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I've just discovered Pathfinder Society, and have been reading up on it. I'm contemplating using it as a means to structure our home games. Is this a good idea?
Pros:
- Anybody can be a DM sometime
- It doesn't matter much if someone can't play one evening
- We can have a larger group of regular players
- Shorter stories, with endings
Cons
- More bookkeeping
- Less freedom
- No long stories (not sure to what extent this is true)
Some more information about us:
- We don't go to cons (there are none around where we live, in Belgium)
- We plan to keep our games private
- There are, I'm guessing, about 12 players in our group who could play more or less regularly. Three or four of those are capable of being the DM.
- A significant amount of players are newbies. As such, I have concerns about PFS being too hardcore.
My gripe with playing an Adventure Path is that the same 4 or 5 players need to be present to be able to play. We can't have someone in the group who can only play once a month, and it becomes a big problem when one of the regulars isn't available.
If we start at Season 1, will we experience some sort of overarching story, or do all scenarios stand on their own? Do you suggest we start in a later season? Should we just play a couple scenarios in each season, and then go to the next season? Should we coordinate with each other as DM's, so that we only pick scenarios from the same season? When we're in season 3, is it possible to still play scenarios from earlier years? I'd like for the whole thing to have a sort of "campaigny" feel, like everything is happening in the same world...
Are there specific places you suggest I start reading? Do you know some specific scenarios which I could maybe read up on? I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction.
I tried searching these forums, and have found a lot of help, but I feel like I could use some more info. Thank you in advance.
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- A significant amount of players are newbies. As such, I have concerns about PFS being too hardcore.
Really - how hard people think PFS is varies quite a bit with the type of characters they build. If you're worried - stick with seasons 0-3 to start, as they tend to be pretty easy with a couple exceptions ranging up to moderate difficulty.
Of note though - those earlier seasons were designed for 4 players. That's part of why they're easier. It also means that some of the dungeons can get rather crowded if you have a full six players. (fighting in only ten foot wide passages etc)
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I'm doing this right now for a smaller group. Start them with First Steps (if not retired), Master of the Fallen Fortress, The Confirmation/ a repeatable 1-2 module. It is definitely easier to do PFS as a home game than a regular game. The modularity of it means you can run with whoever is able to show up and not worry if people have to miss a week. The bookkeeping sounds like it is work, but only takes about 20-30 minutes that can be done mostly ahead of time. Silent Tide, Mists of Mwangi and Black Waters are a few good Season 0 scenarios that introduce Absalom. Beyond that going through seasons there are some overarching stories from beginning to end but it can be more fun to macguffin them together without mechanically affecting the scenarios.
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I'm doing this right now for a smaller group. Start them with First Steps (if not retired), Master of the Fallen Fortress, The Confirmation/ a repeatable 1-2 module. It is definitely easier to do PFS as a home game than a regular game. The modularity of it means you can run with whoever is able to show up and not worry if people have to miss a week. The bookkeeping sounds like it is work, but only takes about 20-30 minutes that can be done mostly ahead of time. Silent Tide, Mists of Mwangi and Black Waters are a few good Season 0 scenarios that introduce Absalom. Beyond that going through seasons there are some overarching stories from beginning to end but it can be more fun to macguffin them together without mechanically affecting the scenarios.
I'm just wondering about The Confirmation being a season 5 scenario. Isn't this a problem somehow?
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I'm just wondering about The Confirmation being a season 5 scenario. Isn't this a problem somehow?
Nope, The Confirmation is specifically designed as a scenario to be played as your first Pathfinder Society game (having a special boon if it is), though I find it better as a second or third game. It is also designed such that at least for the foreseeable future the story in it will remain relevant. You basically go and explore some ruins as a way to find out what Pathfinders do. The difficulty is a little bit higher than First Steps: In Service to Lore or Master of the Fallen Fortress, which is why I'd suggest doing those first, but it is not "difficult" in the way that some season 5 scenarios are. Playing those 3 also gives everybody a level 2 character, which means less chance of random death, more options for what to play, and a set of scenarios that can be replayed to get more people to have the level 2.
Edit: The Confirmation is also retroactively relevant. So you could play it and have it make sense to then play Season 0 or 1 games.
Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
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MaartenDF, welcome. About 3-4 years ago my homegroup switched to PFS as our format for our core games. At that time none of us had ever gone to a convention and had no real intention of going to one. Because PFS had the paperwork, and allowed for taking our characters "on the road" I went to my first Con a few months after we started, since we had some friends that lived in a city that had the con. We were all geeks and I thought it might be fun to try out, and a 5-star GM Doug Miles was running an exclusive scenario that only he could run in Michigan and I wanted to play it. Ever since I was hooked.
I had no intention of ever playing anywhere but with my homegroups, but since then I've gone to 3-4 conventions a year and my friends and I are even working to start our own convention (Tavern Con). I've spread out and run at several stores regularly as well as kept our original homegroup running PFS and switched a family group I ran for to PFS as well. I love being able to experience an entire adventure in one sitting and know that I could go about anywhere in the world and be able to fine a PFS game and play with my own characters.
It is a bit more paperwork than a normal homegame, yes, but after a while you stop noticing, at least I have.
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I used to play in a group like this. We played with whoever was available that week, rotating GMs, and bringing in new players whenever we felt like it. The group worked out great for more than a year, until a few of our most active members (including myself) moved away from the area. Of course, we also occasionally went to conventions, so it was nice having those characters for when we traveled to those cons.
As others have said, there are some continuous story lines you could play if you choose, but the entire point of the system is that it's fairly modular, so you don't have to. Also as others have said, if you're worried about difficulty for newbies, stick to seasons 0-2, and early season 3. Later in season 3 is when they started making things harder, and a couple of those got kind of rough. Season 4 was brutal, but season 5 seems to have found a better balance of not too tough and not too easy, from the scenarios I've played so far.