Thanks for this, John. I ended up picking this up late and running it (cold!) at a convention and it... ran weirdly smoothly, but I couldn't get any of the implied dates to line up, and I didn't have the time to figure it out. I'm glad I'm not crazy.
This was not the Rasheen scenario I was expecting! (It's short on crocodilians, among other things.) Noting some things as I come across them. 1. Hey, a good use of in media res for the intro! Sort of. Maybe not technically. 2. DR/wound? I guess bypassed by a weapon with the wounding critical hit effect? Hrm. I'm not familiar with a rule as to whether it's any weapon with the wound property, or on an attack that creates a wound, which would usually be a crit. I'm thinking any weapon with the property? 3. The sphinx's makeshift haste circuit is "broken." By using up a swift action as normal, but forcing it to only last one round (as abnormal), it means that she really only benefits from the increased movement speed. She doesn't have a swift action to use for her full attack, so she can't move and full attack in the same round like you would expect as someone benefiting from haste. Smells intentional to me, but I'm not 100% sure. 4. Keystone's mentioned (a possible victim of the editorial process?), but it sounds like they're supposed to be lumped in with the four other AIs that are working in the background and go undescribed.
I have no explanation for the poor kobold, but I turned the alchemist into a recurring character who would set up shop with slightly overpriced consumables in dungeons throughout the adventure path. A little bit of a timeworn trope, especially if you've played too many JRPGs, but Mimips has turned out to be really popular anyway! I made Dagio quite a bit more powerful but didn't really play around with the immortality bit. It seemed way too difficult to really communicate to the players, and the circle bit was probably the more important bit for them to latch onto.
Hey, new authors! Woohoo! I'm excited to see what everyone put together. I was going to start with a question about page 5: PCs who rolled less than a 20 on their check feel an odd tingling around their heads as they recall these facts; this sensation is a manifestation of Myrrium’s assistance, as the orrery helps the PCs remember relevant information. It's very confusingly worded, but I think I just put two and two together: the "actual" DC is 20, and the orrery is giving the PCs a +2 bonus which is already reflected in the DC, so if the orrery is responsible for the PCs succeeding at the check, then and only then do the PCs' heads feel fuzzy. I don't think that whole head-fuzziness-thing is supposed to happen if the PCs fail, but that particular bit didn't make it into the text. I dunno, maybe that'll help someone else puzzle through it.
Just to let you all know: we are currently experiencing an unplanned, extended outage of organizedplayfoundation.org, which is the website for the Organized Play Foundation. It also hosts the Pathfinder Society Second Edition and Starfinder Society guides. We are actively communicating with the hosting service, who are working on restoring access. Unfortunately, we do not have an ETA on when the website will be available again. As part of restoring access, we have taken steps that may cause the guides to remain unavailable until Monday morning. We will provide more information as we receive it. We apologize for the disruption, and thank you for your patience!
Specifically, the policy reads:
Qualifying Event: Any public event at a qualifying location. To build on some of the things that have already been said, the word "public" in English is a very ambiguous one. When you say something is public you could mean: ...among other things. My current public library lets anyone get a library card, but my last public library limited library cards to local residents. They're both considered public libraries, though. We often think that "anyone can run for public office" because it's "public" but in truth there are usually restrictions on who can run, like minimum ages or residency requirements. Even if we let anyone play from anywhere, there are still restrictions--having a character of the right level, sometimes. Being able to connect to the services we use to play. Even knowing the language the game is being run in. We can argue about whether the restrictions we have in place are the right restrictions, it's true. But using the word "public" does not automatically mean restriction-free.
What, Mosquito Witch hate?? It's my favorite! Okay, so you have to run it very differently from most PFS scenarios. The ending's in a very different style. If you're expecting your typical PFS romp, it's not for you. But mystery! Horror! Laid out in a way that you can make it work well in PFS! (I might be a dork.)
I'm not hugely thrilled with the reduction in Starfinder scenarios, since I don't play much PFS2 - and with (seemingly) more of the One-Shots going Pathfinder 2's way, it doesn't seem like there'll be as much to make up for what looks to be a more drastic reduction. So, I'm disappointed. But constant crunch isn't crunch anymore, it's a workload management problem. We've all been able to see the problem for a long time, and it's not a good place to be. Something's gotta give. You either need to do less work or hire more people, and it looks like it's the former. Considering that and reacting to a long-standing problem is a really, really good thing, and I'm glad something's being done. I don't want to jump too far ahead, but maybe in time you'll all be able to hire someone new and bring the total scenario count back up to where it was--with less psychic damage this time.
Much less important, but maybe helpful for consistency for those who care--it looks like Paizo grabbed the art for the CR 12 paraforan, rather than the CR 6 paraforan fragment. The fragments are these cute little crystalline bird things. (Which, I guess, is not far from what the larger paraforan is supposed to look like!) The correct art for the fragment is on page 77 of the Alien Archive 3, hiding on the second page of the paraforan entry. (Yes, they got put in the opposite order of how they appear in text. It's no wonder someone grabbed the wrong one.)
Hmmm, something to keep in mind is that the fancy high-res map that's included in the .zip file is actually slightly different from the map included in the scenario itself. It looks like someone got a tile flipped around in the wrong direction and didn't notice! Shame it's the tile with the elevator on it, that might be important.
It's worth specifically noting for posterity (and future thread necros) that the VO corps recently received some updated information, and the post linked to above is currently out of date. Maybe it will be updated or included on another page soon! In the meantime, Alex gave us permission to share the updates publicly. I've been keeping the Pittsburgh region's "stars and table requirements" reference up to date, and for the moment it seems to be the only updated public resource. For Pathfinder 1e, the changes in the most recent batch are:
I also would love a subscription! Regarding frequency, somewhere between 1 every two years and 2 every month is probably reasonable for me. If the adventures/modules drop below one every two years I'll keep the subscription and be a little sad there isn't much happening with it, basically what happened to me with PF1's modules subscription. If there's more than two adventures/modules a month then I need to talk to my higher-ups (i.e. lovely spouse) and confirm that we have the shelf space to expand our collection that fast. We don't want a containment breach! I'm fine with any and all map options so long as the traps and secret doors aren't flattened onto the custom maps again. :P
We had a conversation about this for another scenario. (And I hear it also appears in a third scenario?) Spoiler:
SFS 3-00, where I calculated that--if run as written--it would likely cost a high-level character somewhere in the mid-two-digits of fame to remove. Alex Speidel, the house GM, ruled that it only affected one item, not all, unless the character got rid of the item in a timely manner. An implicit part of that ruling was nerfing the transfer on the curse so the transfer wasn't immediate but you had time to react to it. This is, of course, non-binding and non-official. I'm adding it here to provide some perspective on approaches to addressing it. I agree the trap is amazingly inappropriate for this level range. I also think the trap, at the correct level range as put in the CRB (!), is amazingly poorly written and absolutely bonkers. Not everyone's going to have reserves of Fame they can use to remove curses! It could probably stand an erratum. Or two. (Heck, even Starfinders will be Fame-less sometime in the possibly near future! If announcements happen as originally announced.) Dexterity drain? I'd be tempted to rule that the save is, at least, a save negates if nothing else. Dex drain at this level is also nuts, but not quite as nuts as the trap.
For example, on https://paizo.com/events/v5748mkg1vnmx you should be able to easily see the error in the map itself. More detail is available on the console, the most enlightening of which I believe is: The Google Maps JavaScript API v2 is deprecated and will be turned off on May 26, 2021. Please visit https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/v2tov3 to migrate your application to v3. I realize it's only described as deprecated in that particular error, but there are a number of important features that are now unavailable in v2, so it's largely unusable and marked as "for development only" now. (Sending sympathy [empathy?] to those developers stuck supporting google APIs. I hated how frequently those got retired when I used them for tiny incidental projects.)
Hah. Hahahahaha. Oh boy. I'm laughing because I just spent an hour working through the logic with my wife. By negating both of the conditions, it can make it hard to grok, it's true. Something about negation is just difficult. We never got to a NAND gate though; that's a bit of an odd one. I think there's some simpler wording, but it took me a little while to get to. If we simplify the wording a bit for brevity's sake, a condensed version she found helpful was: A combatant is shot at by a laser unless the combatant moves or is in melee.
Slight necro. I am finding the same when it comes to social interaction vs beacons. I try reminding the players to keep their eye on security as that was the main focus in the brief but the amount of interactions can be a slight bit tight if you have PC's with some social skills wanting to role play some and that is something I like to encourage. I actually thought this was a really interesting conceit. You have the experienced AbStat VC who tells the players that security is important, and the flighty VC-ish dragon who's new to leadership and who says "Naaaah, it's okay, don't worry about security! We've got it covered!" And then how well the PCs listen to the experienced VC determines how well they actually do. I do think it benefits from some emphasis on the GM's part early on, but I don't think it's necessarily a problem. Starfinders don't always succeed, and this is a really interesting way to fail. At least IMO.
Because 2020 couldn't get any crazier, someone let Thursty write a class?? I like insanity, though: I'm in. This should be good! I'm really looking forward to seeing how this turns out...
I bet it took you to your shopping cart, due to a quirk in how this quirky site works... he believe meant to link to http://pfschat.com/. On to GMing! In my experience, your level of comfort with GMing is going to be dependent on a lot of things, including how much you've GMed in the past (even if it's not for organized play), how much org play you've actually taken part in, and your level of familiarity with the rules. You've got some experience running other systems, so I think you're a better candidate for jumping in the deep end than most. Still, there are a lot of very strange things about organized play that running home games simply doesn't prepare you for. If you have the opportunity, I would play at least a couple of games (preferably more!) before you give Society GMing a try. My first experience with PFS:
I'd been running d20-based systems for 14 or 15 years when I got into Pathfinder Society for 1st ed. My very first PFS experience was as a player, in a game of the Confirmation (a newbie-friendly intro) on the Sunday of a convention. It was fun enough, but not particularly enlightening as far as best practices go since basically nobody was awake. When my wife and I went to try to play some Pathfinder Society at home afterward, we were told the tables were all full, but if I wanted to run some games, I could. I did!
It was... not a disaster, but it also wasn't great. I had a bunch of new players as well, one of whom cast entangle on the entire map on the first round. 40-foot radius of entangling vines and difficult terrain. None of the PCs had serious ranged attack options. It took two and a half hours for the first combat after I had the last combatant, unharmed, give up and leap off a cliff into the sea in despair. It was a four-hour slot. There were three more combats. Everyone had a good time, but it wasn't what we'd call a smooth table for organized play. You had some questions, and I have some too-long answers: How many of you that have GM'd for Society games did so before playing in one? How about before playing a PC in Pathfinder period?
How many of you had prior GMing experience in Pathfinder? What was the biggest change you had to make in how you approach Society games from your regular games?
You also have less autonomy over the characters at your table; taking a relaxed attitude toward builds will really help. You aren't the final say, so you aren't going to have the same familiar characters along for the ride every session like in a home campaign. There will be characters built based on rulings in FAQs and weird interactions that you're unfamiliar with and that aren't even legal except for a boon you've never seen! Even if you don't think a character option should work that way, many of the builds you see will be legal. (Not that you don't see some accidentally invalid builds now and again.) One thing that didn't trip me up but has tripped up other GMs: you also need to be more conscious of the perspectives and sensitivities of players you have never met. You are likely not going to know your players, at least not at first, so treat your game like you're speaking in front of a public audience. Jokes are fine, but not every joke is. You also need to be on top of the rules of Society, like chronicle sheets and day jobs and so on. Spending time as a player really helps with that part. What turns a new player into someone who's ready to GM a Society game?
Beyond that, an ability to improvise helps a lot; the capability to see things from multiple perspectives is helpful; the discipline to study the adventure and the relevant rules is important; and finally the ability to read the room (or at least the table) also pays off in spades. But none of those are required. Face to face and play by post, does one style lend itself better to a new GM?
And, lastly, how did y'all fare running your first Society game? Covered that above, at least! It wasn't awful, but it wasn't good either. Based on my experience, I'd recommend being comfortable with things not going as well as you would like.
Act 4 was missing some detail... this seemed to represent the intended path:
Datch's Dispassion from 2-24:
Datch’s Dispassion (Slotless Boon): Your efforts in defeating Dispassion and ending Datch’s character assassin training grounds have not gone unnoticed. Your notoriety in the Society (and beyond) ensures that Luwazi cannot employ you in her final mission against Datch, though your actions will resonate for those who finally confront the insidious ysoki. If you play Starfinder Society #3–00: The Last Bite with any of your characters, you can use this boon for an added effect during that scenario. This wasn't added, or was perhaps cut, from the scenario:
it was missed/cut out at the last minute, so our apologies, our bad, it doesn't do anything in 3-00. However, depending on the outcome of this scenario, it might have effects in the future...
Also, affectionately known as the Suzi from Accounting Fan Club. I'm pulling in some info from the pre-Gencon discord here... Product page: https://paizo.com/products/btq024x0?Starfinder-Society-Scenario-300-The-Las t-Bite
Languages change when the people who use them decide to talk differently, for whatever reason. It's been an inevitable part of human history at least since we started talking, and if you extend that to communication that doesn't rise to the level of language, it's been true for much longer than modern humans have been around. Heck, other animals do that too--for example, you've probably heard of the sparrows already. It's inevitable. Sure, we as a society push back on that a bit and teach children language rules in school: stuff like grammar and spelling. It lets those children communicate more clearly with more people. (How we teach that and the emphasis we place on it isn't always healthy, but that's another issue.) Being understood isn't the problem here, though: it seems like everyone or almost everyone understands what's going on when Eleanor wrote "they." So if we're not complaining about it because it's unclear, why are we complaining?
As it turns out, running games all weekend (or, rarely, getting to play games...) has not left me very much time on those aforementioned weekends for anything else! D: It has been a learning experience. Far easier to keep up as a player I must say. I suspect this is news to absolutely zero of you, but it was news to me. Apologies, and thank you for your continued patience! I've been asked to report, and I will be doing so tonight! We are very close to wrapping up.
Ciren turns and says "Jubair! You--oh." She begins backing away. The closest of the thugs, wearing a set of obviously mismatched chest plates (the left plate reads "ARCORP / RITY") stammers. "Th-that's okay. We didn't get paid enough for this job anyway." His compatriot behind him, a younger man who hasn't shaved recently, says "Boss! This wasn't the idea! C'mon! We can handle some morlamaws! And a copaxi! And a--I don't know what that is!" You only catch half of the glare as the boss backs away. Ciren futilely stamps her foot. "Good! Get out of here!" She turns to all of you. "It's nice to have some muscle to back me up. I've missed it." In the distance, you might catch:
Ceren says, "I checked up on you all. Seems I'm really dead!" She cackles with glee. "I haven't felt this alive in--I don't know how long. I'm gonna go collect my grandson and my tomato plants. I've got to get ready for work next week! Ta!" Ceren slowly ambles off. After a few minutes, you all receive a ping on your comms. It's Historia-7. "I've been informed that Ceren feels confident enough in your work to return to public life effective immediately, Starfinders. I have also received the data she retrieved from Bluerise." "That is the kind of acceptable work product we expect from our agents. Continue operating at this level and you will find your yearly evaluations less stressful." A crate-shaped courier robot with six wheels and a little flag to indicate its position (to prevent being stepped on by members of larger races, you believe) drives up to you shortly after, and beeps. Inside you find a credstick with 200 credits and a frostbite-class zero rifle with a note. "I found some of my old gear from my high school days. I'd like your Starfinders to have it! - Grandma C"
What I am asking is, do you mind if players use a plan B, as a google handout?Alternatives are being considered, but at the moment, only the official PaizCon Online Discord server is currently approved for use with these events. Alternatives would be appreciated! Discord servers are geographically targeted, so while it's not usually a problem, the fix for latency is "get a server that's closer to you." Hard to do if it's not your server, unfortunately. Furthermore, the vagaries of back-end network connections could render any particular audio solution problematic should a backhaul line get saturated. It's not common, but it's gonna happen for someone. (We just had this come up for Take Two con. 900ms ping to the Sac. discord server from the east coast despite 50ms ping to our local discord server; we switched to Hangouts and it all started working immediately.)
I would like to be able to give the volunteers who man our headquarters table some sort of reward in the new system. I also worry about incentivizing our volunteers. Right now, with paper boons for conventions, it's easy enough--everyone gets excited to earn that race boon! I do fear that as we increasingly move to AcP, going from "earn a race boon" to "earn exactly as many AcP as you do in our local events" is going to hurt. We lost a lot of our dedicated GMs in the edition change, so the group of intrinsically motivated gamemasters is much smaller. We do have a wider population of potential GMs, but by and large they still need a lot of extrinsic motivation to sign up and run. Our local conventions are cheap enough that getting free admission is a little motivation, but not much. Just to add another data point: we have also historically provided boons to GMs whose tables don't fire, although we base our tablecounts on projections based on past data and prune pretty heavily if it looks like we have a dead table. Couple that with centrally-managed game schedules and we don't run into too many overscheduling issues. Having an outlet to provide AcP for GM of the game (or two) every convention that doesn't go off would be helpful though, and I'll look forward to hearing more as that idea develops!
Glad to hear that wheels have been kicked! The resolution thing hasn't bothered me much, but it has bothered me some, and mostly for maps. (Everything else is generally fine for me, really; it's just those danged maps!) So while I'm not going to lead anyone on a map resolution crusade I am excited to see that there might be improvement to be had! Also, I would totally be in on paying for the entirely-hypothetical-at-best package of higher-resolution maps from existing products. And images too, why not? You guys contract out for so much art that a collection of the original images at their original resolutions, without the cropping that so often happens off the edges of pages, would be a really amazing resource.
Hey Winston! You look to be a bit far away, but I'll let you move up to the thing from where you were. In the future, if you could keep track of your location on the Google Slides it would be helpful! Also, do you have a character sheet somewhere I could look at? I'm not particularly nosy, but I don't see any information about poor Winston anywhere. He's gone off the grid for sure.
A round summer triaxian in a Sovyrian shirt bounds toward the snacks. "Hey little boss lady! Thanks for the donut!" "I mean, I'm sure y'all know me, but I'm Maximus. I like sun, summer, and chilling out. Being cool really helps you get in touch with what lives in here." He taps his chest where his heart would be. You think. Triaxian anatomy can be a little weird. "I'm all about peace, love, and--" he looks at his snack "donuts, at least for today. And Sarenrae, of course. So lean on me to keep your spirits up! I'm here for you, dudes, dudettes, and doodles." He goes to envelop Fitch in an awkward bear-hug.
Maximus looks at V'lorus. "Bring it in! Bring it in." He holds his arms out wide.
Considering that powered armor is relatively close in AC to heavy armor and that there are no modifications to add flight, that seems like a big nerf to powered armor. Any sort of pit or zero gravity situation becomes a big big big deal all of a sudden and we seem to see a ton of them because at the point that you can afford powered armor, well, everyone can find a way to fly! Or... not. :(
It looks like an oversight, but if you've decided you want to break the plot to make everything fit together, maybe it should? ;) Could be a nice bit of foreshadowing. Since you're in charge, you could always say that she removed the badge (or it could have fallen free) prior to her starting in on the Junior Senator. A third option: the badges aren't that expensive. Limitations would be a reasonable thing to add. Perhaps they only can be triggered when the wearer is on the Senate floor?
It looks like we got everything except for Forbidden Tides, which shows as purchased to me but didn't end up downloadable--either from the Digital Content page or from the product page. Can someone please give the scenario-granting-process a good poke with a big stick please?
I agree that it's up to the players to keep track of their chronicles, but as has been noted above, that can be kind of tricky. I've mentored some new players through the process of acclimating to society play, and most of them are very bad at tracking chronicles at first. No matter what I tell them... Given that the language to enforce this doesn't quite exist, and that the situation (at least in my experience) mostly afflicts the new players we want to attract and keep, is a hard-line policy really the policy we should be enforcing? I'm not sure I see the downsides to some reasonable leniency.
The situation at the gate isn't covered in a lot of detail, so you've got some freedom. As a GM I'd say it's important to do what you're thinking and let the big cat get around. Doesn't mean you can't have some fun with it, though. A guard may not let it into the city but... said guard could probably be bribed into letting a wagon full of hay or a cart full of Jeggare wine in. Alternately, a well-timed invisibility could help get the cat through the door even if it doesn't stay invisible for long. Each diplomacy check takes a minute, so... can the party diplomacize their way through the gate before the kitty pops back into view? That could be an interesting, self-inflicted "clock." After that, what does the party do? What does the lion's owner do, specifically? Well, there are all sorts of reasons a wagon might be in the streets. Maybe he's a "food truck" vendor, 'Lion's Lunchmeats.' "Sorry, we're closed." "But it's noon and the hours said you're open between dawn and dusk!" "WE'RE CLOSED." Maybe the lion just hides in the hay wagon all adventure. Eventually a fight happens, the authorities figure it out, and for the remainder of the scenario all hay wagons are searched for signs of big cats, which doesn't bother the PC much because they just bought a "food truck". Maybe the party primarily sneaks around at night, and small children everywhere tell their parents about this lion they saw, but none of the adults believe the kids? Maybe the PC makes friends with an entire tavern of people by buying rounds constantly, and in return this crowd of people surrounds the PCs and escorts them from place to place, shielding the lion from view. Lions are very Taldan--maybe he can put it on a cart and drape a cloth over it. Tell it not to move. "What's under the cloth?" "A statue I'm working on for the High Strategos! No, don't look underneath! It's obviously a lion, but I've been sworn to secrecy--no one shall see it before Pythareus does!" "Did it... did it just move?" "It's on a wagon. Of course it moves." "No, I mean..." (make intimidate check) Don't make any of it too big a deal--you don't want to have this be an every-round, every-fight, every-movement thing that drives the player nuts IMO. But you can have it pop up once or twice a session as something fun to distract the party with, and you do need to deal with it in some way. I think both you and the player have a lot of options to make it work.
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