Before your first game of Pathfinder Society, you need to take a few steps to register yourself and at least one character in order to play. This will give you some tracking numbers which will be used to track whenever you play so that you can collect rewards both for yourself as a player and for your character(s).
If you do not complete these steps (maybe you’re already sitting at a Pathfinder Society table and you’re scrambling to get set as you read this), whoever is organizing the event may be able to help. But if you’re not already sitting at a table, please take the time to complete these steps ahead of time because it will make everyone’s life easier.
Create Your Account on Paizo.com
Visit Paizo.com and create an account. If you have an account that you’re using to purchase products from Paizo’s website, you’re already done.
Once you have done so, visit the My Organized Play page and verify that you have an organized player number. The page should look something like the image below.
The text “Your Organized Play ID is X” is especially important. This id number is one of the two numbers which you will need to record your progress in Pathfinder society. You can download an organized play ID card which gives you a printable PDF, but the only information on it is your name and ID number.
Record your organized play ID number somewhere convenient that you can access without an internet connection. Game shops and conventions don’t always have great cellular service or wi-fi.
Create an Organized Play Character Entry
Next, we’ll create a character from the My Organized Play page. The “Create a Character” link is weirdly useless, so ignore that. Instead, scroll down and look for a series of buttons which all start with “Register a…”
Since this series of guides is for Pathfinder 2nd edition, I’m going to assume that you’re playing Pathfinder 2nd edition. Click “Register a New Pathfinder Society (second editin) Character”. This will open a form for entering some information about your character.
Note that you can enter almost nothing about your character. If you’re planning to use pre-gens for your first few games or if you don’t know what you want to play yet, this is very handy.
The one decision that you must make is to pick a faction. You can learn more about the available factions on the Pathfinder Society page and about the mechanics on the Organized Play Foundation page for factions. If you don’t know what to pick, Envoy’s Alliance is a safe choice. We’ll discuss factions more later in this article series.
You can change factions, so for now just pick something and we’ll return to this step later.
After saving your newly-created character, you’ll see a new entry under your list of characters which will look someting like the image below.
The number all the way on the left side of the row is your character’s id number, which you’ll need to track that you played with that character or with a pregen and you’re applying the rewards for that session to the character in question. The format is your organized play id number, a hyphen, and a shorter number identifying the character.
Be sure to record this number alongside your organized play id number. You will need both numbers to fully track your progress after playing a session.
