Jade Suryani's page

The fabulous At Ease Games in San Diego, California is celebrating another successful year with a glorious offering of Pathfinder Society games, including 7-00: The Sky Key Solution and the chance to play Aspis Agents in Serpents' Rise and Serpents' Ire.

Join us September 10-12 in sunny San Diego!

More information including a full schedule available at our Meetup Group and sign-ups available here.

What: Mini-convention - CaydenCon 2015 (5 slots of gaming)
When: December 5-7, 2015
Where: At Ease Games, 8990 Miramar Rd. #140, San Diego, CA
Convention Website: Warhorn

Description:
Celebrate the end of the year and Golarion's luckiest god with 5 slots of PFS play at At Ease Games!

I'm honored to welcome Sean Goodman to the ranks of five star GMs. He's an absolute pillar of the San Diego gaming community and one of the best game masters I've ever seen. He has a fantastic knowledge of lore, a deep understanding of the rules, and is an impartial arbiter. He's welcoming to new players and the ones who sit with him come back. His art and handouts are local legends. Without him, San Diego would not be the wonderful community that it is.

Please join me in congratulating Sean on his fifth star!

At Ease Games in San Diego will be hosting a PFS mini-con from December 12-14. We have an awesome schedule, including 5-99: The Paths We Choose!

The complete schedule can be found on our Warhorn!

I've been running Mummy's Mask for a table of five very experienced players on a 15-point buy. They are about to start Part 3 of Secrets of the Sphinx and they are just having a very easy time of it. No deaths, the crypt-breaker alchemist has found all of the traps, very few failed saves. Their ACs are high enough that enemies have a hard time hitting them and the enemies have low enough AC that they are very easy for the party to hit. No one has even gone unconscious yet. I don't necessarily want to kill any of the characters, but I would like to feel like I am at least challenging my players.

I usually run in PFS, so I have never tried altering combats before. Has anyone else run into the same problem? Does anyone have any advice for how I can (fairly) increase the challenge for my players?

Thank you!

At Ease Games is hosting three days of Pathfinder Society goodness from Saturday, June 7 to Sunday, June 9. There will be six slots of Society excellence, including all five levels of Thornkeep and the first level of Bonekeep.

Sign up on our Warhorn today!

After hearing the podcast and reading the blog post, there was something I wanted to bring up. I've been playing PFS since season 0 and GMing for almost that long and I really like the faction missions. I think they're part of what makes PFS fun and they're one of my favorite parts of the game. I'm actually making my first boards post ever so that I could respond to this:

"There will be a fundamental change in how faction missions work in scenarios. The biggest change is that individual scenarios will no longer provide faction mission handouts except in rare circumstances"

1. Faction missions allow players to connect with their faction leaders. Because they don't appear often in scenarios, the faction missions are what allow players to learn about their faction and its leaders. You learn about the Paracountess and Madris through their missions and how they address you. Without the missions, players will lose that connection.

2. Faction missions also allow for really cool layers in the meta-plot. I love that parts of season four were foreshadowed in the faction missions for season three and that important parts of season two were present primarily in the faction missions. It allows for a lot of different agendas in the season plots which makes for more complicated and better plots.

3. The layers allowed by the faction missions also reward GMs because you are able to see the plot from different angles. This means you can learn more about the Society and its politics by GMing, which is fantastic.

4. Faction missions give new players something to directly connect with. They can hold the paper in their hands and get a better idea of what they should be doing in the scenario. Without the missions, I think new players will have a harder time earning their prestige at all, since they might not know the gaming tropes that will help them get the "secret mission" prestige.

5. With only 24-28 scenarios per year, making each scenario deal with one or two factions will result in only 3-6 play opportunities for each faction per year. I've loved the Chelish focus in "The Disappeared" and "Fortress of the Nail"…but I don't have any Chelish characters, so I was glad there was something for me to do too. "The Fortress of the Nail" faction missions even give you hints to how the Society functions as a whole, which is fantastic. I also don't think it will be enough to engage new players if they only have a chance of doing their special missions a few times a year.

6. Finally, the faction missions connect players more deeply with the campaign world. They give characters a variety of motivations while all still working without in the society. I really enjoy the flavor that it adds and think that the faction missions make the game more fun.

In five years, I've played every scenario and almost every faction. I think the campaign will lose something without these elements.

Thanks for making it through the wall of text