Season of the Shackles: The Halfwayish Point

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

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.

Beware, me hearties—story spoilers for Adventure #1 of Season of the Shackles lurk below.

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

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Tags: Adventure Card Guild Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Season of the Shackles Skull & Shackles

Free scenario! Awesome. That is some mighty fine lemonade.


Awesome!

While the goldahkos did not actually kill us, we sure thought this scenario was tough! Now we get to pat ourselves on the back for accidentally playing in nightmare mode...


Well, that's rather nice of you! I just finished my solo-Damiel home play run through Adventure 3 and didn't plan on starting Adventure 4 for a while anyway. Need to play catch-up with my OP players over the holiday, so this all works out fine.

Although I'm personally not worried about this as a subscriber, I am a little worried for retail buyers actually getting the correction pack. Based on what I've seen with promos not making it to my local store from their distributor and hearing similar stories on the forums, I'm not sure if I'd expect much better with this. I'd recommend asking your local store to inquire about the pack (and the retail promos they should be getting) when they make their Adventure Deck 5 order.

Also, if anyone might not be getting Deck 5 for a while and buys their cards via other online retailers or large chains like Hastings where there isn't as intimate of a relationship with between customer and owner, would it be possible for them to request the pack through customer service?


I recall finding a correction pack in one of the 2nd printings of Rise of the Runelords, so hopefully there's a chance this could be included inside the retail packages of AP5 (or AP6 if 5's already shipping).


Thanks for finding and fixing a problem we didn't even realize we had yet, Paizo! :) Merry Christmas!!


Where's the like button on the actual blog post? :)

Jemma seems pink, like Merisiel's skin color pink. Also seems to have elements of tiger, because of the scars.

Grand Lodge 4/5 *

I buy my PFACG stuff on Amazon.com. Per Tanis's comment about sending these to distributors does this mean my pre-order for Deck 4 will come with the extra correction deck? Or will Amazon put a price on it?


Rene Ayala wrote:
I buy my PFACG stuff on Amazon.com. Per Tanis's comment about sending these to distributors does this mean my pre-order for Deck 4 will come with the extra correction deck? Or will Amazon put a price on it?

If the process works similar to the correction issued for Rise of the Runelords, you'll find the revised cards in the retail packs for AP5 or AP6, and future reprints of AP4 will address the oversight.


Oh boy. I get my stuff from amazon.de (I live in the Netherlands). Very late (we just got AP3 two days ago) and never ever a promo card (even though I pre-ordered the entire series). So, I'm worried I'll never see the correction deck. I hope there will be other ways for lgitimate buyers to get the deck free of charge.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

2 people marked this as a favorite.

I can give everybody an update... the make-good packs should be arriving any day now.

If you purchased your deck 4 from paizo.com, and you have a subscription shipment coming in February (for *any* line, not just the PACG), we'll be putting your pack into that sub shipment.

If you purchased your deck 4 from paizo.com and you do not have a February subscription shipment, we will send your pack out separately at around the same time.

We will also be sending tons of these packs through our regular distribution chain along with our February releases, which means US retailers should have them around February 25, and international retailers shortly thereafter. If you purchased your deck 4 from a retailer, we would prefer you contact that retailer and make sure they procure one for you.

If your retailer absolutely can't find a way to help you, our customer service department will.

Also, once we get them, we will be inserting them into our remaining stock of deck 4; once we've done that, it means that when we fulfill either paizo.com or distributor orders for that deck, the pack will already be included in the box.

By the way, none of the cards in this pack have any value in the game if you don't own Skull & Shackles Set 4, as they all rely on other cards in that deck to function. There's also no game value in having more than 1 pack for each copy of deck 4.


Thanks for the update Vic, sounds like excellent service to me. Very impressed.


If I started my subscription with deck 5, will I receive one or should I talk to the retailer where I bought deck 4?

Sovereign Court

They were pushed back to Adventure 6. If you start, you'll get it with February's delivery, as well anyone else.


Andrew L Klein wrote:
They were pushed back to Adventure 6. If you start, you'll get it with February's delivery, as well anyone else.

This post from Vic indicates that only people who purchased deck 4 from Paizo will get the make-up pack from Paizo.

Although, he also says if you can't get the pack from the retailer you purchased deck 4 from, contact Customer Service.

Sovereign Court

You are correct elcoder. I need to stop helping at 1AM.


So, what would happen if you bought The Island of Empty Eyes nowadays? Would it still be in need of the correction pack, or is there a newer version of the deck with the correct number of cards?

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

We never reprinted the deck, but if you buy it from paizo.com, you should get the correction pack with it.

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