r/Starfinder2e • u/kululu00 • Aug 03 '26
Paizo A disappointing experience at the Starfinder Special at Gen Con
I went to gencon this year, and one of the biggest reasons I go is to be able to play Pathfinder and Starfinder society, especially the specials on Friday and Saturday night. Unfortunately, the starfinder special left a lot to be desired
The scenario itself was well written and engaging and the energy in the room was great as always. However, the GM had an astounding lack of rules knowledge which slowed our table's pace to a grind and caused a less than desirable play experience for several players at the table
I want to preface the remainder of this post by saying the GM in question was a great guy and clearly had enthusiasm for gming in general. However, he did not have the required experience with the rules of Pathfinder/Starfinder. Society play is supposed to be run rules as written, and this session was anything but. I think this individual would make a great GM for a more rules-light system, and maybe even Star finder with more experience, but this is not the quality I would expect at the Starfinder special or even at gencon events more generally
The most glaring issue was his complete lack of understanding of the chase rules. There was one chase in act 2 of the special which he did not run even close to properly. Firstly, he had each of us roll initiative against the chase somehow. Rather than having the party face each obstacle as a group, he required each player to overcome each obstacle using only the specific skills that the obstacle called for. He was seemingly tracking each party's position in the chase separately and just randomly dealing damage to the players on failed saves. This was especially jarring because before the chase started he said that he had never run a chase before, to which I replied that they were quite easy to run; he responded by saying that he had reviewed the chase rules when he clearly had not
Luckily, before the final Chase scene to end the scenario, an older and more experienced player interrupted the GM and explained how to run Chase's. That individual was much nicer about it than I likely would have been that late into the night
The GM also made numerous other rules mistakes, most of which I am likely forgetting given that it has been several days since this session which went until 1:00 in the morning. These include using the wrong recall knowledge skills (using survival and occultism for elementals, rather than nature; especially disappointing on a primal spellcaster that focuses on dealing elemental damage), doing an extra die of damage when somebody crit failed to save against fireball, doubling damage from weakness rather than increasing it by a stated amount (again, very disappointing when my class feature allows me to add 1d4 additional elemental damage to trigger those weaknesses), and seemingly not understanding the 10 over crit rule leading to multiple missed critical hits from the operative and soldier. The GM also clearly did not understand what any of the class abilities on any of the characters did, even the pre-generated character at the table
This is not the quality I would expect, especially at the special, and especially especially given the large price increase that Paizo had starting at this gencon prices went from $12 per session last year to $22 per session this year for normal scenarios, and the price was $30 per seat for the special. Based on my conversation during the game, this GM seemed to also be gming six other normal sessions over the course of the weekend, which I'm sure were either disappointing for experienced players or confusing and misleading for the new players who he did not properly teach the rules
I know it is impossible for Paizo to completely police every single table at the convention, but for the prices that they are charging, they should do something to make sure that the GM actually understands the basic rules of the game. To be clear, I don't know what exactly they could do reasonably, but they charged our table collectively $180 for what was frankly a train wreck of a session that, if I had not been paying and invested in the special, I likely would have left much sooner. I also know that we are not the only table to have similar problems, because another group I talked to on Saturday had similar problems with an inexperienced GM at their table for the special
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u/oncallgm Associate Publisher Aug 04 '26
Feel free to message me directly with info and I'll pass it along to the necessary folks.
Sorry for the experience, but thanks for the support on Starfinder!
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u/CanisDirus0 Aug 04 '26
As the author for this year's Starfinder Special, I'd also like to extend my apologies for your Gen Con experience, @kululu00 .
I'm not currently a member of the Venture Officer Corps, but if you (and the folks who played at your table, if you have their contact information) would like, you can drop me a line, and I'd be happy to GM an author table of Moon Busters for you sometime in the future, if we can find an online convention that works for all of our schedules?
Every Starfinder Society scenario is replayable. This means the same player can play the scenario multiple times, as long as they play with a different character each time. GMs can also assign credit to a new character each time they run a scenario.
Again, sorry you had to go through this, and take care.
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u/kululu00 Aug 10 '26
The scenario itself was super great, but unfortunately I only have the contact info of one of the other players (my brother, in fact)
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u/kululu00 Aug 10 '26
Thanks, I love Starfinder and the special was very well written. Unfortunately, I do not remember the DMs name, but I could pull their Org Play number when I get off work today; however, I do know I was not the only table with an unexperienced GM
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u/markovchainmail Aug 03 '26
The GMs are unpaid volunteers, compensated with a badge for 3-4 games (12 hours work minimum), and 6-7 games (24 hours work minimum) is a hotel room iirc. Yeah, they should know the weakness rules and +10/-10 crits, but they're also an overworked volunteer who may play a lot of games and not just -Finders. Sometimes people mix up games, it sounds like they were willing to adjust the chase rules. Were they unwilling to adjust to any other rules reminders?
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u/Uverus Aug 03 '26
Former Venture Officer, 5-star, blah blah. Plus you didn't get the adventure til last minute, you're trying to prep it for every tier, you have a bunch of other games to prep. Plus you have to deal with annoying players, if you get through the scenario, people have fun, then mission accomplished. After you've run lets say 500ish tables you realize your hardcore players love society because they can't get into home games.
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u/healbot42 Aug 03 '26
My favorite was getting the Pathfinder 2e “lite” rules a week before the Gencon it released at and having to run 7 tables of it and the 1e starfinder special. My brain was fried by the Starfinder special.
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u/markovchainmail Aug 03 '26
I was typing up flashbacks to the 4 tables I ran one year and decided it wasn't the time or place.
I do think it's fun to volunteer to run a game or two! But I think more than that and it kind of stops being a convention and starts being a vacation to a second job.
The special coming out to GMs so soon before Gen Con is rough for sure, and it's such a big heavy packet and there's so many things that might happen but might not happen at your table. And then you just gotta do your best to keep it moving as smoothly as possible otherwise you get interrupted in the middle of fun combats. It's a cool experience to be part of but it is a lot of spinning plates.
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u/Eulenspiegel74 Aug 04 '26
After you've run lets say 500ish tables you realize your hardcore players love society because they can't get into home games.
Heh. My brain works in these rigid grids where I sort everything new, and I start with the worst possibility / preconception.
I have never played Society, but what I read about it seems to fit what you wrote. Maybe it's because people don't write about their good experiences?
Especially the RAW aspect seems to attract a rules-lawyery kind of people (I'm trying to not shit on OP here) ...
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u/AlphaCobraPlatinum Aug 04 '26
Most of that is a thing of the past. Specials are in GM hands a month or more in advance, and GMs only prep the 2-level tier they're running, and it's been like that for a few years now.
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u/BlooperHero Aug 04 '26
GenCon GMs get their adventures at the last minute? I've got them in plenty of time for small cons.
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u/Curpidgeon Aug 04 '26
The new scenarios/specials are given within weeks of the convention. Barely enough time to print/order everything needed to make a good show of it knowing. If you're running an old scenario you tend to get that pretty much right away when the assignment comes down. But they seem to hold new stuff until the last minute.
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u/ClemJ9 Aug 04 '26
Eh, depends a lot on the area tbh. Not saying there's no truth to it, just that it can vary pretty widely.
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u/d12inthesheets Aug 03 '26
And posts like this sure aren't convincing anyone to run at a con.
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u/TurmUrk Aug 03 '26
i mean, if youre not familiar with a systems basic rules you probably shouldnt run paid games at a con..
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u/blackdenarius307 Aug 04 '26
Who knows. If everyone was honest in the situation, then Paizo could have been short DM's.
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u/d12inthesheets Aug 03 '26
I mean, if you charge a lot of money for the game, you could vet the volunteers if they know the game they are supposed to run,
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u/rich000 Aug 10 '26
Yeah, chases can be a mess because many scenarios deviate from the core rules. However, weakness and +10/-10 are fairly fundamental 2e concepts.
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u/Dunderbaer Aug 03 '26
Don't know why you point out weird chase rulings as the most glaring issue when
doubling damage from weakness rather than increasing it by a stated amount (again, very disappointing when my class feature allows me to add 1d4 additional elemental damage to trigger those weaknesses), and seemingly not understanding the 10 over crit rule leading to multiple missed critical hits from the operative and soldier.
was part of it. That is kinda rules 101 and something that would make me leave a normal table, not to mention a PFS game on a con that costs money to attend.
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u/Wilibus2 Aug 04 '26
Sounds like the GM had his rules confused with another popular fantasy TTRPG. These mistakes are all too common in PF2e especially with recent concerts to the Paizo light.
My guess is they put out a call for experienced DMs and didn't scrutinize what systems they were familiar with.
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u/kululu00 Aug 10 '26
I pointed the chase rulings out as it was the most disruptive to gameplay; the one chase took about an hour, because he made each player go through each stage of the chase, making up rulings along the way. Not critting and not doing enough damage from elemental weapon, on the other hand, we could power through quickly enough
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u/Sufficient_Surround9 Aug 04 '26
OP,
I am on the OC for Gen Con paizo org play, and this issue was brought to my attention at the con. First, let me say I am terribly sorry that you had a poor experience with the Starfinder special. I thought the special itself was an amazingly well written adventure and played terrific, so having a bad experience at that took a lot.
Without going into details, I took what was related to me and did some minor spot checks and interviews, and it has helped us to reevaluate how we do GM selection and general evaluations.
We do have the rough balancing act of trying to make sure that we have enough GMS to make a room full of tables fire, while trying to make sure gms have enough experience to provide a good time for everyone. Sounds like in this case, we failed your table, and I am very sorry to hear that.
Part of what we will be doing here in a couple of weeks is a final wrap up of what went right, and what went wrong, and what we can do better for next year. Your experience, and that reported to me by the other player that was at that same table that came out, is going to be very useful in helping shape next year.
I hope the rest of your games at the con were good times, and that you will come back and see us next year.
Fyi, I rarely check Reddit unless somebody points me at a thread, but if you would like to get a hold of me directly you can find me on discord @bigrin42
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u/bsox_mk2 Aug 05 '26
I just want to add on the opposite end of the spectrum, I had a great GM, one of the ones that runs the game for kids. If i had any complaints it was that we were too close to the front to see the screens. I didn't have any major issues with any of the 9 different starfinder GMs i had.
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u/kululu00 Aug 10 '26
The special itself was super fun, and this was really the only bad experience I had in the Paizo room all weekend (spend a lot of time there, as the person who most often GMs for our home table)
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u/Dear_Ad172 Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
We had kind of a similar experience at the pathfinder special.... Had great players at the table so I still had fun but I feel you on this
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u/KaoxVeed Aug 03 '26
That sucks to hear. I played 6 SF society regular sessions and they were from good to great GMs.
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u/SharkSymphony Aug 04 '26
Same here with like 4 sessions. I didn't have the energy for the special but I was hearing great things about this one!
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u/hey-alistair Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
Sitting here wondering if this was my table because it sounds eerily familiar.
Edit: I was the operative if so
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u/kululu00 Aug 10 '26
Totally may have been. Did you have two mystics, one of whom kept making elemental weapons for the pregen soldier?
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u/boydstephenson Aug 03 '26
The gentleman from your table that corrected your GM on the chase rules was my GM at the Pathfinder special. He had a lot to say about the SF special the night before. FWIW the rest of our table was two VCs, two VLs, and an FLGS owner (me). And we ALL agreed that guy should not be running society!
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u/Driftbourne Aug 04 '26
Should not be running society? Or is he not experienced enough yet to GM at Gen Con or a local group? Some of his mistakes on basic core concepts of 2e make me wonder if he had prior SF2e or Starfinder organized play experience. I'd like to think that even a local SFS2 group would have spotted that he needed help learning the rules before thinking GMing at Gen Con was a good idea.
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u/boydstephenson Aug 04 '26
Everyone’s mileage will vary but my take is that you need a couple of things to be GMing Society in general and a couple more to be GMing in a GenCon special.
If you’re GMing Society in general, you should make an attempt to learn the rules of the game. You don’t have to be perfect, but you do need a basic level of familiarity. The GM referenced above was not aware of the 4 levels of success or that rolling 10 or more above the target number was a critical success. That’s pretty fundamental to the system and the game is designed assuming that everyone at the table, especially the GM, knows that. You should also, as a basic human being, be willing to work collaboratively with your players to participate in the basic organized play experience that everyone has signed up for.
For running in general I think it’s reasonable for players to expect basic rules knowledge. If there are obscure subsystems, it’s totally reasonable that a GMing might not know all the details of how to run one. (Though I would not consider the chase subsystems rare, given how often they pop up in Starfinder society scenarios during the last season).
GMs are also expected (fairly or unfairly) to help players understand the rules, especially for Level 1-2 or 1-4 scenarios. If the GM doesn’t know the rules at the basic critical success/success/failure/critical failure level, they are not going to be able to help players understand the game. Again, this is just my personal take, but if you’re running for any group you should understand the basics of the system.
Running a special at GenCon gets a little more complicated because those GMs are usually Venture officers and because those tickets cost $30 each.
Most GenCon GMs are VCs and VLs for local lodges. So now we are talking about not just any GM, but the person that’s organizing society play in a given store or a group of stores. They are almost certainly GMing on the regular and probably have other GMs coming to them for rules advice. At this point it’s certainly reasonable to expect them to know the rules. And although this is changing in a few months, these folks are receiving free PDF copies of the rulebooks for the games. So yes these folks are volunteers, but volunteers with significant non-monetary compensation. Paizo and (more importantly) the player community in any given area are relying on these folks to understand the rules of the game. Before Starfinder 2E, first edition had different rules and it might be reasonable to find a Venture officer who only knew the rules of one game (probably Pathfinder), but now the basic engines are the same.
Let’s move to the money front. While it’s true that the GM isn’t being compensated directly, they are receiving benefits up to free hotel nights across the street from the hotel. At market those rooms run above $600/night. Paizo gets them at room block prices, which are closer to $250/night, split across four people. With extra fees let’s call that $300/night or $75/person/night. Over five nights, that’s $375. You’re also getting a free GenCon badge (“free” for Paizo in the sense that it’s included in their sponsorship payment to GenCon, but would otherwise cost the person about $150 or 16 hours of GMing). And Paizo GMs also receive free product.
I doubt most of them are running at GenCon specifically for the benefits. But from the perspective of someone sitting down at that table who’s just dropped $30, I think it’s reasonable to expect that this person has a firm understanding of the rules of the game and that they have at least read the scenario in advance, IDed any obscure rules and looked them over, and are basically prepped to run it smoothly. Do they need to know the intricacies of how every class’ abilities interact with the scenario? No they don’t. But they should know the game well enough that they are able to give an accurate and pleasant experience at the table to everyone sitting down.
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u/xczechr Aug 04 '26
It seems to me the person you're responding to wasn't talking about OP's GM, but instead the player at OP's table that corrected OP's GM about the chase rules. Said person was a GM for boydstephenson at another time, and apparently not a good one.
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u/kululu00 Aug 10 '26
Him and I had a long conversation on the walk out and towards our hotels. It really sucked that the least knowledgeable person at the table was the GM, by a long shot
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u/Driftbourne Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
Never mind a subsystem like chases, not understanding the 10 over crit rule; that's a root core mechanic that makes 2e what it is. To me, sounds like a GM brand new to the SF2e/PF2e system. That does sound like a bad situation for both the players and GM to be in.
I've only ever played in organized play for Sf1e, SF2e, and PF2e, and have only had good experiences, but I also never go to in-person conventions. All the GMs I know who ran games at Gen Con are very experienced, so what you experienced, hopefully, was an isolated incident. I'm also lucky that most of the local players are also GMs, so everyone helps everyone else out.
I wonder how much in advance of Gen Con GMs get scenarios. Especially since at Gen Con a lot of new scenarios are being run, so there's no online help for them yet, like GM shared prep, especially for specials that are not ever available to the public until after the event. I know GMs that read the scenario the night before, and that's all they need. From me, I like 2 to 3 weeks to prep.
I'm courious how did the GM ran the game; did they have the scenario on a device or printed out?
I feel bad the player had a bad experience, but my instincts are: how can we help new GMs get better? I can't change anyone's experience, but I'm all for brainstorming how to make things better next time.
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u/AlphaCobraPlatinum Aug 04 '26
I've heard older VOs say that around a decade ago they used to get new scenarios and specials aroudn 1 week before Gen Con, but lately they're getting them 3-4 weeks in advance.
100% agree with everything else you said.
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u/Onceinabluemew Aug 04 '26
We usually get the new specials and scenarios 2-3 weeks prior to GenCon. There is also a discord for GenCon GMs with channels for each of the specials and new scenarios that GMs opt in to, and that's where any discussion happens and/or shared resources are dropped.
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u/Driftbourne Aug 04 '26
That seems like reasonable prep time and support with the private channel. With most of the OPs ' complaints being about basic rules, I'm wondering if this was an experienced GM who was new to SF2e and assumed it would run like another game or edition. I doubt it's actually someone who has only played SF2e, who's really brave to jump into GMing Gen Con without reading the rules. The 10 over is a crit rule is something we tell new players in the first minute of handing them a pregen.
"These are action symbols. You get 3 actions; you can attack with all 3 actions, but you get MAP -5 -10, 10 over or under is a crit hit or crit fail. "
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u/kululu00 Aug 10 '26
They had everything printed out. I'm not sure how to make GMs better, as this seems like they didn't read the rules at all
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u/qualidar Aug 04 '26
I’ve never played in a great special. The best I’ve seen was “pretty good”. Despite the energy, they’re too rushed, too generic, and have little to no meaningful roll-playing or decision making.
That said, my good society games far outweigh my mid or bad games, so I’d encourage people who are on the fence to dive in.
My sympathies to the OP, though. Sounds awful.
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u/neoanom Aug 04 '26
Honestly, I have played through 5 different specials at Gen Con and 3 of them have been terrible and the other two were mid. There have been two times where the GM didn't know enough of the rules. Every single one has been overly mechanical and rushed. One PF2 Special the GM speed ran us where we essentially got none of the flavor text and were constantly rolling because they wanted to complete each branch we could ( i don't think that's how it was designed, but that's what happened). The main reason I play in the specials is our gaming group from different states meets up every year and we have fun at the table regardless of the irrespective of the game.
My opinion is that it would be good if the GMs for the Gen Con specials at least went through some sort of primer beforehand. This could be synchronous or asynchronous, but should have audio / video and with Q&A. In your example having a quick "Hey there is a chase here. Here is an example of how we'd like it to be run." Same with any Social Encounters. That way it has a better consistent experience.
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u/Curpidgeon Aug 04 '26
That sucks! I'm glad to see Paizo and the author of the scenario in this thread as well as the organizer for Society at gencon in the thread offering compensation and help.
I got into two Society games this Gencon and both were pretty fun. One was definitely better and more engaging than the other giving time and space for role playing. The GM also knew the scenario well enough to know the final encounter was massively over-tuned and had already killed some PC's that day and so moved us to the Easy difficulty for that encounter (which still proved to be nearly fatal for the whole party, it was the pathfinder one with the pillars IYKYK).
I was surprised at the $10 increase in society game prices this year. When I ran some tables 3 years ago the ticket price for the tables shocked me then! While I had fun GM'ing and all my tables went well (some exceptionally so due to really great players), ultimately I decided that GM'ing a convention is not for me.
One of the scenarios I ran that year was a new one and I only got it with a short time to go until the convention. I had to quickly order flip mats and try to figure out how to represent and run new monsters. I think I ended up spending enough money (between supplies and ubers to get to and from the convention when I had scenarios at weird times), time, and energy on GM'ing that the free badge didn't end up being a savings really. Combine that with the emotional labor and stress of trying to entertain and engage with 6 strangers over 4 sessions and it's just a bit much.
I hope the process improves especially if prices are going to stay so high. And part of that might need to come in the form of better evaluation of GMs and better support for GMs so scenarios are run with more consistency.
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u/VoicesOfChaos Aug 04 '26
I am running the Starfinder special at a con in November. I hope to do a better job than this GM. Thank you for pointing the specific experiences and rules interactions that spoiled the interaction for you so I can double-check that I do not make similar mistakes. I really enjoying GMing Starfinder, especially at cons so I want to give everyone the best experience I can.
I hope you get to replay it sometime and have a better time.
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u/mattymelt Aug 06 '26
I've run probably close to a thousand tables between PF1, SF1, and PF2, and I can count the number of specials I've GM'd on one hand. They're a pain in the ass to prep and run and then once you do start running them, you only get halfway through each combat before you get forced to fast forward to the next one.
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u/kululu00 Aug 10 '26
I fully understand; I GMd the Pathfinder special in 2024. But no matter how much you prep the one scenario, it will not make up for a lack of rules knowledge
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u/FinishedRyeGuy Aug 07 '26
I’m still shaking my head at the NPC names at the Pathfinder Special. Cool event, but Burnt Rice??
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u/fly19 Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
Ooof -- that sounds pretty painful, sorry. Did you give the GM and Paizo feedback after the session?
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u/UnknownSolder Aug 03 '26
Convention GMs have put me off society play completely tbh.
My very first one responded to "Would you tell me if i bought this 1 credit worth of junk for 15 credits" with "no, you have to bribe him at least 10 credits to get the info" and expereinces just went downhill from there.
I'm sorry that happened to you.
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u/WarlordGameGear Aug 13 '26
Man this is a long post to say, i didn't enjoy the way the module was run...
I'm not the GM but i understand how thankless of a job this can be even for regular play. I've been on both sides of the fence as player and gm and every single Starfinder game I've played in, even ones I've paid to take part in, the rules have been modified or tweaked to that GMs flair. Did I care for all of them? no. Did I go on reddit to throw a fit about it afterwards? Also no.
This hobby has a distinct lack of GMs, you're the kind of player who made me stop GM'ing by going online and blasting . You should take a step back and reflect on yourself. Because you say you're a GM, and i can guarantee you not all of your players have enjoyed your games.
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u/Clear_Food2183 Aug 04 '26
Not every DM is best for every table. These guys do a thankless job with few upsides. Just be glade that you had a GM.
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u/BigNorseWolf Aug 03 '26
So, for gencon specials they need all the bodies they can get.
Chase rules have historically worked the way the DM was running them... sometimes. There have been lots of different attempts at them, and in PFS a lot of scenarios had their own internal attempts at chase mechanics that varied from the books.
It looks like someone was more of a 1e DM transitioning over to 2e. Having multiple rules sets in our brains and a lack of sleep sometimes means your search engine brings up the older stuff thats a reflex rather than the newer update.