Donald Hiles III's page

@Vic - speaking of reporting, I've been working on an app for my FLGS which just changed hands. I was wondering if you guys use a standard file format for reporting or had an API. As a User Experience Designer I loathe using the reporting tool even tho I know it helps justify OP, so I wanted to help out. If there is someone I should talk to about this sort of thing please just point me towards them. I can post my prototype later if people are interested.

http://super.magfest.org/

I am returning once again with a cart full of cardboard in sleeves!

Got my placeholder sessions in for PACG at MAGFest. The question is, what to run?! Thinking that Season of the Goblins would be good content to a convention, unless I can get my hands on some sweet sweet convention only content!

Sound off if you are interested in attending or have ideas!

Here's my current blocks and I'll update with scenarios once I've figured out what I'm going to be running

Jan 4 - 03PM - 7PM
Jan 5 - 10AM - 2PM
Jan 5 - 03PM - 7PM
Jan 6 - 10AM - 2PM
Jan 6 - 03PM - 7PM
Jan 7 - 10AM - 2PM

Another thing you might want to look into is hooking up with your local Pathfinder Society Chapter. We run our ACG games on the same night as the PFS content at our FLGS. We usually get one new player a month who will rotate in and out if they've already done everything thats scheduled for PFS. Now that we have all the box sets and campaigns, we've started adding an event to their meetup since we have the supplies to run 2-3 tables concurrently.

All that being said, one of the reasons why we can grow our group quickly is that I own all the physical content. We started with all the original class decks split between an old roommate and myself, which we sleeved and put into binders with the appropriate character sheets. This let us easily and quickly pull together new stuff for new players. Once there were enough Class Decks out, we retired all the original classes to a huge binder for demo/conventions.

One of our players ended up starting a new group when he moved with putting his own 5 class decks into binders and bringing them with him. He's got a regular run of 3-6 players now.

Also my group knows me to invoke GM Fiat at something that would make the game unfun or severely mess up someone's experience enough for them to not enjoy the rest of the night, to a certain point. Don't be afraid to bend the rules if they are stopping your ability to have fun.

In regards to character death, something you might have missed in the rules is that the party may spend 3 die bumps to resurrect a character.

Just wanted to open a thread for this card in OP.

As the organizer for our standing event, this card has been the recent bane of my existence. Its having effects far outside the game.

I understand the cards design, its very thematic and fits great with the lore. Suddenly an group of demons descends upon the party unexpectedly and they must fight them off to continue their mission. Makes perfect sense.

The issue is the development/mechanics portion. In an RPG setting such a thing is mitigated by the party being able to rely on their class roles to handle this unexpected event. Tanks will tank, dps will dish the damage, support will try to make sure the battle goes the party's way. This same formulae doesn't translate into the ACG, the summoned demons are randomly assigned to an individual member. The party hammer may get none and the healer may have multiples.

So why do I say this card is affecting more that just the game? Because it can make 90 minutes of play suddenly worthless. When Demonic horde is showing up I begin to question whether its better just to call the scenario and restart or move to a season 2 session. If we do face the horde, often times it goes back into the deck due to one failure forcing a full fail. Resolving the horde also takes a disproportionate amount of time due to its nature, especially when coupled with varied card traits or scenario effects. More time is spent on resolving the horde due to needing to ensure N success otherwise having to do the same thing again.

We also try to limit our tables to 4 players to avoid adding in extra demonic hordes, which goes against the spirit of OP wanting as many people to play as possible. Each of our recent needs to replay were directly influenced by demonic horde and how it distributes its effect, even more frustrating at high tier where remaining deck upgrades become very infrequent. No upgrades and no progression, a mitigating factor at lower tiers are that failure will often still result in a deck upgrade.

An influencing factor could be the scenario power and servitor demons that appear at the higher adventure decks.

I could be overinflating this due to my profession as a user experience designer, but a participant result of their time feeling wasted would make me hold a release to investigate.

I've brought this up for discussion because the card is great thematically and in its intentions, but the first thought shouldn't be "F$+! it, you want to go get dinner before the second game?" or "Can we just restart?"

Just to clarify the part we are anxious about is the other bit of scenario text "When you fail to defeat a card with Demon or Cultist trait, discard a card from the blessing pile."

This is the the real stickler because of the random assignment nature of the horde.

Flip Blessing deck card.

Encounter Demonic Horde (Demon trait)

4 Favor of Deskari to party. (Demon trait)

Fail to defeat any due to recharging scenario power.

Discard 4 cards from blessing deck (1 for each servitor demon undefeated)+ Discard 1 card from blessing deck for horde.

At least 6 cards from the blessing deck have been discarded this turn.

If thats RAI thats g!+ d@+n brutal, especially since a 6 player party can see almost a third of their turns gone in one horde.

I don't think I'd have a problem if this was clearly called out, its the ambiguity of that this is probably what happens that makes it feel so brutal. You have a feeling that the scenario's success is a lot less in your control after losing so many turns in one shot. It makes sense flavor wise of the demonic horde suddenly appearing and being a pitched battle, but mechanically it feels very much out of your control. You loose the feeling of investment and determination when things are nebulous and this sort of result happens.

I believe tho it shows the intent for why the cohort's mechanics are such that they are.

This scenario is a horrible experience the first time around but much more enjoyable, and even fun, the second time around. The first trip is bad because it breaks your mental model of how to play the game by now wanting a big hand of your lower impact cards so you can be recharged into your good ones. Once you adjust, the second trip is a more enjoyable experience because you know whats going to happen and you adjust your play style. Our first trip thru this scenario I was ready to quit on the second turn due to the villain being on top and recharging into cards I couldn't win with and then having to send chunks of my deck into the location. I was visibly frustrated, annoyed and was a bit short with my group, and the rest of that gaming night was colored by that experience, even when we played Rise for our second game.

Just things you think as a user experience designer by day cuz you can't it off even when nerding out with a game you love :P

I have a cheatsheet of the orginal class deck pregens I created from the July 2015 version of the guide. I can drop a dropbox link here if thats okay with Tanis and co until the updated versions come out.

Got a few questions from my players and couldn't direct them to any one place on the site to see how to unlock particular characters. Is there a list somewhere of the characters and their criteria?

I was there and can confirm that is exactly what happened. And that AGT in leather at the harem, well that was a sight to behold.

Does anyone have any good art links for using for binders? Thinking of also making it easier on my players and just making a binder for each class deck.

Hey content team!

Just chiming in that I would love to see a piece of fluff. I've been making binders for each season for my store and would love to have nice front and back cover art. I usually just try to resize the Season AP art but it always looks sad. I would love to see a piece that I could use for the Season binders and other promotional material.

I end up making FB event cover photos my slapping the Scenario name below the Adventure name.

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/mcwrc4vweex0b9o/AADLzJmgSYY3ab-KXYgW4v-4a

Having actually OP assets to use to promote the play group would be awesome!

We saw an uptick in our event attendance replies when we started including artwork so things looked cooler in players FB feeds

You guys always have such good art, help me use it to draw even more players in!

Also Season 0 is a great way to level reserve characters while getting to see new content and get some interesting rewards. My new Barbarian is heading to the seas tomorrow. He'll be ready should my Paladin die to the horrors of Wrath 5!

I think one of the hardest things about this season has been interpreting the scenario text for some locations and the questions it doesn't answer. Particularly the scenario with the split decks and how they should be encountered, moved to, closed, etc . The other one I get questions on is when villains appear in the blessings deck if they function as a villain(meaning they must be dealt with) or only a marker.

These could probably be cleared up with a little extra text in the scenario, possibly describing what you don't do or what has changed.

Errata that was available for a scenario via some method would be much appreciated, I am chomping at the bit for the Season of the Righteous deck on DriveThru as it will clear up almost all the issues we had with the season. Give me the chance to purchase the cards only when I buy an Adventure PDF(or have one in my account history) and I'll gladly pay an extra 5-10 dollars for those cards. Leveling characters in Season 0 is going to be much smoother since I have the deck for that already and my players are enjoying how easy it makes keeping track of everything, especially the fresh drop ins.

Our existence is a fragile and fleeting thing. With each passing day we must rejoice in the gift we have been given. Our oldest tomes postulate that the Guild existed long before we had the means to record our flashes of life. We do not know when the Guild began, only when we learned of it. The mystery of how the Guild unites so many different realities and timelines is second only to the fact that different realities exist.

Chapters exist spanning amazing swathes of time, location, plane, even reality, yet we are all united in the Guild. In life and in death. Our lives with our Company and our Chapter are temporary, but the Guild eventually welcomes all to join Omega Company. Here, we honor those who have gone before us to prepare our way.

With reverence we record these members entry to Omega Company.

May their light forever shine and light our path.

OMEGA COMPANY - Their light shines eternal

Ezren, CGOFFX Chapter Alpha Company
Siwar, CGOFFX Chapter Alpha Company
Lem, CGOFFX Chapter Alpha Company
Agna, CGOFFX Chapter Beta Company

All Glory to the Guild.

So this is a question I'm investigating on my own but I only have the first three SotR Scenarios. Why the question? My FLGS is lagging on joining the retailer program because of some of the information that is requested, so I've been running everything out of my own box.

We've grown from our initial 2 players to 12! With new players joining in as our original crew heads into 1-3A, I'm trying to see how much of 1-1 and 1-2 can be run at the same time slot of 1-3 without sharing locations.

Don't know if Paizo OP has this info but a simple list of which things CANNOT be run at the same time would be helpful assuming a table of 4.

Has anyone figured this out already while I work on getting more boxes?