The inaugural season of the Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild is underway, and players across the globe are testing their mettle against not-so-lone sharks and a very frisky dragon turtle. Curious about the story so far? You’ve come to the right place!
Before I get to that, though, you should be aware that weekly scenario downloads will resume in January, as the goblins in the Paizo workshop take a much-needed holiday.
Adventure 1 begins with normal, friendly, totally not-a-pirate you, innocently hiring passage on a Shackles ship for what you thought was a, well, perhaps not a three-hour tour, but a nice safe voyage from island to island. The ship’s navigator, one Jemma Redclaw, had other plans.
She seemed friendly. No hint of dastard to be seen.
Your first night aboard, as you slept the sleep of the naive, Redclaw and her hand-picked band of sailors mutinied. You woke up on a pirate ship as esteemed guests. Guests who were forced to participate in a seemingly endless series of near-fatal encounters with sharks, a brine dragon, a disgusting undead former captain, sharks, every angry animal on this side of the world, a lady who seemed to be one-third octopus, one-third seacat, and one-third humanoid. You’ll be having nightmares about that last one for a while.
After dispensing with Captain Redclaw and her scurrilous band, you realized that a pirate’s life can be a good one. You’ve got your own ship, your own crew (who seem to understand the laws of personal hygiene in a way that Redclaw’s mates, unfortunately, did not), and your eye on the horizon.
Next week, we’ll talk about Love Plots and the naming of scenarios.
Before we go, though, a note from Vic Wertz about Skull & Shackles Adventure Deck 4:
Due to a printer error, adventure deck 4 of Skull & Shackles, Island of Empty Eyes, included 6 copies of the henchman Gholdako and 1 copy of the henchman Ghol-Gan Obelisk; it should have had 6 Ghol-Gan Obelisks and 1 Gholdako. And due to our own error, it has 1 fewer Blink Spider than you’ll need when you have 6 players.
We’re going to solve this problem by making a pack of cards that includes 5 Ghol-Gan Obelisks, 1 Blink Spider, and—in the interest of turning lemons into lemonade—The Land of the Blind, a brand-new scenario that makes use of those extra Gholdako cards. We’ll be providing that for free to customers who purchased Island of Empty Eyes from paizo.com, and we’ll also be sending copies through our distributors as well. With luck, we’ll have them in time to send them out along with January’s release of Adventure Deck 5, The Price of Infamy.
In the meantime, when you play the scenario "Home Sweet Home," we suggest proxying with Buccaneers (that is, setting the Ghol-Gan Obelisk to the side, adding Buccaneers to the location decks instead, and referring to the Obelisk whenever you find a Buccaneer).
Tanis O'Connor
Adventure Card Game Designer