From the Raging Heart of a Swirling Sandstorm Comes... the Mummy's Mask Preview

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

I have said in other blogs that each Pathfinder Adventure Card Game set takes on the personality of one of Lone Shark's designers. With its sun-parched sense of derring-do among the pyramids, the Mummy's Mask Base Set coalesced around Liz Spain's pith-helmeted madness. For today's preview, Liz has been presented with the challenge of writing this preview in the style of a desert-blown romance novel—a challenged that was embraced. Enjoy!
     —Mike Selinker, Adventure Card Game Lead Designer

Osirion! Land of ten thousand years of love and loss! What mysteries will you unveil under the light of the burning orb? Reveal to your fair traveler that which beats beneath a cover of blistering sand!

The wind howled in protest as the traveler strode out alone into the storm, heeding only the call of her own desires. The dust threatened to steal her breath, but she grasped at the cowl of her cape to protect her face.


The desert can swallow you whole.

Designed to withstand the dangers of exposure in the desert, the dense weave of the sensuously smooth cloth danced across her skin. The wind breathed her name, a name born of wind itself: Simoun.


Masters of elements—air, fire, and steel.

The weight of her old armor gone, she felt more free despite the danger that lay in wait. Here in Osirion, trappings of metal and leather were not what they seemed. Though her precious vestments would do little against steel, they were a comfort beneath the elemental electricity that danced above.


In Mummy's Mask, armors and weapons don't do what you expect anymore.

In this place of cultures more ancient than humanity, Osirion has not lost its teeth with age. Here, Pathfinders are survivors who know the secrets of the elements. To the rhythm of her drumming heartbeat, Simoun prayed the lords of lightning would spare her another night.


In the desert, staying alive is challenging. You'll need resources.

The dry storm raged on, cracking the dark sky with brilliant flashes of lightning, illuminating the rolling dunes. The caravan was not far away. Simoun hoped to find succor from friends there, or at least enemies of enemies, but until then she took cover in the night.


You never know who you'll meet in the desert, or what they serve.

She set her jaw, determined to find her prey first, somehow, amid the blinding dust. Her boots slid swiftly over the shifting dunes, as shapes of dead things emerged and were buried just as quickly by waves of sand.


Barriers do strange things in this set.

Tomorrow, life would move on, driven by the sound of footfalls proceeding ever westward, punctuated by the sighs of discontented camels. But tonight, she was the huntress. She heard his call carried on the wind. Despite the ravages of the poisons and hungers within her veins, she pressed on.


These scourges will plague you till the end of days.

And then, she froze. A bolt of blue electricity revealed him, hovering over her, huge and powerful, his wrappings in tatters. They would dance, blade and bone, her will against his. Steel and song swirled amid sand in the storm. The air was his domain, but so was it hers. She would tear him apart, even if it took her all night.


With the Trigger trait and monsters doling out scourges, it's hot times in the desert.

As the dawn light gilded the calming sky, she threw off her dust-caked cape to approach the caravan. An Aspis Consortium trader was there, awaiting successful adventurers seeking to exchange goods unearthed from the ruins. Busily coaxing the camels to wakefulness, the merchant noticed her wicked smile.

"Interesting night?" Falsin Deek grinned.

"I wouldn't have it any other way." The young Djinn coyly asked, "Trade for dragon teeth?"

His grin widened to reach both ears.


When you return from adventures, you can now trade your goods at the markets.

As they concluded their dealings, the rest of the caravan grumbled to its feet. With the sun at their back, they marched toward the River Sphinx over sands that held ten thousand years of history. A new adventure awaited them all.

Liz Spain
Adventure Card Game Designer

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Tags: Mummy's Mask Pathfinder Adventure Card Game
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You have to destroy them! Yes, it feels utterly wrong, but it's all part of the game. I genuinely think you lose something if you don't do it.

On a related note, the USPS website tells me my copy of SeaFall left Heathrow this morning en route for delivery :D


Pandemic Legacy is OK. We had fun playing it, but...

Pandemic Legacy (Season 1) Spoilers:
...underneath it's still Pandemic, and I already own a copy of that. Pandemic is a decent game, but there's other coop games I like better.

More importantly, it's no RPG campaign. I think it gets high marks from board game folks who aren't also RPG players because they're not used to games where your actions change the game/affect the story. While I liked playing it, I'm glad I didn't pay for it.

(It doesn't help that I guessed most of the storyline as we went, zombies and betrayal and all. :(

Oh, and one other thing:

cartmanbeck wrote:
One thing I do like about Pandemic Legacy is that, at the end of the season, you have a game board that you can play "Standard" Pandemic on as many times as you like, but with some cool twists/changes to the rules.

You must have played differently than we did; our post-storyline Pandemic Legacy (Season 1) set is no longer useful as a Pandemic set. (This is different from Risk Legacy, which was designed to continue to be played with your modifications.)

Grand Lodge

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I gleefully ripped up and wrote on everything in Pandemic Legacy. It was so freeing.


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

I'm not sure I'd want to spend money on a game I can only play once. I assume it's not any more inexpensive becuase of that.

On the other hand I don't know the Pandemic game this seems to be based on.

Grand Lodge

You actually get a minimum of 12 plays and up to 24 plays to beat the campaign. And it's still useable afterwards, just in a very personalized and altered state.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

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cartmanbeck wrote:
It's a "Legacy" style game, where you make irreversible changes to gameplay as you play through the "season". You put stickers on the game board, you put stickers on cards and in the rulebook, all of which update the gameplay based on choices you've made or things you succeeded or failed at.

When Lone Shark brought us Saints (the precursor to PACG), character feats were tracked by putting stickers on a pack that housed your deck.

Lone Shark Games

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Legacy, before it was a thing.

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

Vic Wertz wrote:
cartmanbeck wrote:
It's a "Legacy" style game, where you make irreversible changes to gameplay as you play through the "season". You put stickers on the game board, you put stickers on cards and in the rulebook, all of which update the gameplay based on choices you've made or things you succeeded or failed at.
When Lone Shark brought us Saints (the precursor to PACG), character feats were tracked by putting stickers on a pack that housed your deck.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first time we've been told the title of the original game they brought to you. "Saints", eh? Very interesting. I'm curious how much of "Saints" ended up in Apocryphya. :)


Saints has been mentioned before. I know I've also heard it mentioned in interviews, but not sure how far back.


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cartmanbeck wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first time we've been told the title of the original game they brought to you. "Saints", eh?

Nah, it lies about in blog posts and occasional comments. I even seem to recall seeing a prototype logo, but I might've just dreamed it up...

EDIT: Goshdarnit, Hawk! How many feats did you put in that Stealth: Dexterity anyway?

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

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Longshot11 wrote:
cartmanbeck wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first time we've been told the title of the original game they brought to you. "Saints", eh?

Nah, it lies about in blog posts and occasional comments. I even seem to recall seeing a prototype logo, but I might've just dreamed it up...

EDIT: Goshdarnit, Hawk! How many feats did you put in that Stealth: Dexterity anyway?

It's not even Stealth: Dexterity... it's Stealth: Intelligence and Knowledge: Intelligence synergizing in a single power that I would say is written something like this:

-When a question is asked about the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, recharge a card to use your Knowledge skill to post the correct reply; ([X] you may also add your Stealth skill + 1d8 with the Magic and Genius traits to the check, and the reply is immediately posted with a date and time of -1d12 minutes from the current time.)


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Once he gets his role card, it suffices to reveal instead of recharge.

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

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Doppelschwert wrote:
Once he gets his role card, it suffices to reveal instead of recharge.

Totally gonna have to make a Hawkmoon character card and role card now....

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Longshot11 wrote:
cartmanbeck wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first time we've been told the title of the original game they brought to you. "Saints", eh?
Nah, it lies about in blog posts and occasional comments. I even seem to recall seeing a prototype logo, but I might've just dreamed it up...

Not a dream.


Vic Wertz wrote:
Vic Wertz wrote:
You shouldn’t know where your token card is while you are shuffling.
In case you're wondering about the presence of that weird statement, since the token card doesn't have a standard back, you could technically comply with the instruction "shuffle it into the deck" and just continue shuffling until your token was on top again. So we added this "no peeking" rule. (As Mike would say, "this is why we can't have nice things.")

By the way, without a standard back you often can see where the token is within a location deck. You can always see it when it is on top of course, but it is also awfully difficult to keep the deck 100% straight when you take cards from the top of the deck. So after the first explore or examine you often can see where the token is inside the deck (yes, we are clumsy).

Or maybe we are in fact supposed to know where the token is and we don't have to try and keep the location deck 100% strait?


I don't think that is a big deal. As long as you aren't influencing your shuffle, I don't think it will be to big a problem to know where it is or not.

Shadow Lodge

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Maps, Rulebook Subscriber

If you sleeve your deck, of course, that's a lot less of an issue.

It's not a complete solution; a lot of sleeves (such as the yellow or orange UltraPro Matte sleeves we're using) aren't totally opaque, so you can make out the design on the card back through the sleeve.

I've considered making a set of proxy token cards (or, pragmatically, simply sleeving some other PACG card with a paper insert giving the character name; I've got a whole stack of "Temptation of Big Die" promo cards)

Silver Crusade

JohnF wrote:

If you sleeve your deck, of course, that's a lot less of an issue.

It's not a complete solution; a lot of sleeves (such as the yellow or orange UltraPro Matte sleeves we're using) aren't totally opaque, so you can make out the design on the card back through the sleeve.

I've considered making a set of proxy token cards (or, pragmatically, simply sleeving some other PACG card with a paper insert giving the character name; I've got a whole stack of "Temptation of Big Die" promo cards)

We did something similar to this when using my friends unsleeved box. Just picked a card from the class deck to represent the character.


Yes, certainly proxies or non-transparent sleeves will help to keep the info hidden but they can seriously affect your decisions in the game.

Suppose you are lost in a location with lots of banes (like it was in our case). If you see that your token is on the top (or near the top if you are Alahazra or Estra), you don't really need your friends to help you out, but if you have no idea where your token is in the location, you would probably need to call your friends to help you, otherwise you can be stuck indefinitely.

Grand Lodge

That is, I believe, EXACTLY the point. You're not supposed to have that information when you make those sorts of decisions.


I really don't see what the problem is - it was LONE SHARK who told you to shuffle your *character token* in the location deck, and I think we can probably agree that Lone Shark folks *know* what a Token looks like (i.e. - it doesn't have a default back). Now, if YOU want to play it "Hardcore" and proxy, or use a sleeve - hey, it's your game and no one's gonna come kicking down your door and busting you, but by RAW, there's *nothing* that indicates you're not supposed to see where your token is (If anything - by argument of the contrary, the specific instruction in the Rulebook "you shouldn't know where your Token is while you shuffle" indicates that your Token should indeed be *visible*, once it's shuffled in).

Shadow Lodge

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Maps, Rulebook Subscriber

I disagree. If your token isn't meant to be locatable while you shuffle, that includes not being locatable at the very end of the shuffle as well.

Lone Shark Games

If you don't sleeve the token, you could tell when to stop shuffling by watching the token - so you are instructed not to shuffle in a way that you can do so. After you stop shuffling, you can look at the deck like normal.

Both methods (sleeving tokens and not sleeving them) work just fine. We've tested with both. Play whatever way makes you happier.

Lone Shark Games

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Keith said that in a friendlier but spongier way than I would have.

You are always allowed to know where your token is in the deck.
You can fan your cards in your location whenever you want, as long as you don't flip them over.
You are not allowed to shuffle the cards in a way that influences where your token is.


The way we do it is to first shuffle (if you play PACG you love shuffling cards) the deck without the token, then roll a die (if you play PACG you just love rolling dice) to determine the position where to put the token in the location deck. That way position is both known and random (just like when told to do something in a random location).


Mike Selinker wrote:

Keith said that in a friendlier but spongier way than I would have.

You are always allowed to know where your token is in the deck.
You can fan your cards in your location whenever you want, as long as you don't flip them over.
You are not allowed to shuffle the cards in a way that influences where your token is.

Thanks a lot, Mike, that's exactly the info I was looking for!

Lone Shark Games

FYI, we sleeve our playtest token cards in colored sleeves to match our character decks. So it's very obvious to us where our tokens are.

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