Preface: I have a buddy who has a bug up his but about running his game with Pathfinder Society legal, even though he isn't registered with the pathfinder society and no one in the group is. While this is both stupid and irritating that's between me and my buddy. But I want to know a few things about pathfinder society as this at least made me a little curious...
1) What's the appeal to mixing a large scale real life bureaucracy with fantasy gaming?
2) Please tell me this is better run and less irritating than White Wolf's much longer running LARP version of the same thing, is it?
3) If you're in an area where it looks like the closest PFS bureaucrat is more than 8hrs away are you just SOL on getting something started in your area?
4) If there's money involved is it remotely worth the price of admission, what are the real benefits?
Mainly if my buddy whats to run the game this way I'd at least like to see some kind of benefit from all the restrictions and lack of crafting and what not...
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For me, the allure is the episodic nature of Society play. My schedule makes it difficult to commit to a regular home group. With PFS, I can play my character at any sanctioned game of the correct level, whether it takes place in Austin or in Seattle. I know the rules, the world, the deities will be the same.
It doesn't hold up the game if I can't play for a few weeks, and I don't miss anything, because I can catch those scenarios another time.
Yes, there is paperwork, and the fact that any character who played a certain scenario can buy the same sword (when the BBEG had only one) is not "realistic", but these rules were made in response to player abuse of other Living campaign methods.
And you don't need any campaign staff to sign off on home games or small-scale game days at stores. If you get to the point that you need prize support for a convention, campaign staff can help you with that.
I've often wondered about question 1 here, but from what I've gathered, people like it because they want to play and PFS makes playing available to them. I also see why people like it for comparing builds here, because it keeps everything on the same baseline without having to worry about having to see how the other person's DM does it. Since PFS is about random people getting together to play, the strict RAW is understandable to keep things easy and consistent, but I don't think I'd play long in a home game that strived for that... saying "no rules say you can't do that" or "I don't care how cool that would be, Paizo didn't publish it" to something within reason annoys me; if I wanted to play an old school adventure game where I can only do one of a few commands, I'd have stayed home and played an old school adventure game >_<.
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1. Wynd Sister nailed the biggest thing: Flexibility for people with busy schedules. In a home game, you have to count on the same people being able to get together regularly. With PFS, you just play with whoever shows up. This also facilitates ease of convention play.
But she left off one of the other big appeals: Quality of adventures. The Paizo staff publishes 26 scenarios per year for PFS, and most of them are very good quality.
2. I can't answer your question comparing to White Wolf, as I never played that.
3. You don't need any central organizer involved to do PFS. You just need everyone to register their characters on the web site, then one person in your group needs to log on to Paizo.com after each adventure to register the session. That's it. Your group can do it without anyone outside your group even knowing about it, other than the Paizo staff who look at their database of reported sessions.
4. The price of admission is $3.99 per adventure to buy each scenario. Given the high quality, I think it's well worth it, especially if the members of your group split the cost. And that's not counting the FREE First Steps series, which are three adventures intended to introduce you to Society play and get your character to level 2. You'll also want the FREE Pathfinder Society Guide to Organized Play.
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The appeal I imagine is not having to be punctual for a regular gaming group. You make it when you can make it. I don't really go to PFS anymore but I'm glad its there. It lets me screen potential players for my home game if I need to. I kind of get to keep a finger on the pulse of my local gaming community. Some people like meeting new gamers and trying out many characters and PFS supports that well.
I wouldn't use PFS rules at home unless I was a little unsure of myself as a GM. Using the organized rules may seem like putting a leash on the game and not letting it get away from you.
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1) What's the appeal to mixing a large scale real life bureaucracy with fantasy gaming?
The fact that you can sit down at any PFS table in the world and play the same character you have been playing at home.
2) Please tell me this is better run and less irritating than White Wolf's much longer running LARP version of the same thing, is it?
Never played any other organized game, but it seems reasonably run to me.
3) If you're in an area where it looks like the closest PFS bureaucrat is more than 8hrs away are you just SOL on getting something started in your area?
You can start your own, for only the cost of the scenarios.
4) If there's money involved is it remotely worth the price of admission, what are the real benefits?
No money involved, just fun.
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I've been playing PFS for over a year now, and I really enjoy it. However, from the tone in your opening post I can tell this is a hard sell. To answer your questions:
1) The "bureaucracy", as you call it, is not part of the appeal. It is, however, a necessity when it comes to anything approaching organized play. If I want to take my character from PFS game A and go to PFS game B, we had better be using the same rules and the same tracking system. If I want to take that character to Convention C, I don't want the hundreds of people there to all be negotiating what house rules we're using.
2) Having never played that, I wouldn't know. I think PFS is very well run.
3) If you don't have a Venture Captain in your general vicinity, the first step is to post on the Pathfinder Society boards. Ask around, and if there really is no game nearby, it is free and relatively simple to start your own.
4) There is no cost for attending unless the store imposes a fee for using their space or attending their games. At one of the stores I frequent there is a donation box that we use to buy our GMs scenarios to run. It's pay-what-you-can, so we don't have a table fee, and I certainly don't begrudge anyone who cannot pay.
Pathfinder Society is a different beast from a homegame. I meet a lot more people than I would attending a single homegame, and there are a great deal of new players with different styles and tics. A lot of players there seem to treat it as a weekly social occasion. So... come out and join us? :)
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I'll give you another one. There are some experiences you can have in Pathfinder Society that you'll never have in a home game unless you're one helluva GM and have a huge group to tap into. Playing the Friday Night Specials at GenCon (or other large conventions) or the Grand Convocation at Paizocon is a roleplaying experience like no other. Having hundreds of people all playing the same adventure at the same time with a master of ceremonies helping to guide the whole thing along is very cool.
Organized play is definitely not for everyone, but as someone who was a longtime home gamer and who has now gotten quite involved in Society play in addition, I think the paperwork concerns are WAY overblown. It takes me about 1 minute to register a game on the Paizo boards, less than 5 minutes at the end of a game session to fill out chronicle sheets, and less than a minute to report the event.
For me its not an either/or, its a both. More opportunities to play. More opportunities for different types of experiences.
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Running PFS rules at home games is more having a ruleset that is harder to argue against from what I have seen. Making a rules call on the various iffy stuff in the ruleset in some group leads to a LOT of bickering and headaches. If that is so in your group, running PFS can help minimize that as that ruleset if designed specifically to negate the need for such.
Let him use PFS rules..then when he reads one sentence wrong in that module you call him out on it and have him punished!
I have no idea why people like PFS. I imagine either because it's their only option TO play, or only option they're aware of. When you're starving, you'll eat just about anything, you know?
It could also be people thinking that PFS is somehow more balanced and protected against game-breaking exploits (it's not, maybe slightly more so, in the sense of a ship with only 20 holes instead of 30 is "less quick to sink") because they ban all this "bad stuff."
It could be a case of people being sheep or groupthink. My other friends think this is cool, hence I like it.
Or there could be no logical explanation. People sure as hell aren't rational.
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PFS though isn't really pathfinder. Its like a giant bloated set of ill thought out house rules. Things banned without even a reason. (deadly dealer feat... not even a good feat) The game is neutered to sub lvl 12. Dumbed down (removal of crafting and gods know what else..)
It is more or less turned into a tabletop MMO.
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PFS though isn't really pathfinder. Its like a giant bloated set of ill thought out house rules. Things banned without even a reason. (deadly dealer feat... not even a good feat) The game is neutered to sub lvl 12. Dumbed down (removal of crafting and gods know what else..)
It is more or less turned into a tabletop MMO.
Let's be honest, very few groups ever go past level 12, and when they do, they're well into the arena of doing lewd things to the laws of physics and causality in general.
I have no idea why people like Italian food. I imagine either because it's their only option TO eat, or only option they're aware of. When you're starving, you'll eat just about anything, you know?
People like 'cause its fun? Gaming's still gaming.
The GM is new to it as I'm usually the GM in our group. We all rotate here and there I get him wanting to use the scenarios they are indeed groovy. But if we have to use those rules for his sessions I would want us to actually join up in the PFS if it's worth my time.
The chip on my shoulder was from The Camerilla, which was and still might be a vampire larp community. I tried them once and was never made to feel less welcome at a larp in my life. I have run 200+ people LARPs and joined in dozens of games, I wasn't asking noob questions I was genuinely interested in how things work, but they wanted money up front for a yearly fee without even letting me observe play or ask all my questions first. I never went back.
Sounds like PFS is actually very chill and there's no money investment tp try it and there seems to be a point. I am going to see what we want o do as a group for is games.
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Things banned without even a reason. (deadly dealer feat... not even a good feat)
Enlightenment! Thank you, Friendly Neighborhood Search Function!
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The GM is new to it as I'm usually the GM in our group. We all rotate here and there I get him wanting to use the scenarios they are indeed groovy. But if we have to use those rules for his sessions I would want us to actually join up in the PFS if it's worth my time.
The chip on my shoulder was from The Camerilla, which was and still might be a vampire larp community. I tried them once and was never made to feel less welcome at a larp in my life. I have run 200+ people LARPs and joined in dozens of games, I wasn't asking noob questions I was genuinely interested in how things work, but they wanted money up front for a yearly fee without even letting me observe play or ask all my questions first. I never went back.
Sounds like PFS is actually very chill and there's no money investment tp try it and there seems to be a point. I am going to see what we want o do as a group for is games.
Yeah, the reason I bothered with PFS at all is because I don't have to spend a single penny if I don't feel like it.
My only regret is that I can't play a Synthesist Summoner, but I haven't had a single concept other than that that I couldn't edit to work in PFS, so it's fantastic for me. Now if only I could make it to more games.
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I know why I like it.
It's because I am an adult, with a job, and a wife, and for most responsible adults that don't have the good fortune to work in the game industry gaming time is a precious thing.
Try living in a town with a relatively shallow pool of available gamers, and then imagine a life where the only real way you can play is to go to conventions.
Try being 20 years out of college, and all your friends have a wife and 2-3 kids, so getting together every Friday night to rock some PF is pretty much out of the question.
So, put all those things in a bowl and realize that organized play lets me say the following: as a busy modern adult, I have access to a great system, the absolute best scenario writers in the business, a ruleset common among all the players/GMs, and an enormous player base that spans the globe.
I could play in houseruled one-shots at conventions, I suppose, but my experience with those is fraught with variance. Also, those aren't my characters, they don't last me from level 1 through level 12+.
Because of PFS Organized Play, I have gotten to meet pretty much all the Paizonians, more than a few fantastic writers, and a truly astonishing array of incredible GMs.
Are those sufficient reasons?
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Just to correct one thing going around here.
You are expected to own the pathfinder society field guide, the core book, and the free pdf from the website about pfs.
Then if you have any classes/archetypes, feats etc, the relevant book or PDF watermarked to you available.
You do infact have to spend money to play by the rules.
The GM is new to it as I'm usually the GM in our group. We all rotate here and there I get him wanting to use the scenarios they are indeed groovy. But if we have to use those rules for his sessions I would want us to actually join up in the PFS if it's worth my time.
The chip on my shoulder was from The Camerilla, which was and still might be a vampire larp community. I tried them once and was never made to feel less welcome at a larp in my life. I have run 200+ people LARPs and joined in dozens of games, I wasn't asking noob questions I was genuinely interested in how things work, but they wanted money up front for a yearly fee without even letting me observe play or ask all my questions first. I never went back.
Sounds like PFS is actually very chill and there's no money investment tp try it and there seems to be a point. I am going to see what we want o do as a group for is games.
I've only played a few scenarios in PFS, and have felt welcome with the people there, I only knew one. The really nice thing is if you can find both the time, and ability to get to a gaming convention. I help run one and we will have over 50 PFS being run from Friday afternoon to Sunday Afternoon.
National Cam was a bit bizarre wasn't it? A community service component in a primarily Vampire LARP organization, those were strange days.
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Just to correct one thing going around here.
You are expected to own the pathfinder society field guide, the core book, and the free pdf from the website about pfs.
Then if you have any classes/archetypes, feats etc, the relevant book or PDF watermarked to you available.
You do infact have to spend money to play by the rules.
While they are part of the core assumption, no one at any convention or game will insist upon a brand new player bringing $20-70 of gaming material on his first day.
Streamofthesky: I'm currently in a home game and enjoying it. I still go to PFS regularly, and in fact have taken on some organization responsibilities as well. It's not because I'm starving, but because I enjoy the style of play and the community that comes out of it.
GM_Solspiral: I wish you luck in finding and enjoying a PFS game. If you have any questions, check out the PFS board or PM me.
1) What's the appeal to mixing a large scale real life bureaucracy with fantasy gaming?
A) I've seen essentially no bureaucratic effects that have influenced me in any significant detail.
B) Home game is every other Tuesday. I would like to game more, but with my schedule, I can't commit to another group. My weekends may be tied up for a month. But when I have a weekend free, I can go to the local PFS event.C) Something to do at the next convention.
D) Don't have to spend hours arguing about the rules. My home group does that sometimes and it really gets on my nerves.
E) If new to being a GM, it is more cut-n-dried. So you don't have to make very many off-the-cuff rulings.
2) Please tell me this is better run and less irritating than White Wolf's much longer running LARP version of the same thing, is it?
Never experienced that, but PFS is nothing like a LARP.
3) If you're in an area where it looks like the closest PFS bureaucrat is more than 8hrs away are you just SOL on getting something started in your area?
Nope just a few minutes on line to set things up.
4) If there's money involved is it remotely worth the price of admission, what are the real benefits?
You are supposed to own a copy of any material you are using in your build. But that is not unreasonable. You can have a high old time with just the CRB and free downloads.
I think my primary character is actually fully CRB compatible just by chance anyway.-------------------------------------------
Address some of the common complaints I see about PFS.
1) No crafting. My current group does almost no crafting. Several GM's that I know don't like the crafting rules and ditch most of them anyway. So I don't consider it a huge lose though I know a few that do.
2) Limited to level 12 (or special events to I think 13 or 14). Most of the home games that I have played since 2e tend to die at about that level anyway.
3) No custom magic items or spells. There are so freakin many of them that I will never get through anyway that I really don't feel much lose here. Except there are a few combos that I would like to see like mule back chords combined with a cloak of resistance. But that is minor to me.
4) Don't know who you will be playing with. This is both good and bad. Did your PFS session have a bad GM or fellow player? Guess what you don't have to sit with them next week. I've also seen some very good ones that approached things differently (and better) than I am used to.
5) No long term campaign. There actually sorta is one in the background but since you probably aren't playing them in order and might not be hearing or remembering all the info given, it is hard to keep track of. This is actually the only one that I have any real problem with. But I sort of keep a personal campaign in the back of my head with what my character is trying to accomplish. That is usually enough for me.
For me, these restrictions/complaints are minor issues. But they do bother others enough to turn them off.
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I love it. I mean I have a regular home campaign, but society offers a unique flavor.
It's like a regular poker night. It takes you out of you comfort zone, you get to play with varied individuals and styles. Doing so you become a better player and GM.
I don't obsess over the mechanics.
The GM is new to it as I'm usually the GM in our group. We all rotate here and there I get him wanting to use the scenarios they are indeed groovy. But if we have to use those rules for his sessions I would want us to actually join up in the PFS if it's worth my time.
That's really easy. You just need to register your character online and blammo, you're in the PFS. Then the GM just needs to report the sessions online and sign your chronicle sheets, and you're done. I think that's all there is to it?
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Thanks for everyone who responded to this thread. We're going to sit down next week and get registered and what not. We'll all chip in on books and scenarios and keep our rotation going. Like the idea that I can take my character from his game and go elsewhere with it. Also, he runs quite irregularly compared to me and the other DM in our crew (usually my kingmaker campaign they give me breaks when I need them.) But yeah thanks again everyone!
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Just to correct one thing going around here.
You are expected to own the pathfinder society field guide, the core book, and the free pdf from the website about pfs.
Then if you have any classes/archetypes, feats etc, the relevant book or PDF watermarked to you available.
You do infact have to spend money to play by the rules.
Incorrect.
I am a current PFS player and I can tell you that all you need is to bring your dice. Some DM's bring everything else you need including pre made characters. There is such a thing as sharing a book.
Appeals of an unsanctioned PFS game:
-you have a Phobia of high-level wizards and are scared to admit it
-you have a Phobia of high-level clerics and are scared to admit it
-You are new to pathfinder and don't wish to commit too much to it
-you prefer gritty down to earth games to high fantasy, and you believe high level play encourages high fantasy too much
-you have difficulty comprehending high level abilities and combat
-Your wife left you the first time you got to 13th level and you just got remarried
-Your husband left you the first time you got to 13th level . . . just see above
-You have a Phobia of the number 13
-You have a Phobia of Liches and Vampires and they just happen to be 14CR and above
-You do not meet the age requirements for 13th level play
-You can only count to 12
-You are plagued by bad luck
-Pathfinder Society plays you
-You didn't survive the Mayan Apocalypse
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According to the rules for PFS, what you've just described is, in fact, not legal, and the technical term for it is cheating. Don't give bad advice to the noobs, it's bad practice. Lantz is correct, by PFS rules you do in fact have to own at least the PDF of the sources of your non-Core stuff/Just to correct one thing going around here.
You are expected to own the pathfinder society field guide, the core book, and the free pdf from the website about pfs.
Then if you have any classes/archetypes, feats etc, the relevant book or PDF watermarked to you available.
You do infact have to spend money to play by the rules.
Incorrect.
I am a current PFS player and I can tell you that all you need is to bring your dice. Some DM's bring everything else you need including pre made characters. There is such a thing as sharing a book.
There is cheating and then there is cheating. Someone who has just started playing Pathfinder is not expected to own anything. As our campaign coordinator has stated, use common sense when enforcing these rules.
There is absolutely no need for language like 'noobs' either.
According to the rules for PFS, what you've just described is, in fact, not legal, and the technical term for it is cheating. Don't give bad advice to the noobs, it's bad practice. Lantz is correct, by PFS rules you do in fact have to own at least the PDF of the sources of your non-Core stuff/Just to correct one thing going around here.
You are expected to own the pathfinder society field guide, the core book, and the free pdf from the website about pfs.
Then if you have any classes/archetypes, feats etc, the relevant book or PDF watermarked to you available.
You do infact have to spend money to play by the rules.
Incorrect.
I am a current PFS player and I can tell you that all you need is to bring your dice. Some DM's bring everything else you need including pre made characters. There is such a thing as sharing a book.
There is cheating and then there is cheating. Someone who has just started playing Pathfinder is not expected to own anything. As our campaign coordinator has stated, use common sense when enforcing these rules.
There is absolutely no need for language like 'noobs' either.
1) I'm no noob been playing D&D since the 80's, guess to society play I would be but also this isn't COD.
2) Here we have what I feared, gaming with the unknown. Rules lawyers and bickering destroyed my 5yr 80+ person LARP and I've avoided anthing bigger than small groups of gamers since. I"m still going to try PFS and I'm hoping that things are more civil once you remove the anomnimity of the internet.
3) I'll have access to the books so the arguement is now moot.
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It's not cheating to not bring any books with you to the table.
You're not required to bring any books if you're playing a character made entirely from Core materials. I've got 11 PFS characters, including all sorts of oddball archetypes, sorcerer bloodlines, etc from non-Core books. But I think four of my PCs are almost entirely core (2 clerics, a bard, and a fighter - note that the Lore Warden archetype is from the Field Guide, which is core assumption).
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People enforce the core assumption in different ways. I assume that all my players do own or will eventually own a copy of these books, starting with the free one and moving onto the Core Rulebook. I would never disallow someone from playing because they didn't have the money to buy one of these.
We get brand new players at our store all the time. The store coordinator gives away free folders with a pre-generated character, scrap paper, a new PFS number, and the short PFS organized play rules. I lend out a set of dice and a mini, and they get to play. If we forced every walk-in to buy a $50 book or $20 worth of PDFs, we would be a much smaller organization. The letter of the law should not prevent people from using common sense.
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First, let me say that I've tried Organized Play before: Raven's Bluff, Living Greyhawk, and Shadowrun Missions. I hated all three. I cannot stress that highly enough: I hated them.
Invariably at every table there were two or three players who were interested in nothing but power-gaming, and I guess the controls on the rules were not sufficient to control it, because these players would basically use their ultimate characters to take over and do whatever they wanted. There was no need for the non-munchkins to be at the table, honestly, in all of the ten or so sessions I tried of those three Living games.
In three years of gradually increasing PFS activity (I play only at GenCon), 12 adventures, I have yet to not have a good time at a table. While there have been characters that were more powerful than the rest of us at the table (not hard in my case; I play a weak ranged rogue), there seems to be something in the PFS player that just wasn't present in the other Living games: a desire to actually play an RPG with other people.
Seriously, I've played PFS games with 40 to 50 other strangers ... and not a single obnoxious player. (And I'd say 10 of the 12 DMs were significantly above average, too.) That's beyond amazing and into miraculous.
I've liked PFS so much that in GenCon 2013, I'm planning to GM a couple of slots.
Anyway, that doesn't fully answer the OP's question of "why do Organized Play in the first place"?
Well, just to be clear, at home I don't. I'm running Jade Regent right now for a stable group of friends, and I ran a Mutants & Masterminds campaign for three years before that, and Eberron for three years before that.
I have been giving thoughts to starting up a bi-weekly PFS society game, though, primarily because I like playing on a pretty strict schedule, and since people can drop in and out of PFS games without disrupting stuff, the control freak in me won't get so stressed out about last-minute cancellations the way I do now in my JR game. Secondarily, the PFS adventures tend to be pretty good.
The reason I do Organized Play is that I very much enjoy playing RPGs at GenCon (pretty much the only con I attend), and I enjoy playing RPGs with strangers (in the abstract). At GenCon, the quality of games is wildly variable, which can be frustrating. Before I started doing PFS games, I'd typically have a mix of two good games, two mediocre games, and two games in which I'd be very close to just leaving the table two hours in.
Before PFS, I'd specifically try to find games with GMs I'd previously liked a lot (and that gets tough, after word spreads), or regularly play games or series run by specific clubs (like NASCRAG; but eventually the magnetized-to-the-very-visible-rails aspect of these, combined with some OOC silliness, wore me down). Playing PFS basically streamlines the process, and since PFRPG is one of my three favorite games (the other two being M&M and SR), it was a natural thing to try.
And since the experiences have been uniformly positive, I'll keep playing PFS until they stop being so.
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Although everyone's motivations will vary person to person, I can probably list quite a few of them that happen to all appeal to me:
- Interesting scenarios. Not every adventure is "kill the bbeg" or "get item X". I am inspired so much by the intrigue or intricacy of some scenarios that I try to incorporate them into my games. I've played rpgs for almost 20 years, and GM'd for half that, and yet I continue to encounter new material in PFS.
- Variety of players. For most of my gaming history I've enjoyed stable groups and long campaigns. Next month I'll have run the same game for two years, and I've played in others just as long. While I have no complaints about that, you generally get used to the play styles, habits, characters, and roleplaying of your gaming group. I find the variety and players, styles, and characters refreshing to what could otherwise become a stagnant and uninteresting hobby.
- New ideas. The character builds, roleplay styles, thoughts on pathfinder religions, the intricacies of the factions, usefulness of mundane items, synergies of feats, and a whole host of new experiences that could only be encountered in such an environment.
- Escape from monotony. Basically everything listed above lumped together in one highlight. I never know quite what to expect when I walk through the doors of my local game store, except that I'm going to be having an awesome time.
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According to the rules for PFS, what you've just described is, in fact, not legal, and the technical term for it is cheating. Don't give bad advice to the noobs, it's bad practice. Lantz is correct, by PFS rules you do in fact have to own at least the PDF of the sources of your non-Core stuff/
Incorrect.I am a current PFS player and I can tell you that all you need is to bring your dice. Some DM's bring everything else you need including pre made characters. There is such a thing as sharing a book.
Wrong. There is nothing more wrong than this.
When I started playing last summer, my local VC did not direct me to my FLGS with a list of books to purchase as a requirement before he'd allow me to roll up a character or pick up a pregen to play in my first scenario. I can't imagine any PFS player or GM who would.
All the core assumption assumes is that players have at least a passing familiarity with the rules and have access to, not ownership of, a short list of resources.
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you are expected to own copies of any material you are using for your character. Many organizers won't really check,
I personally don't own Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Equipment etc (I basically have the core assumption plus Bestiary and APG) so if a player indicates they are using a Feat, piece of Gear or spell from one of those sources and I ask to look at the source - they had better have it, if not I would likely state that they could not use that Feat / Gear / Spell for the session.
Of course the problem comes if its not just a Feat / Gear / Spell but instead a Race or Class - I ask what everyone is playing at the start and if they didn't have the sourcebook I would have to ask them to play another character (potentially a pre-gen) or simply not play.
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There are three reasons I like PFS:
I like PFS because, well first of all, I really like a lot of the local people (Atlanta) that play in it.
I actually have a lot of time to play games on the weekends, and my local area has a game every weekend that I can attend. I could organize a home game, but it's such a hassle to try to get 4-6 adults to come together for a game when it's just much easier to have a system for it instead where people aren't really missing anything for not coming. It's flexible for both those who can rarely game and those who game a lot.
The third reason is because I can pretty much make any character I want within the rules and it can be accepted anywhere, whereas in a home game the GM can easily say "no" to a class or ability.
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For your first couple games, that is fair. After you become a 'full member' of the society (basically play enough to get a character to level 2), you are expected to own copies of any material you are using for your character. Many organizers won't really check, but they are within they're rights to deny you a seat at their table if you don't adhere to the rule. Again, few are going to do that, but if you as a player do not support the game you are playing then the company ceases to create product for the game because it's profitability isn't sound. It's also in good form when you play in a FLGS to make a purchase while there, but that is more of a personal choice rather than any sort of mandate from the rules.
All the core assumption assumes is that players have at least a passing familiarity with the rules and have access to, not ownership of, a short list of resources.
That's just not true. I've read the Core Assumption forward and backward and nowhere, absolutely nowhere, does it even imply ownership of any materials is ever necessary. Is it s good idea? Yep. Will it support Paizo and your FLGS? Absolutely? Can you be denied a seat at a table for not owning any Paizo books? Never.
I happen to own just about everything published for Pathfinder (in pdf if not a physical copy), but my wife doesn't, nor does my son. I even have a few friends who have just started to play in a home game and none of them own any books. They all use mine. Each of them still play PFS, and I fully expect each of them to be able to play whether I'm present or not. This is exactly what the the Core Assumption allows and why it is phrased the way it is.
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you are expected to own copies of any material you are using for your character. Many organizers won't really check,I personally don't own Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Equipment etc (I basically have the core assumption plus Bestiary and APG) so if a player indicates they are using a Feat, piece of Gear or spell from one of those sources and I ask to look at the source - they had better have it, if not I would likely state that they could not use that Feat / Gear / Spell for the session.
Of course the problem comes if its not just a Feat / Gear / Spell but instead a Race or Class - I ask what everyone is playing at the start and if they didn't have the sourcebook I would have to ask them to play another character (potentially a pre-gen) or simply not play.
This is why it's the player's responsibility to provide the sources for anything allowed under Additional Resources, and even here there is no requirement for ownership. All a player must to is provide a copy of the source he's using, not own it. Certainly someone own it, but the player using it doesn't have to.