Brained's page

I like both of them, but for A Night Raid on Halabad, the image is covering up the Villian.

Oh yes, the cards are nowhere near done. Right now I want to get the mechanics down first so I've made low res sample cards for playtesting purposes. What images you see will be mostly unworked placeholders.

The final cards will look nice and working with super high res images will be the final part of the process. The villains (for now) on Night Raid are Rahdoumi Captain and a custom villain
named Slavemaster Rambuka, who is a two-headed Rampore Rakshasa. :)

Here is what I had intended for this variant.
In the following scenario, the Ruffians/Bandits that any players might have joined in Scenario 3 provide advantages. This uses the new "display" rule in S&S. This is balanced by the difficulty of keeping them from defecting in the previous scenario, and by the difficulty of the current scenario itself. I'm looking forward to playtesting this, I think it might lead to some interesting strategy in scenario 3.

A Night Raid on Halabad

Fast forward about a dozen sessions and they finally had a falling out. Guy actively worked to derail every plot. When the party faced a difficult situation or foe, guy just wanted to quit the quest and just farm beets and raise chickens. He was finally asked to leave.

This was a serious LOL.

Thank you. I'm actually going to rework the first half of the adventure. Scenario 3 (Rabble in Arms) might be a bit of a stretch. It needs to be simplified. I don't want to go overboard on introducing variants in any case.

The adventure, tentatively called Wrath of the Archduke, is going to have 5-6 scenarios. There's a story (quite a bit of writing), several new cards, and a lot of attention paid to balance issues and strategy. In the adventure documentation I will include base set substitutes for the new henchmen\villain cards so that people without sleeved sets can play. The first 3 are land based, but then the action moves to the the Shackles set, so players will need both base sets to play.

The main variant I'm including here is the concept of "escort mission" scenarios. The players must escort allies through the scenarios, one is a vizier and another a prince, and if either are banished or buried, the scenario fails. So, much of the strategy and dynamic of the adventure will be in sharing the duties of protecting these guys.

This is going to be a lot of work, and as I do some playtesting I'm hoping some people on here might want to try it out. I have spent hours finding and altering public domain images so that the new locations look cool, and have the entire library of Paizo blog and web fiction images downloaded, which will be used in the creation of villains/allies/henchmen. So this will be an exciting and long lived project, especially if anybody shows interest in playing it.

Thank you. I'm actually going to rework the first half of the adventure. Scenario 3 (Rabble in Arms) might be a bit of a stretch. It needs to be simplified. I don't want to go overboard on introducing variants in any case.

The adventure, tentatively called Wrath of the Archduke, is going to have 5-6 scenarios. There's a story (quite a bit of writing), several new cards, and a lot of attention paid to balance issues and strategy. In the adventure documentation I will include base set substitutes for the new henchmen\villain cards so that people without sleeved sets can play.

The main variant I'm including here is the concept of "escort mission" scenarios. The players must escort allies through the scenarios, one is a vizier and another a prince, and if either are banished or buried, the scenario fails, so much of the strategy and dynamic of the adventure will be in sharing the duties of protecting these guys.

This is going to be a lot of work, and as I do some playtesting I'm hoping some people on here might want to try it out. I have spent hours finding and altering public domain images so that the new locations look cool, and have the entire library of Paizo blog and web fiction images which will be used in the creation of villains/allies/henchmen. So this will be an exciting and long lived project, especially if anybody shows interest in playing it.

A revised and clearer version... If anyone cares :D.

The Rabble in Arms!

I am in the middle of designing an entire adventure with several custom cards and locations. I wanted to have one scenario include an element of choice, where your allegiance to one side or another affects the setup of the following scenario.

In "A Rabble in Arms!," the players may lead mobs of Ruffians or Bandits.

I am usually in favor of simple rules, but this is an exception.
I'd appreciate some input on this idea.

Ignore rough draft graphics. I probably need to customize the template to put a larger font
in there as well.

A Rabble in Arms! Scenario

I've been poking around there as well.
There seems to be only one adventure path made by fans, the "compilation."

Now it's legal! Wish Paizo had some location and scenery assets available... I will look around.

Vizier Adelard link

The textured backgrounds on the templates make it a bit of a pain to import the Paizo graphics, but it's not too bad.

I figured as much. Wishful thinking, really.
I'm removing the few "snagged" images and replacing them with legal stuff.
Rights acquisition seems like a waste of time when I could be making things, but then why should I assume that the world's art is there for me to have fun with for free.

I read the guidelines and I don't seem to be violating anything there.

I'm making a pretty involved adventure based on some very old writing of mine, and I've been snagging fantasy images off of Deviantart and so on. Would this be considered unscrupulous in the Pathfinder community or is this considered fair use? Please forgive my ignorance on this.

I would of course credit the artists in the adventure's PDF. I just noticed that the Paizo guidelines allow me to use artwork from the fiction section, so if I'm doing something bad here I can start over with the images you provide. Any acceptable free resources you guys know about for this would also be great. I'm not into using photographs, it just doesn't look good.

Here's an example:

Sample Scenario

A first draft of a custom ally.

Cool, thank you Hawkmoon.

Hello friends. Sorry if this has been posted elsewhere, but I couldn't find it.
I have the template pack, but would like to start designing a cross-set S&S/Runelords adventure and will be using ships. Could someone point me in the direction of a blank ship template?

Thank you!

I usually stop watching a TV show when they do what I call "jumping the rape shark."

That means using rape as a means of generating drama or interest, when rape is a fairly awful thing that has little entertainment value. Rape is usually depicted in the most asinine way in media. It is often meant to titillate. It is usually sexualized. It's a cheap shot.

If you wish to have a female character raped in your story, how about this, have one of the male characters raped too. See how that works with your players.

Personally I could not endure a guy describing a rape in a game environment. It would be MAJOR AWKWARD.

For those that are trying to sleeve, I read somewhere that the Ultra-Pro standard size Pro Fit sleeves would work better as they are narrower and shorter, but they were VERY difficult to put on and have cupped many of the cards so that they do not lay flat. I am hopeful that with play the sleeves will stretch a bit and the cards will re-flatten, but I would not recommend them at this point.

Here is the base set with the character expansion for reference once sleeved.

Sleeved Cards

I HAVE to sleeve my cards because of the 2nd printing/1st printing card back problem.

It saddened me a bit to see Vic think sleeving was a bad idea. I don't really feel like I have an choice here if I want to play the game properly, unless I'm missing something. I've invested >$200 in the game so it feels like I'm committed to making this work at the point.

I subscribed to get a first printing of deck 6 and I am incredibly disappointed that I just unwrapped by monthly Paizo box to find a second printing deck 6. So even subscribing was not enough to insure I got a matching game.

It's back to the Book Depository for me now, blindly hoping that their first batch will be a 1st printing. But is there even a chance?

I gave up trying to get consistent printings. I'm going to sleeve my cards, which is going to be costly, but I'm already noticing that the edges of these cards are damaged quite easily even with limited shuffling, so it may be necessary if I want to play this game frequently anyway.

BUT I have some good news for you if you're proactive about it! Call Phoenix Comics and Games in Seattle (on Broadway). They had 3-4 copies of the 1st printing of deck 6. I'm sure they'd ship it to you.

I have 2nd printings of expansion decks 2 and 3, and the rest are 1st printings, so I feel your pain.

I've a question along similar lines, and I've read about 6 different threads all saying different things.

I am at Hook Mountain, messing around with a solo game. I am organizing a new game soon with friends starting at Perils... I've read that you're supposed to revert the set back to Burnt Offerings level when starting new characters, but is this really necessary?

I'm just curious, based on people who have tried both leaving the level 2+ ranked cards in and reverting them to the proper starting level, if it really hurts the game. I'd really like to not bother with organizing cards.

For me the color differences between 2nd printing and 1st are glaring and make it very difficult to play without knowing when a certain expansion's cards, particularly the villains, are coming up. I made the mistake of buying a few expansions at once and, lo and behold, they are of mixed printings! So I'm going to have a half dark back and half light back. For me, these differences are disrupting and obvious.

Its looking like people have solved this with opaque deck protectors. I have never played a game enough to warrant card sleeves but I guess I'm going to have to drop $70 or so on some.

Well, I appear to have half 2nd and half 1st printing expansions, so I guess as the box fills with other misprinted cards from the 2nd printing it won't be quite such a glaring issue. Still, what a bummer!

My base set is printed in America, and my Skinsaw is printed in China.
Am I correct in thinking that my base set is 2nd print and the Skinsaw is 1st?

I have this problem too.

We can't play this, since the backs of the cards on Skinsaw Murders are so dark that I know exactly where the villains and new items\monsters are.

Has anybody addressed this?