Introduction

Organized play runs on volunteer GMs who run games at home, in stores, and at conventions. Without these volunteers, organized play groups like Pathfinder Society simply couldn’t function.

Why GM for Pathfinder Society?

Beyond just “someone needs to GM” and “it’s fun”, GMs also earn rewards for running games.

  • Achievement Points: You get just as many as the players do.
  • Chronicles: You get a chronicle just the like the players do and can assign it to one of your characers. The usual limit of one chronicle per adventure per player still applies.
  • GM Credits and GM Glyphs: Earn points toward earning GM Glyphs. Each Glyph allows you to grant one Hero Point to a player at the table at the beginning of a session. You can earn up to 5 Glyphs, but the 5th glyph requires a great deal of effort and review by a local Venture Captain. Glyphs are included on you organized play id card, making it a bit more useful than just your name and id number.
  • Free convention tickets and hotel stays: If you’re willing to run games at conventions, they will often offer free tickets abd even cover accomodations if you run enough games. For example: Gen Con gives you a free badge if you run 70 player-hours of games. If you run 4-hour games for 6 players, that’s 3 games for a badge. If you run 800 (which can be divided between up to 4 people), you get a room in their hotel block. That’s ~34 games, which is physically impossible for one person to do at a 4-day convention, so you’ll want to bring friends.

Essentially, you get the same rewards as a player plus GM Credits toward earning glyphs.

Picking and Acquiring Adventures

We discussed the available types of adventures ealier in this article series.

Unfortunately, PFS adventures generally aren’t free. If you’re GMing for a recurring group and cost is an issue, discuss it with your group. Hopefully you can work out a way to split the cost of adventures so that you as the GM aren’t constantly left with the bill.

Read the Official Guide

Despite my best efforts, there’s not much I can do to trim down the official text guides. Fortunately, they are laid out in much more sensible format than the rest of the documentation.

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