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The reason I PFS is...
This weekend at a local convention, DragonFlight 34, I found a connection with a fellow VC from South Africa.
I end up taking pictures and then speaking with a PFS player who noticed my Venture Captain red shirt I was wearing. He was playing a board game far and away from the PFS area but we sat and talked when their table took a quick break from an intensely long session they just had.
After a while I ask him one of my favorite questions to ask any fan of PFS. What is your favorite table you ever played at? The following is a para phrasing of what he said.
"My family and I went on a vacation to South Africa. (Cool Reasons that are personnel go here). One day my wife went off to do her thing and I had my two kids with me. My son is 8, my daughter 7. I looked up where there was a local game and took the kids down there to get some PFS in. You know, something familiar to them just to have fun for the day.
'Well...I show up and the Venture Captain has his two young kids with him that day, adorable little daughters. He sees me, notices my accent and we talk for a bit, and then he sits us down at his table and pulls out a scenario and holds it up for the kids to see...I ask him which one it is, to make sure I haven't played it before, and he goes "It's the one I wrote. It just came out."
'Best table by far for two reasons. 1. His daughters were taunting my kids to be braver at the table and run head long into combat and seeing the interaction between him and them as the GM was awesome. 2. The Venture Captain from another country took care of me and my kids like we were special guests far from home in a land we didn't fully know...and he pulled out the scenario he wrote, something I am sure he has read hundreds of times, something I am sure he was tired off, to give us the best experience possible in his territory."
With all of the complaining on the boards lately, I was getting dragged down in spirit by some of the heavy handed...concerns. I was honestly a bit down and out.
Then I heard the above story.
So first off...major Kudos to you Jerall Toi, VC of Cape Town. Not only did you send home an awesome experience with this guy, he is now joining my local community as a volunteer at conventions and regular game days because of you. I owe you a beer at the least and probably a decent meal on top of it for the amazing inspiration you were to this new PFS player and by extension to me as well.
Thank you.
Please share in this thread the cool stories you have heard from others about PFS. Don't tell us about yourself or your cool moment...tell me about someone else. Tell us about someone else. Be a storyteller and tell me...
...Tell me the reason you PFS?
I happened to watch a PFS event near where my brother's place (didn't have my stuff with me so just watched for a while).
There was a woman and her daughter playing together. Apparently the daughter had been spending all her time in online MMORPGS at friend's house / the library / etc... The single mom couldn't afford a couple of PC's and high speed internet connection but wanted to be involved in some activity with her daughter.
I think she said someone originally gave them the CRB. It only cost them some time, a couple sets of dice, and some blank paper.
Their finacial situation is better now (whole stack of books and a big box of figures), but they are still going to the store several times a month for the last couple of years.
Neither is what I would call a high level gamer or system expert. They are not method actors that speak in voices or get emotionally tied to their PC's. I'm not entirely sure either would keep playing if the other did not. (But I could be wrong, may have just been an off day.)
But the import thing for them was,
It was exceptionally kool to see them and hear some of their story.
It's fun, I've met great people, and if I have a boring weeknight now, it's because I want one!
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I PFS because I don't need to have a consistent group to play. I am married with 3 small children and we have enough difficulty juggling our own internal schedules without having to include those of a regular gaming group. With PFS, I can find a game in jump in as I am able or, as I am doing for the 1st time, this Sunday, posting an event and running it.
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I play PFS because it is a wonderful way to grow the hobby as well as an activity that gives my wife and I yet another thing that we both enjoy and can share together.
I very much enjoy my home games, but helping new folks experience Pathfinder for the first time has provided me with some of my most awesome moments in this hobby.
Finally, I've met a ton of awesome people in PFS, not only expanding the groups of those we play with, but making a lot of new friends in the process.
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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 4
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Wrote a great story about Cape Town.
Wow, I wasn't quite expecting to see this when I logged on to report the weekend's sessions. I just have one minor edit to the story - the two girls aren't my daughters, but they, and their dad, do form part of our regular players at our fortnightly games.
I remember that table rather well. The table featured me, two dads and the four kids. The younger of the two girls is rather gung ho, which tends to land them up in some "interesting" situations. I'm not surprised our visitor remembers the game so well.
We have a handful of kids, at or under the age of 12, attending our games. Some of our most memorable tables involve them - for their out-of-the-box solutions and the occassional escalation to combat :P
I hold to you that beer, one day. If you're ever on my side of the world, I might just treat you to one of our craft beers down here.
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I was out of town on business and I came onto these forums and said "hey is there a game running during the week here in Minneapolis?" What they had scheduled didn't work out, so I offered my thanks but declined. Instead they rounded up a bunch of guys, picked me up from my hotel, and hosted me one of their houses. We gamed, we had a few beers, and they made me feel completely welcome. When I came home I decided I needed to be involved in PFS to give others the same opportunity to have a great game no matter where they are, or who they know, really it was a pay it forward kind of thing.
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Wrote a great story about Cape Town.Wow, I wasn't quite expecting to see this when I logged on to report the weekend's sessions. I just have one minor edit to the story - the two girls aren't my daughters, but they, and their dad, do form part of our regular players at our fortnightly games.
I remember that table rather well. The table featured me, two dads and the four kids. The younger of the two girls is rather gung ho, which tends to land them up in some "interesting" situations. I'm not surprised our visitor remembers the game so well.
We have a handful of kids, at or under the age of 12, attending our games. Some of our most memorable tables involve them - for their out-of-the-box solutions and the occassional escalation to combat :P
I hold to you that beer, one day. If you're ever on my side of the world, I might just treat you to one of our craft beers down here.
Ah-ha! I knew I missed something!
Plan to come to Paizocon at some point. I'll get you your beer there... ;p
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Hey OP:
Great story! As to why I PFS, there's a few:
1. Being able to drop in and out. I don't have to leave a campaign or miss sessions, or stop sessions from happening if I don't feel like showing up.
2. Character continuity. Assuming I can find the GMs to do the modules, I can get all the way to 19 or 20, which is awesome. I can't tell you how many 3.5 home games fell apart before 10 because either some of the players got bored, or the GM ran out of cool ideas. And then I have to find a new group and start at 1 or 2 again. I haven't seen the other side of 10th level enough for my tastes.
3. Meeting a lot of people. Through going to cons and PFS, I've met more gamers than I ever thought I would or could meet. It's been great.
4. GM power tripping. Outside of PFS I've have good and bad GMs. But I've had more than my share of GMs that house rule (or use other interesting methods) to the extreme. For some reason or another, they'd really treat it like it's players vs. the GM. I like PFS for the "run as written" rules, which almost completely nullifies the ability of bad GMs to rule 0 the game into a crap hole.
Note: The games with bad GMs I stayed in because I was friends with the group. I realize the best way to deal with bad GMs is to walk away.
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Terrific story, Kyle. :-)
I PFS for a lot of reasons.
I started playing Pathfinder Society as an artifact of the Living Greyhawk days of 3.5 D&D. LG had afforded the opportunity to table with a bunch of different players and GMs, and it turned out PFS did too. I eventually started GMing Society sessions as an attempt to give back to my local community.
With any luck, something worthwhile has rubbed off on me from every table at which I've played or run and I get to hopefully share that worthwhile element with others. I get the opportunity to game at a number of local (and not-so-local) conventions. I also get the opportunity to bond over a common interest with those people — and that's huge to a person as introverted as I actually am (shh, don't tell).
And I readily acknowledge that, once upon a time, I had the desire and energy to create my own adventures out of whole cloth. That time in my life, regrettably, is long since gone. I now have one of those Real Life [tm] things, which includes a family, a career (or at least a full-time job, if not actually a career, LOL), and a half-dozen other things that command my attention before gaming gets a chance. Such is life.
PFS gives me my gaming fix. It lets me do so as it fits my schedule, and the fact that it's modular and can go where I go is an enormous bonus.
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Venture-Captain, Massachusetts—Central & West
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I moved to the Boston area for work about three years ago for work after graduating from college. On the entirely different coast from family (I'm an Oregonian) and friends from college, I knew no one here. While this might come as a surprise for people who play with me on a regular basis, I have a hard time making friends.
I spent my first year in Boston going through the motions: wake up, go to work, work, go home, eat, go to sleep, repeat. Needless to say I fell into a bit of a funk. People who've lived in Boston know that it's notoriously hard to meet new people for enigmatic reasons. It's a very transient place with all the colleges, graduate students, and temporary researchers that people coming for short periods of time don't seek to make long-lasting ties to the area only to sever them. On the other hand, people who've lived here for years or were raised here already have tons of ties, and have formed their own nigh-impenetrable cliques. I figured I would stumble upon some co-workers to hang out with, but I was a fair bit younger than a lot of people in the office. They didn't seem to want to hang out with someone who is younger than their own children. Oddly enough, I live right across the street from one of my co-worker's sons and he's older than I am. I had no chance of making friends using my normal methods. Pretty sad and depressed at that point I figured I'd have to do something and step out of my comfort zone. If I was going to be miserable, at least I'd be miserable crossing things off of my bucket list.
I looked up the local gaming store, and say they had an RPG night. I'd always wanted to give tabletop RPGs a try, but no one to play with. I figured it would be better than sitting around. I went the day after Thanksgiving. The place was practically empty, but I got to play one game of 4th Edition. So, my thirst was whetted. However, it was a $2 cost to play D&D, and I was cheap. So, I went to the free Pathfinder Society game, and the rest was history.
Playing and running at PFS has helped me open up and give me a bit of a social network. I've seen changes in myself, and seem to people look up to me. Why, because I'm all sorts of awesome, apparently. So, I PFS because it has been an instrument of change for me. Over my 1.5 years playing PFS in Boston, I will continue to PFS because I've seen changes in others as well.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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Thanks for starting this thread my west side brother!
Stories like this are the reasons I play PFS.
If you haven't read that story yet, go ahead and do so now.
I'll wait.
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Ok, now that you're properly pumped, I'll say the following.
That is still the best game of PFS I've ever experienced. So every time I sit down at a table, I'm hoping to walk away with a story that's even better.
And it's not that others haven't been close. I've had some close contenders.
- The party of high level PCs that helped some moonbeasts complete their ritual, only to watch in horror as it summoned a very angry, very hungry shoggoth.
- Every waking moment of Eyes of the Ten (run by Kyle Elliott himself). The brutal fights, the excellent roleplaying, the plot and all it's devious twists.
I was nearly brought to tears when a soul-crushingly sorrowful plot hook was revealed. That is how much he made me care. - Getting to play with Todd Morgan, Wes Brock, and others at PaizoCon this year. Seeing them slough through fight after fight against an unstoppable demon horde.
Hearing them shout "OUTSIDE" or "INSIDE" whenever sections of the city started to falter. Watching as Melissa smashed into one unfortunate fiend for exactly 666 damage, and then reveling in the irony of it.
And I have many more memories like this because of PFS. All because of PFS.
And those are just the games! Those anecdotes are all just what happens from a mechanical perspective at the table. None of them can do justice to what it feels like to be there at those tables. To help shape those moments. They also don't tell of the moments that happen before, after, or during a game that have nothing to do with the game at all! All the "freebees" that come with being around those awesome people.
For me, PFS is a tool that I use to have a great time with a community full of great people.
That's why I love PFS.
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So at some point I had to move from one side of the country to the opposite end. I was leaving behind my home group, I didn't have any roleplaying contacts in my new city.
I looked online for a new home game and found one that ran every Tuesday night. A bunch of uni students got together and pretended to be Japanese in 3.5 rules. There was no conflict. There was no story. There was just bunch of fantasy pseudo anime characters that made no sense to me sipping tea and commenting on Ichi-karo's business plans to the South. It was 4 hours of pure WTF-is-going-on nonsense. This is what will happen to a world with no Organised Play.
Distraught, I decided I'd just have to GM constantly for my mates. Protip: People writing their PHD don't have much time for your home campaign. So that failed.
Then I found PFS. My character found himself flung into dark and complicated world where one of the faction leaders was horribly murdered right in front of my characters eyes. Stuff was going on all over Golarion, and I had the opportunity to play and experience it first hand. I made loads of friends, and eventually became VL. I'm totally addicted to the story, the combats and my ever-growing menagerie of heroes.
As for a great moment... I'll bring up Feast of Ravensmoor.
A funny moment turned into a genuinely moving moment of two Pathfinders talking like regular Joes about the horrors they face on the job. It was a great moment to make the characters become real.
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Why do I like PFS?
I like to game with complete strangers, that's frankly the short answer. With strangers .. you dont really know their backgrounds, how they game or what they might do next. Of course after a while those strangers can become friends and you get to know how their characters are played. I know the majority of people prefer to play with the group they normally always play with, thats cool.
It's just that I would find it a little dull/tired after a while. Ive never understood why people would travel a great distance to go to a con... just to play with the same group of people week in/week out.
PFS affords me the opportunity to not only game, but meet new gamers, get new gamers in on the activity and have a laugh or two along the way.
Developer
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Why Did I PFS?
Some of my closest friends wanted to reunite as much of the gaming gang as they could, and they were also raving about this awesome organized play thing that use the rules that we had alpha/beta-(one of those)-tested more than a year before. I had just gotten back from grad school and wanted to get back into a campaign.
Why Do I PFS?
More than three years ago I wouldn't have imagined just how many amazing people I have met through organized play. From seeing someone at a convention for the second year and realizing we still remember that one game we played together to growing a community of gamers of all ages and backgrounds, Pathfinder Society has exposed me to countless viewpoints, styles, and experiences that would not otherwise have.
Being part of an ever-growing network of Venture-Captains and Venture-Lieutenants meant I knew somebody almost anywhere I wanted to travel, and then traveling to those regions and getting to know those folks was its own treat.
I like swapping stories. I like GMing for people with creative ideas who are more than willing to carry them to their logical--and often messy--conclusion. One of my favorite games was when I GMed Wrath of the Accursed for Wes Brock, his friend, a trio of awesome gamers I lovingly refer to as Team Qadira, and a gentleman playing "Boar Druid," as we remember that character. Did we spend an entire hour on someone's faction mission? Yes, but everyone delighted in Wes's passionate attempt to do another character's faction mission. I love telling that story and others like it.
Why I Will Continue to Play PFS
There's too much awesomeness coming in Season 5. I can't miss out on that!
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I was out of town on business and I came onto these forums and said "hey is there a game running during the week here in Minneapolis?" What they had scheduled didn't work out, so I offered my thanks but declined. Instead they rounded up a bunch of guys, picked me up from my hotel, and hosted me one of their houses. We gamed, we had a few beers, and they made me feel completely welcome. When I came home I decided I needed to be involved in PFS to give others the same opportunity to have a great game no matter where they are, or who they know, really it was a pay it forward kind of thing.
Glad to hear it, and that "Minnesota Nice" is not dead.
I have to say, that I PFS for several reasons. At first, it was just to check out some interesting sounding games at the Con of the North, but it has turned into much more. It gets me my gaming fix at a time when my current groups are struggling to get gaming nights together. It has given me a whole bunch of new friends, and a new outlet for both playing, and GMing.
I will tell you, that after 15 years of running as series of Champions campaigns, the ability to run something polished, that someone else has written (and balanced) is a joy! I feel like this frees me to role play more as a GM, as well as freeing me from hours upon hours of prep time, where the players are going to look at my villains often as not much more than targets.
But the biggest thing still has to be the friendships that I am gaining. Some may still be more of "acquaintances", technically, but I am counting a LOT of new friends met in the circles of PFS.
I am looking forward to being able to go to a game, outside of the Twin Cities... if I even manage to get out of the Twin Cities.
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PaizoCon 2012.
I was hanging out after the convention Sunday afternoon. There were board games in the lobby, I got my first taste of Arkham Horror (We beat the eldritch horror! I was the only man standing!) and a certain person came up asking if anyone wanted to play We Be Goblins.
My wife and I said sure, we had an early morning flight, but we could sleep on the plane. So we packed up into the conference room and gathered with a bunch of complete strangers.
We start off with deciding who gets to play which goblin, and the method of selection was having to write down as much of the goblin song that was just sung to us as we could remember. I sat back in my chair without a word as everyone else began jotting down bits and pieces. Then the reading began, and finally it came around to me.
I smiled and said 'Goblins don't write'.
I ended up with first pick and took Mogmurch the alchemist. But before we could start, the staff arrived to tell us they needed to clean and we would have to move. So up to the outer level we went, in those horrible tents on the loading area. (I think? I don't even know, we were on some kind of parking level or something.) There were one or two tables still going out there, around 9-10 at night.
We proceeded to howl and scream and laugh and cry through the whole session, the GM managing to stay in-character almost the entire time. From fawning over the player of Reta Bigbad (Hi Reta.) to giving Chief Gutwad a high nasally voice, he fed the roleplay beautifully. When it came time for Hide or Be Clubbed, Poog won by firebolting the goblins about to find him. All I can really remember thinking is "these are horrible little people, and I'm having to act like one". It was a magic night, totally worth the sleep deprivation.
Paul Trani ran a workshop on how to entertain, and I try to recapture that magic every time I stand before a table of Pathfinders with my GM hat on.
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...because no matter how hard it gets, no matter how much work I put into it, gosh darn it it's fun. No matter what there's just that moment in every game where I get that amazing feeling of "dang, that was cool" or "man I just accomplished something". That's why I keep coming back, even after running a con that kicks the ever loving crud out of me (aka Con Drain).
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How I Found PFS:
I've been a gamer for longer than many members of the boards have been drawing breath. Ever since my first game back in late 70's I was hooked. A funny story about my first game:
There I was, 7 years old, and hanging out with the "older kids" in the neighborhood. I had no idea what D&D was and they were having a "wizards battle". I was given 5 minutes to look at the list of spells in the old basic book, memorize as many as I could, and then duel with one of them. Needless to say, in a wizard's duel, Levitate and Magic Missile were not what I should have been concerned with. My poor guy was soon fireballed into the middle of next week. And so went my first D&D experience.
Since then I've played in nearly every mainstream RPG system that has surfaced. I've spent countless hours behind the GM screen and have loved every last moment of it. When Pathfinder was released I rushed out to get the core book and start learning it, as I was a huge fan of 3.5 and absolutely HATED 4e D&D. The system was incredible, the class changes were awesome, and the race tweaks were perfect. I was hooked. I played with a few local groups for a number of years until things died off due to people's schedules changing, folks moving away, and so forth.
For almost a year I was unable to find a game. Everyone had their established groups and were hiding in basements and playing, out of the public eye. I was going through gamer withdrawal. It was then I just happened to see a PFS insert in a book I had picked up, and things started to click. I started doing research, looking for a game, anything. I knew this was the answer to my search. Sadly, it seemed that my entire state was completely oblivious to PFS and the local gamers had been bitten by the LFR bug. So no games could be found. I started playing and running in some PbP games, and that gave me a taste of the system, and I was an addict from the start.
Hoping to be able to organize some games locally I started meeting with store owners, asking if other folks had asked about PFS. After a ton of dead ends I reached out to Mike Brock and he mentioned that the VC position was open for applicants. Obviously something in my application made sense, and I was assigned the position. Since then things have been picking up steam in the area and events are happening. People are playing PFS and loving it.
Why I PFS:
I love to tell a story, and as a GM there are few better outlets than that. I also love having new faces across the table from me and not the same player each and every week. It keeps things fresh, exposes you to new ideas, and you get to meet fun new people. PFS at its core is run by a team of people who are gamers, understand gamers, and want to put out the best product and experience for their fellow gamers that they possibly can. These guys live and breathe gaming and I am envious of the fact that they get to make a living bringing an ongoing campaign like PFS into reality for the rest of us.
Why I Will Continue to PFS:
The players and GMs are some of the best people I've ever met in gaming circles. They are passionate about the experience, which can sometimes lead to heated debates. But in the end, we are all here to have fun and enjoy the system that the folks at Paizo have worked so hard on for us. Any company that puts that much work into making sure my table has fresh content, an engaging scenario, solid rules to play by, and constant support will always be the one that earns my gaming dollar.
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What pulled me into PFS?
A number of things. I have been playing Pathfinder since beta, and I dabbled in LG but I never really liked it. My Fiance and I have since fallen in love with the world of Golarion, its rich and detailed lore and its plethora of things to play and roleplay as. When PFS popped up at our local store (The Dragon's Den in Richmond, VA. as an FYI/shout out), a couple months ago we decided to give it a try. So we made sibling characters with the inclusion of her sister and went to the first session. I was not hooked right away, but after a level or so I got hooked. I loved the ability to get into an adventure from beginning to end, find unlockables (I am a bit of an achievement hunter). We have also grown the gamer community we knew, and now are among some regulars that go to the games. I was worried it would be somewhat insular, take care of yourself cause the groups are transitory, but I have found it to be the exact opposite. While we ourselves grow in our list of friends and contacts, so do our characters. Stories have since evolved based on events from in the games just like any other game.
Why will I continue?
Because every character creates a story, every character has a different experience, every faction has its own flavor changing the scenarios ever so slightly, and because Paizo does a wonderful job supporting the PFS. I always look forward to seeing what new area of Golarion I will travel to during each session.
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I have been playing Pathfinder for years and moved across the country for better education opportunities last year. After going several months without any gaming, I discovered that there would be a small convention in Raleigh, only an hour and a half drive away (being a Southern Californian -specifically the desert- driving an hour and a half to get somewhere fun was common).
I arrived to the con with time to spare before the first games were played and a GM was calling out for people to fill up a table of We Be Goblins! Never heard of that, let's try it out. It ended up being the single most amazing game I had ever played. Then the GM started handing out Chronicle sheets for everyone. I was familiar with organized play, but also knew that in my area there wasn't much to offer, so I initially declined.
Later that day I would meet one of the Venture-Lieutenants in the area and through conversation told him my sad tale of no groups in my area. He asked for my contact info and that he would put me in touch with some people.
Later that night, same GM was running We Be Goblins Too! I had such a great time earlier, I had to play the next! The next day I stuck with that GM (if you ever see this, please take my sincere apologies for sticking to you like a sad puppy. You were just too good a GM to leave)for yet another game and met some members of his regular group. At the end I caved and he was kind enough to write up all three of the sheets for me. Even went out to dinner with him and some others.
Fast forward 3 weeks later, I'm now involved with a group only 30 minutes away and am waiting for my second session with them. It is thanks to a friendly VL and an incredible GM that I am now playing PFS and planning to start work on that sweet, sweet first GM Star.
So the reason I PFS? I PFS because it's an opportunity to play a game I love, meet new and exciting people and create memories. In just 4 sessions, I have made contacts, made friends and will forever remember a player asking "Does this much gravy count as cover?". Thanks PFS, now take my money.
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I PFS because of the people.
Because of PFS, I have friends all over the globe now, many of whom I will sit down to play a game or two with. For every one person I've met that I'd rather NOT deal with again, I've met 5 that I look forward to gaming with.
I've been a gamer for a long time, but PFS has given me an outlet for my social side while still including swords, magic and monsters...some of my very favorite things in life. And the games we play provide endless fodder for the story mill.
I would still game if PFS were no more, but I would be missing out on the sense of community it provides.
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I play PFS because it's a GREAT way to play with people from my local area . While that means drama from time to time, I've also met some fun people and made some awesome friends.
Campaigns and APs are great, and I enjoy them. However, because of the commitment required, they can be difficult for busy people to stick with, especially in my local area. PFS allows people with busy lives to drop in whenever they have the time. It works around their schedule. And only in PFS can you play with SOOO many different people over a year's time.
PFS brings us together, not as a group, but as a gaming community. That's totally awesome!
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... to kill that goat thing on the front of the PFS page.
It has come to my attention that goats are being subjected to hate speech and threats of violence. As the Semi-Official non-representative of all cartoon/fantasy art goats everywhere, I must protest.
Remember, goats are two people. Err, two people are goats. Sigh. Goats are people, too!