Menace II Pathfinder Society ...
Menace II Pathfinder Society, in which I game in-person with strangers!
Before we begin: a big hello to our first timers! Ambush Tactics now delivers to readers in 19 countries, which is just wild. Thankfully, no subs yet from the Immortal Principality of Ustalav …
It takes courage to sit around the gaming table and roleplay a goblin cleric of Abadar – squeaky voice and pious palm-rubbing and all — in a dark basement with your close pals after a few beers to loosen things up.
Think you’ve got the guts to go to that weird place in front of a group of complete strangers on a Tuesday evening in the middle of your friendly local gaming shop?
Welcome to Pathfinder Society, where players from around the world participate in a global campaign organized by Venture-Lieutenants and hosted at FLGS and gaming conventions.
I speak to you from the land of the initiated. Yes, I played my first public Pathfinder Society session last month, at Game Post in San Francisco. We had 12 players and 2 GMs on hand to tackle “Scenario #1-08: Revolution on the Riverside,” plus the kindly shop owner Diana who keeps her place open late several nights each week for Pathfinder players to gather and get their geek on.
This wasn’t my first attempt to roll dice with strangers. I’d registered to play a PFS mission at this same location way back in January 2020. One day before the scheduled session, our GM emailed the players who’d registered on Warhorn to let us know the game would be cancelled: we were short of quorum. “Likely due to the holiday,” Doug Hahn wrote.
Or perhaps people were already getting antsy about the coming global pandemic.
Either way, it felt amazing to finally make good (more than three years later) on my original intention. As much as I love my recurring home games with friends, and long-running Discord campaigns where we’ve been posting daily in-character messages for years, there’s something deeply energizing about meeting new people around the gaming table. It’s cool to see how other players embody their characters, and to witness how other Game Masters run a session.
If playing Pathfinder with strangers sounds interesting to you, here are some resources to help you find a game:
The “Get Started With Pathfinder Society” guide via paizo.com
Pathfinder’s Store Locator to see if a FLGS near you offers games
An email directory of PFS Venture-Coordinators around the world
Calendars of upcoming Pathfinder and Starfinder conventions
Listings of upcoming PFS games on Warhorn, an online scheduling platform
So, what was my PFS experience like?
The biggest thing that struck me was what an artful dance of grace and courtesy is required from all participants to make our four-hour adventure feel satisfying. In our recurrent gaming groups, we know the drill (or hopefully we do): who takes the lead in diplomatic conversations, who dumps the lore, who offers to fetch snacks, who might have their feelings hurt if you give too many suggestions or criticize their tactics?
Who would be ok if their character died … and who wouldn’t be?
With strangers, more care is required. For example, I’m used to being the GM and hogging the spotlight. But I quickly realized that, as just one player in a party of six, I needed to be a lot more judicious about grabbing the mic, so to speak.
With 12 players and two GMs, we divided ourselves into two tables: one low tier (mainly Lv 1 PCs), and one high tier (playing the same adventure but facing higher DCs and fighting tougher monsters). I ended up at the high tier table with my silver kobold Fizzik, a Lv 2 investigator.
Our GM was Jarvin Bayona aka Animaznman, the Venture-Agent of the San Francisco lodge. And here’s another treat of playing PFS if you’re a Forever GM like me: getting to show up with a half-baked PC and frolicking through an adventure that someone else has done all the work to prep!
I learned many new tricks from Jarvin, who deployed his collection of Paizo pre-printed flip mats to marvelous effect. One slick move I’d never seen before: Jarvin busting out his telescoping teacher pointer to tap specific squares on the map!
On the topic of tapping specific squares, please earn yourself a Hero Point by beeping that heart button up top. I have no idea what it accomplishes, besides making me feel good!
At the same time, I was mildly disappointed not to join the low tier table run by Doug Hahn, the “five glyph” GM whom I’d narrowly missed playing with back in January 2020.
I know Doug by reputation, as a longtime active Pathfinder presence in the Bay Area and online. And for a while now I’ve shared with players old and new a thread called What to Expect at a PFS 2E Table that Doug wrote on the Paizo forums in 2021.
In his post, Doug asks:
“What do you expect of yourself, and your teammates, in 2E PFS?”
It brings to mind Thomas Scanlon’s moral philosophy text “What We Owe to Each Other” (as viewed, of course, through the lens of the NBC sitcom “The Good Place”):
In his post, Doug details everything from how to focus fire and set up flanks, to what to do when you show up at a table with four barbarians and no healer, all largely in service of protecting your new acquaintances’ precious imaginary characters from succumbing to the perils of a dangerous fantasy world.
You should really read the entire post, but I want to highlight his big picture conclusion:
“Pathfinder Society is a social endeavor. You are often playing with strangers who have different reasons for picking up this hobby and different things they enjoy about it. Respect that.
Your GM is volunteering their time and doing their best. Your fellow players are too. We're often tired after a busy day or have other things going on in our lives that distract us or detract from strategic ability.
Empathize, forgive, and pass on knowledge, and celebrate in a respectful manner. Allow space for everyone to have at least one moment in the spotlight, every single game.
When someone does something that helps the whole party or expends a valuable resource, give them a compliment. Say thanks.
I don't always live up to these expectations, but I strive for them.”
So, what was everyone at my table able to contribute to the party?
Well, Daren loaned me a painted kobold mini to represent Fizzik on the map; Nico provided comedic relief when his sweetbreath gnoll kept failing Diplomacy checks; DJ leveraged his fighter’s Legal Lore (and hot dice) to find favor with the River Kingdoms authorities; and Kyuu brought along a cake to celebrate one of the other table’s players’ birthday. (We all sang for Gwen on a break in the action.)
As for Evan and his half-orc druid, Morg Tuskless: occasionally in roleplaying games, two characters’ backstories intersect to produce a moment of serendipitous magic that you couldn’t ever plan or predict.
You see, Morg introduced himself as a man of the woods and a fan of mushrooms. In fact, he carries a mushroom leshy familiar in his satchel.
Well, when my kobold investigator Fizzik heard this, he felt the scales on the back of his neck stand up. You see, Fizzik’s a hardboiled detective. And his big case? The one that got away? The one that keeps him on the trail of adventure, searching for answers?
It all ties back to a moldy casserole pan that he once discovered inside a failing magical icebox. The long-forgotten pan which birthed a mushroom leshy. That fungi fatale whose name still haunts Fizzik’s dreams:
Chanterelle …
I told you: roleplaying games are weird. Super weird. But once in a while, you stumble upon strangers who like to get weird along the exact same lines as you. We should all be so lucky.
THE MINI AND THE DICE
Speaking of pre- and post-pandemic gaming, that Hero Forge 3D-printed steel mini is Bente Bensik, my dwarf monk who I got to play in-person for several weeks of GM Jason’s “Age of Ashes” campaign before shelter-in-place sent us online. I never got around to painting Bente, who was killed in Book 2 by a chimera. I kind of like that she’s still raw, unfinished steel. She was a badass.
Those sparkly purple-and-gold Haxtec dice are another vestige of the pandemic: my family fled California in the fall of 2020 to shelter with family in Canada, and I didn’t remember to pack a set of dice. So I ordered these on the Internet in the depths of that brutal Canadian winter as a last gasp effort to preserve my sanity. And … I guess it worked? Eh, you be the judge.
NEW FROM THE WAREHOUSE
Quests are back! And better than ever! So, my home group typically plays two-hour sessions, which means a PFS Scenario that’s designed to take 4-5 hours is too long for us to complete in one shot, and a Bounty that takes one hour to play feels a bit skimpy.
Enter the new Quest 2.0 format, which launches on April 26 with “Quest #14: The Swordlord’s Challenge” by Tineke Bolleman. Here’s what Paizo had to say about the new format, which is designed to be played in 2-3 hours:
“The biggest difference is that Quests will be tied more deeply into Pathfinder Society than Bounties, and much like Pathfinder Society Scenarios will assume your PCs are all Pathfinders. They will reward half as much credit as a scenario—2 XP, 5 treasure bundles, and 2 reputation.”
Sign me up!
(In fact, I did just sign up to run this as a play-by-post game on the Find the Path Discord server. I guess I’m an easy mark.)
PARTY DYNAMICS
OK, readers from Austria to Indonesia: here’s your chance to jump into the comments section below and swap some nerdage of your own.
This month’s 1,000,000 gp question:
What character concept — ancestry and class — would you be most confident roleplaying at a table full of strangers?
Sign me up for a halfling bard with multiclass druid dedication, which my wife once declared to be the closest Pathfinder approximation of my actual personality …
That’s it for this month, friends and strangers. And so, as I say at the end of every Pathfinder module I run: this has been Ambush Tactics. I’ve been your Game Master. I hope you had a fun time.
Adventure!
At a new table and looking to make friends? Healer/buffer all the way! I think healers, especially divine casters, get a rep for being weak compared to the glass cannon casters. But when you play a healer, you really have to pay attention to what other players are doing and then take actions that build the table chemistry and camaraderie. Plus, with a healer in the party, your squishy level 1s are more likely to survive when the DM roles a critical hit with max damage :)
And as a rule, for shorter bounties and quests, I keep backstory short and simple. (Save the detailed backstory for campaigns where you can develop the character alongside the plot). A good backstory for a short session hits 3 questions: Where am I from? What's my motivation? And what's my flaw? That last one is easy to overlook but usually what ends up making a character fun to play. For instance, my dwarven fighter is gruff and in the throes of a midlife crisis. That's enough flavor to bring him to life in a new scene without getting bogged down in details too elaborate for a 2-hour session.
You only get to a TPK taking the healer out first. Otherwise the DM is just playing whack-a-mole. ;)