Back to School at August’s Absalom Lodge Conclave

It’s the end of August and that means some of us are Back to School. I’m ready to torture…er, I mean teach, yeah, that’s the word! some new students in the Fall semester. Some of you are hitting the books in history and the other lesser subjects, so let’s have some fun this weekend by having some fun rolling the d20! This month’s Absalom Lodge Conclave is August 27th at Tri-States Games & Hobbies. We will kick off the Conclave at noon with two tables and follow that up at 5 PM with another round of gaming in the evening.

We have two wonderful scenarios for you in the noon slot. We are once again offering 2-19 Enter the Pallid Peak so everyone has a chance to play in it before we venture into the second scenario of the story arc and then the multi-table special in December. Right alongside it, we are offering 3-05 Inheritor’s Rite, the second part of the two-part Andoren story arc which is connected to the Season 3 metaplot. I went through the records and most players have played the first part of it, 3-02 The East Hill Haunting. Either way, you can play them independently with no problems. Both of these scenarios are in the 1-4 level range.

In our 5:00 PM slot, we will offer 3-06 Struck by Shadows, which continues the four-part Absalom story arc, which is also part of the larger metaplot for Season 3. This is a 3-6 level scenario. Depending on sign-ups, we will have another scenario available. That all depends on if we have a GM available to run it. Here’s the Warhorn sign-up page so you can sign up right now!

That brings me to something we need to discuss a bit. We really need you to sign-up for these games in advance so that we can plan accordingly. We are very lucky that we have so many talented GMs at our lodges, but every game session goes so much better when the GM has time to prepare the table for you. A lot of GMs in Society will not run a cold table if they have not ran it before. By signing up on the Warhorn page, you reserve your seat at the table and tell us you are coming to play. That way we can be sure to have enough tables for players.

Lately, we have had one or two signups and then 14 total people showing up. I am thrilled to see everyone there. Don’t think I’m not. I put a lot of work into making these things happen and your attendance validates everything I and the others do. But we really need to have a better idea of what to plan for because if 15 people show up, either we turn someone away or we have to find another GM. Do you want to be that person who gets turned away? You know I don’t want to turn anyone away from the table.

So, please, help us out. By signing up you help us and you help yourselves to make this a much more enjoyable experience for everyone. Remember, we are all in this together. Let’s take the small little step of signing up for the games so we never turn anybody away from this great hobby of ours.

If for whatever reason you can’t sign up on Warhorn, e-mail us at leagueofaroden@gmail.com, send me a note in our League of Aroden Discord server, or say something on our Facebook page. Just let us know and we can do the rest.

Quick look down the road time! In September, we will host a Player Recruitment Conclave. We will run two scenarios for everyone to enjoy from the brand new Season 4 adventures, 4-01 Intro: Year of Boundless Wonder and 4-02 Return to the Grave. Both are for the 1-4 level range and 4-01 is repeatable. That one in particular is a great one to bring new players to the table so they can experience Pathfinder. The second one is really good. Everyone was thrilled with it at Gen Con, so I am excited to run it next month on September 24th.

October’s Conclave will be on the 22nd. It’s a great month to run March of the Dead which is a two-part game session. We ran it at QuinCon and it was awesome. We want to offer this on the same day as you have to play both parts back-to-back. It lives up to its name too. This one is a very special one where you do not have to play your PFS2 character, but instead can make up a one-time use level three character in Adventure mode. We will offer other tables for those who have already played it (if they are not running it).

November is our No Conclave month due to Thanksgiving, but your friendly Venture-Captain is already planning to run a special session, maybe even one of those higher level one-shots for another Black Friday event!

Finally, to close out 2022, we are participating (actually, we are spearheading it) the Holiday of Boundless Toys special in conjunction with the Toys for Tots campaign. This is shaping up to be a national event now. Last year, we tested out doing it with a few tables. This year we plan to take it up to about 20 to 30 tables nationwide where all the tables are running the 3-98 multi-table special together at the same time. More on this as we get closer to the event.

So, as you can see, we’ve got some outstanding ideas for the rest of the year. We will kick off 2023 with more wild adventures and even start running some level 5-8 scenarios since by then several of you will have characters in that level range. For all we know, we may take over Eddie’s basement and turn it into a Golarion-themed game zone. It would be really cool if we could get some good round tables, more of the wall dividers, some poolroom lighting over the tables, and then put paint Pathfinder murals on the walls. We get enough people playing Pathfinder and that might happen!

But until then, let’s focus on August 27th and our next Conclave! Sign up on the Warhorn page or let us know if you are coming, please. I’ve got a metallic 20mm red Dragonscale d20 ready to roll some crits!

See you on the 27th!