Venture-Captain, Missouri—Cape Girardeau
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My rabid support of Paizo and the Pathfinder RPG has lead to me being volunteered to coordinate the PF Society events at our local Con this fall. While I was a longstanding member of the RPGA, I can count on one hand the number of times I had the opportunity to attend an event sponsored by them and see how LG was run. This means that I have little to no experience at actually coordinating an event like this. Other than the PFS Player's Guide, is there a Pathfinder Society help manual for this kind of situation?
*Do all the players have to have official PFS characters registered online to participate? If so, how do I go about setting up a character generation station without a computer?
*Are all modules still available to play (specifically those from season 0) even after the switch from 3.5 to PF? Do the rewards from those "out dated" modules still count?
I'm sure I will have more questions later. I'm just hoping that someone with a little more experience can give advice.
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They don't have to come to the con with a registered character, but they will need a PFS number before they walk away from the table.
If you go to your “My Pathfinder Society” account page you will see a section at the bottom of the page regarding reserving Pathfinder Society cards. You can download a PDF page of ten unique cards, which conveniently may be printed onto business card punchout sheets available at any office supply store. On the cards are PFS#s that will be forever reserved for the new player you give the card to. It instructs them to register on paizo.com/pathfindersociety and provides a unique confirmation code so no one takes that number by mistake. Even if they don’t register, at least you will have a PFS number to report. It might help if you help them get online right at the convention and guide them through registration before they lose the card :)
All Season 0 scenarios will be playable after Season One begins, but they obviously will need to be updated to the Pathfinder RPG system. Paizo may update a few so there’ll be a couple more low tier scenarios for new players at GenCon, but they will not be updating all 28 Season 0 scenarios. That may be done by individual GMs or may even be updated then shared by other rabid Paizo fans (I’ve heard there’s some out there). As far as I have heard, there will be no “retirement” of PFS scenarios. But like I said, you may need to take on the time-intensive task of updating them from 3.5 to 3.75.
As far as the Chronicle rewards go, I'm assuming they're still valid until Josh says otherwise.
I have found myself in the same situation and did some trial-and-error convention and event coordination back in LG. The most important thing is not to bite off more than you can chew. You’re not going to be able to please everyone so don’t try. Beg, borrow or steal GMs but don't offer more events than you can cover. Make sure that you have blank character sheets, extra copies of the Guide to Organized Play and if you ask Josh nicely he may send you his PRPG pre-gen characters that he's going to make for GenCon because inevitably there will be players who show up without characters and will lose interest in playing if they have to create one from scratch.
There are so many areas to plan for when coordinating so I'll let you mull this over and I'm sure everyone here will be happy to help if you have more questions.
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and if you ask Josh nicely he may send you his PRPG pre-gen characters that he's going to make for GenCon because inevitably there will be players who show up without characters and will lose interest in playing if they have to create one from scratch
And if you ask really, really, nicely, he may give you some free Scenarios to give to your GMs.
Once the pregens have been created and laid out, they will be available for free download at paizo.com/pathfindersociety. Look for this is mid to late August.
Everything Doug said is correct except for one tiny thing: we do reserve the right to "retire" scenarios and there are a few season 0 scenarios I'm debating retiring. For the most part, though, we'll keep them pretty much forever.
Director of Brand Strategy
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Everything Doug said is correct except for one tiny thing: we do reserve the right to "retire" scenarios and there are a few season 0 scenarios I'm debating retiring. For the most part, though, we'll keep them pretty much forever.
Any hints as to which of those might be on the chopping block so completists can try to get them under their belt before the axe drops?
No, hints, no.
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"completists"
I'm guessing there's nothing preventing you from running "retired" scenarios as home games if you've already purchaed/downloaded them, though you won't get Pathfinder Society recognition for doing so (eg, you can no longer report those scenarios online, and Chronicle record sheets for these won't be legal after a certain date, eg items/prestige etc, though policing this might be difficult). Certainly there will be players who will have downloaded scenarios prior to them being "retired" but not aware of this status prior to attempting to report results online.
A similar situation, I know certain scenarios have been "updated" since I downloaded them, but I'm not aware of which ones? A page listing scenarios with their last updated date would be handy, so we can compare with the download date in the personalisation watermark in the header/footer, particularly as a checklist before running a bunch of scenarios at a convention so I know if there are any I need to re-download.
Understanding that Season 0 was playtest season, just curious if there's any particular criteria a scenario might be targeted for retirement? eg:
- They don't transition as smoothly under Pathfinder RPG rules?
- Changes to organised play guidelines?
- Too challenging for tiers?
- In retrospect, don't reflect Golarion setting as well as you'd like?
(or do you regard these as "hints" ;-)
A similar situation, I know certain scenarios have been "updated" since I downloaded them, but I'm not aware of which ones?
All of the scenarios that have been updated were updated with an email to the email address associated with your paizo.com account informing you of the changes.
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A similar situation, I know certain scenarios have been "updated" since I downloaded them, but I'm not aware of which ones?All of the scenarios that have been updated were updated with an email to the email address associated with your paizo.com account informing you of the changes.
Thanks Josh, I realise this, but it's easy to overlook those emails and not update your scenarios until you need them. A webpage with dates would still be a useful reference.
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Venture-Captain, Missouri—Cape Girardeau
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If you go to your “My Pathfinder Society” account page you will see a section at the bottom of the page regarding reserving Pathfinder Society cards. You can download a PDF page of ten unique cards, which conveniently may be printed onto business card punchout sheets available at any office supply store.
Do I have to set up the EVENT first? If not, I don't see the link you describe.
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Venture-Captain, Missouri—Cape Girardeau
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Ran first session tonight, Scenario #02 "The Hydra's Fang Incident."
The quote of the night was either,,,
"Can I just smash the little girl with my hammer?" from the barbarian wielding an Earthbreaker.
Or in the same encounter...
"Can I search the little girl... wait, that came out wrong..." from the cleric.
All said, we had a great time, and by the end of the night, confirmed 5 more sales for the Pathfinder RPG in August (the store owner is doubling his initial order!) Everyone enjoyed the session and best of all, not a one has any plans of rejoining the RPGA's 4E Living FR after this! One player said that it "restored his faith in RPGs and the D20 system again!"
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CEO
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Ran first session tonight, Scenario #02 "The Hydra's Fang Incident."
The quote of the night was either,,,
"Can I just smash the little girl with my hammer?" from the barbarian wielding an Earthbreaker.
Or in the same encounter...
"Can I search the little girl... wait, that came out wrong..." from the cleric.
All said, we had a great time, and by the end of the night, confirmed 5 more sales for the Pathfinder RPG in August (the store owner is doubling his initial order!) Everyone enjoyed the session and best of all, not a one has any plans of rejoining the RPGA's 4E Living FR after this! One player said that it "restored his faith in RPGs and the D20 system again!"
Arnim:
Sounds like a great time! Thanks for running PFS and getting your store jazzed for the PFRPG.
-Lisa
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Hi I'm new to the PFS and am just scratching about trying to figure things out. Does PFS support online tables via Skype or other chat channels?
If so where do those events get listed?
I Know there used to be a group called the pathfinder society online collective or something like that that set up online games. I wasn't a memeber, and it was a google group, so I don't know where it went when google groups failed.
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Other than the PFS Player's Guide, is there a Pathfinder Society help manual for this kind of situation?
You will find tons of good info and assistance on these forums.
*Do all the players have to have official PFS characters registered online to participate? If so, how do I go about setting up a character generation station without a computer?
You can play the scenarios as stand alone open gaming events without any PFS ID required at all and pregenerated characters of levels 1, 4 and 7 already to go. However, I highly recommend encouraging players to join the PFS and you can enable them by having an ample supply of IDs ready to hand out to players.
Having a knowledgable person available to run character generation is a great job for someone to do that needs a gaming break and I highly recommend having someone available for just such a purpose.
*Are all modules still available to play (specifically those from season 0) even after the switch from 3.5 to PF? Do the rewards from those "out dated" modules still count?
Another great question, all of the PFS scenarios are still available to use but not all are active for PFS, some have been retired and the older series need some modifications to make them compatible for Pathfinder. But if you are going to have some sessions of the older versions of the oldest roleplaying game at your convention the old seasons make great premade adventures for open gaming for those other games and especially for Pathfinder open gaming sessions.
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I Know there used to be a group called the pathfinder society online collective or something like that that set up online games. I wasn't a memeber, and it was a google group, so I don't know where it went when google groups failed.Hi I'm new to the PFS and am just scratching about trying to figure things out. Does PFS support online tables via Skype or other chat channels?
If so where do those events get listed?
We still exist! Pathfinder Society Online Collective
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In addition to the Pathfinder Society Online Collective, Google Group, there are a couple more places to look for online games...
Fantasy Grounds Pathfinder Society Online, Yahoo Group
Pathfinder Society Online, Forums
I would take a look at each, and usually with four groups you should be able to find something that is running on a day and time suitable for your free-time.