Archive:The Pathfinder Society

Paizo Organized Play

Paizo has a structured form of small adventures that people can join tables to play at their Friendly Local Game Store. They are part of The Pathfinder Society (PFS) series of quests. the PFS scenarios are meant to be smaller semi-standalone "episodes" that tie into common themes, but don’t really fit into larger campaign plotlines.

For example:

PFS Season 1 is the “Year of the Open Road” where the scenario episodes all tied into themes of travel and exploration

PFS Season 4 is the “Year of Boundless Wonder” so the scenario epsiodes all have to deal with some kind of powerful artifact or treasure that must be sorted out.

The Pathfinder Society is basically an IRL MMO, but for tabletop campaigns.

For those unfamiliar: MMO worlds are mostly static with a bunch of players running around independently completing a bunch of quests strewn about in the world. These quest lines have parallel-but-independent storylines that everyone is completing at different rates even though everyone is running around doing all this stuff at the same time. As the MMO gets expansions, the world gets some updates and new quest lines are added into the questing landscape, but the existing quest lines are still there for new characters to complete. Some players complete the quests/questlines several times over on different characters for various reasons - familiarity & easy exp, the loot, showing new friends the cool story sequences, etc.

Each scenario is repeatable but only on different characters. There are valid reasons why you as a player might want to repeat them - TTRPGs, unlike video games and MMOs, can be very different based on who is at the table and even what their character is trying to accomplish. A player might be interested in replaying a scenario to get a new angle on lore they missed the first time, to get some easy/familiar exp for their character, or they want to experience the episode with a certain other player, among other reasons (probably all of the above, tbh).

The Pathfinder Society in the real world

Each scenario is basically a TV episode chronicling the Pathfinder Society’s evolving lore. This helps Players going to their FLGS all know what to expect, since the Society has a general vibe and plot direction. It’s a useful starting point since you might be playing with strangers at your FLGS. It helps foster a more consistent experience regardless of where you play.

The Pathfinder Society in the game

The Pathfinder Society is basically Archaeology Starfleet. Kinda like Star Trek Starfleet, Pathfinder Agents are bound by a code of ethics and moral imperatives to “Explore, Report, Cooperate”. They task themselves with digging up secrets of the past and acting as a kind of neutral diplomatic/humanitarian agency.

In order to become a Pathfinder Agent, a person would need some years of study and training with the Society. This is a great way to explain why lvl 1 PCs start out with the initial weapon/skill training proficiency that they have and have suite of abilities/spells. The Society has lodges established around the world which is helpful to serve as a base of operations for agents doing around doing stuff.

Quest Rewards

The PFS scenarios have a useful, if a bit sterilized, way of assigning loot rewards at the end of the scenario - everything you, as a Pathfinder Agent, find over the course of the quest is handed over to the lodge when you report in.

There is a subquest checklist the GM will track behind the screen. Based on what you, as players, do and accomplish in the scenario will determine how much the Society rewards your characters in return. If you rush through a scenario, you won’t get the full gold piece “paycheck” than if you took the time to help resolve the side issues presented along the way.

Characters then presumably have access to the Society’s resources in some way to spend their earnings to craft/buy magic items and gear, rather than just putting up with whatever items you come across and waiting for the next best thing to come along.

Much like an MMO, you also gain additional points/reputation currency to spend on smaller bonus stuff. If you’ve got a lot of reputation built up with one of the internal branches of the Society, you can dip into the Society’s reserves a little bit to equip yourself with some extra potions and other consumables between each quest.\

For the early stages of the Wild Tangents, I will skip this in favor of simplicity. But as we go and get the hang of it, I'd expect to retcon a few things or assign some bonus reputation to compensate for not having it early on.

Record Keeping

So it is largely honor system for record keeping, but the FLGS does sign off on your completion of quests and stuff. Then you should upload the chronicle sheet to your account on Paizo’s website. This is mostly if there is an issue, past information can be pulled up to sort it out.

For our purposes, I wont have us do this unless people want to. I will be up front about this: I’ll probably be fairly lax about the record keeping. I will however maintain an excel sheet tracking who has what character, who signed up for which scenario, and stuff like that. The remaining details I figure will just live on the character sheets within Foundry. But if anyone wants this to plug into the official Organized Play stuff in some way, I’m open to it :)