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Since PFS is designed with convention play in mind, you're best off thinking of it as an on-going series with each scenario being a single episode. Each one is a self-contained story, sometimes running over to the next episode, and tied together by an overarching plot. But like television series, most of the time the story has to be wrapped up by the end of the time slot.
ooohhh and another thing i saw on the PDF im not allowed to play if i dont have a physical copy of the game material? really? this is a large barrier for me. my group always had the books, i just used online material to look up things.
PDF copies are alright so long as you can show the watermark with your name on it. If it's just a home group, people don't freak out too much about it. Just think of it being like playing with a GM that doesn't own the books either and wants you to be able to show him the actual rules you are using.
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w01fe01
First of all - welcome !!!
What advise can I give you? Well - you have a glass half full / half empty situation ahead of you. If you embrace what is good and new (half full) then you will open a new chapter in your life of gaming and unlikely will look back.
If you look for faults instead, be sure to find some. So go with an open mind and embrace.
I did go to my very first PFS game 5 years ago. It was in a private setting and I had hit the jackpot by meeting up with both the later PFS venture captains for this country and some great players / GMs who are now all friends of mine. We met at 10:00 in the morning and played until 1:00 in the night. A few years later and I'm a 5-star GM not been involved in organized play before and a little bit in a similar position then as you are now.
Incidentally if I recall correctly a second newly interested player didn't show up - not sure what ever happened with him. His loss.
Not everything will go as great as this. But let's look back
1) embrace new play styles and new GM styles - I had played/GMed some 25 years but PFS brought me to a completely new level
2) make friends - this is a community. I can go to any convention here in the UK and can expect to get hugs from different players
3) find out what you like / dislike. I go to conventions (which I didn't do before), I moved my home group to PFS, we have approx. twice a year a weekend when some of the GMs players I like to play with most come own to our place and we have a whole weekend of gaming, I'm active here on these boards which is a completely different community to the real flesh one. I reached out while traveling and have been playing/meeting up with 'strangers' from these boards in the US and Germany. So there is lots of options here.
PFS has many play styles, don't be put off if you have an occasional bad experience. It will happen that you might have some GMs you love to play, some were your play style doesn't mix perfectly. You should be fine as long as you approach this with an open mind. And after a while you might be able to better pick and chose - provided your local community is large enough.
Yes - there are rules like point buy. I disliked it originally as well. But now I regard it as something that ensures players start even - and it allows me to take my character I played here and travel in two weeks to the US and play at someone's table there. That is worthwhile the price to pay to have no freedom to bend rules as the GM allows.
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Different PFS groups have different play styles among them.
Some would appreciate and encourage roleplay, others may have a more mechanical/optimization mindset among players, some GMs just give the story flat, others may role-play them out...etc
Get a feel of what your local PFS group is like, then use the rebuild rule to make a character that fits your group.
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If you make a character using only the CRB, Bestiary 1, and Guide to Organized Play; you will definitely not be asked to show any watermarked or hardcopy material.
There are still a huge amount of perfectly viable fun characters that can be made using just the CRB. I have a 9th level PFS sorcerer (click on this avatar to the left to view him) that was completely CRB until just a few of the most recent spells and feats chosen and I think one time he summoned a creature that was not in the Bestiary 1.
There are no house rules and the GM's are set to a pretty high standard as far as Rules As Written. This is done for consistency of play experience from Walla Walla Washington to Brunswick Georgia. However, when players try to do something odd that is not covered in the rules, a GM will still have to make an ad hock ruling. I don't think there is anything in the book to say how long it will take a couple of medium sized summoned earth elementals to clear a cave-in (I didn't want to get my nice clothes dirty).
If your not sure about whether your PC (and/or planned progression) is PFS legal, appropriate, effective, or will be appreciated; just post the build on these forums and ask for some advice. People are happy to help. Also remember, up until you play as a 2nd level character (your 4th successful session with a PC) you can freely change anything you want.
RP probably does tend to be a bit less in PFS than in a home game. Part of that is probably because the players just don't know each other as well and are a bit self conscious. Also, the games are often out in a public venue and that puts off some peoples RP motivation.
Having said that, it doesn't need to be less RP. Once you play PFS for a while, you get to know the folks in the area and they know you, so every one is more comfortable in knowing what level of RP will be acceptable. Also plenty of people are completely uninhibited about it and will really get into the RP with total strangers in the middle of a PFS session held at Starbucks.
Just last week my freedom loving Lavode (Andoran) was sent on a mission with a bunch of those repressive Cheliax thugs. They made fun of my soopy, boo-hoo, Halfling loving, enabling attitudes. Whenever a couple of them didn't like the orders they were getting, I pointed out that if they joined us in Andor they would be free from that tyranny and could do what they felt was proper instead of stupid counter productive orders from some well-born oaf that was too stuck-up to admit he was wrong.
We had a blast!
There are some scenarios that continue a storyline in a mini-arch. You don't have to play the series straight through, but it makes a bit more sense to do so. I have heard that some groups will schedule something all day on a Saturday to play through one of those mini-archs straight through. I've never done it, but a few do.
We also use PFS to pre-screen for our home game. A couple of us in the home group also play PFS. When we have been at a table with a someone for a few sessions and like the way he games, we invite him to our home game if we have an opening. If we don't like someone's particular gaming style, no problem. A few hours isn't going to kill me. Next PFS session we probably won't be at the same table.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Welcome to PFS!
Maybe I can help make the constraints of organized play feel a little less... constraining?
Imagine that you started up a new campaign with your friends. They all make brand-new 1st-level characters based on what you told them the campaign is about. You plan to run this campaign for them every week.
Except then some men in suits and sunglasses kidnap you, and inform you that you're only going to be GMing every 8th week or so. For the rest of the sessions, each week will be GM'd by a different random stranger you've never met. You'll be prevented from intervening directly if anything goes wrong, but the players will be told to email you with any complaints they have. You won't know who these GMs will be, so the only way to communicate with them will be to leave behind some written instructions. Beyond that, all you get to do is pick up the pieces afterwards.
The nice men then tell you that you have a little time before the first session to make any preparations. What do you suppose you might do?
Do you think you might write out ahead of time what's supposed to happen in each session and be strict about the GMs needing to follow it?
Do you think you might write down all your houserules and insist that the other GMs honor them and not bring in their own?
Do you think you might make rules about loot and item access and make the GMs follow that instead of your players getting (or not getting!) loot according to what sounded good to the GM of the week?
Do you think you might write out how stats were generated so GMs don't decide your players' stats are too high/low and force changes?
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I think if you remember that the point of organized play is for a bunch of strangers from different gaming backgrounds to be able to come together as seamlessly as possible, lots of the rules/constraints will feel like good ideas; the rules are there to enable fun. If you feel like you should be able to do X so why won't they let me, just imagine that someone else wanted to do the opposite while guest-GMing your home game; if you wouldn't be comfortable having someone else be free to make that call in your absence, then maybe the rule isn't so bad after all.
Hope that helps! :)
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Ty David but i must be honest, i do not posess the current cashflow (just moved) to buy anything.
so i guess im out for now :/
Just make a character with the Core Rulebook. As others have said, you don't have to own that one.
It should be noted that while the hardback books are expensive in hard copy form, most of them are only $10 as pdf files. So you could pick up the Advanced Players Guide cheap if you wanted to make a character using stuff from that. That's the one book I highly recommend for everyone, right after the Core Rulebook. Lots of good stuff in there.
Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
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Just out of curiosity, which lodge are you near? Have you been in touch with their VOs?Mt. Pleasant MI, i briefly talked with them (kinda interrupted there session, felt bad about it) he gave me his card, im probably gonna email him this weekend.
You know... as I was reading this I had a feeling it sounded familiar... :D I'm the guy in the red shirt you talked to. Don't feel bad about interrupting our session. We're usually pretty relaxed there anyway and interrupt ourselves all the time. ;)
First off, welcome again. :)
Second, while it might seem constrictive to only use the Core Rulebook, as the NPC codex proved, there are a ton of cool/powerful characters that can be built by using the CRB alone. I always bring my CRB with me to games and if you ever need to look something up, you're more than welcome to use it. (It's the big book covered in red w/black dragons duct tape ;D)
We've got several players that just started gaming with us a few months ago, so we try to run at least one low table when we have multiple tables. The last month has been slow/low attendance, but it should pick back up soon.
Will it be the same as your old group? No, but we do have a good group of gamers and they're all welcoming to new players. Give us a try for a couple of months. If it doesn't work out, I'm sure we could put our heads together and find a local non-pfs group that might fit what you're looking for better.
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w01fe01, is there a specific PDF you'd like? I still have 10 dollars of store credit from PaizoCon laying around.its ok i cant in good conscience accept that. id feel horrible. like i said im just going to have to give it a go with the CRB, ill feel constrained but i might be able to make a less creative character functional.
For what it's worth, I once made a finesse gnome ranger 6 /rogue 3 that was core only using Arcane Strike and sneak attack for damage boosters. it wasn't optimal, but it was able to do a decent job of putting out damage and deal with traps and skill challenges. I had a lot of fun with it.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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w01fe01, is there a specific PDF you'd like? I still have 10 dollars of store credit from PaizoCon laying around.its ok i cant in good conscience accept that. id feel horrible. like i said im just going to have to give it a go with the CRB, ill feel constrained but i might be able to make a less creative character functional.
There are a small number of people on this forum who A.) have more store credit than they can spend, earned from volunteering to GM at cons or b.) want to support Paizo and draw more people into the hobby.
It is not considered bad manners to take them up on an offer (though it is of course considered rude to ask.)
In this case they have a chance of making the game more fun for you (and possibly interesting your significant other?) :)
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i come from a background of playing gestalt for a good bit, lots of complexity and system mastery...especially for my character. (Ape Shaman/Hungry Ghost+qinggong+iron mountain+MOMS with crane/snake/dragon styles all under his belt.we used core, APG, UC, UM, and a few cherry picked feats from Cheliax.
the limitation of both non gestalt and only being allowed to use core...i honestly do not know if i could have any fun with that. i fear id be bored to tears.
Think about it this way. If you were sitting down to a table with a bunch of beginners, would you make the mondo ultimate mythic gestalt killing machine and leave them feeling stupid and worthless? (I hope the answer is no.)
Because at PFS events that can happen. I think twice I've been at a table where only the GM and I had any significant experience with the PF system.
The PFS scenarios are designed so they can be played by noobs (at least most of the low level ones). So it isn't necessary to be super combat optimized to succeed. Therefore you could try some less than optimal concepts and see what you can do with it.
Maybe make a single class fighter with enough intelligence to have several skill points, so you can make him sneaky enough to be the party scout. Or try a barbarian that's really a nice guy when he's not angry, so he can function as the party face. Whatever, just look at it as a challenge to see what you can do with one book and pick something wierd.
Then when your circumstances change and you can afford another book, start a new character. I have 6 of various levels, some of these yahoos have dozens.
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I've made a few characters that are almost entirely Core Rulebook. Sometimes I'll dip a spell from somewhere else, and there are a few things in Ultimate Equipment that I really want. (For first-level characters, the most common thing I'll pull out of UE that's not in the Core Rulebook is a 10gp Journal.... It just seems to me that most Pathfinders would carry one of those around.)
When I GM physically (as opposed to online, which is actually where I do most of my GMing), I carry with me a handful of first-level characters to hand out to players. This gives a bit more variety than a pregen, and because of the rebuild rules players can still change them into their own characters later if they wish. I make all of these characters entirely from the CRB, so that new players can be sure to use them. (The only exceptions are that I take traits from the online web enhancement and from the PFS Guide, if there are any, and, yes, sometimes I give those characters a journal, even though it's not in the CRB; I suspect nobody's going to object too much to that.) (Also, some of the characters I've made have traits from the Field Guide, because I made them during Season 4 when that was still part of the Core Assumption.)
CRB characters are still quite cool and interesting.
Bah. True masters of the system can roleplay with a rock and three pieces of string.
Leave out the string for more challenge.
