The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Gets Ready to Fly!

August cannot get here fast enough! I think this is going to be amazing!

The cards look lovely. But I see something there that I also noticed as a problem with the reprint of the Pandemic board game - the artwork for the cards stretches all the way to the edge!

This means there might be times when players can tell what cards are coming up on the draw (even at times if facedown).

Is that a problem?

There will be a border around the color you see.

Not sure I care for the double sided cards. It makes sleeving them a pain. Last I checked there were no Deck Pro Sleeves that were clear on both sides, and penny sleeves just don't offer the same level of protection. (I have kids so protecting the cards is crucial; I even sleeve my Munchkin and Chez Geek cards before playing. It takes an extra 10 to 15 min of prep time, but it has saved me having to replace the deck on at lest two occasions now.)

Oh nice... I hadn't heard of this before, but back at high school I always wanted to have a Magic: The Gathering style card game which played like a D&D adventure. I even spent half a year of free-writing time during English class working on my own system for such a thing. I forgot about it all at some point and never finished, but this sounds rather like the game I had always imagined.

The shipping for the main game is going to be super high for me, but I'm going to see if my FLGS can get it in. :)

Not sure I care for the double sided cards. It makes sleeving them a pain. Last I checked there were no Deck Pro Sleeves that were clear on both sides, and penny sleeves just don't offer the same level of protection. (I have kids so protecting the cards is crucial; I even sleeve my Munchkin and Chez Geek cards before playing. It takes an extra 10 to 15 min of prep time, but it has saved me having to replace the deck on at lest two occasions now.)

Have a look at these sports cards sleeves. UltraPro sleeves

Leo_Negri wrote:

Not sure I care for the double sided cards. It makes sleeving them a pain. Last I checked there were no Deck Pro Sleeves that were clear on both sides, and penny sleeves just don't offer the same level of protection. (I have kids so protecting the cards is crucial; I even sleeve my Munchkin and Chez Geek cards before playing. It takes an extra 10 to 15 min of prep time, but it has saved me having to replace the deck on at lest two occasions now.)

Have a look at these sports cards sleeves. UltraPro sleeves

I'm a fan of these sleeves too. You can get them right here at Paizo

Is it too early to speculate on pricing and packaging? Like what are the increments that it is purchased in, a base game with expansions, or does " At the point I learned that all of them would fit in the same box" mean that they will be sold in one box, or just that once you buy them all one box will hold them?

My tone as I read that sound accusatory, i'm just curious and sleep deprived.

Like what are the increments that it is purchased in, a base game with expansions, or does " At the point I learned that all of them would fit in the same box" mean that they will be sold in one box, or just that once you buy them all one box will hold them?

I'm pretty sure they mean the latter.

Galnörag wrote:

Like what are the increments that it is purchased in, a base game with expansions, or does " At the point I learned that all of them would fit in the same box" mean that they will be sold in one box, or just that once you buy them all one box will hold them?

I'm pretty sure they mean the latter.

Yeah i'm pretty sure they said in a previous blog that there would be expansions every couple of months expanding the ROTR adventure and once finished all the cards would fit in the original box. Hence the subscription option.

I'm very, very excited for this!

Hmmm... I'm not crazy about the card design. It's very 1990's. I started a thread on RPG.net last year where I posted examples of what I consider gorgeous card design you can find it here (ignore the art, I'm talking about borders here):

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?662329-Where-we-post-pictures-of-our-fa vorite-game-cards

I think this game could use a bit more attention to the border design because it's boring me.

I'll buy it regardless because I've been waiting for something like this for a looong time.

Will the rulebook be made available for download?

I wants it sooo baaaad :)

Looks very promising, but I strongly dislike the look of the bar with the card name in it. It cuts through the art and is way too far down. Cards of the majority of games I know have the name as the very topmost thing and for good reasons, I believe.

I'd remove the "Rise of the Runelords" text and instead just print a symbol of that edition, then I'd move the card name to the top of the card and have the card type (Adventure B, Monster 4, Spell 4) right below it.
That should also be where the artwork begins.

Also, the monster card's orange is a bit... dunno... weird... A more dull tone or card borders with a pattern might work better.

Either way, I'm really excited about this! With artwork the quality of Paizo's and stories as great as we know from you guys, it's gonna be a blast!

I was fortunate enough to get to spend time as one of the play testers for this game.

1) The double-sided cards are double-sided for a reason. You'll be far happier they are double sided than if they tried to put all the relevant text on one side. Seriously.

2) The color borders NEED to be clearly and easily distinguishable. You're going to spend a little time (for every scenario you play) sorting cards based on those colors.

3) The game play is simpler than the description of game play in the draft rules was. I really don't know if the Paizo team figured out how to get the rules to read as easily as the game plays, but, I think you will enjoy how it plays.

4) The opportunity for replay and customization of the play experience is really VERY GOOD. Actually, I was surprised how good.

I agree with HustonJ, the double-sided cards are very important.

The way the playtest sets were given to us, there were three parts to the card game so far:

-there is a "basic set" which includes the most iconic of the iconics (Wizard, Sorcerer, Rogue, Fighter, Cleric, Bard and Ranger) and the introductory scenario (including the most basic monsters). These are the cards that you see a "B" in the top right corner of, like Treacherous Cave above.

-the Rise of the Runelords campaign cards (which come in six "chapters" and each have their own sets of monster and "loot" type cards. These have numbers at the top-right corner corresponding to the chapter.

-the six-player expansion which has more of the iconics (Monk, Barbarian, Druid, Paladin) along with loot for them and some more monsters and such to add to the deck for six players. These have "E" in the top right corner, not shown above.

Each playtest group had certain subsets of these: my group had the Basic set and chapters 3 and 4 of RotRL. We were also able to get the text of the cards for the characters in the six-player expansion thanks to the playtest forums, so we were able to test those out also.

I'm going to assume that all three of these parts will be in the box at release, with further iconic characters (from APG and Ultimate books) being introduced as part of later scenarios.

This is probably unanswerable due to an NDF, but were there any people or groups in the playtest who just didn't care for the game at all?

I'm pretty sure we weren't required to sign any such thing. If I'm wrong, Mr. Selinker will yell at me, I'm sure. But no, we didn't have anyone in my group that just outright hated the game. Just like in Pathfinder RPG, some players liked the play style of one character over others.

For example, Seoni is an excellent "blaster" character who mows through enemies thanks to extra damage from her feats, whereas Ezren is much more likely to use an Invisibility spell to send a monster to the bottom of a deck and leave it there for Valeros to come hammer on. I prefer Seoni's play style, personally.

When the game is released, I urge anyone playing it to try ALL the characters to see what you like best. each character plays COMPLETELY differently, and I think that's part of the appeal of this game.

BTW, I'm signed up to help demo the final version of the card game at GenCon in August, which I'm super excited about!

Hmm. My wife might even play this.

Does this function in the style of players combating eachother, or in the style of players working together to defeat a common enemy (either another player or a scenario deck)?

Cooperative. Most certainly cooperative. The game is the opponent.

Can't wait for this game to be released. We really enjoyed the playtest at PaizoCon and after more polishing, I'm sure its going to be great!

This is probably unanswerable due to an NDF, but were there any people or groups in the playtest who just didn't care for the game at all?

In a playtest of any size, won't there always be some people who really didn't care for the product under test?

And in this case, only some groups playtested the full 30-adventure game; others tested only the first, middle or last one-third of the set, which may have had an effect on their opinions.

I participated in the playtest and feedback forums with my weekly gaming group. I seem to recall one poster saying his group hated the game. But this was fairly early on, and the whole point of a playtest is to shake out the bugs. I think the rules went to revision 1.3 and there were many, many, many changes made to individual cards before it was all done. Would his group still hate the final product?

@Mike Selinker: "At some point, I convinced the Paizo team to run a "semi-open alpha test," where we gave it to more than three hundred Pathfinder Society members and said, "Break this thing."

Boy, did they. Over three months of testing, we received thousands of pieces of feedback. A single card might have 30 forum comments about it; put two cards together and a vigorous debate about card combos would break out. My favorite thread title: "Harpy + Treacherous Cave raises suck to a new level."

That was my thread! :)

Just for the record, not all of those 300+ playtesters were PFS members; no one in my group was/is. We just signed up for the playtest by giving our info the local Venture Capt/Lt and having those PFS members forward it to Vic.

I was also part of the playtest and wish the game great success. I playtested as a solo player rather than with a group. The game is built to be playable by one person alone, and it does function in that mode... kind of. The biggest issue with solo play is that the game takes a fair amount of time to set up and tear down, and I found myself doing more of this than actually playing. Ultimately, this meant it felt more like tedious work than fun. As a result, and because my gaming time with friends is quite limited and I personally enjoy playing RPGs more than card games, I probably won't buy this product unless they overhauled the solo game after the playtest. That said, if I were at a con and between events and someone broke the game out, I'd happily join in.

Other solo playtesters may've had completely different experiences, of course!

I would tell any designer that if no one hated your game, that means no one saw it.

I also believe that there are a few Fight Club-style restrictions on what playtesters can and cannot say (especially about individual cards), but whether or not they enjoyed their experience is completely in bounds. I don't speak for Paizo on this point, of course.

Mike

This is probably unanswerable due to an NDF [..]

(I meant non-disclosure agreement of course, but I had non-deliverable funds on my mind!)

I would tell any designer that if no one hated your game, that means no one saw it.

Well, unless the expectation is that everyone will hate the game, it really just means it wasn't seen by a statistically significant sampling.

Huh? He was exaggerating for humorous effect? But...no smiley...okay, fine.

Never mind. :)

I can say with complete abandon that I signed nothing approaching an NDA about this card game, and that my name wasn't submitted to Paizo until AFTER I was involved, so it isn't like there COULD HAVE BEEN a legal restriction placed upon me.

There is a common sense one, though.

I don't have the cards in front of me to discuss specifics. If I did, I don't KNOW that all of the play test-driven updates were applied to all of them. Even if they were, I know that there were more changes made post play test that I have had no reason to see or internalize through use.

My lack of specifics is tied directly to an inability to be confident that the specifics would be correct. I hate finding out that I gave out bad information, so I tried to avoid doing so.

Not sure I care for the double sided cards. It makes sleeving them a pain.

Most cards are not double-sided. A bunch of the cards—villains, monsters, barriers, weapons, spells, armor, items, allies, loot, and blessings—go into decks, and all have the same cardback.

A bunch of the cards don't go into decks; they mostly just stay on the table (though you may occasionally pick them up for reference, and you will flip over some of them during the game). These are the cards that represent your character and the individual story elements (Adventure Path, Adventure, Scenario, Location). These are the ones that are double-sided.

Regardless, sleeving your cards will cause a problem, in that the Base Set includes a tray designed to organize all of the 1155 Rise of the Runelords cards that you'll have if you purchase the add-on deck and the expansions; that tray won't do its job if the cards are sleeved.

It sounds like you may store your cards unsleeved and them sleeve them prior to play; that'll solve the tray problem, but it could take longer than you think, as six players with very advanced characters may have upwards of 280 cards in play in a single session.

Is it too early to speculate on pricing and packaging? Like what are the increments that it is purchased in, a base game with expansions, or does " At the point I learned that all of them would fit in the same box" mean that they will be sold in one box, or just that once you buy them all one box will hold them?

The Base Set contains 495 cards, including Chapter 1 of Rise of the Runelords. It's for 1 to 4 players, and includes the Wizard, Ranger, Cleric, Bard, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Fighter. It's due in August, for $59.99.

The Character Add-On Deck includes 110 cards, adding the Barbarian, Druid, Monk, and Paladin, and also expands the maximum number of players to 6. It's also due in August, and sells for $19.99.

Chapters 2 through 6 of Rise of the Runelords are each sold in 110-card Adventure Decks, which sell for $19.99 and will be released bimonthly from October through June.

Will the rulebook be made available for download?

No reason not to...

This is probably unanswerable due to an NDF, but were there any people or groups in the playtest who just didn't care for the game at all?

The playtesters are not under NDA, and may talk freely about their experiences.

There were a couple groups that didn't care for the game, as well as a couple of individual players who were playing in groups where most others did like the game. It's obviously inaccurate to paint them all with a single brush, but for the sake of generalization, I'd say that most of those people had expectations for the game that didn't mesh with our goals. For example, there were a couple people who essentially said "This won't replace the Pathfinder RPG for me, so why bother?" (Replacing the Pathfinder RPG is *not* a goal for this project!)

I think the rules went to revision 1.3 and there were many, many, many changes made to individual cards before it was all done.

We're currently at 1.10, and are still a couple revisions away from shipping. And nearly every single card has changed at least a little bit since the playtest. However, most of those changes are in how things are expressed; the game itself has only had small evolutions since the playtest. Armor got more useful, feats got way cooler, and minor things like that, but overall, it's very much the same game you played.

I was also part of the playtest and wish the game great success. I playtested as a solo player rather than with a group. The game is built to be playable by one person alone, and it does function in that mode... kind of. The biggest issue with solo play is that the game takes a fair amount of time to set up and tear down, and I found myself doing more of this than actually playing. Ultimately, this meant it felt more like tedious work than fun. As a result, and because my gaming time with friends is quite limited and I personally enjoy playing RPGs more than card games, I probably won't buy this product unless they overhauled the solo game after the playtest. That said, if I were at a con and between events and someone broke the game out, I'd happily join in.

Other solo playtesters may've had completely different experiences, of course!

I wouldn't call it an overhaul, but it will contain suggestions that will make solo play more fun, including which characters work best when you're on your own, and a recommendation that you run two characters.

I will say two things about the game mechanics:

1) The ability to search muliple times per player turn is very, very important for scenario completion. Some significant character abilities cost the single base character search per turn. That's how significant those abilities are considered within the game.

2) Heavy character specialization can get in the way of success, depending on random luck and group dynamics. This is one of the ways the card game varies from table-top RPG resolutions.

Armor got more useful, feats got way cooler, [...]

I'm very excited to see how both of these got implemented. Armor needed to be better. And cooler feats is always better!

This is probably unanswerable due to an NDF, but were there any people or groups in the playtest who just didn't care for the game at all?

We had one playtester in our group that I expected him to dislike the game. Sure enough, he didn't much like first character he tried (protip: sorcerers are fragile at low level, and the card game replicates that well). He switched to another character, but didn't like the inherent limitations built into that character type. Then he switched to the bard and, boy howdy, he fell in love and played that bard nonstop.

I imagine I'll be saying this after the game is released, too, but if you find you don't like the game, try a different character before giving up on it. They all play very differently.

I imagine I'll be saying this after the game is released, too, but if you find you don't like the game, try a different character before giving up on it. They all play very differently.

This needs to be emphasized.

The Bard is best at helping other people do things.

The Ranger is okay at clearing locations by himself, but he is GREAT at providing combat assistance to other characters who MUST BE at a different location than the Ranger.

The Rogue HATES having company.

The Fighter not only handles combat with ease, but having him at your location makes YOUR combats easier!

The group I was part of played the entire set. We had the Rogue, Bard, Ranger, and Cleric. The Bard & Cleric would stay together while the Rogue and Ranger worked at clearing different locations. We made it through the vast majority of scenarios in one try, though a couple were pretty close. We had to take 3 tries at only one scenario. Our Cleric DIED, once. That player chose to return with a "new" (no growth) version of the Cleric again.

Other groups kept everybody together. I'm thinking a Bard, Cleric, Fighter, Wizard group would be likely to perform REAL WELL if they stay together. Many groups were reporting less success than our group had, though. Given the random nature of the opposition deck construction, I truly have no way of knowing if the difference was deck-based, player-based, dice-based, etc.

The Rogue HATES having company.

The Fighter not only handles combat with ease, but having him at your location makes YOUR combats easier!

To clarify for those who haven't seen the game, the Rogue isn't antisocial, she just gets significant combat bonuses when fighting alone; this is an exception to the Fighter making other PCs' combats easier -- he actually cramps her style. :)

Our group found the playtest version of the game to be very enjoyable. We had a six-player group playing the high end (chapters 5 and 6). We found that the game played well with a large group but it took a bit longer to play. I would say that we averaged 90 to 120 minutes per game including setup a cleanup.

I tried some solo play and really enjoyed it(at least with the basic scenarios). I wished that I had some of the earlier chapters to be able to continue solo play and get a feel for more characters.

A real boon for the game will be having actual playing cards. The card stock versions from the playtest were difficult to shuffle and sort. The card examples presented in this post look great.

I am also interested to see the card tray. Keeping the cards sorted is a must for this game.

Based upon what I have seen, I expect that this will be a quality product.

Also, this is not a straight card game. The game uses dice (d12, d10, d8, d6, d4). That was unexpected at the start but the mechanics seem to work.

Also there are mechanics for character growth. The character that you play at the beginning could be considerably different by the time you get to the end of the game.

I would love to subscribe to this but the shipping for the base game alone is $67+ to Germany.

Is there any ETA of the game here or at least somewhere in Europe?

same Problem here :-)

check out bookdepository.co.uk
free delivery and reasonal prices

Thanks, Cyria! I have ordered from them before via the amazon marketplace. I didn't know they have a neatly organized page all for themselves, though!

I would love to subscribe to this but the shipping for the base game alone is $67+ to Germany.

Is there any ETA of the game here or at least somewhere in Europe?

The Base Set is a big box, a bit larger than 14"x14", and we expect it to weigh more than 6 pounds. Being mostly cards, it also doesn't qualify for Bound Printed Matter rates, so shipping is not going to be cheap, and international shipping is going to be particularly hefty (it can only go International Priority).

If you're thinking of subscribing, it may make sense to buy the Base Set locally, and then subscribe for the Adventure Decks, which are small double-deck sets that weigh less than a pound, and cost a whole lot less to ship (especially if you combine them with other subscription items).

The Base Set is scheduled for release in August.

The Base Set is a big box, a bit larger than 14"x14", and we expect it to weigh more than 6 pounds. Being mostly cards, it also doesn't qualify for Bound Printed Matter rates, so shipping is not going to be cheap, and international shipping is going to be particularly hefty (it can only go International Priority).

If you're thinking of subscribing, it may make sense to buy the Base Set locally, and then subscribe for the Adventure Decks, which are small double-deck sets that weigh less than a pound, and cost a whole lot less to ship (especially if you combine them with other subscription items).

The Base Set is scheduled for release in August.

We received a better materials sample from the printer, and it looks like the Base Set will be closer to 4 pounds than 6. It's still going to be expensive to ship, but not quite as bad as we thought yesterday.

Thank you too, Vic! I know that you have posted this information in several threads now and must be a little tired of repeating yourself, but it's much appreciated that you would answer here as well.

hogarth wrote:

This is probably unanswerable due to an NDF, but were there any people or groups in the playtest who just didn't care for the game at all?

The playtesters are not under NDA, and may talk freely about their experiences.

There were a couple groups that didn't care for the game, as well as a couple of individual players who were playing in groups where most others did like the game. It's obviously inaccurate to paint them all with a single brush, but for the sake of generalization, I'd say that most of those people had expectations for the game that didn't mesh with our goals. For example, there were a couple people who essentially said "This won't replace the Pathfinder RPG for me, so why bother?" (Replacing the Pathfinder RPG is *not* a goal for this project!)

I'm reasonably sure I've come across threads where it's been mooted that part of the reason TSR went out of business is that they effectively ended up by competing themselves into bankruptcy. Now this being the internet, such views of how TSR went down may be simplistic at best, or wildly inaccurate at worst, but I'm concerned if some playtesters already see this game as being Paizo essentially competing with itself. (Whether or not it's an actual goal of Paizo to 'replace' Pathfinder RPG with this, apparently in some quarters the game has created a potentially worrying perception that that's what it's doing and designed to do.)

I'm concerned if some playtesters already see this game as being Paizo essentially competing with itself. (Whether or not it's an actual goal of Paizo to 'replace' Pathfinder RPG with this, apparently in some quarters the game has created a potentially worrying perception that that's what it's doing and designed to do.)

As a playtester, I think I can say this card-based game has as much chance of replacing Pathfinder, or competing it out of existence, as Steve Jackson's Munchkin would.

Munchkin is enormously popular, and due to its parody nature it necessarily contains RPG-esque elements, but I can't imagine anyone, regardless of preferred play style, dropping a tabletop RPG entirely in favor of a card game. Much too "Apples to Apples" -- er, apples and oranges; either game is much too dissimilar to ever replace the other for a statistically significant number of people.

Now, on other threads, I have complained about Paizo constantly broadening its product base, creating increasing numbers of product lines to support -- seriously, it's not enough to keep pushing forward, you have to increase the number of fronts you're fighting on at the same time? -- and consequently less time to work on things like FAQ clarifications for core RPG items. But to me that's a totally separate issue; I never worried that any of the new product types was going to kill the AP or RPG Core Rules lines.

Is there any posted video of the game being played? I am not prepared to plop down $60 on a card game I have never seen played. The FLGS has said they don't plan on having a demo copy available.