Venture-Lieutenant, Washington—Seattle
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Individual GMs are (as they have always been) free to disallow replayers.
Rules for Replaying
One Chronicle per Character: Each character can only earn one copy of a Chronicle for any single adventure. You cannot replay an adventure for credit with a character that has already received credit for that adventure.Notify the GM: Inform the GM that you have already played the adventure or run it as a GM. Although GMs are asked to be flexible, the GM maintains the right to deny running the adventure for you if they feel uncomfortable running the event for players who have foreknowledge of the story.
No Spoilers: When you are replaying an adventure, avoid spoiling the adventure’s plot or using insider information to affect gameplay. Doing so can be grounds for the GM to remove you from the table. In general, be mindful in separating player knowledge from character knowledge, and if you are uncertain how to proceed, speak privately with the GM to determine the best course of action.
Link: PFS2 Guide
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I hope the "Rules for Replaying" gets stressed, re-disseminated. Some regions need replays to keep enough tables active; ours does, with a local emphasis on Repeatable scenarios that will inevitably get too stale. And with online play, players can burn through scenarios quite fast. So yeah, I guess this helps more than hinders. But many scenarios rely on investigation, surprise, or even say a significant trap or oddity to reckon with. Foreknowledge ruins those and I'm unsure some of my fellow players can play dumb especially if they'd struggled or hit a major setback the previous run. And I DO enjoy tougher scenarios where I feel threatened, especially if my precautions pay off.
Will an element of randomization be retrofitted into older scenarios? Even if guidelines rather than new PDFs (which I don't expect), I think even a little newness each run would help, even if basic like moving things to different rooms, swapping out select maps, or replacing unnamed minions with the same level/type.
As for "constantly replaying everything", hasn't that genie left the bottle? There seem to be a lot more Repeatable scenarios in PFS2 than PFS1, and those can already be milked to get to 5th+ all around.
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Will an element of randomization be retrofitted into older scenarios? Even if guidelines rather than new PDFs (which I don't expect)
I highly doubt this will happen since all SF2e scenarios were already repeatable, and none of them have any randomization.
I think even a little newness each run would help, even if basic like moving things to different rooms, swapping out select maps, or replacing unnamed minions with the same level/type.
You can already do all of that on your own. Ever since this thread was posted Revising "Run as Written". I've been experimenting with modifying scenarios. I think there is a lot more room to play with than many GMs realise. Because all SF2e and the newer PF2e scenarios are now shorter, being 2 to 3 hours long. Even when not running them as a repeatable, I've been trying to expand elements in them or add to them to make them run longer, so when I do run them as a repeatable, all the changes I've made are easy targets to reskin, flavor, or swap out, creating my own randomization.
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I think infinite replays dilute the experience.
Being the only person at the table who hasn’t played the scenario is not much fun. Fellow players tend to put all the decision-making on you to avoid their own "metagaming." Replaying is not the same either, and I’ve never really understood the appeal outside of special cases like the ones below.
ACP rewards, Stars, and Glyphs were a reasonable middle ground; they gave players a way to earn a replay when an unprepared GM or a disruptive player ruined the session.
Scenarios should feel special. You used to get one shot. I made sure to only play scenarios like Eyes of the Ten, Salvation of the Sages, and all the high-level 2E scenarios with GMs I trusted to show up well-prepared and make them memorable in their own special way.
Running games myself was also something to cherish, especially when players would wait for me to run a particular scenario or personally ask me to run a game for them, knowing they trusted me to give them that singular experience. That was something I held sacred and it made me work even harder to hone my craft as a GM. With this change, that personal motivation is also diluted.
From an operational standpoint, when I was a VL, finding volunteers to muster and replay for ACp/glyph or even for no credit to support new players was never a problem. I'm not really sure I understand what issue this decision is solving, because it was already easy to replay if you needed. I know every lodge is different, but as leaders in Org Play I think it's important to build a culture where the community can step up and help people out instead of depending on loosened rules.
Finally, in my own corner case, having needed to take a couple years off Org Play due to personal reasons, the idea of coming back is now far less appealing.
As a player: I am not interested in sitting down with a bunch of people who've played the same scenario several times.
As a GM: I am not motivated to run games for people who've played the same scenario before or multiple times.
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I'm happy with a few replayable scenarios so there's always something to play. But I like most scenarios being a special snowflake. Each experience should be special and unlimited replays degrades that.
For some history back in LFR (d&d 4e OP) before Pathfinder came out, I diligently drove all over the SF bay area making sure I would play scenarios on their first local offering, and then frequently on local plays 2/3 etc as well.
It was great until I missed 2-3 months and suddenly the tables I signed up for had 4-5 people replaying, all trying to avoid spoiling things but also carefully choosing when to and when not to expend daily resources based on known difficulty of encounters all while saying they wouldn't make any decisions because they were replaying. Except when things were important for rewards or avoiding negative outcomes, then the not making decision voices somehow become very loud.
For those replaying it's fine. For those joining a table full of replayers it was miserable.
As an organizer it means all your signups get constantly choked out by the same people replaying and it's hard to attract new players which are absolutely vital to continued health. You'll miss out on new players you didn't even know about as the people in the know gobble up all the slots.
Also why GM for a second credit when you can just play over and over again? Without meaningful stars/Glyphs, GM rewards are already at a low point.
PFS has been close to my heart for nearly two decades now but PFS2 isn't hitting those highs like the most special scenarios for PFS1 managed.
Hopefully its gotten better but I don't have confidence that the scenarios have correctly utilized subsystems (Of which PF2 has some really cool ones).
Shorter scenarios, make it harder to get complex stories and interesting multiple encounters into game night, and infinite replayability further erodes what I want to be a special experience.
The lack of ability to play PFS characters in Modules for credit is also a big sad for me. Those were always a fun change of pace for an all day adventure or two as an addition to normal PFS play. Playing them in adventure mode just isn't the same even with identical copies of PFS characters.
Maybe these are just me problems but I've been really feeling down on PFS as of late and don't see the current or upcoming changes as positive ones.
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All SF2e scenarios are and have been shorter and repeatable.
I think infinite replays dilute the experience.
I haven't seen this problem yet in SF2e, at least not locally; I don't go to conventions, and I also don't use VTT. Is this a bigger problem at conventions or playing on VTTS?
Shorter scenarios, make it harder to get complex stories and interesting multiple encounters into game night, and infinite replayability further erodes what I want to be a special experience.
I was worried about this, too, when SF2e first came out, but I don't see it as a problem now. Some scenarios are short enough to run back-to-back in the same session. This works especially well with the meta plot scenarios, having a connected story. For the non-meta plot scenarios, several of them have had a sequel within the first season or look likely to get one next season. Even on their own, they have some really good stories.
It varies greatly from one scenario, but in general, I think the biggest advantage of the shorter scenarios is that it gives the GM more time to spend on the story and role-playing without being rushed to get to the end in time. Many of the shorter scenarios have NPCs or other elements that are easy to expand on to make for longer run times. I frequently get an extra 45 minutes to an hour and a half out of them.
The shorter SF2e scenarios on the new store have more and higher-rated reviews than the longer PF2e scenarios. There are some complaints about being shorter, but they wouldn't be getting good reviews if the story wasn't good.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Washington—Seattle
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ORGANIZERS:
If replayers gobbling all the seats and choking out newer/less-informed players are a problem in your area, then for the love of all that is holy, state a policy about replay when you offer games. For example, I might use either (a) Replayers get last priority for seats, or (b) No replayers, depending on the situation.
You have the power to do what is right for your area, so use it.
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I haven't seen this problem yet in SF2e, at least not locally; I don't go to conventions, and I also don't use VTT. Is this a bigger problem at conventions or playing on VTTS?
Local, and in person!
ORGANIZERS:
If replayers gobbling all the seats and choking out newer/less-informed players are a problem in your area, then for the love of all that is holy, state a policy about replay when you offer games. For example, I might use either (a) Replayers get last priority for seats, or (b) No replayers, depending on the situation.
You have the power to do what is right for your area, so use it.
I'm not sure how local policy advice addresses the table-experience issues discussed above. Tables with replayers can still dilute the experience for the one or two first-timers and GMs.
The suggested policy also also shifts the burden onto local leaders and adds friction for them as they would now have to be the “bad guys” enforcing custom rules to deprioritize individuals who fairly signed up, while also asking volunteers to do more even legwork to muster tables.
I remember creating a simple no-call/no-show policy at my lodges, and even that caused gnashing of teeth, emails to our VCs, and posts in public Facebook groups complaining about it. I can only imagine the volunteer heartburn a policy that deprioritized legal replayers would cause. You might have the power, but you might also live to regret using it :)
This is all an unnecessary step backwards, and expecting VOs to be able to solve it for their own lodges is probably wishful thinking.
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How to make repeatables fun, now that everything's going to be repeatable.
Currently, all SF2e scenarios are repeatable, and as of Gen Con 2026, all PF2e scenarios will be repeatable, and this retroactively applies to all previous PF2e scenarios. None of the SF2e scenarios are written with variable options like older repeatables have, and all the PF2e scenarios that are going to be retroactively made repeatable don't have variable options written in them either.
So, though it would be a good time to have a conversation on best practices for reskinning, reflavoring, shuffling encounters around, adding your own NPCs to interact with, or even combat encounters, while remaining within the organized play rules.
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I haven't seen this problem yet in SF2e, at least not locally; I don't go to conventions, and I also don't use VTT. Is this a bigger problem at conventions or playing on VTTS?
Local, and in person!
ORGANIZERS:
If replayers gobbling all the seats and choking out newer/less-informed players are a problem in your area, then for the love of all that is holy, state a policy about replay when you offer games. For example, I might use either (a) Replayers get last priority for seats, or (b) No replayers, depending on the situation.
You have the power to do what is right for your area, so use it.
I'm not sure how local policy advice addresses the table-experience issues discussed above. Tables with replayers can still dilute the experience for the one or two first-timers and GMs.
Starfinder 1e was my first experience with a Paizo game. My 3rd game of SF1e, was my 1st time as GM. The table had one other new player, and everyone else at the table had played the scenario before, and at least 3 of them had GM the scenario multiple times. The game certainly didn't feel diluted to me as a new GM, and the other new player had an epic ending to the scenario. The experienced players were there helping new GMs and players. The scenario was SFS #1-32: Acts of Association, which is a great example of how to write a repeatable. I have since then played this as a player to help a table that was short on players. I still had a good time, and having read the scenario, I know when to stay out of the decision-making for the party.
I had another experience with replays that stood out to me during the SF2e playtests. I played Shards of the Glass Planet 3 times in a row, each time with a different class, at tables with different GMs and players. All three games felt and played out completely different, without the GMs even trying to make them different.
To me, my ultimate goal as an organized play GM would be to GM a scenario with the scenario's writer and everyone on the Starfinder team who had worked on that scenario, Paizo's Organized Play Manager, and at least one new player. Success would be if I could surprise everyone who had worked on it, everyone has fun, and keep it with in Orgnized Play rules and guidelines. I do the same even if I know I have even one player replaying the scenario, and with the new shorter scenarios, I tend to do this even without anyone replaying, just trying to make the scenario run longer. I will say this is much easier to do with a scenario, not in a meta plot.
To me, this is relevant to having all scenarios now being repeatable now, because throwing the players a curveball is one of the best ways to keep players who have played the scenario before from spoiling something in it either accidentally or intentionally. I think a good conversation to have now would be how to best do that within OP rules and guidelines.
This is all an unnecessary step backwards, and expecting VOs to be able to solve it for their own lodges is probably wishful thinking.
The suggested policy also also shifts the burden onto local leaders and adds friction for them as they would now have to be the “bad guys” enforcing custom rules to deprioritize individuals who fairly signed up, while also asking volunteers to do more even legwork to muster tables.I remember creating a simple no-call/no-show policy at my lodges, and even that caused gnashing of teeth, emails to our VCs, and posts in public Facebook groups complaining about it. I can only imagine the volunteer heartburn a policy that deprioritized legal replayers would cause. You might have the power, but you might also live to regret using it :)
Locally, a few years ago, we had a VC with a strict show-up on time policy. We had a new player show up 3 minutes late, and the table was full. I volunteered to give up my seat to the new player, but the VC refused to let me do so. At the time, those rules made sense because we were under time pressure to get through a scenario before the store closed. But to me, losing 3 minutes is better than losing a new player.
A few weeks ago we had a player show up 20 minutes late. Without them, one of our tables didn't have enough players to start the game, and our second game had room for the other GM and players, so we so moved and reset up the tables to run just one game. As soon as we finished setting up, the player showed up late, and we reset and split up the tables again. Note this player, I suspect, is high on some neurodivergent spectrum. Instead of having strict rules, our current VC and VOs have set up a local lodge that excels at flexibility and being prepared to change plans on a 5-minute notice.
Another example, I was GM for an SF2e game, and we knew the night before that the PF2e game didn't have enough players, so the plan was that if no one else showed up for PF2e, the GM and the one player would join the Starfinder table. So the next day we did just that, then 5 minutes before the game started, 3 new PF2e players showed up, so we canceled the SF2e game, and everyone from the SF2e game ended up playing PF2e.
My point being I think planned flexibility is easier to manage than strict rules are to enforce.
This is all an unnecessary step backwards, and expecting VOs to be able to solve it for their own lodges is probably wishful thinking.
Filtering replays could be solved by using an application process for recruitment, like some play-by-post use, and the GM choosing the players. I'm not into that style of recruitment, and think it might cause problems and resentment on a local level. I guess it makes sense for online games that have hundreds of people looking to play.
The main case I can see for repetables being a problem is if you have a table with 4 or 5 players who are intentionally replaying just to get something on the chronicle, or a group replaying that doesn't care about, or is bad at not spoiling things. I think that would be a horrible game for a new player to play in. If a local lodge did intentionally run a game like that, or is aware of a local group of players like that. I would make scenarios being replayed that way off-limits to new players, but make sure there was a table running a second scenario for new players and players not wanting to play in a game where everyone else had played it. Based on our different perceptions of playing replays, I think this would work really well if you ran the 2nd table and I ran the table with people replaying.
I've only been playing for 3 years (89 games, 15 as GM), and the local lodge here has only been around for about a year and a half, so it might not have been around long enough for replays to be an issue, so maybe I'm missing something.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I've been thinking about this change and at first I didn't like it, but I've come around a bit.
We're a small lodge, we usually run 1-2 tables. Some players have been there from the start and although they GM from time to time, they've been a player far more, so by now they've played almost everything. But, some of that was back in season 1 and it's not super fresh in their memory. We also get new players who haven't played anything yet.
This new policy makes it a lot easier to do something like "let's do a Season 1 metaplot series" without a lot of puzzling about who needs to use replays for that.
I think it's significant though that this change is coming now that we have a significant back catalogue of scenarios that we ran so very long ago, that they'd be fresh enough now if we ran them again.
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I think it's good that a fair bit of leeway is allowed to organizers how they want to handle things. Sometimes PFS has had policies handed down that seemed very tailored toward some problem that was happening in some lodges in the US of a certain scale, that weren't an issue for us. Or a policy made sense there but it caused problems on our scale. In particular, the new narrow level bands are more problematic for a 1-2 table lodge because you might very well have a situation where half the players have a level 2 character, and half have a level 3 character.
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I'm also looking at what this means for PFS Tracker. Originally it was made to help set up tables when replay rules were really strict. Over time more evergreens showed up and more ways to replay showed up, and I've adapted the ranking algorithm to that.
By the time season 8 rolls around I'm aiming to change the ranking algorithm/UI again, to make it easy to see how "fresh" a scenario is for players.
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My point being I think planned flexibility is easier to manage than strict rules are to enforce.
To clarify, my old lodge’s no-show policy is reasonable, flexible, and aimed at solving a disruptive issue (repeatedly no-call/no-showing without communicating at all) that was preventing games from mustering. I don’t want to go into the further details here, since that would derail the thread.
I only mentioned it to illustrate the point that even simple, tailored rules can still generate a lot of heartburn for VOs, especially if those rules are not officially supported by the program. That kind of friction contributes to volunteer burnout.
Policy solutions often seem nice on paper, but implementation and change in requires meaningful effort and there are always bumps in the road. Hopefully the PFS community at large understands the leeway mentioned by Ascalaphus, but few and far between read the rules or follow policy changes.
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My point being I think planned flexibility is easier to manage than strict rules are to enforce.To clarify, my old lodge’s no-show policy is reasonable, flexible, and aimed at solving a disruptive issue (repeatedly no-call/no-showing without communicating at all) that was preventing games from mustering. I don’t want to go into the further details here, since that would derail the thread.
I only mentioned it to illustrate the point that even simple, tailored rules can still generate a lot of heartburn for VOs, especially if those rules are not officially supported by the program. That kind of friction contributes to volunteer burnout.
Policy solutions often seem nice on paper, but implementation and change in requires meaningful effort and there are always bumps in the road. Hopefully the PFS community at large understands the leeway mentioned by Ascalaphus, but few and far between read the rules or follow policy changes.
That makes sense, and I agree. Sometimes, the internet just gets in the way.
Speaking of, "but few and far between, read the rules or follow policy changes." When someone does that might be worth giving them a hero point.
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My two cents is that I support this change.
Its taken me four years to get a game of Mean Streets in Shadow Absalom. Before that three years to finally complete the year 2 metaplot. There is less incentive for a GM to run older non-repeatables than newer or repeatable scenarios.
Newer players have less opportunity to play older scenarios, as old GMs have probably already run it, and new GMs are spoiled for choice between new and old. We now don't have a limit on GM credit which is what I care about
Relatedly myself and at least one other GM I have spoken to don't care to buy non-repeatables. They are the same cost as repeatable but less valuable as a GM (you can disagree and call me a miser is you like I won't argue but its my truth and I am sticking to it.) This makes all scenarios worth my money now and I am buying more than what comes from a Humble Bundle these days.
My final point, what everyone else is worried about - players.
I share Driftbourne's view of it. I recognize this as a possibility but in several dozens of repeatables I have played and run this has not been my experience. Its theoretically possible but I don't think bad Replayers is a practical problem.
That said I do sympathize with tables filling up very fast and it must be pushing out new players. I get that, and I also want to give new players priority. WHich is why you say "no replayers" or you say "replayers can only sign up 24 hours prior". I am sorry if you feel burdened by this, but you shouldn't. The VOs will have your back, people who complain aren't the people you want at your table anyways and they are telling on themselves, and its an easy solution which allows for the benefits of my earlier paragraphs.
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Relatedly myself and at least one other GM I have spoken to don't care to buy non-repeatables. They are the same cost as repeatable but less valuable as a GM
Add me to that list. For Starfinder 1e, I bought all the repetables for that reason. The non-repetables I mostly bought after playing them as a player.
With SF2e all scenarios being repeatable I've bought all the scenarios. I take lots of time prepping and laminate all the handouts I make, because I'm hoping to run them many times. I like running repeats because the more times I run a scenario, the better I know how to run it. I also like having scenarios I've run before as a backup ready to go if another GM calls out sick on short notice.
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Had an interesting experience last weekend in a PF2e game with one of the other players spoiling something because they had played the scenario before. The GM called them on it. It happened near the end of the game, so it didn't have a big impact. But got me thinking if it had been earlier in the game and been something important, just because the GM catches a player using knowledge they shouldn't be, that doesn't mean the other players are aware of it. If not careful, how the GM deals with it could end up being what spoils it to the other players. So I'm courious how other GMs handle that?