Keith Richmond's page

It's honestly a pretty complex topic. I don't feel comfortable speaking for Paizo in general, and in particular don't feel that I have the information I'd need to do so.

Indeed, I barely feel comfortable speaking for PACG for Lone Shark Games. I only started working on it midway through Wrath, and I'm not really a PR and speeches kinda person.

That said, silence is awful, so I'll say what I can. I've had the thoughts rattling around in my head because of PaizoCon anyways. Like all my posts here on the forums, this is unofficial, unprepared and I may be corrected by Mike or Paizo.

I don't believe anyone has yet declared 100% that we're not making any more product, hence the lack of an announcement. None of us want this game to be dead. At the end of the day, that uncertainty and sheer unwillingness to let it die has paralyzed all of our ability to talk on the topic.

That said, there are a number of factors that have conspired to make it incredibly difficult or unlikely.

First is raw financials. Factory cost increases have meant that we'd need to be able to print and sell more copies of the game than is realistic to ensure that it's a good decision for either company. Both companies were willing to cut costs to levels that absolutely don't make sense, and even then we'd have risks involved with things like cardback coloration and quality control.

Second, let's talk some about Covid. PACG is absolutely a game meant to be played by folks huddled around a table together, everyone chipping in on shuffling locations and such and really, well, exposing each other to a few too many viruses. It was positively depressing to not be able to see people playing at PaizoCon, to see some of the great friends I've made over this game. I really missed our post-PaizoCon brunch this year.

I know it feels like we're on the way to a new normal, and that there are absolutely families who have played the hell out of PACG during the pandemic. That things like Tabletop Simulator have really kept the flame alive. But, it hasn't been a good couple years to forecast growth of our game. Speaking just for me, I can say that Covid has caused my other job (helping the internet continue to function at scale felt suddenly much more essential) to devour more of my life. I also spent months effectively home-schooling children. An experience that was amazingly rewarding, but one of the most brain-consuming I can imagine.

Lastly, let's just talk people. Vic and Lisa were instrumental to the success and development of the game, and they've stepped away from the business. I don't think any of us begrudge them the ability to retire (or at least step back) after their monumental contributions to our hobby. I don't know who can pick up that torch, but I'm pretty sure that everyone at Paizo is already juggling at least two other torches for Paizo, on top of however many family/Covid torches are in the mix.

So, I'll talk a little about me personally. I'm not really comfortable doing so, but I think it might help understanding. I am positive I could have done more to keep pushing on the game. More blogs, more timely turn-ins, more pushing on coworkers and business partners. Except, well, I'm not sure I haven't been doing as much as I could endure. Without going into too many details, I've been having the toughest few years of my life _before factoring in any corporate, national, or global concerns, like financials, politics, or Covid_.

PACG has actually been an incredible escape during that time. I distinctly remember working on PACG scenarios between my dad's death and funeral, even while Mike told me to log off and be with family, because PACG was absolutely what my brain needed then. Some of the most active members of this community have really buoyed me through these trying times. I have closer family than folks like Tyler, Elizabeth, Mark, Ray, and Andrew (in random order), but not as many as I'd care to admit in public :)

So, believe me when I say that we're grieving the loss of this game, too. Folks can keep playing it, but we all wanted more cards, more boxes.

We made Core + Curse with an assumption that we were making the best version of the game we could, both for now and for ongoing growth of the game. We had some crazy cool ideas for a branching-legacy experience with Kingmaker and a radical multi-box experience scoped for a Rise of the Runelords refresh that could work with Curse to deliver Return of the Runelords, with maybe a little finagling to sneak in Shattered Star into the mix. There was no intent to stop producing PACG!

I am incredibly proud to have worked on this amazing game these past several years. I appreciate that you've invested money, time, and life into this game that made it a vital part of your life.

Even if the stewardship of the game is likely over from Paizo and Lone Shark, please keep on playing it your way. Your cards don't need to go anywhere. Give some time to the fine folks still volunteering on PACG and you will still have a near infinite number of PACG games you can play.

Great gaming with you. 'til we next game again!
Keith Richmond
Lone Shark Games
PACG Designer

I look forward to having fun with folks at PaizoCon, both playing games and just chatting.

The intent is actually each character, though you'd need to really work on that wording since you can't ever explore outside your exploration step; essentially, it'd need to not be an actual exploration, but rather just that each character gets to draw 3/#, display 1, return the rest, and pick one of the benefits.

Thanks for asking. I think that might've been the push I needed to come back to it.

If anyone is available to test a changed Hostile, I'd like to know how this would work out:

"When you fail a check to acquire, to close, or to guard, suffer 1d6 (max #) combat damage."

I love the new uses of the Base in this AP, especially in the latter adventures. Very much looking forward to Year 7!

Yeah... I really enjoy the freedom to try out all kinds of things with Organized Play :)

Well, as long as they never need cards except at the end of her turn, she won't die. Though most people do like the ability to reset their hand, all told.

I don't see any problems with also including an AP box. As long as it's optional :)

Yeah, that's not ideally clear.

If you look at storybook page 3, there's a chart of the Harrow Suits. Also, this section of rules:
Each has the Harrow trait and a Suit trait that corresponds to a specific skill: Hammers (Strength), Keys (Dexterity),
Shields (Constitution), Books (Intelligence), Stars
(Wisdom), and Crowns (Charisma).

So, if it's a Books (not Book) suit, the relevant trait/skill is actually Intelligence.

So, add 2 to local Intelligence (or Books) checks.

Or 1d4+1 if the hour is a Books hour.

There's a lot of work going into the TTS experience. I'm so pleased by how well it's running and I have no doubt that these minor bumps will be erased well before next Tuesday.

Wait, next Tuesday. This convention is _8 days away_!?!

If I can direct you to that schedule at warhorn (I like this view better than the default), I want to point out that I'm "running" 11 tables of PACG this convention, as well as participating _somehow_ with that massive 20-table Special on Saturday. Basically everything that's been released since Covid19.

The slots are spread over all sorts of time slots, clustering a little bit in the middle of the day. I'd love to see and chat with folks, because I won't get to do my usual wandering around chatting with folks this year. So instead I'll try it out on Tabletop Simulator. I apologize in advance for the occasional interruption by kids. ;)

If you're interested in any of those tables, feel free to sign up:

PACS 6-4 What Stalks the Shadows
Tue May 26 Noon-2pm Pacific, A: Intrigue in Ardis
Tue May 26 6-8pm Pacific, B: Rock and Steel
Wed May 27, 9-11am Pacific, C: Who Needs Sleep?
Wed May 27, Noon-2pm Pacific, D: The Tigers' Den

PACS 6-5 Echoes of Death
Thu May 28, 3-5am Pacific, A: Searching for Clues
Thu May 28, Noon-2pm Pacific, B: Race for the Cemetery
Fri May 29, Noon-2pm Pacific, C: Revisiting the Countess
Fri May 29, 3-5pm Pacific, D: An Unwelcome Reunion

PACS 6-90 A Night at Bloodthorne Manor
Sat May 30, 6-8am, B: Death by Dinnerware
Sun May 31, 6-8am, C: Society of the Veil
Sun May 31, 9-11am, D: Unfinished Business

(If you want to play A, Tyler's running it a ton of times!)

Most of the later seasons are similar to Plundered Tombs.

There are some variations, of course. Plundered Tombs level 6 and Factions Favored level 1 are both a little higher than normal, especially with certain party compositions.

Ultimate decks and Adventurer Packs were also added later, so choosing to use or not use them will have a noticeable impact on your difficulty curve.

There are a few other homebrews available like Shield of Rannick, Revenge of the Wicked, and Emerald Legacy. I think most or all of them can be found in the homebrew forum.

Have fun!

Just so it's said: there is a whole lot of super awesome people helping to make these happen, including Tyler, Ray, Mark, Andrew, and likely quite a few people I'm missing (like Yewstance's work on that character sheet), and Lone Shark Games is so damn happy they do. Thank you!

Also, it's really neat being able to hit a single key on the keyboard and shuffle a deck. Or mouseover several decks hitting that key and shuffle several decks in a second.

Looking forward to seeing a lot of you in 3 weeks for PaizoCon.

There is one secret trick to making this work: share a pack between two characters who want it for very different things / are willing to make it work, so that they never overlap cards in play.

Ex:

Lini
Nature
Divine
Ranged*

Hakon
Smash
Support*
Tank

Fumbus
Ranged*
Alchemy
Occult

Varian
Arcane
Finesse
Support*

Just so we're clear... Quinn is an amazing Batman, and you might get some mileage from her appreciating *you* Batman-ing.

That said - Varian remains a great Batman.

With a reminder that I do not make the decision as to how Organized Play works and defer to Paizo and Venture Officers, I would very much appreciate a concerted effort to remove any difficulty playing PACS online, at this time. Even if it's just for the duration of the pandemic.

Whether that's updating errant wikis or whatever. :)

Sorry, that's an oversight, and we'll get it addressed. The generic reward for all doesn't quite work in this instance.

For now, I'd encourage you to add the siege "The party gets all boons remaining in locations." and I'll encourage Vic to FAQ in a way that does the same. Perhaps change "To win, empty the siege pile." to "To win, empty the siege pile. If you do, the party acquires all cards remaining in locations."

Still in effect, at this time. If folks feel strongly that rule should be changed, let us know, but it still serves a purpose.

There are some errors that will likely be fixed soon, but in the meantime:

Alchemy
Level 1 should not have an Items line
All of Level 2 is missing:
Level 2
Ally Flensing Jelly
Armor Grounded Studded Leather
Blessing Rovagug’s Destruction
Items Elixir of Focus, Liquid Courage, Plaguebringer’s Mask, Tangleburn Bag, Twitch Tonic
Spell Full Pouch
Weapon Venomous Hand Crossbow

Divine
Level 2 and 3 should not have Item lines

Finesse
Level 1 allies should be Gang Enforcer, Priest of Abadar

Level 3 ally should be Cerulean Mastermind, armor is Sable Company Leathers

Occult
Level 2 is entirely wrong, should be
Level 2
Ally Fortune-Teller
Blessings Lamashtu’s Madness, Zon-Kuthon’s Pain
Items Wand of Flame, Zellara’s Harrow Deck
Spells Fly, Twisted Space

Yeah, that's on me. I reversed the two in order somehow in turnover to Paizo, so it necessitated swapping them in release.

I can't imagine any reason it would be released late at this point.

Ash points at the red Charau-ka and gestures across his neck. "Ook, ook, you're next."
Intimidate: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (5) + 8 = 13

And Fire.
Attack: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (7) + 8 = 15
Fire: 1d4 + 5 ⇒ (1) + 5 = 6

"And that's your last warning fireball."

* -- While Drunken Master Valeros is a lot of fun to play ("Why won't you stay there and guard that location?!?"), I am amused that many of the "liquids" in his deck are things Valeros probably shouldn't be drinking, mostly paints and poisons with the occasional bomb.

Drunken Avenger is a lot more reasonable of a name than Paint-Huffing Toad-Licking Valeros, and in no way would I encourage that behavior, but hypothetically the mechanics are functionally the same...

Rarely, a mirror image will pop up. Zarlova is a particularly notable example.

Aside, that sword looks more like a katana than a jian.

Didn't make the art, just grabbed an available one that wasn't already used :)

And while I don't play the ACG, I'm glad to see 'the boys' in more content. Where's Arnie?

In the blog I linked, or this link, you can see Arnisant with art.

Have you guys read any of the novels? Varian is a devotee of Desna, not Asmodeus, and Radovan is consistently described as small and overly charming/seductive, not hulking and brutish.

As mentioned in a previous blog, I've read an awful lot of them, yep.

I feel like Fumbus sees himself as Batman, and I'm seeing it as Darkwing Duck.

This is very cool! Can you do this for Lini next?

Shannon has already written Lini, actually! It'll go up in a few weeks, shortly before I do my next character blog, so that we can stay in lock-step with a Shannon strategy following each of my design blogs for the characters.

I completely agree with this assessment. I can't imagine NOT implementing the Market because you thought it added too much complexity. It doesn't add any complexity. Rebuilding a deck is something that players already need to know how to do between scenarios if they are ever short on cards. Banishing a card is of course something players already know. I don't see how the Market introduces anything that every player wouldn't already know.

It introduces the concept that optimizing your deck means reading every single card in the box that is 2 levels lower than you, since you can swap them in every scenario without having to encounter them. When you hit a new level, the entire group might want to do so.

That said, if you feel strongly that it should be in the game, you should definitely play that way. That's why I wrote both the rule and then this blog :)

Remember to also compare the balance against taking a single 1d4+1 heal card that you bury or banish. For instance, if you have ~7 turns (4 person group) and manage to use the staff 3 times, then you healed less on average at the cost of 2 draws that could have been something else. If you manage to use it 4 times (non-trivial in RotR), then you healed slightly above average, but at the cost of 3 draws.

That said, in a solo game it has been the absolute star of my deck in several scenarios by letting me perform feats of endurance that would have otherwise killed or conceded the scenario for me.

I remember just like it were yesterday. Keith was playing Quinn and scouted a Blast Stone noting that it was "no doubt left by Lamm's insane alchemist Yargin Balko." Varian (Me) then acquired the Blast Stone and afterwards encountered Lamm's Lamb. Some background info would've been nice before I quickly deployed the Blast Stone on what I thought was just a skirmish barrier that needed to be squelched with fire. Poor kiddos. I was no better than Yargin Balko or Gaedren Lamm that day.

I don't know - insufficient strategic intelligence feels like a pretty rough excuse for your regret over using a grenade on an orphan. But whatever lets you sleep at night ;)

For clarity, when playtesting, we often / initially don't include the full story text. So our playtesters are sometimes (un)pleasantly surprised to find out what's actually happening.

Still a bit frustrated that it's drawing on mostly edgy pop culture anarchy rather than the actual political and philosophical movement, but aside from that it's pretty cool stuff.

It's actually drawing on the older use of anarchy, representing the state of being without a leader or government, inspired by ancient Greece and entering common usage in the 16th century.

The political and philosophical movement was inspired afterwards, I believe establishing most in the 19th century.

I'm not really sure what "edgy pop culture anarchy" is, though googling it got me a Sons of Anarchy ad, so that's something.

At any rate, it is a historically, factually, and thematically correct usage here, since the monarch is dead and the populace is rioting in the aftermath. Adding a learned philosopher NPC that wants to espouse the theory, non-violently, might actually be a pretty neat thing to add to the RPG campaign.

You always burn the boons, as that power is its own sentence and not contingent on the previous "if".

I've got a solution to most any Core-ish problem like this >> << close to announcing. Be a little patient, and I'll get you covered.

Varian's Sword proficiency not applying to old swords is... not ideal. I'd like to patch that separately, but will need to think on the easiest / best method. Suggestions are welcome, though.

Ah, ok. You could also encounter Vimanda as the first card in the Lair, so it's definitely okay.

Because there are no closing henchmen and you have to "find the combination" to the labyrinth (the labyrinth actually has sections that rotate, so you need to find the right combination of rotations to unlock new pathways), once you do so, it's setup for you to be able to start closing locations and cornering the villain.

It's possibly a little too easy to open the Lair for small groups, but I tend to assume that groups seeking more of a challenge will upgrade the difficulty. That way I can err on the side of "Little easier for some groups, but not crazy difficult for many", which seems to go over better.

37+, confirmed. It's one of those few times where you're encouraged to throw everything at a check, to overkill it in an impressive way.

While we didn't explore that particular game space that much yet, it's fairly likely that at some point we'll want to make having or not having a deity on your check makes a real difference.

This Adventure Path very much requires both Core and Curse. I'll request that the product description is updated above.

When you encounter the Bandit, he's stealing directly from you (recharging and/or burying and/or banishing your cards). You don't have to fight him at all: just let him take some of your stuff to "defeat" him (by banishing a boon). Or, you can object to him taking your stuff and have a combat.

As Yewstance says, the story and mechanics of this particular scenario were much fiddled with to provide a good demo/intro scenario experience. The story is a little more shored up from 1A onwards.

The intention for all those rewards, both in the sanction document _and_ in Fangwood Thieves and Year of Rotting Ruin, is that you add the new card from the vault to the cards acquired during the scenario, not that you take one randomly from your class deck and/or add-on.

So, that means the guide needs to change.

Good question: I understood it to mean the new card, so as to avoid creating an illegal deck, and tested accordingly.

So, at tier 1 you could replace higher level cards in your box with new Core/Curse cards of the same name, as long as those cards were level 1 or 0.

That said, as always, I am not a rules arbiter; that's Vic.

Oh, sorry. I knew I had to do that, then something derailed me and I lost that to-do.

I'll work on that tomorrow. It is a feature that dipping into SotRi isn't a surefire way to rack up feats, but it's desirable that you get some bumps that apply in SotRi itself.

Based on the above, I'll look at other options for updating the Elemental roll for 1A to be a little more survivable. I was not told it was particularly deadly by the team at GenCon, Origins, or PaizoCon (the only scenario called out at Gen Con was 6-1C which has a different than normal wrinkle that I think was tripping people up, so I gave some advice to give those tables if they come up), but it's a little rough to throw at newbies.

Are people really dying to the siege, though? I mean, nothing forces you to explore and you have enough turns that you don't really need to discard allies or blessings to work through the siege deck. I've checked in on people playing that scenario many times and never seen a death and the tables largely felt like they could succeed without any particular effort, modulo maybe one tough barrier for the group.

I even made Tyler test the siege twice, and he didn't die either time, and Tyler is really an excellent barometer for if a scenario is too deadly (I'll admit, my own play style is insufficiently reckless).

The conversion guidelines went through a few iterations of folks after they left my hands (among other things because I was unfortunately entirely indisposed by outside events when it was being launched), so I hesitate to declare anything as incorrect. As always, Vic (and then Mike) are the arbiters of the rule, and I'm just the guy who gets to chat on the forums without nearly as much agonizing over precise language.

But I can say that it is intended that Mother Myrtle has a way to not banish pre-Core spells that would normally be able to be not banished (but not, say recharge Charm Person, Commune, Time Stop, or most blessings, like before conversion).

That Lightning Touch example is at odds with the very next line:
"On all spells except those noted below, replace the first “discard“ or “reveal” with “banish” or leave the first “display” alone, then change any kind of discard and/or recharge text to “DURING RECOVERY If proficient, discard this card; you may succeed at (whatever specific check is listed) to recharge it instead.”

Yeah... you know the worst time to realize you really wanted dividers in your Adventure Path box?

When you open a finished copy as it's already going out to people all over the planet and go "Oh, crud."

It feels awful and not something we wanted.