Hello, Paizo community! With the launch of Starfinder Society Second Edition, I figure it’s the perfect time to issue a call for new volunteers interested in serving as venture officers for Paizo Organized Play. Whether you’re excited about the new science-fantasy future of Starfinder, dedicated to the classic fantasy of Pathfinder, or ready to mix the two together, we’ve got an incredible worldwide community of more than 700 volunteers ready to welcome their nufriends!
What Venture Officers Do
Our volunteer venture officers (VOs for short) serve a variety of functions for the program. Most are involved with organizing games at their local stores and supporting their communities. While this call is geared towards in-person play, we also follow the same structure for our online region and have venture officers focused on virtual tabletop or asynchronous play as well.
Venture Agents (VAs) are the store-level coordinators and often oversee scheduling games at one or two stores. They work with the store owner and employees to share information and speak with their communities to find out what adventures they’d like to play.
Venture Lieutenants(VLs) supervise Venture Agents, often overseeing a city or town. They also typically take up lead positions for local conventions, helping to schedule games and organize GMs for these events.
Venture Captains (VCs) and Regional Venture Coordinators (RVCs) are our top-level organizers. They supervise large cities, states, or multi-state or country regions and help to advise the OP staff on how things are going in their assigned areas.
We also have a rich community of online play, both in the independent online region as well as online offerings from many of our primarily in-person lodges. Whether you’re running online or in-person, there’s a role for you in our organization.
Venture officers can also join task forces focused on specific objectives, such as the Onboarding Task Force, which creates new player resources, or the Guide Team, which maintains the Guide to Organized Play. Joining one of these groups isn’t required but is another way to support our program if you have the skills and interest.
Benefits of Volunteering
On top of being part of our incredible community, venture officers receive perks depending on their rank.
All venture officers, regardless of rank, receive free PDFs of every Pathfinder and Starfinder Society scenario we’ve ever published. No matter what your community wants to play, you’ll have access to that adventure! Venture Captains and Regional Venture Coordinators also receive PDFs of all Paizo products as a thanks for their hard work and time spent with the program.
Venture officers also qualify for the convention reimbursement program, where they can receive a limited number of Paizo vouchers for organizing conventions in their areas. These events often take more time and effort than simple in-store play, and so we want to be sure volunteers are properly rewarded.
At certain major conventions, such as PaizoCon and Gen Con, venture officers also qualify for increased rewardsbased on their rank. Typically, this takes the form of additional vouchers or earlier qualification for rewards like GM badges, but this varies by show.
All venture officers are invited to our special Discord server! This is used to disseminate information to all volunteers, as well as provide them access to certain resources like images for signs and advance knowledge of scenarios for planning purposes.
How to Become a Venture Officer
If you’re interested in volunteering your services, reach out to us! You can find your local Regional Venture Coordinator’s email on this page; contact them with your information and where you’re located, and they can connect you with any local networks in the area.
You can also start organizing on your own at your local game store! Work with them to find a time that works, post signups, and recruit new players! Anybody can be a store coordinator as long as you’re following the Guide to Organized Play and reporting your games back to us.
Finally, if you don’t have any game stores or volunteers near you, reach out to me! Email me at organizedplay[at]paizo[dot]com, and I’ll get you in touch with whoever’s closest to start building out your local network.
Organized Play Foundation
The Organized Play Foundation (OPF) is the 501(c)3 organization we partner with to protect our volunteers. They support the gaming community of volunteers and players by providing resources and experiences that are fun, safe, and inclusive. When you volunteer as a Venture Officer, you’re helping the OPF accomplish their mission of bringing gaming to people worldwide and supporting their values of transparency, honesty, inclusiveness, and non-exploitation.
If you have any questions about what we do, drop them in the comments or reach out to me. We’d love to have you join us as we build out the best organized play programs in the industry. Until next blog—Explore! Report! Cooperate!
Alex Speidel
Convention and Organized Play Manager
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