Get Ready to be Goblified

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Last year, while planning the class deck schedule, a most Gobtastic plan was concocted. In addition to supporting Organized Play using Ranzak, Ekkie, and our newest promo goblin Tup, we could create playable versions of all the main goblins from the We Be Goblins! RPG modules. To celebrate, we could also do a short Season of the Goblins (then called "We Be Card Goblins!") based on the first couple of adventures. Little did we realize that two of our coolest fans, Tyler Beck (cartmanbeck on the boards) and David Jacobson (aka Theryon Stormrune), would beat us to it. When we at Lone Shark Games saw their work, we knew there was absolutely no point to us redoing it for Season of the Goblins. But let's hear it directly from them!

David: Back before there was a DriveThruCards custom Card Creator and before there was a Skull & Shackles Base Set, I had wanted to take the We Be Goblins! module and turn it into a card game adventure. Unfortunately without the ability to create cards, my vision was limited on how to proceed. My thoughts turned to proxying cards but that wasn't practical on the required scale. Over a year passed and through the HawkCon meetings, I met Tyler Beck. Somehow the subject came up and I found a kindred spirit. Now, Tyler is a creative fiend. He loves to throw ideas onto "paper." I soon discovered that he had a lot more done with We Be Goblins! than I had. So I started working with him to polish and fit the work into the current structure of the game. And around that point, the Card Creator came online, allowing us to create some of the proxy cards we needed to bring the adventure to life.

Tyler: While David was designing his version of We Be Goblins! for Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, I unknowingly was working on a very similar idea. I had decided that PACG is fun, and goblins are fun, and so PACG plus goblins would be even more fun! By June 2015, I had started writing card text, and by the time July rolled around, I was finished with my first draft of the scenarios, as well as five goblin characters. I decided that I wanted to do something more with them than just play with my friends: I would go to PaizoCon and run the game there! I emailed Tanis and asked her if she'd be interested in writing up a special boon for those who play in my special goblin-themed games at PaizoCon, and she was tentatively excited about the idea. Once I ran into David at the HawkCon event, I knew I had the perfect person to get my crazy ideas boiled down into really clean card text, and we started working together on the cards. David's meticulous editing made a huge difference, and we quickly had a great set of scenarios all printed up, and we went into playtesting mode. We each ran the game for our friends, and everyone had a blast (especially those who played Mogmurch)! Eventually Tanis acquiesced to my idea of making the event a sanctioned game, and she ended up writing up an absolutely amazing special boon for those who would play in our game at PaizoCon. Unfortunately, I found that I would not be able to attend PaizoCon, and all would be lost... except that I had an excellent proxy!


Wait, not those proxies.

David: A couple months before PaizoCon 2016, Tyler asked me if I would run the We Be Goblins! event at PaizoCon. It was my first PaizoCon, but we had put in a lot of time into our work and I wanted to make sure it was a success. So I agreed. We'd have three sessions with two tables each session: one run by me, one by Tanis. I kept reading about it in the blogs leading up to PaizoCon. It made me nervous and excited. Tyler and I kept creating and refining our cards with the Card Creator, and then had two finished sets made. Then I got to Seattle and it was a big success. The players enjoyed the adventure and gave us great feedback. I changed a few things between sessions based on what people thought and how it played. I think that was one of the most important things about the journey of our work. So I made notes and headed back home. We had planned on creating a second adventure based on We Be Goblins Too!


Even got Gaby "goblified"!

But Paizo's Season of the Goblins had been announced, apparently making our work (and future work on the second adventure) moot. So Tyler and I started working immediately on our other ideas. Again, his creative madness had started and I was just trying to keep pace with the new adventure.

Tyler: Then we got tapped on the shoulder as Lone Shark was planning on adapting the We Be Goblins! module for the mini-season. They had seen our work and realized that it would be a great starting point. So we were asked if we'd be willing to contribute to the design of the Season of the Goblins! mini-season, and we were happy to take on the challenge. One major question was how to make it work with Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild play. We had designed these scenarios to be played with goblin characters, but for organized play, any legal character would need to be allowed. David came up with the idea that any non-goblin character may have been transformed into a goblin by the work of the dark deity Lamashtu, and we were off! We had designed these scenarios to be played with a mountain of custom cards, including custom goblin characters and decks, boons like allies Bruthazmus and Goblin Raider, and banes like the monster Shopkeep's Daughter and henchman Ven Vinder. PFSACG play would be problematic if every table needed so many custom cards, so we pared it down to only the most useful cards. Then we sent it over to Keith Richmond to do his magic.

David: And then it was time to head to Indianapolis for Gen Con. Again, I wondered how it was going to look and how it was going to play. Tyler and I hadn't seen a copy of the adventure yet. I had signed up to play sessions of Season of the Goblins! as well as volunteer in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game section of the Sagamore ballroom. And just like at PaizoCon, it was a big hit. Paizo had wanted to limit the tables to 4 players, but every session had 5 to 6 players per table with three tables having been "goblified" as we called it. The changes that Keith had made were a perfect match to the original material and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. People had fun. The new characters from the Goblins Fight! and Goblins Burn! decks played well alongside other class deck characters.

But at least for me, nothing really matched the excitement of hearing that Mike Selinker liked our original work, and seeing our names at the top of the credits page. It makes all the work worth it: the hours reading and re-reading our adventure and card text, getting cards printed and reprinted, playtesting and fixing this card or that card.

Keith: I want to thank Tyler and David again for being great fans and playtesters, whose excitement and hard work led to a fun event at PaizoCon and made this season a breeze to develop. I like to think I've added a couple cool twists, like "Goblifying" the boxes by shuffling in the Goblins Fight! and Goblins Burn! cards if you have them, and rewarding access to the goblin promos, but the overwhelming bulk of the work is theirs. The first adventure of Season of the Goblins, We Be Goblins! is available now. We Be (Card) Goblins Too! will be available sometime in the next month. Enjoy the Gobbling!

Tyler Beck, David Jacobson, and Keith Richmond
Adventure Card Game Contributors and Adventure Card Game Designer


Illustrations by James Martin and Jeff Carlisle
War! Huh. Yeah, it's pretty good for us.

P.S.: Aside from all the Goblin happenings, September sees the release of the Warpriest Class Deck. To pique your interest, gaze upon some of the awesome art.

More Paizo Blog.
Tags: Adventure Card Game Homebrew Adventure Card Guild James Martin Jeff Carlisle Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Season of the Goblins!

Super awesome! And here I was worried there might not be a PACG blog post today. But this is one of the best ever. Great to see this go from fan creation to official product. Congrats guys and great work.


Hey, how come the Longshanks Adventurers barrier has the Veteran trait but no veteran powers? Who proofread these things anyway?

Grand Lodge

Rebel Song wrote:
Hey, how come the Longshanks Adventurers barrier has the Veteran trait but no veteran powers? Who proofread these things anyway?

It's in my notes. We need to adjust it. (Thanks for reminding me, Rebel.)

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Is it possible to get the scenario cards printed from drivethru cards? If so, how? I didn't see that option. I already bought the PDF.

Silver Crusade

Go go gobbos!


drowranger80 wrote:
Is it possible to get the scenario cards printed from drivethru cards? If so, how? I didn't see that option. I already bought the PDF.

+1 to this. Keen to try the scenarios, but not a fan of proxying cards.

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

drowranger80 wrote:
Is it possible to get the scenario cards printed from drivethru cards? If so, how? I didn't see that option. I already bought the PDF.

Unfortunately, since the scenario cards contain Paizo IP which is not covered by the community use policy, we can't offer those as printable cards on drivethrucards.com. If I have time later today, I'll pull together a list of the cards that are publicly available that we made for the original non-OP scenarios, and you can feel free to shuffle those in when playing NON-OP versions of the scenarios to increase your goblification!


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cartmanbeck wrote:
drowranger80 wrote:
Is it possible to get the scenario cards printed from drivethru cards? If so, how? I didn't see that option. I already bought the PDF.
Unfortunately, since the scenario cards contain Paizo IP which is not covered by the community use policy, we can't offer those as printable cards on drivethrucards.com. If I have time later today, I'll pull together a list of the cards that are publicly available that we made for the original non-OP scenarios, and you can feel free to shuffle those in when playing NON-OP versions of the scenarios to increase your goblification!

This is so amusing to me because it's Paizo stopping Paizo from printing something. There's probably a Dilbert comic about this somewhere...


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Hi Cartmanbeck.
Is your post covered by the community use policy?
If not, can the fact that Paizo cannot publicly refer to your post to forbid Paizo to forbid Paizo to print actually would allow Paizo to print without denying Paizo its rightful right to forbid Paizo to forbid Paizo to forbid you to write post?
And vice versa?

Dilbert.

This said, I totally support Paizo to be strict on applying community use policy. It's a great policy that allows us fans to already do a bunch of great things, with still ensuring that make money to deliver ever greater games.

Grand Lodge

This is also the issue we hit when it came to our We Be Goblins! adventure.

Some cards could fall into Community Use and could be made public but the Adventure, Scenario and Location (and a few other) cards would be using Paizo's copyrighted material from the module. When I was at PaizoCon, I met Steve Wieck from DriveThruCards and had a discussion with him and Vic. Steve asked about bundling our cards on DTC but I explained that since Paizo owned the IP and the actual module material wasn't covered by Community Use, we couldn't make it happen.

That being said, please don't let proxying stop you from playing these adventures. They're a bit off but allows you to dive in with the new goblin decks using any of the nine characters. Plus, since Lamashtu had answered the pleadings of the Goblins, any character/class you bring in gains the Goblin trait.

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

One thing that I will add is that a lot of the proxies are cards that don't get shuffled into decks. There are a bunch of custom locations and there are 4 barriers which only get summoned, not mixed in. But there is some proxying.

My presumption is that if Paizo does decide to release them on DriveThruCards, they'll do it in the same way that the Season of the Shackles cards worked - but this probably requires them to release the Season of the Righteous cards first.


Is anyone else reminded of the time that the Simpsons made fun of Fox News, and almost led to Fox filing a lawsuit against itself.

I hope they do make this an official DriveThru purchase (like OP Season cards). Until then, I'll probably just wait

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

Rebel Song wrote:
cartmanbeck wrote:
drowranger80 wrote:
Is it possible to get the scenario cards printed from drivethru cards? If so, how? I didn't see that option. I already bought the PDF.
Unfortunately, since the scenario cards contain Paizo IP which is not covered by the community use policy, we can't offer those as printable cards on drivethrucards.com. If I have time later today, I'll pull together a list of the cards that are publicly available that we made for the original non-OP scenarios, and you can feel free to shuffle those in when playing NON-OP versions of the scenarios to increase your goblification!
This is so amusing to me because it's Paizo stopping Paizo from printing something. There's probably a Dilbert comic about this somewhere...

Except it's not, because I'm not a Paizo employee and Drivethrucards.com is not a Paizo subsidiary, so we have to work under the same rules as any other member of the community. The fact that we were INCREDIBLY lucky to stumble upon something that Paizo was already planning to do and somehow were able to impress them enough with our designs that they asked us to contribute is definitely not the norm, and I'm eternally grateful to the folks at Paizo and Lone Shark for giving us this opportunity. :)

That being said, here are some cards that we designed that DO fit within the community use policy (and how many I would recommend printing and shuffling in), and should enhance your goblin-y-ness if you're playing in a non-organized-play sanctioned way.
Many of the cards I'm linking here were meant to replace cards from Rise of the Runelords that don't really make sense for goblin characters. For example, not many goblins have human (or longshanks, in general) allies, so we removed most of those from the box and replaced them with goblin or animal allies. Same thing with monsters... no real reason you should be fighting against your brother and sister goblins, so remove them and put in some extra human banes. The Shopkeep's Daughter barrier isn't very tempting for a goblin, so she becomes a monster. Etc.
As far as the loot cards go, treat them as if they were available at the end of the first scenario.

Blessing of Goblin Mischief (Blessing) x5
Bruthazmus (Ally) x1
Burning Hands (Spell) x2
Chief's Robe That Is Useful (Loot) x1
Compassionate Samurai (Ally) x1
Dazzling Fireworks (Spell)
Dog (Monster) x3
Dragon Brew Gourd (Loot) x1
Ferret (Ally) x2
Giant Spiders (Ally) x2
Goblin Cheese (Item) x2
Goblin Dog (Ally) x2
Goblin Meatshield (Ally) x3
Goblin Pyro (Ally) x2
Goblin Raider (Ally) x3
Goblin Vulture Pilot (Ally) x2
Goblin Warchanter (Ally) x2
Gogmurt and Tangletooth (Ally) x1
Gorge of Gluttons (Loot) x1
Horse (Monster) x2
Monkey Goblin Cousin (Ally) x2
Ranger Trap (Barrier) x2
Ripnugget and Stickfoot (Ally) x1
Shopkeep's Daughter (Monster) x1
Skyrocket (Item) x2
Ven Vinder (Henchman) x1 (for summoning)
Wolf (Ally) x2
Zoltar the Mystic (Ally) x1

I don't think I missed any, but if I did, I'm sure David can jump in and link them for me.


Theryon Stormrune wrote:
That being said, please don't let proxying stop you from playing these adventures.

Oh, we're playing tonight (as Adventure 5 isn't out yet). I'm always so confused when an OP scenario doesn't have proxies. You mean the villain is actually the villain? And the henchmen are actually the henchmen? And we have to, what's this, "corner" and "defeat" the villain? What is this nonsense?

Eliandra is even playing a goblin!!!!! WHAT.

Scarab Sages

So at HawkCon we're playing this after Wrath finishes, right?

You all know which goblin I'm going to be.


Calthaer wrote:

So at HawkCon we're playing this after Wrath finishes, right?

You all know which goblin I'm going to be.

Better be Ranzak. All dem boons.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

We'll make all the new cards for the official Season of the Goblins scenarios available on DriveThru eventually. But we're only halfway through the season—we need to finish it first, and then give it some time to work through any slugs bugs. (I also need to get a bunch of other stuff off my plate, like the last chapters of Mummy's Mask and Season of the Runelords, and the first chapters of Season of the Mummy, which haven't actually hit my plate yet...)


Any idea when Runelords 5 might be coming out?

Scarab Sages

Rebel Song wrote:
Better be Ranzak. All dem boons.

Dem boons! Gimmeh!

Silver Crusade

Rebel Song wrote:
Theryon Stormrune wrote:
That being said, please don't let proxying stop you from playing these adventures.

Oh, we're playing tonight (as Adventure 5 isn't out yet). I'm always so confused when an OP scenario doesn't have proxies. You mean the villain is actually the villain? And the henchmen are actually the henchmen? And we have to, what's this, "corner" and "defeat" the villain? What is this nonsense?

Eliandra is even playing a goblin!!!!! WHAT.

I DID! I played Chuffy. I've been singing his song to myself for two days!


One more question. You can sufle X amounth of Goblins fight and Goblins Burn decks to you box when playing Season of Goblins. The problem is if someone plays one of those class decks on their own, it soon becomes very hard to tell what cards become From the box and what cards come From the player deck because They Are the same...
Could it be possible to release Rice of the Runelords Goblinified deck (or We Goblins deck) that would include cards From Goblins fight and Goblins burn class decks among those Season of Goblins specials? That way you could not accidentanly mix class deck and box cards together. Even better would ofcourse be We Goblins big box, but that have to wait some time I am Afraid... But in anyway Goblin cards with "We Goblins" signature would be nice to have. Much easier to find those out of the game box and from player decks after games.

Lone Shark Games

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It's only a real impact for the players using those decks, and card sleeves or careful use can solve that handle it.

For instance, even if a player of one of those goblins acquires a card that could be in their deck, when they sleeve it, sleeve it upside down or slip a scrap of paper inside so that it's obvious it's not actually yours.

If you're willing to spend money to purchase a Season of the Goblins equivalent deck of these cards, you can actually short-circuit the process by just buying the existing goblin class decks and distinguishing them more permanently with a writing implement or sticker. A dot in the corner from a sharpie is plenty to distinguish who owns what, in my experience.

That said, it is optional to shuffle in the extra goblins. If it's too hard to manage, don't do it or take appropriate steps.

Good luck!


Rice of the Runelords sounds yummy! ;)

To address the problem/solution, I think that the optimal solution involves sleeves and permanent markers (I use Staedtler Lumocolor pens, which won't rub off from repeated use but which wash off easily with rubbing alcohol). Simply write the initials of the owning player on the sleeve, next to the deck marking in the top left.


We did the upside down thing at GenCon.


Many thanks!


We really need a boxed adventure for goblins at some point...


Is this Season only 2 Adventures ? Or is it still incomplete ?

Silver Crusade

Nope, it's only 2 adventures!


Argetkveykva wrote:
We really need a boxed adventure for goblins at some point...

/agree

Thornkeep : Rise of the Goblins

Grand Lodge

We started an all-goblin run of SotRi. 1-1A went... poorly. (Tup, Ranzak, Ekkie, Poog, and Mogmurch. Poog being the only healer hurts.)

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