Season of Ghosts: The Summer That Never Was | PF2E AP

Creating your character

CHARACTER CREATION All characters begin at 1st level as residents of, or recently arrived locals in, the town of Willowshore in rural Shenmen, Tian Xia. The campaign is set in the year 7108 IC, roughly a century before most Pathfinder Adventure Paths, and character concepts should reflect that context. Players are required to read the free Season of Ghosts Player's Guide, available at paizo.com, before session zero, and to build characters that conform to its guidelines. ALIGNMENTS: Any non-evil alignment is appropriate. The campaign relies on PCs being motivated by compassion for their community rather than personal gain. ANCESTRIES: The most fitting ancestries for Willowshore's population are humans of any Tian Xia ethnicity, elves, half-elves, halflings, kitsune, nagaji, and tengu. Aasimars, dhampirs, hobgoblins, leshies, and ratfolk are uncommon but thematically appropriate with GM discussion. Androids are not permitted, as the campaign is set approximately a century before that technology reached beyond Numeria. Aquatic ancestries are a poor fit given the setting. CLASSES: All classes are welcome with one exception: gunslingers are not appropriate for this campaign. There are no resources or infrastructure in Willowshore to support that class, and it does not fit the setting thematically. BACKGROUNDS: Players may choose from standard Core Rulebook backgrounds or from the six custom Season of Ghosts backgrounds detailed in the Player's Guide. These custom backgrounds are tailor-made for the campaign and are strongly encouraged. All characters should have a clear reason for being among Willowshore's Reenactment Festival abductees at the start of play. FAITHS: Worship must reflect the timeline. Deities whose faiths either do not yet exist or have not undergone significant changes as of 7108 IC, including Arazni, Casandalee, and Nocticula, are not available. Aroden's faith is not significant in Tian Xia. Sangpotshi, the philosophical tradition tied to Willowshore's founding, is available and thematically central. GEAR: A selection of uncommon Tian Xia weapons from the Core Rulebook, Advanced Player's Guide, and Treasure Vault are available to all characters at creation. The Player's Guide lists these in full. HOME AND STARTING TREASURE: Each player must select a home location within Willowshore and one of four starting treasure sets as detailed in the Player's Guide. These choices are made during session zero.

Preparing for the session

PREPARATION: Before session zero, every player is expected to download and read the free Season of Ghosts Player's Guide, available at paizo.com. THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL READING. The guide covers ancestry and class guidance, available backgrounds, faith restrictions tied to the 7108 IC timeline, gear access, home selection, and starting treasure. Characters built without this knowledge will need revision, and session zero is not the time to be encountering these constraints for the first time. A short Session Zero runs directly before our first official session. We will cover the full character creation guidelines, safety tools including Lines and Veils, table expectations, party dynamics, and any remaining questions about Willowshore and the setting. Come with ideas and questions. Do not come with a fully locked character you are unwilling to adjust to fit the group and the narrative. COMMUNICATION AND ONBOARDING: Once your seat is confirmed through StartPlaying, message me on the platform for the Discord link. Please do not send a direct Discord friend request before your seat is confirmed. THE TABLE ETHOS: I prepare extensively. The Tian Xia World Guide is at my side every session alongside everything else needed to make this world feel alive, authentic, and specific. You will never sit down at this table with a GM who has not done their homework. PLATFORM POLICIES: All booking and payments must go through StartPlaying. Attempting to move the game off-platform after connecting here is a violation of the Terms of Service we both agreed to and will result in immediate removal from the table.

What Yuthika 'Fey' brings to the table

WORLD AND PLAYER PRIMERS: I will provide all foundational world material. Before Session One, you will receive a custom PDF setting primer covering the basics of Tian Xia; its peoples, its spiritual landscape, and its history; at the exact level you need to play a character who belongs here. You do not need to purchase or read the Tian Xia World Guide to sit at this table, though it is a beautiful book if you want to dive deeper. You will also receive a player primer covering house rules and table expectations before Session Zero. FULL IMMERSION GAMEPLAY: I do voices. Every NPC at this table is fully present. Merchants, spirits, celestial functionaries, and things that should not be speaking at all. If it has a name, it has a voice. A TEACHING GM EXPERIENCE: I am a formally trained teacher, both in the classroom and at the table. If you are new to Pathfinder 2e, I will walk you through the 3-Action economy and every mechanic you need before it matters. If you are new to TTRPGs entirely, we start at the beginning and we build. No one sits at this table feeling lost if I can help it. CONSISTENCY AND CARE: The world remembers what you do in it. Your choices have weight. The story we tell together is the one that belongs to this specific table and nobody else. Furthermore, after every session, I check in privately. This is not optional on my end. I want to know how you are and how the session landed. THE VIRTUAL TABLETOP: All sessions run on Discord for voice and a fully configured Foundry Virtual Tabletop for maps, combat, and encounter tracking. This is part of the reason this Adventure Path is more than my other listings. At my table we play with the full Paizo additions to the VTT.

Homebrew rules

The NATIVE EXPERIENCE: The Tian Xia World Guide and the Tian Xia Character Guide are native Pathfinder Second Edition publications. Everything at this table runs exactly as designed. No conversions, no compromises, and no flavor-only workarounds. The mechanics and the world were built together, and it shows. TRANSITIONING FROM DND 5E: If you are new to Pathfinder 2e, it is worth knowing upfront that this is a fundamentally different system from 5e. It is more granular, highly tactical, and far more generous with character options than most players expect. I will walk you through it from the ground up in Session Zero. Come curious, not prepared. If you want to understand what Pathfinder feels like before committing to a seat, message me before you book. CHARACTER OPTIONS: The Season of Ghosts Player's Guide sets the baseline for everything at character creation. Supplemental material from the Tian Xia Character Guide, including setting-specific ancestries such as the reincarnating Samsaran, the trickster Tanuki, and the shadow-traveling Wayang, is available but requires a conversation with me before you commit to a concept. Pitch it early and we will work it out together. THE HOMEBREW RULE: Homebrew is welcome when it is built with the same care and specificity the World Guide brings to its own material. Appreciation is welcome. Appropriation is not. If you have something you want to bring, pitch it and we will look at it together. The bar is not impossible. It is simply the bar this world deserves.

How Yuthika 'Fey' creates a safe table

TABLE SAFETY AND CONTENT: Your safety matters to me. Not as a line item on a checklist set aside after the game starts, but as the foundation everything else is built on. A table where people do not feel safe does not produce good stories. It produces people managing their discomfort in silence, and that is not what anyone came here for. CONTENT WARNINGS: Season of Ghosts is a horror campaign. Its horror comes from mood, dread, and the slow unraveling of things that feel safe, not from escalating combat difficulty. The specific content this campaign contains includes: Spiders and spider imagery throughout. The jorogumo are central to the setting and spider themes are woven into the architecture of this world at every level. If arachnophobia is a serious concern, please tell me before Session Zero. We can discuss what accommodations are possible, though this may not be the adventure path for you if this is the case. Spiritual corruption, undead, hauntings, and ghosts as persistent environmental threats. The dead do not rest easily here. Violence against townsfolk, including people the players will come to know. Colonial pressure on a community trying to survive. Body horror-adjacent imagery. The grief of watching something sacred become wrong. The campaign also contains significant plot revelations about the nature of the PCs themselves. These are built into the structure of the story. I will not spoil them here, but if you have seen them spoiled elsewhere, please keep that to yourself for the benefit of your fellow players. None of this is incidental. It is the story. We will establish together before Session One what stays on-screen and what does not, and those agreements hold for the entire campaign. SAFETY TOOLS IN USE: - Lines and Veils: Established in Session Zero and respected without question for the duration of the campaign. - Open Door Policy: Always in effect. At any point, for any reason, you may step away, take a break, or leave the session entirely. No questions. No judgment. Real people come before the game, every time. - Roses and Thorns: We close every session with a debrief. One thing that worked, one thing that did not, one thing you would like to see going forward, and which player stood out at the table and why. - Private Follow-Ups: I follow up privately after every session. This is not optional on my end. I want to know how the session landed for you. If something came up at the table that you did not want to address in the moment, that is what the follow-up is for. If something is wrong, say the word. We stop.