Contributor
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Dear Organized Play Leadership Team:
I'm writing this in response to the Starfinder Society news in the August 13th, 2025 Organized Play Blog.
One thing I realized we didn’t communicate very effectively ahead of time was our sanctioning process for Starfinder (second edition) adventures other than scenarios. We do not intend to issue chronicle sheets for these adventures, outside of special exceptions like Free RPG Day adventures and other single-session adventures. Players are still free to use the character options in these adventures, provided they own a physical or PDF copy of the product, but there won’t be Organized Play credit for playing or GMing these non-Society adventures.
I have seen posts in the past from developers about the challenge of writing chronicles for Sanctioned Adventures. In order to create such a chronicle, the dev needed to:
◈ Read the adventure from beginning to end (a chore for Adventure Paths)!
◈ Find fun and unique equipment to list
◈ Come up with an enticing boon.
I agree that the workload for this is heavy, requiring a bunch of cognitive heavy lifting for something that is not connected directly to Society Play. So I would like to propose a Generic Society Chronicle for longer content. 12 XP, 30 Treasure Bundles equivalent for every longer adventure, whether Adventure Path or for delightful modules like Murder in Metal City. The only unique thing about the chronicle would be the title and product number of the adventure in question. No special equipment or boons included.
Yes, we want the shorter society content for our late night venues that close early. But we also want longer content that might go over multiple sessions. We're an eager and devoted market and fan base.
◈ Encourage us to purchase your adventures
◈ Encourage us to market them for you
◈ The adventures are already written, published and have finished art. Let us run them, please!
You already have rules in place to allow people to start characters at higher levels, and most society players enjoy the process of creating multiple characters.
We know. We've been handling APs and modules in Pathfinder and SF1 for ages. I often lovingly craft a society connection and mission briefing, and I know other Society GMs who do the same. We can handle the occasional cultural disconnect, I promise.
With Pathfinder 2E allowing sanctioning and Starfinder 2E not allowing sanctioning, it makes Starfinder seem like the lesser program. Please... Let us offer your longer creations for Society credit!
Earnestly Yours,
Hmm
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Although I'd prefer more traditional chronicle sheets (and hope they come back eventually), this idea seems like a good compromise. Gamers get GM/player credit, Paizo gets data on what actually gets played/finished, and there's not much extra work that needs to be done by any party. Win/win, I'd say.
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I think this is fantastic compromise! While unique boons are cool, I understand the reluctance to have people have to go through APs to make those sheets. Let's reward people for playing APs and engaging with Society while also keeping the workload lower
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I'd be happy just Generic Society Chronicle for longer adventures, as Hmm has suggested. Even if a longer adventure placed a character outside of the level range of SFS2e I'd be happy just getting GM/player APC credit.
The SF2e playtest was the first time I've played anything longer than a scenario in SF1/2e and PF2e. Although I really like the one-session scenarios, it is nice to do a longer adventure once in a while. I really liked the sandboxy feel of the 2nd chapter of A Chosmic Birthday. Our local Pathfinder Society runs multiple tables weekly, but once a month, one of the tables is a longer, ongoing game PF2e adventure. I'd love to be able to GM Murder in Metal in City for our local group that way.
If nothing else, I think Murder in Metal City should be considered since it only levels up the character to 2nd level, which still fits in the level range of season one. Then you can take more time to consider allowing other longer adventures. Zo! has been such a fun part of SFS1e I'd hate to miss out on Guilt of the Grave Worlds. So hopefully, don't take too much extra time considering longer adventures.
With 2 scenarios coming out each month for Sf2e, letting us run longer adventures would give us something to run in between as an ongoing adventure.
Venture-Lieutenant, New Hampshire—Merrimack
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Adding my voice to this. I am truly enjoying Murder in Metal City. Once there's enough content where I can't possibly run it all, I'll likely veer towards sanctioned only content.
Years ago there was a Venture-Officer team devoted to doing a lot of the heavy lifting for sanctioning. If that's what it takes!
I really want a solution here, and I appreciate anyone reading through to give it thought.
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I'm also hopping onto the bandwagon!
I admit that, when I found out all of the four SFS2 scenarios available at GenCon had custom content on the boons, I was pleasantly surprised, since we haven't had bespoke content on every chronicle since, like, season 1 or 2, in SFS1. While it would be amazing if SF2 Adventures/APs had custom Chronicle stuff too, I think it's more important that they just provide generic rewards: XP, Credits, and ACPs Spacey-Ps. I would gladly accept "generic" chronicles for Adventures/APs, with no custom items, boons, spells, etc., if that's what it took to get Org Play credit for running or playing them.
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Put me down for this as well. My local lodge has begun a tradition of "Module Month," and I worry a lack of chronicles for longer adventures would make this difficult to port to SF2- If you want a concrete example, it's why I haven't proposed using Murder in Metal City as a launch event to give scenarios more time to be released for those who prefer "double features"
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Yes, please. The concern about Starfinder being secondary is already present and very sudden "oh by the way..." announcements definitely add to the feeling of being an afterthought.
While I very much enjoy the bespoke chronicles, what Hmm proposed is a reasonable compromise and I think would make a lot of the community happy.
Venture-Lieutenant, Online—PbP
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I agree that chronicle sheets for longer adventures is something I really want. A more generic chronicle sheet is a good compromise, if the more detailed sheets are too much work.
If these adventures are not sanctioned, I'm concerned that it would set off the following chain of events:
-sales are significantly lower for modules for SF2, because many of those buying modules were doing so in order to run them for society credit
-those at Paizo who make business decisions misinterpret this drop in sales; they conclude that there is not interest in modules, and so stop making them
For my PF1 characters, I think at least half of their experience is from APs and modules rather than scenarios. To not have that for SF2 would be very disappointing.
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Contributor
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I have seen posts in the past from developers about the challenge of writing chronicles for Sanctioned Adventures. In order to create such a chronicle, the dev needed to:
◈ Read the adventure from beginning to end (a chore for Adventure Paths)!
◈ Find fun and unique equipment to list
◈ Come up with an enticing boon.
I just realized that there is one other thing that sanctioned chronicles include that likely required some Dev cognitive energy: summing up the adventure played on the chronicle.
For the record, I'm okay with also ditching that summary for longer sanctioned content in order to make generic chronicles easier and faster to produce. I want to make it as easy as possible for these sanctioning documents to happen.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Wisconsin—Milwaukee
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I would also like to throw my voice behind this request! We want to run this content for our society crowds and we enjoy getting a little credit in a chronicle for doing so! The chronicle does not need boons; continue to provide access to content for those who own the books because that works fine. But your GM crowd loves this content and wants to keep their credit for running it and to give their players credit for surviving their shenanigans... Or not surviving.
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I have seen posts in the past from developers about the challenge of writing chronicles for Sanctioned Adventures. In order to create such a chronicle, the dev needed to:
◈ Read the adventure from beginning to end (a chore for Adventure Paths)!
◈ Find fun and unique equipment to list
◈ Come up with an enticing boon.I just realized that there is one other thing that sanctioned chronicles include that likely required some Dev cognitive energy: summing up the adventure played on the chronicle.
For the record, I'm okay with also ditching that summary for longer sanctioned content in order to make generic chronicles easier and faster to produce. I want to make it as easy as possible for these sanctioning documents to happen.
Leaving that space blank for the GM to write their own summary seems like a great way to personalize these things, actually!
Venture-Agent, Indiana—Indianapolis
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Definitely also backing this request; while I personally am happy to run/play through adventures just for the fun and experience of it, having the option of handing out a chronicle sheet at the end would make it easier to recruit some players.
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Venture-Captain, Washington—Seattle
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If these adventures are not sanctioned, I'm concerned that it would set off the following chain of events:
-sales are significantly lower for modules for SF2, because many of those buying modules were doing so in order to run them for society credit
-those at Paizo who make business decisions misinterpret this drop in sales; they conclude that there is not interest in modules, and so stop making them
If Paizo had any evidence to believe that GMs who would not otherwise buy the book are buying the book in order to run the adventure specifically for Society credit and that this is a significant factor in adventure book sales, then this decision would not have been made.
Consider that in SFS2, book ownership is required in order to use a character option from the book. Therefore, from the point of view of whether Org Play is helping book sales, it matters not at all whether anyone actually runs or plays the adventure in the book for Society credit. What matters is that people buy the book because the book contains some cool character option they want to use for their actual Society character.
For the record, I also would support chronicles for longer adventures. I want them too. If nothing else, for parity between PFS and SFS so it isn't so glaringly obvious that SFS participants are less valued. (Although such parity could certainly be achieved in a different way, so there's that.) But the thinking behind providing chronicles would need to be "because Paizo likes their Starfinder Society players and GMs and thinks that giving them sanctioned adventures makes them more engaged customers and therefore helps sales overall" and not "because Paizo believes book sales are visibly increased by GMs buying them to run specifically for Society credit".
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Venture-Agent, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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If Paizo had any evidence to believe that GMs who would not otherwise buy the book are buying the book in order to run the adventure specifically for Society credit and that this is a significant factor in adventure book sales, then this decision would not have been made.
They have some data for Pathfinder 2, but I doubt it is conclusive and I have no idea what the analysis would show.
They can inspect the Org Play reporting data to get an idea how often people supplement their society adventures with APs and modules. They would want to filter out the FreeRPG Day modules from that.
They also have a few APs (Agents of Edgewatch comes immediately to mind) that are not sanctioned for Org Play. They could look and see if there was a noticeable difference in sales for those projects. Unfortunately there are plenty of other reasons that people may not have bought them so it would be difficult to say how much Org Play was a part of anyone’s purchase decision.
I doubt the data would be conclusive, but it should at least indicate how much crossover there is between the APs and society credit.
Fill in with all the normal qualifiers including past performance being no guarantee of future performance.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Colorado—Fort Collins
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I love earning unique AP boons, but fully understand how the developers' time is better spent on other projects.
A generic AP sanctioning document that simply lists the AP name and the XP/credits earned would give the Org Player base a very apprecriated benefit with a (presumedly) very minimal effort from the developers.
I wholeheartedly support this proposal.
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A generic chronicle is a brilliant idea.
Collectively, we put a lot of time into these adventures, both preparing and playing them. I think it's reasonable to ask for the option of using them for organized play. It's a reward for GM's and players that will also help drive sales.
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It seems like a good compromise, certainly at least until Paizo feels it may be able to direct resources to specific sanctioning. I'm not too surprised that it's not being rolled out as is given SFS2 only have a handful of products you can play (yes, there are more scenarios coming out each month but it's a far cry from when I joined Society Play for Starfinder in Season 3 and tons of stuff had already opened up). I feel confident that options will open up over time, but until they do, a generic sheet might just be the stop gap to keep too much atmo from leaking out of the hull.
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Add my vote for this. As someone who GMs APs and mostly plays Society, not receiving AP credit would practically cut my PC levels in half lol. Bespoke AP Chronicles are nice, but I would be fine with standardized generic ones. It's just nice for GMs to be rewarded for the time and effort in a way that lets us further engage in the game we so love.
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Contributor
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One of the things I'll note is that weekend gamedays can tolerate a different length of adventure than weekday gamedays. As lead up to Starfinder Second Edition, we ran both of the longer playtest adventures Cosmic Birthday and Empires Devoured over multiple days in our game stores.
It's nice to have the option of an occasional multi-day adventure in our offerings.
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Venture-Captain, Missouri—Hannibal
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Murder in Metal City should definitely be sanctioned. I feel that it is a tremendous error to exclude it and other SF2 Adventures whether they be modules or APs from sanctioning. Just do a simple sheet like we've done with PFS2 for modules and APs.
It is not going to hurt the campaign. Instead, it will help the campaign.
Archives of Nethys
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I agree with the sentiment put out by all of my colleagues!
When I first joined Organized Play at the start of the ORC Content, I played 1-03 Escaping the Grave. After I told my GM I had played Malevolence before, he informed me I got a full-level chronicle for completing that adventure. This was an amazing reward and an amazing surprise for completing a long-form adventure.
I would love to continue sanctioning for SF2e long-form content to give new players the same joy I experienced on my first organized play day.
Whether we need to make a team of dedicated volunteers to continue the same quality adventure chronicles, make the bare minimum chronicle with what we have, or something else, we are eager to continue the SFS2e adventure chronicle tradition.
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It looks like Pathfinder Game Night: Dawn of the Frogs (Deluxe Adventure) is also not sanctioned for organized play. I'm wondering if not having
Non-scenario adventures sanctioned, and having 2 Pathfinder and 2 Starfinder scenarios each month, is to encourage people to try both settings?
Maybe that's a good strategy at the start of SF2e, but not sure what I think of it long term.
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It looks like Pathfinder Game Night: Dawn of the Frogs (Deluxe Adventure) is also not sanctioned for organized play. I'm wondering if not having
Non-scenario adventures sanctioned, and having 2 Pathfinder and 2 Starfinder scenarios each month, is to encourage people to try both settings?Maybe that's a good strategy at the start of SF2e, but not sure what I think of it long term.
Dawn of the Frogs isn't officially released yet, so it's not surprising sanctioning isn't available. Maya said it will be, though.
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Dawn of the Frogs isn't officially released yet, so it's not surprising sanctioning isn't available. Maya said it will be, though.It looks like Pathfinder Game Night: Dawn of the Frogs (Deluxe Adventure) is also not sanctioned for organized play. I'm wondering if not having
Non-scenario adventures sanctioned, and having 2 Pathfinder and 2 Starfinder scenarios each month, is to encourage people to try both settings?Maybe that's a good strategy at the start of SF2e, but not sure what I think of it long term.
If Dawn of the Frogs gets sanctioned, I see no reason Murder in Metal City shouldent.
So lots of options for PFS and for SFS 2 scenarios per month. So locally, it looks like we got some players playing PFS every week, some play SFS when available and PFS the rest of the time, and a few that only play Statfinder.
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I wonder if the counter is that you can just make a character at a higher level. What is the need for AP credit?
Edit: I'll also add, after looking, the first non- 1-2 scenario is a 3-4. If this is the pattern that will continue, AP credit will be wholly pointless for at least 6 months if not a year from now.
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There are lots of good uses for ACP right now.
Secondary Initiation: Gain access to options from an organization of your choice.
Expanded Summoning - Pathfinder Monster Core This character gains access to creatures from Pathfinder Monster Core for the purposes of summoning spells.
Starfinder Condition Removal
Legacy Admittance: Dwarf
Legacy Admittance: Elf
Legacy Admittance: Gnome
Legacy Admittance: Goblin
Legacy Admittance: Halfling
Legacy Admittance: Leshy
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Venture-Lieutenant, New Hampshire—Merrimack
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I COMPLETELY understand from a company's perspective wanting to allow higher level characters to reduce gatekeeping. I personally loathe it. There's an... Aristotelean leisure to earning your way to that tier though. I won't ever use the option (no judgment on those who do.)
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I think the idea gives to much away, does it really take someone to read the whole AP on their own to decide chronicle boons, or couldn't we just ask a writer to pick something special from the adventure they wrote and put it on? It doesn't have to be good. There are several chronicles with nothing good on them, but it is the thought that counts imo. Same for the description. Writer can't write an abstract?
BUT I see a compromise will have to be made and people with more AP experience than I do are behind this so I will accept this is the compromise that people are behind and will support it as well. This is a small offering to players and GMs that their time was valued.
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I think the idea gives to much away, does it really take someone to read the whole AP on their own to decide chronicle boons, or couldn't we just ask a writer to pick something special from the adventure they wrote and put it on? It doesn't have to be good. There are several chronicles with nothing good on them, but it is the thought that counts imo. Same for the description. Writer can't write an abstract?
BUT I see a compromise will have to be made and people with more AP experience than I do are behind this so I will accept this is the compromise that people are behind and will support it as well. This is a small offering to players and GMs that their time was valued.
I do agree that it really does give too much away, but I also see the proposed alternative as an "alright" compromise. It really isn't too much when making a chronicle to shoot the author an email or message and ask "hey what is the coolest/most important part of the adventure?" and then put a blurb on a chronicle.
I like the generic chronicle sheet idea. And with SFS giving a static credit reward, nobody has to deal with calculating treasure bundles.
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If these adventures are not sanctioned, I'm concerned that it would set off the following chain of events:
-sales are significantly lower for modules for SF2, because many of those buying modules were doing so in order to run them for society credit
-those at Paizo who make business decisions misinterpret this drop in sales; they conclude that there is not interest in modules, and so stop making them
If Paizo had any evidence to believe that GMs who would not otherwise buy the book are buying the book in order to run the adventure specifically for Society credit and that this is a significant factor in adventure book sales, then this decision would not have been made.
Consider that in SFS2, book ownership is required in order to use a character option from the book. Therefore, from the point of view of whether Org Play is helping book sales, it matters not at all whether anyone actually runs or plays the adventure in the book for Society credit. What matters is that people buy the book because the book contains some cool character option they want to use for their actual Society character.
If the only reason to own something for organized play is for character options, then I'll just wait until I need those options and only get the PDF from now on. Murder in Metal City takes up too much space on my bookshelf for just a few character options. Sad to see it go to the used books store. Meanwhile, Dawn of the Frogs is sanctioned.
For the record, I also would support chronicles for longer adventures. I want them too. If nothing else, for parity between PFS and SFS so it isn't so glaringly obvious that SFS participants are less valued. (Although such parity could certainly be achieved in a different way, so there's that.) But the thinking behind providing chronicles would need to be "because Paizo likes their Starfinder Society players and GMs and thinks that giving them sanctioned adventures makes them more engaged customers and therefore helps sales overall" and not "because Paizo believes book sales are visibly increased by GMs buying them to run specifically for Society credit".
The original comment now has 52 likes and over 40 comments, all supporting her idea. How often do people (engaged customers) on the internet all agree on something...
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Contributor
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If the only reason to own something for organized play is for character options, then I'll just wait until I need those options and only get the PDF from now on. Murder in Metal City takes up too much space on my bookshelf for just a few character options. Sad to see it go to the used books store. Meanwhile, Dawn of the Frogs is sanctioned.
I'm still holding on to my copy of Murder in Metal City, hoping that Organized Play changes its mind about the sanctioning. It would be so great to run it for my locals.
Hmm
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If the only reason to own something for organized play is for character options, then I'll just wait until I need those options and only get the PDF from now on. Murder in Metal City takes up too much space on my bookshelf for just a few character options. Sad to see it go to the used books store. Meanwhile, Dawn of the Frogs is sanctioned.I'm still holding on to my copy of Murder in Metal City, hoping that Organized Play changes its mind about the sanctioning. It would be so great to run it for my locals.
Hmm
Mine hasn't left the house yet, but I'm running out of shelf space. I had to sell all my PF2e books to make room for SF2e and the PF2e Remaster Core for the SF2e playtest. So everything needs to earn its space on my bookshelf. Except for SF1e that gets free rent.
I'd love to be able to run Mudrer in Metal City. I have it all prepped and ready to go, even got all the tokens in organizer boxes and all the cards and handouts sleeved. We had 3 SF2e GMs, but one went back to school, and the other is super busy with work for a few months. I stepped up to fill in, but then my mother died the next week. So I'm only able to run scenarios I already had prepared for a while. So we're only running one Starfinder game a month right now. I'd love to be able to run MiMC to fill in. This goes back to the other thread about should stat blocks be kept and how they affect prep time. MiMC would be great for me to run right now because it has so much of the prep done right out of the box, with the cards, handouts, map, and tokens.