A New Way to Play the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

Thursday, April 5, 2018

Before we get into this week's blog, we have a couple of things we want to share with you!

First, we have a massive Pathfinder Adventure Card Game sale running through April 30. You can get complete PACG Adventure Paths—the Base Set, all 5 additional Adventure Decks, and the Character Add-On Deck—for the price of the Base Set alone. Choose the Skull & Shackles Collection, the Wrath of the Righteous Collection, and the Mummy's Mask Collection! You'll also find the first 19 Class Decks (up through Warpriest) on sale for 50% off through the end of the month!

Next, let's spill the beans on this year's Free RPG Day promo character, Nok-Nok:

Nok-Nok comes to us from Pathfinder: Kingmaker, the party-based, single-player, isometric computer RPG coming this summer from Owlcat Games! (Don't miss their new trailer here!)

Nok-Nok's PACG incarnation will initially be available for free at stores participating in Free RPG Day on June 16. We will then send him free to subscribers of the main Pathfinder Adventure Card Game line alongside the Ultimate Wilderness Add-On Deck in July. After that, he'll be available for sale on paizo.com and at our Gen Con booth in August.

Now, I'll cede the floor to Tyler "Cartmanbeck" Beck, our new Venture-Captain for Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild Online Play!

Tyler: It's hard to believe that the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game was released almost five years ago now. The game has evolved through four full base sets and dozens of character and add-on decks, and has been the focus of a successful organized play campaign.

Speaking of that organized play campaign, in the recent 5.0 release of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Guild Guide, the option was added for online play. I know a few people have been asking things like "What?" and "How?" and "Really?" Thus far, the answer to all of those questions has been "Let's take it slow." So to that end, the Card Guild has become a (relatively small) part of the OutPost play-by-post gaming convention, currently being held right here on the Paizo forums. We've currently got 11 tables running currently, with several box runners (BRs) each running one or more tables of PACG newbies and veterans alike. I'd like to introduce you to two BRs who will tell you a bit about how things work.

Ray (redeux on the forums): Most of my experiences so far have been as a player at one of the play-by-post tables. It's been a blast! Five of us has been working through Season of the Runelords, and over the course of several months we've progressed all the way to tier 5. I'm fortunate enough to also have a local group that gets together for organized play, but what I like about the online play-by-post is that it can be done from anywhere, and it takes much less time out of my day spread throughout a week rather than all in one afternoon. In that regard, it has been super convenient to get a little dose of PACG on a regular basis without straining my schedule. The format also makes it easy to back to look back and check what happened, like that time Kyra unleashed a fire attack with her sword, making sure her fire-loving goblin teammate Reta was nowhere in sight so she wouldn't get any heated ideas.

With the OutPost event, we have been working hard to expose more people to the play-by-post format for PACG. I'm currently running two tables for the event, and I have players from the US, UK, Asia, and Australia, which shows that the game can be played globally. Some of my players are fairly experienced with the ACG, other players have a lot of experience with the RPG but little ACG, and a few started with little to no experience with either. We all work together to help everyone learn and overcome the scenarios!

Let's tackle how it all works. As Tyler mentioned, one person runs the box. This is currently is being handled through a database that contains the card information for each scenario. The database is able to build locations, shuffle them, move cards around, and manage just about anything you need to do during a normal ACG scenario. The scenario is then posted on the campaign page, looking something like this:

The scenario post has all of the "During this Adventure" and "During this Scenario" text in it, as well as turn info, blessing deck info, and location/location deck info. All of the cards in the location decks are hidden through spoilers. This allows players to explore multiple times in their turn without waiting for a new card to be presented to them.

Players use a Deck Handler spreadsheet on Google Docs that handles drawing cards from your deck, discarding, recharging, burying, shuffling, etc. (Tyler provides some instruction on how to use it here. The Deck Handler includes only card names, so you still need to have a physical deck to reference the card text. It provides an easy way to let everyone know what cards you have in hand, and what blessings or other cards you are willing to let people use on their turns. When you finish your turn, it gives you templated text to paste into the forum to communicate your decisions.

Mark (MorkXII on the forums): During last year's online runthrough of the Cosmic Captive PFS Special, I was able to join one of two ACG tables run during the event and had an amazing time, and I couldn't wait to do it again. When I missed the chance to play in a Season of the Goblins game> that Tyler started in November, I asked him if I could run my own table. He agreed, so I recruited four players (and a fifth joined later) to play through Season of the Runelords. That campaign is still going: the group has finished 23 scenarios in roughly 100 days, and we're on track to finish the entire Adventure Path by the end of OutPost on April 30.

Playing the ACG by forum post is obviously not the same as playing in-person: the pace is much slower, and sometimes it's tricky to collaborate on group efforts, such as who's handling temporary closes and multi-check encounters, and who's supplying all the blessings. Some rules and scenarios are a little tougher to implement for forum play and take an extra bit of effort or creative thinking (I'm looking at you, Adventure #2-3C!). But overall the game still works well in this format, and the slower pace also means you spend more time getting to know the group than you would around a table. Early in our Season of the Runelords game, we moved most of our game discussion to a Google Hangouts chat to allow for more real-time discussion. This made it easier to plan out those group efforts, but also enabled more off-topic and personal discussion, and it's been wonderful getting to know some other Pathfinder fans from around the world.

The slower pace of play also means that everyone has more time to take their turns, and many players put in effort to go beyond just listing what cards they encounter and play. The roleplaying and storytelling are my favourite part of playing a game online because it's so entertaining to read! When Reta fell into a giant pit and dragged all her goblin friends along with her, it made for a series of very fun posts. And a different Reta seemed very pleased with herself when she clubbed the villain over the head with a Lamia henchman. (At least she didn't offer anyone any of her... questionable pickles that time).

And playing online, you still get the same exciting moments that you always get from Pathfinder. Who doesn't love clearing out an entire location deck in a single turn? Or blasting away the villain on a last-ditch effort with just one blessing left in the deck?

Tyler: We have a vibrant community of players on the Paizo play-by-post forums, and I'm excited that we've been able to add Pathfinder Adventure Card Game play to that community. As OutPost winds down at month end, watch for new developments on the forums and more ways to play PACG in play-by-post form yourselves!

Vic Wertz
Chief Technology Officer