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Thank you for the new Community Use Download packages. I couldn't find Simoun, Ahmotep, Drelm, and Channa Ti in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Character download even though they are featured heroes in the Mummy's Mask set. I wouldn't expect to find these heroes in the iconics download because they aren't iconic characters.

Currently there's a blog post image for Drelm, but the other characters I mentioned aren't available under the Community Use Policy.

The heroes still didn't make it into the 12/11/2017 update. I'll post a message in the web development forum.

Skulls & Shackles especially since it's been promised to customers for a while. If the plans have changed and errata cards aren't happening anymore, customers should be informed. Nothing official was ever said about Mummy's Mask to my knowledge, so I don't ask about those cards.

Based on what I can remember from past posts, October - December is the time of year when Vic Wertz might have time to work on the revised cards. Any new developments for Skull & Shackles or Wrath of the Righteous? Have updated cards through DriveThruRPG been cancelled?

BGG user Voytaz7 created a Polish version of the guide; Runelords now has translations for German, Polish, and Japanese. Voytaz told me he has plans to translate the other guides as well.

As always, you can find all the Adventure Guides in the Community Use Registry.

A class deck based on the Pathfinder Tales characters is a neat idea. Tales Readers who play PACG gain extra insight into the boons accompanying their hero along with a deeper understanding of their hero's backstory and personality. On the flip side, the buy-in for PACG players who haven't read the novels and want to learn more is relatively low, a library check-out or a $10 book purchase.

You'll find all the answers you seek about Drelm in the follow-up novel "Stalking the Beast." I used to it to write Drelm's biography for the PACG Hero Guide (some players wanted the backstory for their characters and collecting the blog posts was allowed under the Community Use Policy.)

I also like your Frogatar. It stands out compared to some of the other Paizo staffers who picked people to represent themselves online; although admittedly, I can't look at pictures of Abadar without thinking "Why is Vic Wertz in that illustration" so maybe that was the point. :)

I'd like to pay my respects as well, James. Your novel "Death's Heretic" was my first introduction to Golarian and the Pathfinder setting; your portrayal of Salim and the Rahadoumi really got my attention. The idea of a whole society purposefully rejecting gods in a world where miracles happen every day was a interesting idea for a high-fantasy setting. It also helped that Death's Heretic had an interesting mystery with some good plot twists.

Thanks Doppelschwert! I was very impressed when members of the community translated the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Guides into German and Japanese and posted them online for others to read. There's also been some work done for Skull & Shackles.

I've been playing through the Season of the Runelords and I think the amount of text is reasonable. I understand why reading extra text doesn't work for PACG in large settings like gaming conventions - there's a lot of noise, limited time, and a player base that's constantly changing. It also happens to be the setting that most game designers and publishers interact with their customers face-to-face, so those experiences are going to salient during product development.

I already brought up the artwork issue, but let me rephrase it. There's going to be additional artwork made for the card game regardless of what happens in the RPG Adventure Path. It happened for Rise of the Runelords which already had an expanded hardcover edition:

http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5ler0?Return-to-the-Runelords

So does it really matter if the card game artwork is made first and then reused in the Adventure Path vs the current model of leveraging the Adventure Path artwork for the card game?

I think the bigger issue is the licensing fees or payments to Lone Shark to make the game. A brand new story would require a bigger payment to Loneshark (it's more work) or a reduced licensing fee (the Pathfinder name has less value to Loneshark), which might not make good business sense for the card game.

As far as story goes, I've had the exact opposite experience with PACG. It won't hit the table at all without some kind of story, because then the complaint goes along the line of "Why not play Dominion or Magic:The Gathering/Epic" etc.

There seems to be two camps of customers - those who want more story and those that don't, and the reasonable business compromise (time, money) is a small amount of story that could be skipped/ignored by customers who don't want it.

Some of the demand for more story is a side-effect for customer expectations. By naming it after a released product, if the story is lacking people feel like they missed out on something. Anybody remember the old Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings film from 1978? I remember the complaints that the story wasn't complete because the film ended with the Battle of Helm's Deep and Ring wasn't destroyed at the end. It's not an unreasonable demand from film goers because it was called "Lord of the Rings" and not "Fellowship of the Ring and the Two Towers."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_(1978_film)

One way to change expectations - assuming that it's a problem worth addressing - would be to do something new and get rid of the baggage of expectations for story length and detail.

An actual example of what I'm talking about came out in 1989 - Forgotten Realms novel Azure Bonds and it's follow-up module and CRPG:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Bonds

Just to add a different wrinkle to the discussion, I notice a lot of the story demand comes from the card game being based on existing Adventure Paths. PACG's a mature product at this point. How much value is gained from using the existing product names? Is a large core of customers devoted to nostalgia (this thread says otherwise)? Would the story demands from customers be less if it was something new? Suddenly an amount of text similar to the Adventure Guild scenarios becomes a benefit to PACG instead of a sore point because it's "not enough."

I understand the appeal of using the existing products. There's an established story line to work with and there are existing art assets to leverage. If product re-use is the biggest driver, there's nothing saying the card game couldn't be based on in-development story lines(where there's already a product outline) and the Adventure Path provides the full details later. Perhaps the card game might even serve as a prequel (Rogue One vs. Episode IV) or an alternate take on events in the Adventure Path (let's take a break from Cmdr Shepard to see what's going on in the Andromeda galaxy).

Just a thought, people bring up MORE STORY in the PACG debate and there are business reasons for not writing a 40-60 page short story for each release, so maybe there's a way to do LESS STORY; but keep customers happy.

More story or less story, I'm glad to read most of the people commenting on this thread can appreciate the other side's viewpoint.

It's really great that Paizo has a Community Use Policy that allowed the guides to exist in the first place, that way fans could legally create the stories they wanted to see and share them with the PACG community.

By that logic, the PACG mobile app and the upcoming Kingmaker PC game shouldn't exist either because "others play more" and they already know the story.

I worked on the guides, and it's not just Jan Englund asking for more story. Paizo and Lone Shark wouldn't invest the time and money if it was just a few people asking for it.

Customers needs aren't identical, nor do they buy everything a company offers.

Thanks for the update. I was buying the Iconic Hero sets mostly for the add-in cards; I figured it would help players feel more attached to their characters (a custom card that belongs to the hero and is featured in the portrait.)

This change will save me some money in the long run, as character standees would work just as well for the card game and Reaper Miniatures usually has the iconics available as miniatures a lot sooner (I know how to paint miniatures.) As an added bonus, Reaper Miniatures has always done a swell job, which I can't say for WizKids after their showing with the Mage Knight boardgame plus its various expansions.

I'm still holding out for those Skull & Shackles Errata cards. I've got a reminder set to ask about them again in November. :)

Will some of the "construction" include the outstanding errata for class decks and base sets? Skull & Shackles and some of the early class decks are getting long-in-the-tooth.

This is the easiest way to find officially sanctioned artwork, including artist attributions:

http://www.pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Category:Artwork_by_artist

Trust me, I've looked at *every* blog post on Paizo.com using the Older entries link while working on the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Guide, and PathfinderWiki's artist page is much easier.

The only quibble I've found is that on very rare occasions the wiki includes images that only appeared on the Pathfinder Society page (which doesn't have blog in the URL path) and they're marked "Community Use", but this is only an outlier for a few images out of the thousands they link too. My suggestion for avoiding any potential CUP problem is to check out the attribution link to the original Paizo.com web page and only download the image from Paizo.com if the link complies with the policy (eg. a blog post or an official product cover from the list).

This is the easiest way to find officially sanctioned artwork, including artist attributions:

http://www.pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Category:Artwork_by_artist

Trust me, I've looked at *every* blog post on Paizo.com using the Older entries link while working on the Rise of the Runelords guide, and PathfinderWiki's artist page is much easier.

The only quibble I've found is that on very rare occasions the wiki includes images that only appeared on the Pathfinder Society page (which doesn't have blog in the URL path) and they're marked "Community Use", but this only an outlier for about 5 images of the thousands they link too. My suggestion for avoiding any potential CUP problem is to check out the attribution link to the original Paizo.com web page and only download the image from Paizo.com if the link complies with the policy (eg. a blog post or an official product cover from the list).

My bet is that if they were to rebuild PACG today, they would have made a "Generic Henchman" card (i. e. proxy), avoiding to create multiple copies of generic henchmen in each 110 cards pack.

This is an interesting idea. It might work even better with obstacles, monsters, and boons. Have cards called "Obstacle", "Monster", "Weapons", "Spell", etc. for building decks, and then the player draws a card from the box. It'd save a lot of time when building location decks and allow Paizo to abstract some of the specific encounters for a set, possibly aiding in game designs requiring the addition or removal of cards like the class decks (imagine never having to swap out cards at the end of scenarios ever again...)

Not to be confused with Drivethru "errata decks" which from where I stand are must buy because no one wants to check the FAQ after each card is played.

Totally. For a game with a golden rule of "cards do what they say / don't do what they don't say", this is a must.

I provided the anecdote of my set progression earlier in case their was a feeling back at Paizo HQ that "nobody needed the errata cards because they're done playing."

I am surprised there have been no further sets of errata cards advertised on drivethru (unless I missed something?!).

No Beagle, you're not missing anything. They're not done yet. Vic and Lone Shark have been busy with other projects and there's some tight coupling between the base sets and class decks that need to be resolved before the cards are finalized.

Hopefully we'll get a wrap-up on the outstanding errata decks for Skull & Shackles, Wrath of the Righteous, and the Class Decks - or at the very least - an official cancellation notice of the projects.

I've been busy enough that I haven't played the S&S and WOTR APs yet, so updated cards have a lot of value for me.

Also: Paizo says:

-- they want to make PACG more accessible
-- they want to include more story
-- they want to reduce the price.

Thanks for the update ElCoderDude!

I'm in favor of including more story. The adventure paths are rich in story, but we diehard players have looked to Autoduelist & friends to supply story for the card game.

Me too. Creating the guides is a lot of work, plus some extra purchases of official Paizo material, so I'd be fine with retiring in favor of official story content... or not if the new edition of PACG is lacking and players want more guides.

I suspect the amount of story content will be similar to what's being done with Apocrypha or the Adventure Card Guild scenarios. If I get around to re-working Wrath of the Righteous, I'll have to try my hand at a "short" version to that mimics the Organized Play scenario length too to see how it does.

As far as reducing the price goes, I'd imagine some sort of base set with fixed cards that are used across multiple product releases, similar to FFG's Living Card format. Do we really need Bunyip cards with different Base set logos for Rise of the Runelords and Skull & Shackles? No we don't. The offset of course is a bit more complexity: "Exclude the following Monsters from when constructing Mummy's Mask location decks: Bunyips, Giant Eels...."

I came up with another suggestion for the minor errors in the rulebook thread. Perhaps locking down the gameplay examples with a picture of the card in question would cut down on the number of rewrite-then-proofread problems required for each new base set. For example, It's much less important that the displayed Mattock comes from Rise of the Runelords in the Mummy's Mask rulebook than the fact that the written gameplay example matches what's on the card. Just lock it down by showing the Mattock and the Character card (with corresponding powers that alter the check). At least do this for the sections of the rulebook that aren't the play-by-play example at the back of the book, that way you never need to change them once they're proofread.

Ugh... Another suggestion might be "locking down" the layout by including a picture of the card referenced in the example. That way, you wouldn't have to care about which cards are in which sets. You would only have to edit the rulebook once because most of the examples would just work at that point.

Again though, this depends on how important it is to avoid errors and proofreading & writing investments for each box set.

I love the horse shot too. It would work well when paired with Craig J. Spearing's Dust Digger for a Community Use project.

That Ringleader Bard would be a fun Community Use illustration for the section in Skull & Shackles where the players clear out the Chelish opera house for Arronax Endymion.

Ugh. I thought as much.

It sounds like the play-by-play examples could be a real maintenance headache for the rulebook. With a living document used across sets, you want to touch established sections as little as possible.

Malcolm Reynolds was spot-on with the observation that familiarity blinds you to some problems.

The Quality Assurance suggestions I can immediately think of is adding a "review play-by-play example" to the final proofreading checklist, and perhaps, tracking the cards and characters referenced in the rulebook examples so a review is triggered when those cards are altered. For example, in a bug tracking database you might have a boolean for "rulebook example". When it's set to true, the bug resolver has indicate in the notes whether a rulebook update is required as part of the solution - if the example needs updating, then a new bug should be opened up against the writer/editor responsible for the rulebook.

Of course, these suggestions all depend upon how important it is to avoid these kinds of problems in the grand scheme of things. The errors potential impact might be too low to make the extra work worthwhile.

Out of print? I'm pretty sure every set and deck is still for sale on paizo.com, as well as elsewhere.

Organized Play, as I understand it, is available globally if I'm to believe some of the job titles in the product credits. Can you say this in all the territories the Adventure Card game is sold in? I've seen incomplete APs for sale in my home state of Washington in the U.S.A., something that wouldn't seem possible given Paizo is located in Washington.

Organized play is a program designed to help retailers too. Customers buying the product from somebody else - especially online - isn't helping the retailer hosting the event.

I could imagine something like a goblin themed mini season on AD3 and AD4 that takes place in SnS, for example. You could use that as continuation of the RotR goblin season or to exchange the middle part of SotS. Something like that could work, I think.

This sounds a bit more reasonable. I thought you were planning something like "let's use a villain from Wrath of the Righteous, Henchmen from Skull & Shackles, and Obstacles & Monsters from Rise of the Runelords" (I've seen suggestions for mixed scenarios like this on BGG.) You can imagine the logistical problems this would cause in a retail setting.

I suppose another options would be to provide the missing cards at the back of the digital file similar to what's already being done with the Organized Play scenarios. Rather than designing a new villain or henchman, Paizo could just add the necessary cards from previous sets.

Mixing sets would violate the Mike Selinker's Afghanistan rule, and cross-set Organized Play scenarios would pose some logistical challenges for stores. Part of the goal for the Organized Play program is to encourage customer interest and purchase of recently released Paizo products. If Paizo is trying to help stores push old inventory, then they've already done something wrong by not creating products customers wanted in the first place. If you prefer the glass is half-full explanation, what if customers loved the cross-set scenarios; but where then told "Sorry, I can't order that base set for you because it was three product cycles ago and it's out of print." Tantalizing customers with products they can't buy isn't good for retailer's either.

The idea of a mini-season for the villain decks sounds plausible to me and would be a good way to capitalize on the gimmick value of the decks. Good for you Doppelschwert that you're creating something new for the community. It's great to see people roll up their sleeves and make the things they want to see.

Great finds Malcolm! I agree that it's important to get play-by-play examples correct for new, first-time customers. It also saves on support costs for company staff having to answer questions in forums and create, edit, and post revised PDF files.

I think you've also illustrated that since the game is built around "exceptions to the general rule", it's important to review every card and character sheet when writing the play-by-play examples, or at the very least, error checking by stepping through the completed example with every card to see if it still works as written.

There is the small possibility that the cards and character sheets were altered between the time the play-by-play example was written vs. submitting final versions of the cards to the printer. Of course, the counter-argument from the customer perspective is that this is the fourth release in the Adventure Card game line, so the play-by-play examples should be written correctly for a well-understood game system - it's a little harder to expect this level of performance with specific card & rule terminology because of cut-n-paste errors from outdated files, different thoughts about what specific phrases mean to each customer, and the individual differences between each designer (Mike phrases the concept this way, but Liz phrases it that way....)

Thank you for all the rules question answers in the BGG and Paizo forums. I learn something by reading your replies (sadly, I've spent more time writing guides than playing the games).

I wasn't planning on writing the guide myself, but the blog posts about Adventure Deck's 4 & 5 caught my interest from a story telling perspective. Then it was an epic three-week slog over my vacation to write the guide while doing Thanksgiving holiday planning.

I'll need to go back at some point and axe the cohort banishment section, which didn't work, and clarify some of the narrative, mostly because I'd like the project to be updated before all the alternate language editions of Wrath of the Righteous hit retail. I applaude the people creating translations of the guides to make the game more accessible to PACG players around the world.

Did you know there are fan-made story guides that serve as a companion for the card game? They flesh out what's happening on all the scenario cards as you play along. You can find them in the Community Use Registry here on Paizo.com; the files are hosted on BoardgameGeek. There are text-only versions and versions with artwork for each set in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game.

I've been busy improving prior editions of the guides because I've seen translations pop up online as PACG is made available in other languages. I reformatted Skull & Shackles and Rise of the Runelords so the presentation matches later editions of the Adventure Guides. Deck 6 of Skull & Shackles got a significant artwork update. Rise of the Runelords looks better than ever because I snagged almost every piece of Community Use artwork available for Runelords and put it in the guide.

I'll look into reworking Wrath of the Righteous at a later date since some aspects like the cohort banishment section didn't work out as well as I would have liked. It was still a good project for something I did in the equivalent of 3 weeks worth of "crunch time".

I guess we'll have to wait and see what Byron is up to regarding the glossary. You'll notice the new format increased the page length and resulted in more writing, which is also something players complained about. The new format also means a bigger time investment for Byron and myself.

I've been busy improving prior editions of the guides because I've seen translations pop up online as PACG is made available in other languages. I reformatted Skull & Shackles and Rise of the Runelords so the presentation matches later editions of the guides. Deck 6 of Skull & Shackles got a significant artwork update. Rise of the Runelords looks better than ever because I snagged almost every piece of Community Use artwork available for Runelords and put it in the guide. I don't expect Runelords to change any time soon, unless Paizo puts out another retrospective blog post (Runelords 15th Anniversary?) or someone reports an error. I sometimes wish someone would pull out the +2 Red Pen of Correction and go to town on grammar and punctuation because it's not my strong point; but the guides are still pretty high-quality community content.

I'll look into reworking Wrath of the Righteous at a later date since some aspects like the cohort banishment section didn't work out as well as I would have liked. It was still a good project for something I did in the equivalent of 3 weeks worth of "crunch time".

And now the illustrated version is available for download. You can find the link in the Community Use Registry (it's hosted on BoardgameGeek).

There's a grayish "box" around Mavaro's small and large size PNG images. The transparency isn't 100% perfect, so less forgiving displays (like Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with GNOME desktop and stock drivers) easily display the problem for the whole world to see.

Recent CUP artwork releases allowed me to improve the presentation of Adventure Deck 6. You can find links to the guide here on Paizo.com in the Community Use Registry.

Version 1.0 of the text-only PDFs is now live.

There's also the option of making your own standee pawns under the Community Use Policy. You'll want to download the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Characters.

For digital editing, Paint.net is a nice, simple editing program for Microsoft Windows that has a gentle learning curve.

Now that there are DriveThruCards for Season of the Shackles, Season of the Righteous, Season of the Runelords, and Season of the Goblins; would it be possible to get versions of the PDF files minus the Organized Play Score sheets and replicas of the playing cards?

Sure, I could use a PDF Editor to remove those pages myself; but that doesn't mean it's allowed under the EULA. It is a *HUGE* pain to go to a print shop to get the organized play scenarios printed and nicely bound with instructions like this: "Print everything but the last page for the first two files, then print everything but the last 2 pages for the third and fourth files, skip the last page for the fifth file, and then ignore the last 3 pages of the sixth file...." I don't want to print these files myself because it doesn't make sense to kill my expensive ink cartridges when color copies are inexpensive relatively speaking.

Cards ordered. Thank you for getting the Seasons cards in for the Organized Play scenarios.

Draft 4 featuring everything through Adventure Deck 5 is now live!

Some people tell me this is the right way to play, of course, I am biased. :)

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2u43c?Mummys-Mask-Adventure-Guide-is-live

I remember these discussions back in the days of 1st edition AD&D. They tended to be more crucial for divine based classes (clerics, paladins, druids). Maybe some of the more recent Star Wars films/video games would be instructive - or just muddy the waters? Generally speaking, minor bad acts by a jedi didn't turn them into sith immediately; but such behavior was frowned upon by other jedi.

I think it's important to look at how the player deals with the aftermath of their poor choice. An "ends justifies the means" outlook should be reflected in the player's behavior: a pious character might go out of their way to engage in additional good deeds out of shame for their actions and not punishment from some external source, while a compromised character might be more willing to behave poorly in the future.

If the player is unwilling to explore those role-playing aspects, but it's still important to you as a game master, I'd suggest disallowing the action in the first place or withholding experience points gained from the first such incident, and then stepping up the penalty from there for additional violations. Obviously the GM should apply their own judgment: casting Cause Blindness on the priest who cares for homeless orphans so the party could "borrow" a relic is probably worse than casting the same blindness spell on a random encounter monster.

I'm also reminded of this chestnut from Penny Arcade about the Harry Potter Crucio spell:

Mavaro looks like he's wearing a suit of prosciutto, which reminds me of an old Far Side cartoon demonstrating right and wrong hunting attire, and the wrong outfit was made of meat. I think I might have used a different type of dragon (green, blue, etc) to avoid the association to cold cuts; but I think the intent was to illustrate something close to Mavaro's regular outfit.

Hmmm... I think the headline I would have used is "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Fight Them." You can always use it for Beastiary 7. :-)

For those of you following along here on paizo.com, Draft 3 of the guide featuring everything through Adventure Deck 4 went live on Boardgamegeek.

Thank you very much.

My last ditch effort with all the artwork is hunting for signatures or brands within the piece that I try to match against existing known artists. Usually this translates into "go look up the most prolific Paizo artists based on initials and see if it matches any of their work."

Those first two images (pyramid and elemental fight) might be helpful for the Adventure Guide. Who are the artists so I can give proper credit?

Here's an example of the CUP in action, though I've found people rarely listen to poor Zathras.

Now that there's an illustration, shouldn't Elaine get her own Channa Ti avatar if she wants one?