Xathos of Varisia's page

Yep, there is quite a bit of OP going on in Missouri. We've got lodges in my neck of the woods which is Columbia and the rest of NEMO, along with lodges in Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, Rolla, and Cape G. I believe another VC from one of those lodges is reaching out to you and they are a lot closer to you than I am by far.

However, feel free to reach out to me if you need anything. I am not a FGU user. I use Foundry when I do any online stuff which I haven't done in a while due to time constraints.

Plus, welcome back to Org Play! It's always good when someone jumps in. If you ever get a wild hair to drive a lot to play, hit us up in Columbia on the second Saturday of the month at Valhalla's Gate. In fact, we're playing the first scenario from Season 7 of PFS2 this Saturday at noon. I know, that's a long drive!

Still radio silence from the powers that be on the (overwhelmingly negative) feedback on the (overwhelmingly unpopular) Society changes.

I wish I could say I’m surprised. :-/

Did you ever stop to think that others are happy with the changes? The forums are often overloaded with people that complain and gripe about things. I like most of the changes to Org Play. I do not like getting rid of the stat blocks which seems to be the biggest complaint.

They could just get rid of Society or just offload it onto the community like WotC did with AL. There's a pretty strong case to be made that OP is not really bringing in enough business to justify the costs for sustaining it. On the other hand, we saw during the pandemic where OP saved Paizo's butt and that totally justified every expense ever put into OP.

Pick your poison.

Let's get Dead God's Hand published in AP format!

I'm looking forward to the shorter scenarios for multiple reasons, one being getting weeknight gaming going. The 4-hour scenarios just did not fit the time slots available.

I am also glad to see the level bands. While they might be problematic for some, I didn't like running games where 4 or 5 players were the lowest level for the scenario and one or two players were the highest level. It resulted in some unbalanced sessions where there was often no challenge. I might as well have just handed out chronicle sheets and played a game of Yahtzee.

Murder in Metal City should definitely be sanctioned. I feel that it is a tremendous error to exclude it and other SF2 Adventures whether they be modules or APs from sanctioning. Just do a simple sheet like we've done with PFS2 for modules and APs.

It is not going to hurt the campaign. Instead, it will help the campaign.

You can also use the maps from the Shattered Star AP for Magnimar.

Grats David!

I really didn't think you would make it through all ten levels and not suffer a TPK. Grats to all of you! I am glad to see Belcorra and company managed to take some gunslingers with them to prove this wasn't a easy dungeon.

It is always a wonderful experience to make the drive to Indianapolis and reunite with my friends from all across the US. Many of those friends were made at earlier Gen Cons. I also look forward to meeting nu-friends just as much. Plus, I get to learn from my peers at the tables. It was great to GM tables next to GM HMM, who took the time to help me learn how to play online via the PbP system several years ago as well as some of my other friends and comrades in purple.

I'll echo GM HMM here as well about the GM Servitude program. I would not have been able to attend Gen Con at all without it. While I do not get to play very often as a result, I feel that the program is worth doing. It's an incredible experience, the rewards are rather generous, and the gratitude of the players is genuine. I get an incredible rush just stepping into the Sag on the first day in my purple volunteer shirt knowing that I am helping to make somebody's Gen Con a positive experience.

I'm already looking forward to next year's Gen Con!

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

I'm so confused how you're writing this 5 years on from the release of Pathfinder 2e and the massive success its been.

Massive success? Just that ? We probably don't live on the same planet. From my window I see that PRPG2 sells much less well in stores than D&D 5. Which itself sold less well than PRPG1 in the past. The players and GMs I know who tried the adventure with PRPG2 came back to PRPG1 or switched to D&D 5. I'm already amazed that this system managed to last five years when I see the reviews in magazines and on the internet. Even video games based on PRPG2 rules are very, very far from having the notoriety of a Kingmaker or a Wrath of Rigtheous.

Did you paint your windows black or just live under a rock? PF2 outsold PF1's initial release on Day One of Gen Con 2019. In the five years since it's release it outsold ALL of PF1. They even managed to sell an entire print run out in 3 weeks thanks to the OGL crisis. Your observations are made with horse blinders.

If you want to whine, by all means do so. But your view is flat out wrong. PF2 is a huge success. It is outselling PF1. PF2 is a far superior game than PF1. Will that be the case with Starfinder 2? Based on my experiences running it at Gen Con last week, the answer is yes. Your mileage may vary.

When will Dead God's Hand be published? This is an adventure that really needs to be released soon.

Grats to Zach and Jess! Way to bring it home to Southeast Missouri, Zach! It's been fun to play at your tables over the years.

Kansas City or North Carolina as part of the vacation? Tough choices.

Grats to Landon and Eric!

Grats to our new coin holders, Wally, Barb, and Nicholas! Big grats to Doug for the rare 5/5/5!

Grats to Gary on his campaign coin and to Noah and Stephan on getting those 5 counts!

Super Grats to Heather! You're awesome and definitely deserve this recognition. I have seen you make Gen Con work and it's incredible how you pull it off year after year.

Grats to Bill and to Bigrin42 (Brad) on earning their campaign coins! I had the great fortune to have Bill at one of my 5-02 tables this year at Gen Con and to play with him and another 5-Glyph GM later Sunday night. We had a table ran by a 4-Glyph GM (eval time!), three 5-Glyph GM players, and 5 other Glyphs for the remaining three players. That made a total of 20 Glyphs for the players and 4 for the GM. I have never been at a higher Glyph total table as a player or GM before. We had a great time and enjoyed a wonderful Sunday which was just part of an even better Gen Con!

Finally, upgrading the tech platform from the 20th century and punch cards to something from the 2020s! That alone makes my day, but the union news along with the remote work, new store...okay, everything else in the announcement just adds to the fun.

I'm very happy to see Paizo adapting to change in the industry while also being a force for change in it as well.

You could easily have a thousand schools of magic all over the Inner Sea. They do not have to be large, formal schools. They could be "Lucky's Legerdemain & Lore," or "Master Mikhail's Dojo of Mysticism." They could be really large formal academies as well. Anything is possible. There could be on major school in a city and 15 smaller dojo-style schools or any combination or lack of combination.

The 3+1 slot system can be maintained by saying school trained wizards acquire the extra slot whereas generalists retain their current slots. We could also say the generalists are self-taught or traditional wizard-apprentice types of wizards.

Schools could offer all kinds of spells and have a few higher spell ranks spells be original. Or not at all. Anything is possible. I am in favor of having as few restrictions on this aspect as possible so the writers can be as creative as they can with this. This is also a way for writers to create new spells for schools in their adventures for a specific school.

I shamelessly stole this the initial idea for this from from another poster, so my apologies on forgetting who said this.

Effectively, there were originally major Drow cities. But the timey-whimey antics of the adventuring group involved in the events of Return of the Runelords created ripples in time, one of which resulted in the subterranean elves never completely falling to darkness. This basically led to Drow never being created, rather the elves that stayed underground became the Cavern Elves, which didn't exist in the old timeline. The Cavern Elves weren't nearly as ruthless as the Drow however, which allowed the Serpentfolk to hold onto or reclaim their old cities.

The Serpentfolk are terrified of Zirnakayin, because it exists as a time anomaly, the abandoned ruins of a city that shouldn't exist. Time doesn't work correctly there, and things from the primeval past and the distant future haunt the city.

This for the win! Excellent way to deal with the situation and one that can work very well for adjustments coming in the Remaster.

Paizo, Jump on this!

Grats to Marcel on the 5th Nova!

I will never buy another WotC product until they state unequivocally that they will not sue any other producer of RPG content over their created content, VTT or otherwise.

The OGL is Dead! Long Live the ORC!

Outstanding work! Foundry is just rocking the PF2e system for VTTs!

Is this likely to be sanctioned for PFS?

I do believe this will be sanctioned for Society play. The sanctioning will probably appear in November hopefully.

Is this the actual cover? It is definitely different than the one on the product page.

Grats to everyone and special grats to Milan. That is a major accomplishment and on top of doing the work with Archives of Nethys and a VC.

Extreme Kudos to you!

This looks like a wild ride right up until the party gets that TPK. I see no way they survive the Abomination Vaults. I doubt they make it past Level 6.

That's not a knock on the team. That's just AV and how tough it will be for a party of gunslingers only.

But yes, I'm going to watch this run because it will be fun no matter what the outcome is.

Thanks so much for bringing us Pathfinders 1 and 2, Starfinder, and most of all, Organized Play!

Grats to everyone! Glad to see another Missouri GM pick up their fifth star, so grats to Zachery on that! Also, Barb deserves that Order of the Wayfinder in a huge way. She's been instrumental to us as Organized Play and to me and the League of Aroden lodges for her advice over the last few years as we began to rebuild everything in 2017 and onward.

Grats to the new 5-stars and 5-glyph!

I am excited for Season 4 after the cool story arcs that made up Season 3, which I consider to be the best season for Society yet. I like how you are integrating the overall plot beyond just one season. Our players here like the lore connections because it brings the campaign to the feeling that it is live and ever changing.

Grats the new 5 Star and 5 Nova GMs! Way to go!

Grats to the new coin holders!

Special grats to Nicole Heits on her coin! You make me so proud of you every day!

I am really looking forward to this book. I have held up playing my champion because I want to see what new options are available for him in Knights of Lastwall.

Congratulations to Jim on the promotion!

I hope that Jeff's health improves and his quality of life is not diminished in any way. One's health is really important for living the life one wants to live. It really sucks to see one's life totally upended because of an often unavoidable health issue.

I have the urge to create a Knight of Lastwall character that takes an oath to destroy every undead he encounters, along with the other forces of evil like devils and demons. This book will help me flesh that character out in full. The book should be a great aid for players who want to build champions of good.

Grats to the new 5-ranks!

Kinda neat how this setting book will pull from the last three rulebooks (and maybe even the fourth depending on final content for Dark Archive). I thoroughly enjoyed Mwangi Expanse and am looking forward to seeing each region get the extensive examination they deserve.

Overall, I think the Lost Omens books have been a major improvement over the 1e splat books.

Good move by Paizo to reach out to the 5e audience and show off their Adventure Path. Hopefully, it will entice more of that audience to throw off their shackles and embrace the awesomeness of Pathfinder Second Edition.

This is just another reminder to myself that there is no point in going on the forums.

I will just reference a Mark Twain quote and call it good.

Have a nice day.

I do have a bit more information than you do regarding table counts. Unless something changes, those are the numbers.

It is possible that Gen Con limited Paizo's presence. If so, they need to make that statement up front. I haven't seen that statement. Instead, I see a big wall of silence which indicates bad decision making. If it was Gen Con, then they are idiots for doing so.

I think there's an overabundance of caution, but since we don't have all the details, there's no way of knowing that is what is going on. It is just speculation. Either way, this is not good for live gaming which needs to be showcased after two years of this pandemic.

Xathos of Varisia wrote:

EXTREMELY NOT HAPPY.

Why?

It's time to kick open the doors and hit live play hard. Gen Con is where Paizo gets to show off its merchandise via Org Play. We should have the Sag at full capacity and be showing everyone how great PF2 and Starfinder are and how fun Society play is.

Instead we are only going to have part of the Sag? With only 600 tables? That's just ignorant. It's an ignorant business decision that is bad for Paizo and even worse for Org Play.

There's only 28 rooms which means 112 GMs. Those GMs have to run 7 tables each, but there's only going to be 50 scenarios and 10 demo/bounty/quest/whatever tables in each slot. No overnights (no loss there), so 10 slots times 60 equals 600 total tables.

So, you want to GM, but don't get picked for one of the extremely limited spaces with the Paizo-provided hotel rooms? But, you are required to show up to GM anyway or else be blacklisted for future Gen Cons? Yeah, you're really showing us the love there. I don't see that happening because I'm pretty sure you're going to have enough GMs in those rooms to cover all 600 tables.

Worried about Covid, but you're going to put 4 GMs in each room? That's hypocrisy.

What I perceive is Paizo cutting back on the biggest con on the calendar and pushing for us to be online for it. If that's what Paizo wants, then they need to be upfront about it. I want to know who made these decisions so I can tell them to their face that they're wrong and made bad decisions.

EXTREMELY NOT HAPPY.

So happy to read this awesome news! I am ready to fill out the form to volunteer to run Pathfinder 2e at Gen Con in Indianapolis again! I love going to Gen Con and meeting so many of my fellow players and GMs.

Let's get this party started!

Congratulations to Wally and Landon! Woot!

Thanks very much for posting this. We've got a con in July to plan for and this makes it so much easier now. I gotta say, I am loving this season's meta-plot. I love how there are 14 scenarios devoted to it across the level ranges with plenty in the 1-4 and 3-6. This is great for creating a character and playing it along the meta-plot during the season while mixing in some repeatables or other scenarios to level up.

I especially like the way 3-01 was created in that it is repeatable. This allows players to play it again and bring new players into the meta-plot. That is a very shrewd move and one I want to see established as the basis for following seasons.

Thanks Again!

I very much enjoyed the final installment of The Expanse series. The idea of a scrappy crew of misfits making their way on a heavily-modded, stolen Martian gunship (legitimate salvage!) is part of what appeals to me about Starfinder. It got just weird enough by the end. I would love to play in/ learn more of the post-novel setting.

I looked this series up as a result of your post and was intrigued by it. Leviathan Wakes just arrived in the mail this afternoon. Thanks for the tip!

I am looking forward to running this at my lodges when it comes out. Sanctioning it should be a relatively smooth process and one that is highly desired.

My favorite sci-fi has always been Robert A. Heinlein. He really poked hard at humanity's habits and beliefs with some of his books like Stranger in a Strange Land. One of my all time favorites of his was The Moon is a Harsh Mistress which made you question what you thought you knew about the American Revolution and the way things are at any given time. That particular novel was written during the Cold War when conformity was starting to be challenged by people who objected to being told that questioning authority was bad.

Another favorite book is Dune by Frank Herbert. This book is still relevant today. I hope the new film is worthwhile, but I am often sorely disappointed when films try to adapt sci-fi or fantasy masterpieces.

It was a great year of gaming and I hope that 2022 is an even greater gaming year! Hopefully we can get back to more live gaming and see each other at live events and maintain our online gaming as well.

It was a fun event. Our players really enjoyed it and want to repeat it again next year. Thanks to Nick setting things in motion and to our players and GMs who participated and donated to Toys for Tots.

Vanities would be a great thing to add to the game.