It’s time for the annual Absalom Lodge Holiday Conclave which is always the first Saturday of December since our November and December weekends seem to have holidays cluttering them up. This year, we are working with the Pathfinder Society Northern Virginia lodge to run enough tables for 2-00 The King in Thorns (sign up link). This is a multi-table special where all player tables of varying levels work together to defeat the protagonist of the scenario, or in this case, the Season 1 metaplot.
In the jungles of the Mwangi Expanse, a large group of Pathfinders stands ready to travel beyond a magical gateway whose mysteries stymied a group of the Pathfinder Society’s founders. What lies beyond the doorway is also the crux of the plot of an ancient evil fey, the Thorned Monarch. Will the Pathfinders unlock lost fey magic, restore buried secrets from the Society’s history, and purge the world of the Monarch’s evil, or will they fall before the fey’s minions and tricks?
This is also a great opportunity for GMs to pick up one of the ten Exclusives they need to earn their 5th Glyph, which is the pinnacle of GMing Pathfinder Second Edition. In my case, it is my 10th Exclusive which will leave me with only one evaluation left to do to earn my 5th Glyph. It has been my personal experience that meeting this particular requirement is the hardest part of earning one’s 5th Star, Nova, or Glyph. Unless you run online, you end up needing to go to a lot of cons to get the Exclusives, although this is being addressed with special scenarios lately. For those that do not know, here are the PFS2e requirements for earning Glyphs.
The Pathfinder Society (second edition) offers GMs recognition in the form of glyphs based on the amount of GM credit earned. GM glyphs are visible on your Organized Play ID card and in the paizo.com forums. GMs obtain the first four levels of glyphs automatically by running and reporting games.
- 1 Glyph = 10 GM credits
- 2 Glyphs = 30 GM credits
- 3 Glyphs = 60 GM credits
- 4 Glyphs = 100 GM credits
Each Scenario run Grants 1 credit. Quests grant 1/4 credit. Other products grant varying amounts of credits.
To earn 5 glyphs, a GM must fulfill the following criteria:
- Earn 150 GM credits
- Run and report 50 unique adventures
- Run and report 10 adventures with the Exclusive tag
- Complete 3 evaluation games in the presence of a venture-captains, regional venture-coordinators, or Paizo Organized Play staffers using the Organized Play rubric.
To give you an idea of how this plays out, there are around 600 5 Star PFS1 GMs, four or five 5 Glyph PFS2 GMs, and maybe 20 or 25 5 Nova SFS GMs.
Anyway, we are going to shoot for 2 tables at this Conclave. The tables are broken down by levels. I am going to open up two tables with one being for L1-2 and the other for L3-6. I have pregens for L1, L3, and L5. We do need 2 GMs for this. I will be playing the role of the House GM or Overseer for the entire event. It takes about 4.5 hours total to run this, but sometimes less. If we do have enough for 3 tables, that’s even better. Sign up here at our Warhorn page. If we don’t get enough for the L3-6 table, but do have enough for a second L1-2 table, that’s fine and we’ll go that way. It works fine!
In the second slot, we will offer tables of 1-15 The Blooming Catastrophe (1-4). This one is great for introducing the leshies to the Society. I will need one GM for the second table.
Since I am sending this out just before Thanksgiving, I want to remind everyone of Black Friday’s gaming which is going to be pretty open. I will have several scenarios there and we’ll just see who shows up and wants to play what. The plan right now is for PFS2 at noonish and D&D 5e at 5 PMish. My intent is to run 2-05 Balancing the Scale, but that could get changed to a repeatable or even the Beginner Box (which is repeatable). It all depends on the players.
If we don’t have a 5e DM volunteer for 5 PM, I’ll run DDAL 08-00 Once in Waterdeep (L1-2). This will be a game for the Tri-States Realms of Quincy lodge, which is a new organized play universal campaign set in the Forgotten Realms. I have a post about this project on the blog which you can access here in the Black Friday post. There is no sign up for this as it is totally on an ad hoc basis. If you do want to let us know you are coming, email leagueofaroden@gmail.com, contact Tri-States Games & Hobbies to let them know to tell us, post on our Facebook pages, or whatever you need to do. I can’t read smoke signals though. The main thing is to hang out and have some fun. I think one DM is going to kick off a 5e game at 9 AM too.
In any event, let’s get signed up for December 4th so we can get this all nailed down. We have only ran two multi-tables before and that was at QuinCon 2019. This particular one has the lowest maximum tables required which lets us offer it like this. Plus, it can be played 3 times in the different level tiers.
Finally, it is Thanksgiving and I want to share a tradition I’ve observed for four decades or so. Every Thanksgiving I play Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant. It doesn’t matter which version you play, it’s always a great song based on real life events. Sometimes songs just write themselves.
Happy Thanksgiving!
The League of Aroden 
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