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Jim Bulter posted a comment on this in the blog post thread
You're totally right here. When the guidelines come out, I suspect they will be Infinite-based and not ORC-based. We've updated the blog to remove mention of the ORC.
Not sure, but that comment could still be referring only refering to SF2e/PF2e. I do think it would be a good move for Paizo to allow this for SF1e/PF1e. The people who are still playing PF1e aren't likely to switch anytime soon if they haven't done so by now.
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(I was the poster that Jim was responding to in that QA, but I think the initial quote chain in that post got a little corrupted)
In addition to the rules versus lore/setting aspect, Infinite has more restrictions on where you can sell. (Ie you don't see Infinite adventures direct on the Foundry Marketplace, only as keys through DTRPG). Infinite takes a higher cut. Infinite has more art available. Infinite makes it much harder to make a collectors box set or a print (not Print on Demand) product (if even possible).
Most of the Infinite downsides don't matter as much for PFS -- you need the setting IP in the first place. And digital first/only is less of a problem. I think absence from the Foundry Marketplace is a slight downside for marketing to outside the PFS circles, but DTRPG Infinite sub-store dwarfs the non-Infinite section, and people have good awareness of it. Plus it sounds like Paizo was planning to promote Infinite more directly in their store at some point.
I've published one ORC-licensed adventure; it was short and I would have liked the better visibility that I think the Infinite DTRPG pages have. However it was a setting agnostic adventure I had pulled out of a larger campaign I'm writing. If I had published under Infinite, it would have made it extremely difficult to pull the adventure back into a longer explicitly non-Gelation full campaign down the road. These trade-off/restrictions make sense to me, and both offer good options base on what someone wants to do, but they have more subtle differences that take a lot of time to understand. I was excited to see ORC mentioned by Jim in that post, since its what I've learned to use, but felt fairly confident he didn't actually mean ORC for PFS and that was clarified. I would love to see Paizo promote some 3p PF/SF ORC stuff, but honestly given their current financial position I can't see that happening until things are better for them.
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Nothing yet. I think many people (included myself) are very interested in what the guidelines are. Especially since on Lorespire it's stated official PFS scenarios will end in October and are replaced with the printables line.
There so many answers I want to know! Such as:
1. What level ranges? I'm hoping it's completely open to go up to 20.
2. Further, what level bands are allowed? I'm hoping authors can do the 4 level band with challenge points and not just restricted to 2 level bands.
3. Can authors use special rules in their scenarios? (Mythic, Sailing Combat, etc)
4. Can authors make multi-table specials? If so, what restrictions?
5. What will the chronicle look like?
6. Can older PF1e scenarios be converted to PF2e and played? Same question for SF1e/SF2e.
7. Are authors required to charge $ on Infinite specifically for PFS/SFS scenarios? (I know normally they don't have to but dunno if there will be any special provisions here)
8. Will there be seasonal themes that authors can write around?
9. Will these be reported? How does that work?
10. Any restrictions on length of scenarios? I'm hoping authors can choose between a shorter 2-3 hour or the longer 4-5 hour. (Lots of PFS scenarios had trouble staying in these scenario lengths anyway)
11. Do scenarios need to be edited in a certain manner? Is there a template available?
12. Any restrictions on encounter difficulty? Maybe it's associated with amount of encounters?
There's more I'm probably not thinking of right now.
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Where does it state that?Especially since on Lorespire it's stated official PFS scenarios will end in October and are replaced with the printables line.
Interestingly, someone in my local community just pointed out to me that portion on the website got removed. I'm unsure if it was recently, which prompted me to look back at this post today. I actually made a screenshot of what it used to say. It used to be right under "Coming Soon." It said:
"November 2026
Publishing of new PFS Scenarios is suspended. Paizo Printables Adventures expand.
The two October scenarios will be the last published before the suspension.
One Paizo Printables Adventure comparable in length to a Pathfinder Society Scenario will be published per month beginning in November."
Don't know if that means there's a reversal being considered because the lawsuit worked out well, or if that information was not supposed to be on the website yet. I would be happy if there was a reversal!
Either way, the Pathfinder Infinite language is still on there for now and unchanged since I took that screenshot.
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1. What level ranges? I'm hoping it's completely open to go up to 20.
Good question, especially since SF2e scenarios only go to 10th level.
2. Further, what level bands are allowed? I'm hoping authors can do the 4 level band with challenge points and not just restricted to 2 level bands.
Personally, I really like the narrow bands; it makes prep and running a scenario so much easier. I would imagine that follows through to writing a scenario as well. If bands were to be widened, I think a 3-level range balanced on the middle level so the easier or harder adjustments are easy to apply. Alternatively, allowing 2-level narrow bands that start with even levels such as 2-3, 4,5 etc so there's some overlap?
5. What will the chronicle look like?
Good question. At minimum, the generic sanctioning chronicles for adventures could be used. Allowing giving items in the chronicle that Paizo has published would be the next easiest. Being able to create new items would be cool, but would have to be carefully balanced.
7. Are authors required to charge $ on Infinite specifically for PFS/SFS scenarios? (I know normally they don't have to, but dunno if there will be any special provisions here)
My vote on this is yes, just because I want to help support Paizo. Free scenarios would be directly competing with Paizo's scenarios.
8. Will there be seasonal themes that authors can write around?
If the seasonal theme is also the season's meta plot, I think it would be a bad idea. Unless all the authors knew the entire meta plot, there would be too many chances to cause contradictions. I wouldn't be surprised if it was required for authors to create new planets and star systems to avoid conflicts.
10. Any restrictions on length of scenarios? I'm hoping authors can choose between a shorter 2-3 hour or the longer 4-5 hour. (Lots of PFS scenarios had trouble staying in these scenario lengths anyway)
I only run short scenarios now by choice; I like to mod them to run longer. My preference would be being able to write in extra encounters like Starfinder Society Scenario 1-32 Acts Of Association has. This way, you can run long or short.
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"November 2026Publishing of new PFS Scenarios is suspended. Paizo Printables Adventures expand.
The two October scenarios will be the last published before the suspension.
So this looks like a rebranding of Organized Play scenarios. I hope it's not the end of Organized Play. I don't think it will be, but it could mean more changes to how it's run on the back end.
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I liked the larger level bands and longer scenarios, so it would be nice if authors had a choice of what they want to do. It's better to have a variety than to limit it to one type in my opinion.
I brought up Starfinder Society Scenario 1-32, Acts Of Association; it's a great example of a repeatable scenario. It's got 6 encounters that you pick 4 from, and on top of that, it has a 7th extra encounter. It could be a great example of how to make a variable-length scenario.
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Sure but an author might not want a variable scenario, nor design that many encounters.
(I say this as I've been musing on one that would be much more straightforward)
I'm just throwing out lots of options. I'm all for choice of length, but if we only get one standard length, I would hope for the most flexible format.
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There are several scenarios I'd love to see squals for. I'm hoping that the freelance writers for organized play get Infinite Master status and can maintain an open channel with Pazizo to be able to finish or expand on existing store lines that have not been finished. Pazizo's role would just be making sure there are no conflicting projects.
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"November 2026Publishing of new PFS Scenarios is suspended. Paizo Printables Adventures expand.
The two October scenarios will be the last published before the suspension.
So this looks like a rebranding of Organized Play scenarios. I hope it's not the end of Organized Play. I don't think it will be, but it could mean more changes to how it's run on the back end.
Good news! (not really) They announced the end to PFS scenarios today. Left things super vague and corporate but maybe we will get more information in a week or another month.
Still no answer on how Infinite scenarios will work and we don't know if that has been scrapped or if they are pivoting to rely on community created scenarios only|
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I saw the blog post where the end of PFS scenarios was announced. I thought the plan was to cut down to 1 per month from 2, not end it outright. The same was not announced for Starfinder yet... Maybe Pathfindr was hit harder by the layoffs? Sad to see the PFS season 8 meta plot only get 2 scenarios. I had been wondering if going to just 1 per month would mean just doing the meta plot or just doing solo scenarios. At least PFS has 7 past seasons to fall back on that are all non-repeatable. SFS2 only has 1.5 seasons.
I'm also courious what the community-created scenario standards will be. I was thinking there would have been some announcement at Gen Con, but I guess not.
All the ideas I've posted about modding scenarios seem less crazy now, with everything now repeatable and Paizo cutting back or ending scenarios.
I don't mind going to community-written scenarios; it's how Paizo got started, it's what made D&D into the number one TTRPG, but I'm most concerned about the future of Paizo organized play; it's a great community I don't want to lose.
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According to the old Lorespire post (quote above), PFS scenarios are being replaced by Paizo Printables.
I'll provide the Starfinder section that was also briefly on Lorespire.
"November 2026
Starfinder Society Scenarios reduce publishing to one Scenario per month.
Two Scenarios will be published in October, with the reduced schedule beginning in November."
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I had read the recent blog post before anyone had commented. Now that there are comments, it looks like we're going to get more info on 9-21-2026
I wonder what Paizo Printables for organized play will be; it usually refers to STL files. There's Paizo Printables for One Page Rules and Paizo Printables: Dawn of the Frogs Miniatures Bundle (STL) $100.00. IS Paizo looking to start organized one-page rules battles? If so, I'd assume/hope that's in addition to normal organized play.
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I had read the recent blog post before anyone had commented. Now that there are comments, it looks like we're going to get more info on 9-21-2026
I wonder what Paizo Printables for organized play will be; it usually refers to STL files. There's Paizo Printables for One Page Rules and Paizo Printables: Dawn of the Frogs Miniatures Bundle (STL) $100.00. IS Paizo looking to start organized one-page rules battles? If so, I'd assume/hope that's in addition to normal organized play.
For the first two "seasons" of paizo printables, there was a short pdf adventure with each batch of minis roughly the length of a bounty. This month that adventure increases to the length of a season 8 scenario (10,000 words)
The adventures are sanctioned (I've played one), but distribution outside of paizo printables has proven... difficult for some reason. Only the adventure for the "Welcome Pack," Last Croak is available, and that one is free on the paizo store but not sanctioned.
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I'm also courious what the community-created scenario standards will be. I was thinking there would have been some announcement at Gen Con, but I guess not.
There was supposed to be (it's stated in one of the blog posts) but didn't happen. We now know that it just wasn't ready and just wasn't communicated that it wasn't ready yet. It's fine that it's not ready; we understand the short staffing and hard decisions have impacted Paizo a lot. Just wish it was communicated earlier.
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That's not easy to find. Searching the Paizo store for Last Croak returns nothing; searching the Paizo store for Paizo printables only brings up the Dawn of the Frogs Miniatures Bundle. Googling Paizo printables finally gets a Paizo page that links to MyMiniFactory and Paizo's Patreon.
So it looks like seasons are 3 months long?
Is there an option to just get the adventure?
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That's not easy to find. Searching the Paizo store for Last Croak returns nothing; searching the Paizo store for Paizo printables only brings up the Dawn of the Frogs Miniatures Bundle. Googling Paizo printables finally gets a Paizo page that links to MyMiniFactory and Paizo's Patreon.
So it looks like seasons are 3 months long?
Is there an option to just get the adventure?
Yeah, for something they plan to replace PFS with, the main workhorse of Paizo besides APs for over 15 years, they made these nearly impossible for their customers and community to find.
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Yeah, for something they plan to replace PFS with, the main workhorse of Paizo besides APs for over 15 years, they made these nearly impossible for their customers and community to find.That's not easy to find. Searching the Paizo store for Last Croak returns nothing; searching the Paizo store for Paizo printables only brings up the Dawn of the Frogs Miniatures Bundle. Googling Paizo printables finally gets a Paizo page that links to MyMiniFactory and Paizo's Patreon.
So it looks like seasons are 3 months long?
Is there an option to just get the adventure?
I'd expect/hope that will change once it's more officially announced. Perhaps linked to where the other seasons are?