updated frequently as new products are released.

Pathfinder Society has been growing at a rapid pace here in Melbourne, Australia. Nowadays, there's hardly an empty day on our calendar in which a PFS session isn't running in a store somewhere across metropolitan Mebourne.

I'm very proud of our community, and even moreso of the GMs whose effort makes this possible.

One such person is Jena Wills, who has been an active member of our Society for 12 months now. Recently, Jena offered to check out a new store, Next Level Games in Dandenong. Although Jena regularly attends games at our other PFS venues, she has quickly made NLG Dandenong her home turf, which has been fantastic, because it extends our Society to a corner of Melbourne that neither myself nor VL Andrei could hope to cover ourselves. NLG Dandenong is now hosting up to three PFS sessions per week.

As Melbourne's player-base and scheduled sessions continues to grow, I know Jena will become a valuable member of our team. I hope some of you will have an opportunity to join Jena at a PFS game in Dandenong or one of our many other gamedays and events across Melbourne.

Pathfinder Society Melbourne: Warhorn | Facebook

Parents are often dubious about time their kids spend "playing games", but what you're achieving with these kids and their communities via Pathfinder/Kingmaker is truly inspiring.

Thanks for sharing your story with us. I wish this project, the changemakers and their communities every success.

Any gamer who reads this should forward this good news example to parents or others they know in a guardian or educational role.

Congratulations Simone, and welcome to the team! :-)

Congratulations Tom, very pleased to see you've joined the VC team :-)

Good luck building the PFS community across Scotland.

Assuming you have a venue (game store, library etc) you can play at, talk to the staff, place flyers on the noticeboard, wall or window to attract gamers and promote your gamedays. Schedule your gamedays on the same day/time each week, so local players fast associate that day/time as Pathfinder Society, consistency works.

Set up a [ Warhorn ] account, schedule your gamedays on Warhorn, so players have a fair sign up process and know when a table is full, can Waitlist etc.

Set up a Facebook Group (not Page) for players to join, ask questions, create discussions, share experiences, it's great for building a community around!

And don't forget to set up an ongoing [ Event ] for your gamedays, via [ My Pathfinder Society ].

Place these URLs on your flyers, so new players know how to get in touch and join your group.

Hi Stemboy,

I'm still surprised whenever I hear of some corner of the world where PFS hasn't taken off like wildfire. All it takes is a dedicated individual to schedule some regular monthly or weekly gamedays, and after some persistance, bam! you have your own local PFS gaming community!

You might like to check out the [ Pathfinder Society Regional Coordinators ] and [ Get Involved ] pages, where you'll notice Scotland on the Volunteers Wanted list.

As for Flyers to help promote your gamedays, check out my posts in threads [ here ] and [ here ].

Good luck with getting PFS running in Scotland. There's many of us here to help with advice, flyers and other support if you need it.

Cheers,
Stephen (DarkWhite)

The issue being Pink Dragon, the player needs to be responsive enough so that when a gm asks 'How did your Perception get to +9 at level 1?', the player can answer them just as quickly.

If you notice on a Herolab sheet it dosnt show the calculations made. You will have the player uming and arring to figure this out.

I've had this happen to myself. You notice a number that looks wrong, and your first response is "Oh, Herolab's got it wrong again!". But then you back-track and try to calculate everything manually, and you realise there's an obscure ruling you weren't aware of or forgot, and that Herolab's got it right all along.

Encumbrance due to weight

This is a very common situation for new users of Herolab, one you don't repeat once you're aware of it. I'm pretty sure there's a checkbox on the first screen that allows you to ignore coinage when calculating encumbrance.

Back in the days when players were allowed to temporarily level up an existing character to play sanctioned modules, we had a lot of problems with players not advancing their low-level characters to high-level properly, so we started requiring character audits before confirming a player's registration to high-tier Modules.

Example: we've run the Ruby Phoenix Tournament PFS sacntioned module for 11th-level characters three times now, and each time my (then) VL RyanK required a character audit before confirming a player's registration to the table. In almost every case, those who built their characters in Herolab were built correctly, while those who built their characters by hand were riddled with errors and incorrect rules assumptions.

The clear message here is that human error occurs much more frequently than Herolab error.

Based on this experience, I wholeheartedly recommend Herolab to all Pathfinder players. Just remember to bring your sourcebooks or PDFs with you to the table - Herolab on it's own doesn't qualify your character as PFS legal.

TetsujinOni wrote:

Recreating the maps (including recreating a version of a mappack map) from scratch would be OK, but using extracts is very specifically NOT OK.

Per the Community Use Policy...

Community Use Policy wrote:

You may use any of the text or artwork published in the Paizo Blog at paizo.com/paizo/blog, with the exception of excerpts of Planet Stories publications, Pathfinder Comics, and any logos and icons that aren't also in the Community Use Package. You may not use any photographs published in the blog (because those rights are usually not ours to offer). You may not use artwork, including maps, that have not been published in the blog, although you may create your own interpretations of material presented in our artwork and maps, provided that your interpretations don't look substantially similar to our materials.

This is something I have been warning local players about for a while now.

I have found a disturbingly large number of maps while going though the old files and have not been transferring them.

There are some talented creative people within the PFS community who could work to replace the GM Shared Prep drive maps with ones of their own creation, similar to these threads where members commission or share their character portraits:

Art of Your PFS Characters
Pathfinder Society Fan Art

Maybe someone could start a similar thread where the PFS community can show off maps of their own design and style, being original and creating new work (don't forget to include the Community Use notice on each map!), instead of simply copy/pasting a Paizo copyright map to the GM Shared Prep drive.

That's a pretty amazing feat.

500 Tables
You can keep GMing after you should be dead.
Pre-requisites: 5 stars, 500 tables of GMing, must have previously or currently been under the effects of Madness
Benefit: Once per day, you gain insane braggings rights, mad respectz from every Pathfinder within long range (400ft + 40ft/level).
Normal: You can't help but gasp in awe when someone with this feat walks into the room.

I live in Melbourne Australia, and Doug lives in Michigan USA, so I'm pretty sure mad respectz extends far further than long range, more like extreme range (9900mi or 16000km).

Probably due to extreme range, Doug has not yet GMed a scenario for me; however, I still feel connected to the Doug phenomenon. I'll let you all in on a little secret:

Back in Nov 2012, I received the following message:

Hey Stephen, feel free to decline to answer this but I am wondering what your PFS session count is at currently. I suspect that we are the two highest, but I took the better part of a year off and I wonder how we compare now.

Doug needn't have worried. I may have been in second place, but even after a year off, Doug was still somewhere in the vicinity of 100 sessions ahead of me.

Without realising it much at the time, I was a prolific GM, simply because we had a lot of players and few GMs, so I was running tables every week or players missed out.

Nowadays, I'm pleased to report that our community has not only grown in players, but also GMs. As a result, I find myself doing more support tasks now, such as helping my GMs with maps, advice, scheduling, slot-zeros, organising cons, new player enquiries, maintaining various facebook groups, Warhorn, RSS feeds etc, a VC's work is never done.

I know others have overtaken me in session count, as I recently read of someone GMing their 300th session, but I don't mind, I do whatever I'm needed most, and sometimes that's supporting others to GM scenarios to help grow the community.

Nonetheless, I still GM frequently, and I'm only a few games shy of 250 - but that's still only half of what Doug has achieved.

Well done and congratulations Doug, I know how much effort this has taken over a number of years, you deserve the accolades, you're the King!

Update: Rebooted my laptop, and the prices in my cart updated with the correct discounts.

I'm also experiencing this problem. Some product only, prices appear discounted on product pages, but not when added to shopping cart. Example:

Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding

I think there's an industry shortage of pre-painted minis for modern roleplaying campaigns or modern-fantasy cross-overs.

Perhaps an "encounters" pack to help fill-out Reign of Winter's modern figures might be popular, without raising concerns of too many modern figures in a standard Pathfinder Battles set.

That's what "dropped to ground" in Hero Lab is for!

Herolab also has an option to not count coin weight for purposes of encumbrance - it's the first screen with all the checkboxes, where you click Pathfinder Society Rules. If you don't do this, you'll find all your Dex based skills adversely affected by the weight of your coins (encumbrance penalties).

I had a player asking if the Kitsune in one book was an errata of the other, and if he had the boon and one sourcebook, could he use the stats from the other sourcebook? Answer: No. This is an option, not an errata.

If you have both sourcebooks, you have a choice at character creation, though if you only have one sourcebook but not the other, then that's the culture your Kitsune was born into, and that defines your starting language.

You only gain access to the features from books you own.

Join the discussion at the Pathfinder Society Melbourne Facebook group

Sign up to play at Warhorn: melbourne-pfs

Pathfinder Society Events around Australia in January 2014, include several conventions over the Australia Day long weekend:

• CanCon2014 Canberra,
  
• PsyCon Nought Penrith NSW; and
  
• Arcanacon 2014 Melbourne!

Hi Steve,

l recall running several PFS scenarios for you at PaizoCon Oz Brisbane 2010 and 2011.

Congratulations on your appointment as VL and welcome to the team!