This will be our discussion thread.

This will be our gameplay thread.

This will be our gameplay thread.

This is the discussion thread.

I'm starting a new game of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game the Dragon's Demand for play by post. This will be specifically geared for those that are new to PBP. If anyone is interested, I have 2 open seats (2 players have already expressed interest. Post in this thread in the next 48 hours if interested. Priority for those new to PBP. I'll select randomly if more than 2 people are interested.

This will be our discussion thread.

This is the play by post thread for my Tyrant of the Harrow game.

Paizo is hosting a silent auction as part of GenCon online. It runs for about 4 more hours after I'm making this post. One item in particular might interest regular readers of this forum:

PACS #1: Custom character written by Keith Richmond, sanctioned for PACS play. Exclusive rights to play for 1 year.
https://discordapp.com/channels/697962502650069073/738563967835963452/73955 0123528552599

(cross posted in both card game general forum and here since it seemed relevant in both places).

Paizo is hosting a silent auction as part of GenCon online. It runs for about 4 more hours after I'm making this post. One item in particular might interest regular readers of this forum:

PACS #1: Custom character written by Keith Richmond, sanctioned for PACS play. Exclusive rights to play for 1 year.
https://discordapp.com/channels/697962502650069073/738563967835963452/73955 0123528552599

The page https://paizo.com/store/pathfinder/adventures never fully loads. The banner and footer of the page load, but I just get the spinning wheel. I've let it run for as long as 5 minutes.

This page is linked from the header bar menu Pathfinder > Roleplaying Game > Adventures and also by clicking the box for Adventure Paths on the subscriptions page.

I'm guessing there might be sooooo much data in the db for the page that the transfer takes a long time, but it looks like it takes too long to be useful.

Many thought it would never happen. But the day long hoped for has come to pass:
Proof!

This will be the discussion thread.

This will be the gameplay thread.

Shannon Appelcline posted a case study of PACG on his blog today. You an read it here.

As a reminder, Shannon also wrote a series of blog posts in Paizo's blog about strategy for PACG. You can find those here.

Who is going to PAX Unplugged this year? I am. There aren't any scheduled events for PACG in the society room, but there will be a table set aside for PACG. I'd like to make use of that table. So, I'm wondering who is going, and for which days? Is anyone interested in getting together and running some scenarios? If so, I'd like to try and plan out which ones.

So let me know if you are going and what you'd like to try and do.

As part of RetroCon, we will be running The Cosmic Captive ACG Special. We are looking for people interested in being Box Runners. We don't know how many tables we will have, and won't until we get player signups, so at this point we are just looking interest. We'll let you know later whether or not we have a table for you.

The event will run approximately 1/4/18 to 3/8/19.

If interested, please fill out this form.

Note: This is just a signup for Box Runners. Player signups will be at a later date.

For more on RetroCon, go here.

I made this post in a gameplay thread, as the overseer of the event:
My post

It was a pretty standard post. But something about it "broke" the display of that post and seemingly the ones below it. The "header" part of the post isn't formatted properly and wraps across multiple lines. I made the exact same post on multiple threads, so I don't think it was my post. But I'm not sure what it was.

This will be our discussion thread.

This will be our gameplay thread.

This will be our discussion thread.

This will be our Gameplay thread.

I had a wishlist (really a list) of all the iconic character blogs. I'd added details such as which source book they'd appeared in, which miniatures products and pawns products they were in, which adventure card game products they were in as well as their class, race, etc. I just noticed today the list is empty.

http://paizo.com/people/Hawkmoon269/wishlists/v5748l939kwtj

Any idea what happened to it? Is it recoverable?

Thanks.

Assault on Absalom is now available for sale. Does it include the card game portion? If not, can that portion be made available?

It also might be good if the description mentioned that there was a card game portion for anyone looking to run the event.

Hello! I'm going to be using this thread to sort of publicize the rewards and prizes won as part of the Play By Post Lodge (Flaxseed On Deck).

In general, when we run or are part of play by post events, Paizo gives us some "rewards" for use in the adventure card guild. On the RPG side, these are called "Boons" but "boons" is something else in the card game. These can be applied to characters and can give all kinds of thing: a bonus deck upgrade, a feat, let you include a card in your class deck, act as a power, really all kinds of stuff.

Paizo is also gracious enough to give us gift certificates to give away as part of our events.

And lastly, we have a list of physical prizes we are going to give away. The initial batch of these (and by far most of them) came from the generosity of Steve Geddes. So, right now let me publicly thank him: Thanks Steve! Your generosity is most appreciated.

You can find a list of the physical products we have is available here. We plan to try to cover shipping costs for physical products, but as we price them we might need to work with the recipient about that.

You've probably read that excellent blog post about making the most of character unlocks in organized play.

I was curious how many possible "different" characters I could play in organized play.

Before I go any farther, let me define some terms that I'm using.

"Base Deck" - When I use this word I mean product that is the initial starting point for the character you are building your character deck from. It can be a class deck, an ultimate add-on deck, or a character deck. It can't be a Base Set or Character Add-On Deck that is part of an adventure path. And I broadly put these in two categories: Ultimate Decks and Class Deck. Ultimate Decks are the 5 ultimate add-on decks. Class Decks are all the others (class deck, character decks). There are 27 of these right now.

"Character" - By this I mean a unique character card. So, for example, Ezren from the Class Deck (CD Ezren), Ezren from Rise of the Runelords (RotR Ezren) and Ezren from Mummy's Mask (MM Ezren) are 3 different characters. Where the character comes from, I'm calling the "Source".

Next, I made up terms for how you got to play which characters with which base deck. There are 3 ways. These are the names I called them.

"Open"- I used this to mean all the characters that come in the base deck product.

"Class Match" - I used this to mean the characters that are in a Base Set or Character Add-on Deck from an adventure path which you can play in any base deck that has a character from the same class.

"Unlock" - I used this to mean the character/base deck combinations you can unlock as rewards during organized play.

"Promo" - This is for the 5 promo goblin characters that can be played with either Goblins Fight! or Goblins Burn!

Ok. Now, one last thing. How different is different enough? I made a few rules for this first run.

1. A lot of the combos come from combining a class deck and ultimate deck. I decided to not count the decision to not combine the two as a separate possibility, mostly because someone that did combine two of them could choose to only take cards from one and have essentially the same character as someone that did combine two of them.

2. I didn't consider cohorts (yet). You can get even more combinations when you factor in cohort possibilities. I'd like to do that eventually, but I haven't done it yet.

3. It could be argued that the iconic heroes promos and the season adventure path loot card rewards are also a differentiation. I haven't factored that in.

So. That's the basis. Here are the numbers:

143 - The number of characters you can play.
169 - The number of charter/base deck combos you can make (93 open, 49 class match, 22 unlock, and 5 promo)
977 - The number of different combinations from combining class deck and ultimate decks (575 open, 267 class match, 110 unlock, and 25 promo).

That is a lot of characters. If you factor in just roles, you are talking 1,953 (Aric/Red Raven doesn't require you to choose between 2 role cards).

When I have more time, I'll try to factor in the cohorts.

What does all this meaning? Well, there are a lot of options. (Assuming my math is correct.) But ultimately, it means nothing. It was just interesting to me and I thought I'd share.

It looks like the first adventure of season 5 of the adventure card guild was released to venture officers yesterday, but when I try to open it I get a message that there is an error. I've tried with multiple PDF programs and all have failed to open it.

This isn't exactly a PACG thing, but there is a nice little Humble Bundle right now about puzzle and game design and it includes 5 books my Mike Selinker and a 20% discount on puzzle books at Lone Shark. I figured there might be a few interested people in the PACG demographic.

Humble Bundle Link

Currently, seasons 1 and 3 each have what I would refer to as a "capstone" scenario. These scenarios are great. They act as a sort of "adventure 7" and often have some extreme challenge at great reward. I hope we continue to see them in the future, including for season 4. Plus, so far at least, they have been free.

However, the requirement to be eligible to play in them is pretty strict.

To play this scenario, characters must have gained the reward from the Season of Plundered Tombs Adventure Path.

And the season 1 scenario says something similar. The requirement is that you have essentially won every scenario in the adventure path. The same requirement for receiving the adventure path reward.

The strict nature of this requirement means there are a few "types" of situations where a character would not be eligible.

(1) A character dies and the player starts a new character. This can happen at any point. There are ways to build a high tier character. But once you decide to do this, you are rendering yourself no longer eligible for the capstone.

(2) A player joins late. This is happening in a group I'm running the box for in pbp. One of the players joined in 3-2A. The other 3 had completed all fo 3-1. The new player created a new tier 1 character to join them.

(3) A player misses a session or two. Similar to #2, but this player starts at the beginning but life gets in the way once or twice and they miss a few scenario.

The issue I have here is that in all these cases the ineligible player will have been there for most (or even all in #1) the scenarios, but if the rest want to run the capstone, they'll just have to sit back in watch. That is what makes this different from missing out on the adventure path reward. If another player has a card you don't... well big deal. That happens all the time anyway. Sure that reward card is neat and cool, but not having it doesn't separate you from your fellow players. But eligibility for the capstone does separate you. They will have to ask you not to play if they want to play.

So, I'd suggest a change in the eligibility requirements. I've discussed this with some others and here are some suggestions we came up with. Keep in mind, these requirements are printed on the scenario itself, not in the guide, so changing them isn't a change to the way OP works:

1. Earn the adventure 6 reward and win X number of scenarios in the adventure path. (We say X because the number might change. In a 30 scenario path, maybe it is 15.)

2. Earn the adventure rewards for the last 2 adventures of the adventure path.

3. Tier up following X times in this adventure path. (This lets people use the catch up of tiering up early and still get to tier 6 to be play. It would need to be low enough to cover the character death situation.)

I wouldn't mind hearing other suggestions too. But in general, I'd like something that still means you spent a lot of time in the adventure path, but not penalize those situations I mentioned. At the same time, I wouldn't want it to be easy to abuse the requirement so that one character could play multiple capstones.* For that reason, maybe requiring the adventure 6 reward would be a good requirement.

*This is partly protected by the fact that your character can only earn a single adventure 6 reward, since the guide says that once you win your 4th scenario at tier 6, you can only continue playing in one adventure 6 that you have already started.

Hi. This post has an email address in it. I've made note of it for use for the game, so could you please delete that from the post so it isn't publicly available? Thanks.

Welcome. Please introduce yourself here. Gameplay begins 7/9/18.

ADVENTURE 4-4: RELIC IN THE WASTES
Thanks to you, the world seems a safer place, with Muhlia al-Jakri captured and bound for Absalom to answer for her crimes. However, each night is less restful than the last. You have ongoing nightmares from your time controlled by the vampire Stavros Nightcrescent, and you have become increasingly concerned about a dangerous artifact mentioned in the notes you recovered from al-Jakri. Known as the Atramentous Eye, the orb is said to feed off the life energy of those nearby, granting its wielder enhanced magical power. Hoping to keep others from tracking the orb magically, al-Jakri stowed it deep in the Spellscar Desert, a desolate wilderness in the magically scoured Mana Wastes across the sea. With al-Jakri defeated, it’s only a matter of time before one of her old allies— either Nightcrescent or the fiend Koth’Vaul—decides to take the orb for himself

Few are willing to brave the Mana Wastes, where the ancient archmages Geb and Nex once battled so ferociously that they left the land devastated. Arcane storms ravage the landscape, and even magic is known to function unpredictably, sometimes manifesting with greater power and other times escaping its user’s control entirely. For all this, the Pathfinder Society has one friend who’s not only willing to travel to the Mana Wastes; he’s eager for the opportunity. The geniekin Ashasar awaits you in the metropolis of Quantium far to the southwest, ready to guide you into the forbidding wasteland.

Millennia ago, the phenomenally powerful archmage Nex founded the kingdom that still bears his name. In its capital Quantium, magical innovation is the most popular industry. As you disembark after a pleasant voyage south along the Garundi coast, you marvel at the sights. Conjurers run errands with bound genies in tow. Transmuters coax lumps of metal into intricate works of art. Impossibly delicate architecture towers above the plazas. Multi-tiered fountains dance with playful water elementals. And over the roofs of one district, you can see the hulking form of an immense golem patrolling the city’s perimeter.

“You would not wish to pick a fight with that one,” comments a geniekin as he approaches, his eyes roiling with energy like thunderclouds. He floats atop a small cushion of mist and descends to stand near you, patting a tiny air elemental that alights nearby. “Welcome to Quantium, Pathfinders. I am Ashasar, Liaison to the Seat of Balance and corrector of elemental irregularities. I understand that you seek a vile artifact within the Spellscar Desert, and I wish to see that realm with my own eyes to determine if my allies and I might quell its curse. When shall we depart?”

COMPLETE THESE SCENARIOS IN ANY ORDER:
4-4A: Wasteland Diplomacy
4-3B: It’s Looking Like Rain
4-3C: Riddles of Ruin
4-3D: A Killer Conundrum
4-3E: The Spellscar Showdown

DURING THIS ADVENTURE

• The scourge die is 1d8.
  
• When creating the blessings deck, replace 1 blessing with the favor Concordance’s Favor.
  
• If the result of your check to acquire or defeat a card that has the Acid, Cold, Electricity, Elemental, or Fire trait exceeds the difficulty by 6 or more, suffer a scourge; otherwise, if you succeed at the check, you may banish a displayed card that has the Curse trait.

Welcome. I'm getting things setup, but we should be ready to roll on time. Gameplay starts on 7/9/18.

4-1: CHASING YELLOW SAILS
Still recovering from the fierce battle for Absalom, the Pathfinder Society was appalled to hear reports that a former ally—onetime faction leader Pasha Muhlia al-Jakri—helped coordinate the betrayal and subsequent two-pronged attack that had threatened the city. Though citizens, soldiers, and Pathfinders alike rose up to thwart the foul plot, the assassin al-Jakri managed a narrow escape. Not only is the Pathfinder Society embarrassed to have trusted a betrayer for so many years, but it is horrified that she used Society connections to nearly bring Absalom to its knees. Uncertain whether she may possess other secrets or allies, the Pathfinder Society desperately needs to track down and capture al-Jakri before she can hatch any other sinister plots. You have been set the task of bringing her to justice.

After some preliminary investigation, it becomes clear that most of al-Jakri’s lieutenants perished in the battle. There is one who was seen escaping, however: a Keleshite man named Satyar Siddique. He was last seen boarding a ship that was then intercepted by a large galley bearing the infamous yellow sails of an Okeno slaving ship. Siddique is now undoubtedly being ferried to Stonespine Island off the coast of Katapesh to be auctioned off at Okeno’s notorious Fleshfairs—markets where slaves of all races and nationalities are sold like chattel. If the Society wants any chance of stopping anything al-Jakri may be setting in motion, you must track down Siddique and convince him to share what he knows. Every moment you delay brings him a greater risk of being traded, tortured, or killed by slavers who are unaware how valuable he is.

Venture-Captain Roderus of the Winding Road Lodge, one of the Pathfinder Society’s local headquarters in Katapesh, has done all he can to equip you for your mission and warn you of the cruel gnolls that are seen as villains elsewhere yet are welcome in Okeno. You’ll cross to Stonespine Island on a merchant ship, and from there you must keep a low profile to avoid unwanted attention. Into the Yellow City of Okeno you must go, with hopes you will not fall to a slaver’s noose.

COMPLETE THESE SCENARIOS IN ANY ORDER:
4-1A: Amid the Yellow City
4-1B: Imposters in the Compound
4-1C: Unfettered Frenzy
4-1D: Trouble Following Directions
4-1E: Seaward!

DURING THIS ADVENTURE

• The scourge die is 1d4+1.
  
• When creating the blessings deck, replace 1 blessing with the support card Liberty’s Edge Favor.
  
• If the result of your first check to defeat of your turn exceeds the difficulty by 7 or more, shuffle a monster from the box into your location deck.

REWARDS
Each player unlocks the ability to play Crowe from the Wrath of the Righteous Character Add-On Deck using the Magus Class Deck.

This group has just finished adventure 1 and is about to start adventure 2. We have 3 players and are looking for up to 3 more. The current party is:

Estra
Skizza
Qualzar

We'll be playing a tier 2 scenario, so your character will need to be within 1 tier of that.

I will set a time of 24 hours for interested players to post in the thread, then I'll randomly select 3 of them. Recruitment closes at 6/13/18 10:30 PM EDT.

It looks like I will be traveling to Austin, TX in June. I potentially will be there on a Thursday night, which, it seems, is when card guild games are played at the Dragon's Lair store. Anyone on the forums familiar with the location and the activity there? I'd like to stop in and play if it works out. Wondering what season might be in swing then and an idea of what tier would be best.

Thanks.

PAX Unplugged 2018 tickets are on sale. I plan to attend. Anyone else? I know Paizo has says they plan to be there and I'm sure there will be an organized play presence there. I'm hoping to get more involved and offer perhaps a bit more of the card guild if possible. Last year we end up just kind of doing pickup games. I'm hoping for a bit more this year.

Outpost I wrapped up a few weeks ago, though I think many of the tables have stuck together afterwards to complete the adventure they were working on (if not the whole adventure path!). This was the first major undertaking for card guild play by post of this scale. So, if you were involved in someway, please share your stories here.

Thanks so much Shannon. It has been enlightening.

On this page there is a link for "Resources and Free Downloads". The URL points to http://paizo.com/pfsacg/resources. But that page doesn't seem to exist and instead you end up at the homepage. It looks like it should now point to http://paizo.com/pathfinder/cardgame/downloads.

When you play Season of the Goblins (even with a non-Goblin Class Deck character), some of the rewards allow you to make permanent additions to your Goblins Fight! and Goblins Burn! class deck for all of your future characters who use them.

In order to keep track of those cards, I've made these little aids. In case anyone else would find them helpful, I'm sharing them here.

Goblin Deck Additions

Let me know if anyone sees any problems.

This is where discussion goes.

This is the gameplay thread for HMM's ACG Fun Time! The goal is to get Hilary to enjoy the adventure card game. She thinks the goal is just to get her 2 ACG scenarios for her Scarab Sages Faction Journal Card. Shhh... don't tell her the truth!

Today was some HawkCon. I've completely lost track of the numbering. But it was commented that we've been doing this every other month for 3 years now. So, that is pretty sweet.

Today, our 3 tables continued through Season of Plundered Tombs. There were many moments of excitement. Both the other tables played 3-4E: The Army Awakens without every seeing the Behemoth Golem in the blessings deck thanks to some Sun Falcons (our table saw him once thanks to 2d4 resulting in a 7 then a 8).

And I heard tell that Uliah got to examine the entire siege deck during 3-5B: Guardians of Ruin and only came out with 3 scourges on him. And if it hadn't been for one card, they wouldn't have had to shuffle the siege deck and would have known every card's position.

At our table of Raheli, Zadim, and Balazar, we had some chicanery of our own during the same scenario. We realized that with the group we had and the cards we taken from traders, we could approach a Defensive Stance scenario in a completely different way from the conventional wisdom. We had at first spread out to cover as many locations (3 of the 4) as possible to protect those valuable boons. But then it dawned on us: "We don't need to spread out as long as we can make sure we never take any damage." How might one do that you ask? Well, a few things.

1. Hadden Hoppert gave Raheli Safety Bubble. The perfect card for a siege deck scenario. We put it up as soon as we could.

2. Zadim could add to our combat checks like crazy to make sure we never failed a check to defeat a monster and therefore never suffered combat damage for doing so.

3. Balazar could protect everyone by banishing monsters to reduce damage of characters at his location (by the monster's adventure deck+1).

We had the added bonuse of Balazar taking Elemental Treaty from on of the earlier scenario "swap" rewards. We decided to camp out Garden of Ossumentals so Raheli could be even more potent when bludgeoning.

Sure, a Sandstorm got in the blessings deck thanks to a Living Sandstorm, but after it temporarily split us up we quickly regrouped.

With so many monsters to defeat an fill Balazar's hand, Zadim having Tetisurah to reload his hand on his own turn after ensuring our checks on our turns, Raheli having Mass Cure and just generally rocking her checks thanks to Steal Soul (which she drew in her starting hand), there were few things that could stand in our way.

With that combination, no check was too hard. We nearly waltzed through the siege deck. I commented how the only risk was something that would deal us damage that couldn't be reduced. We did run into a Cenovath Swarm along the way, but Balazar had no allies in hand at the time and so it dealt him 0 mental damage that could not be reduced.

The only other hurdles were an Insanity Mist that ended up displayed at our location (Safety Bubble and Elemental Treaty let us just ignore that) and a Sky Pharaoh's Curse that probably wouldn't have been a big deal, but we threw some resources at it to make sure Rahlie defeated it.

And that is how you turn a siege deck into a "local heroes" kind of scenario. We ended up not losing a single boon from a location deck. With the bonus upgrade, Balazar and Raheli each got a spell 5 and a spell 4, while Zadim got 2 weapon 5s.

We continue again in 2 months. Come out and join us if you are ever in the Bel Air, MD area.

I've just noticed the Paizo blog doesn't seem to have tags anymore. Is this intentional? If so, I hope you'll reconsider. I find the tags very useful. If it isn't intentional... well, I guess consider this a report that they are missing.

Best sale ever!

With Play by Post starting to take off for the Adventure Card Guild, I was checking the available avatars to see which Adventure Card Game characters had their image available for aliases. I noticed quite a few don't. So, I'd like to request that the Adventure Card Game character images be made available for use as avatars, particularly to help with Play by Post.

I know you are super busy and I know there are lots of factors that go into avatar image creation. But if it was possible, it would be great. Thanks so much.

This is where discussion will happen.

This is where gameplay will happen.