What it actually is
Organized play is one ongoing campaign with a shared rulebook for how credit works. Sit at any table, anywhere, and it counts.
You play one adventure per session and it finishes that session. There is no expectation that you played last week or that you will be back next week — and no expectation that you know anyone else at the table. That is the whole design.
Adventures come in lengths. Pathfinder has Scenarios at four to five hours, Quests at two to three, and Bounties at about an hour. Starfinder runs Scenarios and Bounties. All of them seat two to six characters.
And you do not need a character to start. Paizo publishes free level-1 pregenerated characters for both campaigns; play one for a session and the credit still lands, ready to attach to a character of your own later.
What you take home
Every adventure ends with a Chronicle Sheet — the record of what that session gave your character. Keep them; they are the campaign’s memory.
| Pathfinder Society 2e | Starfinder Society 2e | |
|---|---|---|
| Scenario length | 4–5 hours | 4–5 hours |
| Shorter formats | Quests (2–3 hrs), Bounties (~1 hr) | Bounties (~1 hr) |
| XP per Scenario | 4 | 1 |
| Level up at | 12 XP | 3 XP |
| Treasure | Gold, by character level | Credits, by character level |
| Table size | 2–6 characters | 2–6 characters |
The XP rows are the ones people trip over. Three Pathfinder Scenarios level a character; three Starfinder Scenarios do the same thing with entirely different numbers — so a player moving between the two campaigns cannot carry their intuition across.
Checked against Paizo’s own Get Started pages, 4 September 2026.
Factions, Reputation and boons
- Pick a faction
- Each adventure, your character champions a faction — their own interests inside the Society. You are not locked to one forever.
- Earn Reputation
- Reputation with a faction builds over sessions, and hitting certain tiers unlocks rewards you could not otherwise buy.
- Achievement Points
- Earned every session and tracked against your organized-play account rather than any one character. Spend them in the boon store on new character options — or on getting a dead one back.
- It all travels
- Your character, their chronicle sheets and your Achievement Points are yours. Play at my table or at a convention on the other side of the world; it is the same campaign.
Pathfinder Society
Paizo’s own hub: how the campaign works, the current season, and free pregenerated characters.
paizo.com/pathfindersociety OfficialStarfinder Society
The same for Starfinder, including its own pregens and what content is legal for play.
paizo.com/starfindersociety OfficialPaizo
The publisher. Rulebooks, adventures, and the organized-play account your Achievement Points live against.
paizo.comCharacters
Mine, and what they are built to do.
Scenario write-ups
What a table is walking into, before they sit down at it.
The table kit
The furniture that makes a shop table run itself. Take any of it.
- Table tents
- Print-ready and laminated, with QR codes straight to the Warhorn schedule and to Paizo’s free pregenerated characters. A newcomer can scan and be reading a character sheet before the GM has finished setting up.
- Calendar subscriptions
- The Warhorn schedules as a feed, so sessions land in a player’s own calendar instead of being something they have to remember to check.
- Pregen links
- Straight to Paizo’s downloads. Always free, always level-appropriate, always the fastest way to get somebody playing.
- Want the files?
- Not posted here yet. Ask and I will send them over.