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I know the new seasons name will be released soon but I want to get a thread of speculation going with all we know is that it's the next season.
My vote is there won't be new races added, or at least not a full 4. We've had 8 races added in the last while, some should be left as only available through boons just to keep them special.
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PFS #9-00 Assault on Absalom
PFS #9-03: On the Border of War
I suspect the Pathfinder Society will be getting involved in a war despite its neutral outlook. War has a way of dragging you in whether you want to or not. This will be the season 9 metaplot. Unlike our previous campaign in the Worldwound this will be a battle between nations.
I think there is a high chance Suli will become a legal race. The process of creating one has been getting easier, it is very on theme given the previous season, and the race is mechanically weak.
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I just got home from PaizoCon (okay, yeah, I live 20 minutes away.) At one panel yesterday, Linda Zayas-Palmer confirmed that there will be NO race additions or subtractions.
For a full description of the theme of the Season, check out the many relevant posts in the PaizoCon bloggery thread. But, the war referred to is a war for political control of Taldor.
The entire season will be tied in to the related AP being released in January. I asked if focusing the Season on a war for Taldor will limit or reduce the number of scenarios in places like Tien, Garund, etc. Compton said no it would not, but he did clarify that they will pull back on elemental plane scenarios, much as they pulled back from other regions in the seasons immediately after they were highlighted.
There will be some changes to some of the factions (no spoilers were given as to which ones exactly.)
Developer
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The entire season will be tied in to the related AP being released in January. I asked if focusing the Season on a war for Taldor will limit or reduce the number of scenarios in places like Tien, Garund, etc. Compton said no it would not, but he did clarify that they will pull back on elemental plane scenarios, much as they pulled back from other regions in the seasons immediately after they were highlighted.There will be some changes to some of the factions (no spoilers were given as to which ones exactly.)
We're quite excited about the portion of the season that will be integrated with the AP and tied to the Sovereign Court faction, and our excitement about that mixed our messaging about season 9 a bit. Every faction will get a chance to shine in season 9, not just the Sovereign Court.
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Wait. Are we back to tying the season's theme to an AP? I thought we got away from that.
It's back!
According to the Paizo Banquet Preview dinner we are interweaving the PFS plot-line directly with the AP plot line "for the first time."
I think this means it won't just be the same theme or support but to get the full story of the war for Taldor you'll have to play the AP, PFS and the PACG Organized play season.
Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Indianapolis
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Wait. Are we back to tying the season's theme to an AP? I thought we got away from that.It's back!
According to the Paizo Banquet Preview dinner we are interweaving the PFS plot-line directly with the AP plot line "for the first time."
I think this means it won't just be the same theme or support but to get the full story of the war for Taldor you'll have to play the AP, PFS and the PACG Organized play season.
If so, that now requires a much greater investment of time to do all those things. I barely have enough time to play the RPG. So, if I can't play the AP and the ACG, for example, I can get a portion of the full story but not the whole thing? That's...disappointing.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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If so, that now requires a much greater investment of time to do all those things. I barely have enough time to play the RPG. So, if I can't play the AP and the ACG, for example, I can get a portion of the full story but not the whole thing? That's...disappointing.Wait. Are we back to tying the season's theme to an AP? I thought we got away from that.It's back!
According to the Paizo Banquet Preview dinner we are interweaving the PFS plot-line directly with the AP plot line "for the first time."
I think this means it won't just be the same theme or support but to get the full story of the war for Taldor you'll have to play the AP, PFS and the PACG Organized play season.
Yeah, I wouldn't like that either. PFS is easy to keep up with, doing an additional AP is a lot harder, and I can't imagine actually keeping pace with a PFS season.
I was actually quite happy with the current "cameo AP reference" approach.
Contributor
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I'm not terribly worried about it. I plan to both read and run the Path, and even if I don't play PACG, I can always just read their scenarios. (I can't imagine that there's going to be a ton of storyline locked there anyway.) I don't necessarily need to play every part.
That's just me, though. ^_^
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I never found Year of the Demon to be diminished just because I have yet to play Wrath of the Righteous. While I prefer the seasons to be stand alone, I don't think there is any requirement to play the AP to enjoy the season.
I guess that'll depend on how intimately they get interwoven this time?
Year of the Demon had a fairly standalone story that happened to use the same themes as the AP. That worked pretty well.
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Running the AP perhaps you get rumors of things pathfinders have burned and looted?
Princess Eutropia: "Well for the next part I was wanting to send you to meet up with some other people I had hired to reclaim a valuable relic from the very first army of exploration... but they went and blew up the whole damn mausoleum so we're gonna have to improvise."
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If so, that now requires a much greater investment of time to do all those things. I barely have enough time to play the RPG. So, if I can't play the AP and the ACG, for example, I can get a portion of the full story but not the whole thing? That's...disappointing.Wait. Are we back to tying the season's theme to an AP? I thought we got away from that.It's back!
According to the Paizo Banquet Preview dinner we are interweaving the PFS plot-line directly with the AP plot line "for the first time."
I think this means it won't just be the same theme or support but to get the full story of the war for Taldor you'll have to play the AP, PFS and the PACG Organized play season.
Yeah, I wouldn't like that either. PFS is easy to keep up with, doing an additional AP is a lot harder, and I can't imagine actually keeping pace with a PFS season.
I was actually quite happy with the current "cameo AP reference" approach.
They said at the panel that if you just play one, you'll get a complete stand alone story that makes sense. But if you play all three you'll get a more rich story.
Also Thursty is writing the first scenario and book, and John Compton is writing book 5. The idea is that 7 months of season 9 will inform how the AP starts shaping up while the last bit of season 9 will help inform the penultimate and end of the AP.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Season 6 was no more woven into Iron Gods than 5 was to Wrath.
I always had the impression that S6 shifted gears after there was such a heavy backlash against the first few scenarios ("meatgrinder", "killer robots", "hardness is unfair to anyone not playing 2H barbarian", "technologist is a stupid feat tax"). As a result it featured far fewer tech scenarios during the remainder of the year than the start of the season seemed to indicate. And in fact it was the cause for the new policy of "PFS isn't married to the current AP".
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Season 6 was no more woven into Iron Gods than 5 was to Wrath.I always had the impression that S6 shifted gears after there was such a heavy backlash against the first few scenarios ("meatgrinder", "killer robots", "hardness is unfair to anyone not playing 2H barbarian", "technologist is a stupid feat tax"). As a result it featured far fewer tech scenarios during the remainder of the year than the start of the season seemed to indicate. And in fact it was the cause for the new policy of "PFS isn't married to the current AP".
There was never going to be a much larger push of tech-related scenarios, they were just clustered near the beginning.
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If this gives people running the APs some side quests that are easy to plug in, that will be a great thing. If you play the Adventure Path with a group larger than 4, and use xp for leveling, you are always looking for additional side quests anyway, and it's always a pain trying to find them.
And if that gets non-PFS people used to looking at the scenarios for one-shot games, that's a bonus, too.
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A teenage boy, dressed in the latest Taldan fashion enters, and announces loudly, "Presenting Lord Baron Yzarctihstab Garblenarf, Sorcerer of the Verduran Forest of Taldor"
He steps out of the way to reveal a tiny gnome with greyish skin and brown hair standing behind him. The gnome is dressed in a fine Taldan noble outfit, except in a wider variety of colors than you'd expect, and with a huge hat that really doesn't go with the rest of the outfit.
"I, for one, am very glad that Taldor will be in the spotlight once again. It's what our wonderful and noble nation deserves!" the gnome says decisively.
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It would be nice if we saw a certain "shadowy" faction return to being playable in Season 9...just saying ;)
Compton confirmed, quite emphatically that Shadow Lodge is not returning. He added a dig, that may not have been entirely serious, that there was a severe lack of interest.
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Central Europe
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It would be nice if we saw a certain "shadowy" faction return to being playable in Season 9...just saying ;)Compton confirmed, quite emphatically that Shadow Lodge is not returning. He added a dig, that may not have been entirely serious, that there was a severe lack of interest.
There might be a some truth in the lack of interest. I can say for sure that none of the active players in my region has any interest in the shadow lodge (because they all started in season 5 or later).
And my guess would be that the majority of the ~70k players we got in the campaign started after season 4.To be honest my feeling that only a very small part of the players (less than 1000) is interested in it and it just comes up so often because many of them are very active in the forum.
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Gotta be careful with the wording there. Some folks got some heat for Make Taldor Great Again jokes during and after the banquet.
As much as I like the factions coming back into prominence, my greatest concern is that the in-game events will mirror real-world politics. In that case, I may need a liver transplant before the season finishes.
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Gotta be careful with the wording there. Some folks got some heat for Make Taldor Great Again jokes during and after the banquet.As much as I like the factions coming back into prominence, my greatest concern is that the in-game events will mirror real-world politics. In that case, I may need a liver transplant before the season finishes.
I'd offer you mine, but you'd never be able to get drunk again and you'd be back where you started.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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I am one of those players Nils mentioned... if we are sufficiently unsure about this, just let Torch come back and let players decide how they want to deal with him.
Should be doable via scenario reporting:
Check A if the party decided to ally with Torch
Check B if the party declined his offer
Check C if the party didn't wait for him to finish his sales pitch, and the remains are not very intact.
Frankly, all I have to do is to offer the very worst PFS scenario I know a couple of times so everyone has played it, to make option C significantly more likely.
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Venture-Agent, Nebraska—Omaha
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Hasn't the Grand Lodge faction picked up a lot of slack from the union side of the Shadow Lodge? One of their faction objectives is "Participate in an adventure that directly assists an NPC Pathfinder agent or agent of an allied organization, such as by mounting a rescue, recovering an important object, or defending that group’s resources and reputation."
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Hasn't the Grand Lodge faction picked up a lot of slack from the union side of the Shadow Lodge? One of their faction objectives is "Participate in an adventure that directly assists an NPC Pathfinder agent or agent of an allied organization, such as by mounting a rescue, recovering an important object, or defending that group’s resources and reputation."
I see this in theory but haven't really seen it in practice. It tends to be drowned out by the guys who either don't bother with the faction system or house are just house hufflepuff, or more rarely really really excited to be a pathfinder.
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Hasn't the Grand Lodge faction picked up a lot of slack from the union side of the Shadow Lodge? One of their faction objectives is "Participate in an adventure that directly assists an NPC Pathfinder agent or agent of an allied organization, such as by mounting a rescue, recovering an important object, or defending that group’s resources and reputation."I see this in theory but haven't really seen it in practice. It tends to be drowned out by the guys who either don't bother with the faction system or house are just house hufflepuff, or more rarely really really excited to be a pathfinder.
Yeah, the Grand Lodge is still the Grand Lodge, now with 2% Shadow Lodge sugar on top.
My own Grand Lodgers, 3 out of 4 anyway, are in the "I don't fit in with the other factions, so I'll just ignore the faction system with this PC" variety.
The 4th is actually very excited to be a Pathfinder. Mostly because he wants to travel and see the world, and sample all of its fine cuisine (he's a foodie), so he feels extraordinary loyalty to the organization that pays for all his trips.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Ummm... no. Those of us who want the Shadow Lodge back don't want Grandmaster Torch back.
We want the Pathfinder Union, whose top goal is to look out for our fellow Pathfinders, and hold the Decemvirate accountable for their actions.
Might I suggest not asking for anything connected to the name Shadow Lodge, that name is tainted by the association with Torch and all those "rogue" shadow lodge agents.
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Venture-Agent, Nebraska—Omaha
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Hasn't the Grand Lodge faction picked up a lot of slack from the union side of the Shadow Lodge? One of their faction objectives is "Participate in an adventure that directly assists an NPC Pathfinder agent or agent of an allied organization, such as by mounting a rescue, recovering an important object, or defending that group’s resources and reputation."I see this in theory but haven't really seen it in practice. It tends to be drowned out by the guys who either don't bother with the faction system or house are just house hufflepuff, or more rarely really really excited to be a pathfinder.Yeah, the Grand Lodge is still the Grand Lodge, now with 2% Shadow Lodge sugar on top.
My own Grand Lodgers, 3 out of 4 anyway, are in the "I don't fit in with the other factions, so I'll just ignore the faction system with this PC" variety.
The 4th is actually very excited to be a Pathfinder. Mostly because he wants to travel and see the world, and sample all of its fine cuisine (he's a foodie), so he feels extraordinary loyalty to the organization that pays for all his trips.
And what faction are your card-holding union members? Grand Lodge seems like the perfect place to teach the newbies about what it means to be a Pathfinder.
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Central Europe
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Ummm... no. Those of us who want the Shadow Lodge back don't want Grandmaster Torch back.
We want the Pathfinder Union, whose top goal is to look out for our fellow Pathfinders, and hold the Decemvirate accountable for their actions.
Honestly i find the concept of a "pathfinder union" quite odd. It makes as much sense as a union of chelish marines that wants to hold queen Abrogail accountable or union of priests that want to hold their high priest or their god accountable.
I don't need a special faction to look out for my fellow pathfinders and i don't get how the whole "hold them accountable" should actually work. Like most of Golarion the Society is not a democratic organization and the average pathfinder at least has the freedom to leave the organization if he is unhappy with the leadership which is far more than most people can do if they are unhappy with their king.
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And what faction are your card-holding union members? Grand Lodge seems like the perfect place to teach the newbies about what it means to be a Pathfinder.
One is in grand lodge but his thing is "hates aspis"
Flutter drifted into Qadiria , and left due to the influx of scarzini into the exchange, and then joined the scarab saged because she could belly rub the faction leader. Its really not a surprise a desnan is a little flighty...
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Ummm... no. Those of us who want the Shadow Lodge back don't want Grandmaster Torch back.As one of the people who wants the return of the Shadow Lodge I assure you that opinion of Torch is not universal.
I started *after* Season Five.
I heard about the alleged reputation of Grandmaster Torch via osmosis.
In play, my characters have always had *positive* interactions with the fellow, to the point that it made some of the 'official' members of the Society representing the Decemvirate look *far worse*.
It would be appreciated, though, if there was a faction that was actually, y'know, more focused on seeing the constituent members *excel* rather than these 'Alpha Centauri-esque' idealogical factions...
The Exchange = Morgan Industries
Silver Crusaders = Lord's Believers
Grand Lodge = Peacekeeping Forces
Liberty's Edge = Free Drones
The Dark Archive = The University
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*shrugs*
To be honest, with all of the changes over the years, I have lost interest in the factions; >90% of my (currently played) PCs are Grand Lodge, purely because you *have* to choose a faction when registering a PC (for example, I have never bothered with the Faction Cards, because I don't really see the point), and I have in fact retired a number of PCs, precisely because certain factions changed significantly, or were merged/removed.
Moreover, at least from the local play that I have seen, the relevance of factions has gradually faded away, to the point where they don't seem to matter that much.
That said, I definitely realise that this is purely my own opinion. I definitely respect that other people hold differing views, and the fact that the campaign is such a success suggests that it would be a minority one.
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Venture-Agent, Nebraska—Omaha
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*shrugs*
To be honest, with all of the changes over the years, I have lost interest in the factions; >90% of my (currently played) PCs are Grand Lodge, purely because you *have* to choose a faction when registering a PC (for example, I have never bothered with the Faction Cards, because I don't really see the point), and I have in fact retired a number of PCs, precisely because certain factions changed significantly, or were merged/removed.
If you don't play using factions, it's not surprising you've lost interest in the factions.