Interest Check for players for shorter PF2E adventures / bounties.

Hello!

I have been silently bemoaning the lack of PF2E opportunities on these boards, and I decided to be part of the solution. I want to run some shorter PF2E bounties or adventures, like The Whitefang Wyrm, and lead people through something, say, from levels 1-4. I like groups of 3-4, 5 maximum, and I like to be a cheerleader for my players rather than, y'know, Grimtooth.

I would do this using Pathbuilder and possibly would spring for Foundry VTT, which can apparently incorporate Pathbuilder forms! :)

I wouldn't be running this for PFS and I'd be happy to take PF2E newbies, and newbies in general.

About me online: I've been playing PF since 2012, always play by post or play by email (or play by Discord post, which was fun). I'm GMing a Reign of Winter campaign that has been going well, and am in a wonderful, rollicking, large Age of Ashes party. I'm a once a day type poster ideally, although sometimes work deadlines make that difficult.

About me offline: Grognard, I guess, since I started with 1E of That Game, not that I have ever been a rules expert, and I spend my time working in music or trying to smash the system, maaan, and growing native plants. I often have a cat or dog sitting on me, as one does.

Post if you are interested!

I would be interested. Completely new to Pathfinder, and hoping to play my first game at some point, but I'm wary of trying to get involved in PFS because That Game's version of organized play was a massive time sink for me for multiple years before now.

Are you intending this to be on the forum, or play by Discord? I'm fine with either.

Yeah, I don't recommend PFS as a way to jump into Pathfinder, as there are lots of little stuffy rules for Organized Play, and the scenarios run fast and don't, in general, have the same camaraderie as a campaign...in my personal experience.

I would run this on Paizo's forum with a possible OOC chat in Discord. :)

I might be interested in this provided the pace is relatively casual (i.e. no more than two, maybe three weekly posts expected per player). Not strictly new to PF2E myself, but I haven't gotten to play it anywhere near as much as I'd like so far.

I’m looking to get more familiar with PF2. I’d be up for short games that might develop into something longer, but I’m also fine if they don’t.

ThanKs for stepping up Axolotl - once I feel I have a grasp of the system I’d like to run a campaign, but that feels a ways off.

Played plenty of PF1 here on the boards, been playing versions of THAT game since the early 80’s.

I would be very interested in this, for the same reasons you have pointed out Axolotl (mainly along the lines of bemoaning and such :D).

I have been playing a lot of other games (THAT included) over the years, but have settled in PF for the last decade or so (even though I admit I am now peeking at classic versions of THAT game again, since PF1e has become too bloated for me).

I have read and heard a lot of good things about PF2e, so like OSW I want to understand the system a bit better, stop being a noob, and grasp what all those good things may be that I am missing.

I'm interested!

And since I cannot edit my post, and only now read my PMs - thank you OSW for heads up on this one! :D

I'd be interested as well. I'm planning on finally getting to run my own PF2 game next year, but to dip my toes in the system via shorter adventures as a player sounds like a good opportunity to have a look at it from the players' side as well.

And since I cannot edit my post, and only now read my PMs - thank you OSW for heads up on this one! :D

Any time! Just don’t begrudge me if I want to make a simple fighter also. ;p

Hahaha, fair enough :)

I am interested as well, as I've not had interest enough in the "new" version of an edition I've been playing for a while— human nature, I suppose, but I digress– but I do want to see what has changed with the Monk, so I can get this theorycraft out of my head.

I've been around since 2010, but never truly played PF2E.

Definitely interested in doing my toe in the water.

Happy to take them last, possibly niche filling character/role.

If this goes ahead and I get a spot, I think I will try to play some sort of Gish. No idea how it can be done in PF2e though :O

I'm pleased to see all of the interest, both from folks who haven't played or been on the forums much, and some names I recognize! :)

To answer a few questions:

1. I don't think I would want to reduce posting to less than once/day. Of course things can keep people from posting, but if you set it at say, 2x/week, it will drop to 1/week, then 1 post every two weeks...and that is the way that play by post adventures die.

2. I fully intend to do a module (er, bounty) and then try for another. Probably three of 'em. I have found that APs can die after a few years of slogging, and also, no offense to homebrewers, but every single homebrew I've been in has died an early death. Modules seem like the middle ground.

3. Monks are neato in PF2E.

4. Gishes are possible via Thaumaturge, Magus, or Free Archetype (which I may implement), or via other sources I haven't considered.

5. Oh, and plain ol' fighters are cool in PF2E as well. It's a great system, as far as I've seen.

I'll let this simmer for a bit more and then begin my plans.... ;)

I would love this! My home group is finally getting ready to transition from PF1 to PF2. I've only played a few pF2e PFS adventure zone here yet, and would like something to continue to play.

I have been enjoying PF2e for a couple years. My home group transitioned from PF1e by playing Age of Ashes the December before Covid.
We completed it last month and we already started Strength of Thousands.

I am also finishing up Extinction Curse. Only the main boss fight is left and the wrap up.

There isn't enough PF2e offered on these boards surprisingly.

I am currently running the Otari series for all new players to PF2e. It has been a blast.

I just wanted to thank you and to encourage those that have yet to try to...well...give it a try.
My favorite system since...well, PF1e...lol.

It's weird that there isn't more PF2E, eh? I am enjoying the system so much.

@Axolotl--I would totally be interested, simply because I just started learning the rules and would love to put them into practice!

Can only speak for me but the reason it took me so long (even when I wanted to dive into PF 2E right away) is that I'm more of a story than a rules player/DM. Having to learn new rules isn't that much fun especially when it's that much of a paradigm shift than it was between PF 1 and 2.

At home that's not much of a problem because my players (all family members) don't care for rules anyways so I can just wing it. but here on the boards, starting a game when you'll most probably end up with players with better rules knowledge than you have is a tad intimidating.

Apart from that I'm also not that much into the PFS stuff dominating 2nd ed play here on these boards. And offerings like you just made are unluckily more than rare, so I haven't had the chance to ease into the system like I had way back with D&D 3E.

I am interested in this kind of thing but unfortunately my job right now is not giving me a lot of time to do much more than lurk (when I can do that). I have the rule book for PF2 and have looked over it... some of the changes I can appreciate, some don't make sense, and some I would honestly just have to try to see if I gel with or not.

I have tried my hand previously at THAT GAME's current edition (5th I think) as well as the previous edition (didn't care for it, it is a big part of what got me into PF1).

I did a lot of play by post for PF1 back when I had more time... I miss those days.

So, all this is a round about way of saying if this is still something you are doing in about a year or so (or if you are fine with me coming and going as practical/necessary) I would be down to try something like this... but either way, I am glad that someone is experimenting with it.

Interested.

Interested

Digging all the interest. :)

Some technical stuff:

I've poked around Foundry VTT and found it a little difficult to use. Kind of a walled garden, although neat. And yeah, I bought it. Also, Pathbuilder 2E no longer imports into it.

I don't want people to have to deal with multiple technologies, so I'll probably just do the game with maps on Google Slides as I have previously (unless the assemble group looooves Roll20 or Foundry).

I bought one Bounty and found it to be incredibly short and not super intriguing. I'll have a think about what to use instead.

I don't want people to have to deal with multiple technologies, so I'll probably just do the game with maps on Google Slides as I have previously (unless the assemble group looooves Roll20 or Foundry).

Harpy <<< Link Looks very cool! I love the ease of their maps and token for a pseudo-3D feel.

I actually started a Discord Server dedicated to Virtual Table Tops!

I'm also interested in some PF2e games, though I'm not a newbie at all. Played IRL, on Foundry, and on Roll20.

Axolotl wrote:

I don't want people to have to deal with multiple technologies, so I'll probably just do the game with maps on Google Slides as I have previously (unless the assemble group looooves Roll20 or Foundry).

Harpy <<< Link Looks very cool! I love the ease of their maps and token for a pseudo-3D feel.

I actually started a Discord Server dedicated to Virtual Table Tops!

Hmm, Harpy is compatible with Hero Forge minis too…really like Hero Forge.

Sad that there isn't that many campaigns running for it.

Yeah, I don't recommend PFS as a way to jump into Pathfinder, as there are lots of little stuffy rules for Organized Play, and the scenarios run fast and don't, in general, have the same camaraderie as a campaign...in my personal experience.

I will be contrarian, and do recommend PFS as a way to jump into Pathfinder.

If you're just getting started, there's not a lot of difference between learning 1,000 Pathfinder rules and 1,010 Pathfinder Society rules. And the vast majority of the PFS-specific rules can be summarized as such: the goal of PFS is to normalize play across the world. Your character that you played 2 scenarios in a local game store, then 1 at a convention in Indianapolis? You can take that character to a VTT game hosted by a Nigerian prince and have confidence everything works out. So, yeah, no evil characters, no sandbox adventures, no rule variants from the GMG, the more GM-dependent archetypes/ancestries/spells are banned or gated, etc. But the player pool is large because the GMs are interchangable and the GMs get rewarded.

Some PFS players I've played with are terrible players. Some are amazing players. In any case, it's over in 4 hours. It's not as good as having a great, stable group that plays together for years. But, it's also not as bad as having That Guy join your long term campaign and having to put up with their crap for months on end until the GM snaps and rage quits the campaign.

There aren't a lot of APs organized publicly, because, well, frankly, as a GM, I am not making that massive commitment to total strangers. I run PFS scenarios (3-6 hours of live play / 4-12 weeks PbP), and when I recruited for an Adventure (20-40 hours of live play / 6-12 months PbP), I went to the player pool I already knew. And if I ever recruit for a 6-book AP (200-300 hours of live play / 3-5 years PbP), I will draw from people that have already established themselves as reliable players either through multiple PFS scenarios or an Adventure.

Foundry has unbelievable modules for PF2e -- drag and drop compendia for almost everything to make characters and you can automate most of combat with clicks.

It is a graphics heavy system, especially with the automated stuff, and you can't really use it for mobile.

To use it for PbP, you really have to subscribe to one of the servers like Molten or Forge where the players can open the map when you're not on. Self hosting requires port-forwarding, and its a lot slower/higher lag. I subscribe to molten b/c of the performance improvements for live games for really big maps (like 200,000 pixel square stuff), but it'd also be necessary for any kind of PbP experience so the players could 'wake up' the map when they wanted to move their tokens.

I love Foundry and Arkenforge -- the latter you can't really use for PbP, it's strictly made for live play around a big touch screen or sharing a screen on discord. The players can't access the map outside of game time. They both let you basically build whole worlds within them. I've made stuff like miles of forest landscapes by combining 2,000 battlemaps as tiles in a huge field.

Axolotl wrote:

Yeah, I don't recommend PFS as a way to jump into Pathfinder, as there are lots of little stuffy rules for Organized Play, and the scenarios run fast and don't, in general, have the same camaraderie as a campaign...in my personal experience.

I will be contrarian, and do recommend PFS as a way to jump into Pathfinder.

If you're just getting started, there's not a lot of difference between learning 1,000 Pathfinder rules and 1,010 Pathfinder Society rules. And the vast majority of the PFS-specific rules can be summarized as such: the goal of PFS is to normalize play across the world. Your character that you played 2 scenarios in a local game store, then 1 at a convention in Indianapolis? You can take that character to a VTT game hosted by a Nigerian prince and have confidence everything works out. So, yeah, no evil characters, no sandbox adventures, no rule variants from the GMG, the more GM-dependent archetypes/ancestries/spells are banned or gated, etc. But the player pool is large because the GMs are interchangable and the GMs get rewarded.

Some PFS players I've played with are terrible players. Some are amazing players. In any case, it's over in 4 hours. It's not as good as having a great, stable group that plays together for years. But, it's also not as bad as having That Guy join your long term campaign and having to put up with their crap for months on end until the GM snaps and rage quits the campaign.

There aren't a lot of APs organized publicly, because, well, frankly, as a GM, I am not making that massive commitment to total strangers. I run PFS scenarios (3-6 hours of live play / 4-12 weeks PbP), and when I recruited for an Adventure (20-40 hours of live play / 6-12 months PbP), I went to the player pool I already knew. And if I ever recruit for a 6-book AP (200-300 hours of live play / 3-5 years PbP), I will draw from people that have already established themselves as reliable players either through multiple PFS scenarios or an Adventure.

Alright, thanks for the advice. I'll keep an eye out for any PF2E PFS listings with an open mind. They seem as sparse as regular PF2E games though.

All great points, Watery Soup.

As a matter of fact, as I am going to probably run PFS Scenarios (they seem to be better than Bounties), we can even consider running this in PFS rules.

The hitches are:

1. I just have Pathbuilder, so I am not sure if I can check if characters are PFS-legal.

2. I haven't ever GM'd a PFS game. I'll have to read up on it to make sure I don't accidentally run a scenario incorrectly and foul it up for y'all's credit.

Most PFS games online here are pickup games via the Flaxseed Pathfinder Lodge. I would prefer to choose players based on camaraderie and so forth...I think I'm allowed to do that rather than first come, first serve...but I need to check.

So, the folks chosen can get the best of both worlds, ideally. However, let me make sure what I am proposing is itself PFS-legal. For example, excluding a character submission in favor of another that is more flavorful, but was submitted later. If that is not legal (and it may not be, so that people don't get negged at a convention or rejected from games due to racism, sexism, homophobia, some other bias) then I'll have to reconsider.

Oh yeah, in the GM 101 and 201 documents there are actually loads of examples of excluding or dismissing problematic players, so yeah, I can totally pick folks. And even have private games (with no recruitment), etc.

I’m not a part of PFS, and not particularly interested in joining, so I would bow out if that were the case. Which should make your choice a little easier! Let us know which way you go.

I'm obviously somewhat late to the thread, but PF2 fan here and interested (whether or not it's PFS).

1. I just have Pathbuilder, so I am not sure if I can check if characters are PFS-legal.

herolab online will let you make first-level characters for free and it has an option to make characters PFS compliant.

I will echo OSW's words - I have tried getting into PF2e via PFS and... It did not work.

I think due to the fact in most PFS games it feels like people just want to 'get it over with', they have their builds which are usually optimized, and work with schticks 1, 2 and 3. So for a noob the learning experience was not a good one, as I was basically watching the others play out their nicely built characters.

I do understand the advantage of the 'episodic' nature of PFS, and how in theory it should work as a good learning option for both players and GM, if used as an inspiration and a self contained unit to run a game (not necessarily for PFS 'credit', as I think that is one of the biggest issues).

But that is not usually the case, so my experience with it has not been positive so far. So for that reason, if the chosen path is PFS I will bow out also. No harm, no foul of course ;)

I am actually grateful for PFS. It introduced me to my current group of RL friends.

I am willing to do PFS scenarios if that is what you choose. I am experienced, so can help if needed.

I'm hearing y'all. I wish it were the option that some people could be PFS and some couldn't!

Maybe I'll just do it with PFS modules (scenarios, sorry; grognard) but not with PFS builds nor credit. :D

I find that PFS scenarios are nice adventures that have a connected story Arc, plenty of new places and grant the party a sense of purpose and belonging to something bigger than just themselves.

In other words, most likely your best course...lol.

Playing them non-PFS is perfectly fine too.

One thing though is PFS2e Seasons 1 only went to 8th or so.
Season 2 may have gone to 10th perhaps. Unless of course that has been rectified. I actually haven't played PFS since Covid hit.

I'm going to look at them all and see which season I like the best.

Perhaps the conceit will be that we hate the money grubbing, murder hobo-ing Pathfinder Society. :D

Ummmmmmm....

I'll keep an eye out for any PF2E PFS listings with an open mind. They seem as sparse as regular PF2E games though.

PFS recruitment ebbs and flows but conventions (2 per year) are a good place to jump in. I forget what forum they're announced in (it's an obscure one), but they're also cross-advertised in Cottonseed and Flaxseed. Next one is March 2023, I think.

I just have Pathbuilder, so I am not sure if I can check if characters are PFS-legal.

2E has made it a lot easier. Broad strokes, Common rarity means PFS legal without boon. I think the big exclusion is evil-aligned characters (Common rarity but PFS restricted). And the Uncommon rarity items that are PFS legal without boon are kobold, leshy, gunslinger, and inventor, and a bunch of stuff in the Pathfinder Society Guide rulebook.

You can still find the 1E-style lists of what's legal and what's not, but the rarity system is an absolute godsend.

I haven't ever GM'd a PFS game.

It's probably best to play a few before GMing. The whole point of PFS is to normalize GM variability across many, many GMs.

I would prefer to choose players based on camaraderie and so forth...I think I'm allowed to do that rather than first come, first serve...but I need to check.

So, the folks chosen can get the best of both worlds, ideally. However, let me make sure what I am proposing is itself PFS-legal. For example, excluding a character submission in favor of another that is more flavorful, but was submitted later. If that is not legal (and it may not be, so that people don't get negged at a convention or rejected from games due to racism, sexism, homophobia, some other bias) then I'll have to reconsider.

You're allowed to do that in theory, but on a practical level, there are often limitations.

I also prefer to choose players rather than FCFS, and I do so the majority of the time. For PbP recruitment, I will state up front my criteria for selection, including the date that I'm leaving recruitment open until.

I try not to push the limits of what I'm allowed to do - I've never attempted to select based on a US federally protected class, so no "women only" games or "whites only" games. That may or may not be legal but I'm uninterested in being the test case. I usually give priority to new players, or, if the scenario references another, priority to characters who have credit from the referenced scenario.

For conventions, though, usually the convention organizer has a method for signup, and it's usually FCFS so c'est la vie. For VTT/F2F games, it's also usually Warhorn, which is FCFS as well.

I wish it were the option that some people could be PFS and some couldn't!

For Adventures and Adventure Paths (as well as Bounties), this is already in place. Basically, you can run it however you want, and then whoever wants PFS credit can get it at the end. It's called Adventure Mode.

Maybe I'll just do it with PFS modules (scenarios, sorry; grognard) but not with PFS builds nor credit.

This is fine too. I'd ask for advice on which PFS scenarios are best to do this with, since some are going to be better than others.

To be frank, Albion's criticism about "getting it over with" is well-founded. Many of the scenarios are really linear, and railroad the characters through a more or less preset sequence of events.

It's a feature of, not a bug in, the system. It's an unavoidable byproduct of having public games - non-recurring gaming sessions have to end with certain constraints (e.g., the time that the gaming store closes is a big one for F2F games, IME). The scenarios are designed to be completed in 3.5-4.5 hours. The more interesting scenarios are hard to time in that manner.

I played a sandboxy scenario (on VTT) that ran until 12:30 am (6.5 hours). If it had been a non-PFS group, we could have called it at 10 and reconvened the next week. As such, we had to push through until the end.

The pacing is one of the reasons I like running PFS scenarios on PbP, rather than F2F or VTT. On PbP (and especially without PFS rules constraints), you can really cherry pick the best of the best scenarios, and not have to worry about pacing or timing.

#1-12 (Burden of Envy) and #1-18 (Lodge of the Living God) are two of my favorites in that vein.

Good luck!

It looks like GM hasn't posted in a while so I'm not sure the status of this recruitment, but if it's a casual non-PFS game I would like a spot. I'm a 2e noob (played a lot of 1e but 2e noob) who'd like to get some experience with it.

It looks like GM hasn't posted in a while so I'm not sure the status of this recruitment, but if it's a casual non-PFS game I would like a spot. I'm a 2e noob (played a lot of 1e but 2e noob) who'd like to get some experience with it.

You’re fine, this is only an Interest Check, Axolotl hasn’t made an official Recruitment yet. I think.

I've had many things to think about, and I will put my hat in the ring to GM something soon. Obviously, a lot has happened (*cough* that other game) and also, a wonderful AP I'm in may have just lost our GM...and I'm also looking for work/freelancing...so life has been complicated lately.

However! I'll give a go at GM'ing something. Gimme a few weeks.