To Pathfinder Society or Not…
I had previously planned on running Pathfinder Society at my shop on Saturday afternoons. This was the typical conversation I had with customers who were purchasing or looking at Pathfinder in the store:
Me: “Hey, I’m going to be running Pathfinder Society here in the store, if you’re interested in playing.”
Them: “Pathfinder! Cool! I’d love to play! What’s Pathfinder Society?”
Me: “Well, it lets you take your character from the game here to any other Pathfinder Society event and you get to keep your gear and advancements. You register the character on their site, and get to go from there.”
Them: “Oh… um… well…”
Most simply weren’t interested. They want to play, but don’t want to be held down by the Pathfinder Society Organized Play rules.
So what I’ll be doing is adapting my Godfell Stone campaign into Pathfinder and simply running that. Players can join and drop out as necessary, and I’ll adapt to whatever the party decides to do.
If anyone can think of a good, compelling reason to stick with Pathfinder Society, I’d love to hear it. From what I’m seeing, having the freedom as a Game Master (and player) to do what I want greatly outweighs the benefits.
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My experience is that organize play is great if you have a bug community or if you do a lot of convention play. Otherwise, I would rather just be able to have the freedom to do what I wanted in my games, even if it is technically outside the rules. It’s about having fun, right? I think you made the right choice.
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The big selling point of organized play is being able to play that character elsewhere. If they play a PFS game at a different store in town, or in a different town, or move, or attend a Con they can play the same character.
Registing online can also be sold though having your character have an impact. Paizo is tracking the success of factions, to determine their popularity and how successful each faction is being with their goals. They plan on removing a couple factions (eventually). Player actions (and inactions) have an impact on the campaign.
You can also ask Paizo and see if they can hook you (or your store) up with some generic cards. It’s easier to fill out a card and submit that than to get someone online and registering.
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