Jonah G's page

Eeesh, 90% here, 50% there.

Each player is different. My current playgroup's cooperation rate is so high that we can take on very hard challenges and pull through.

The other thing is play length. I've seen this being split into 2 camps - groups that have very little playtime so they don't want to play through a scenario more than once or twice, and playgroups that play so much they burn through the content and ask why there isn't more.

There's also different reasons people play. Some people play games to win them, and some other people use games as social time. They'll also react differently to these.

I agree with this completely. I've been missing from the community for so long I had no idea how much this game had changed, some of the changes have been great, others have gone the opposite way I would have liked. WotR pushed me away, Mummy beckoned me back. PACG is a game of contradictions for me. I was on Tabletop Simulator the other night with a friend, going over some of my ideas for reimplimenting Skull and Shackles from the ground up, the game mechanics themselves are going to go through quite a change. This has been on the side of other things I'm working on, but I think for the kind of gamer I am, I've reached a wall with the current confines of the game system, and that includes the digital strategy for PACG which I think is a little too closed off and "appy."

I like a hard, mean challenge. I like sitting with my friends and making a serious game plan, all the metagaming that arises from cooperation and sacrifice. Pandemic at full volume, Robinson Crusoe, Mage Knight co-op with the fortresses turned to 11. Only then is the mettle of the team truly tested. I've had a couple years to think about why I stare at S&S at the back of my game closet, and why I stopped buying merch, it has to do with the Final Fantasy-ish/Diablo bent that the game has clung to. I know Diablo was actually an inspiration to it, so my fault there. But that doesn't mean I can't take Diablo and turn it into Dark Souls... That's kinda what I'm doing. :)

It really depends how you play I think.
A certain combination of classes that the designers have not tested on a box (the older the path, the more this is so) is so unbelievably easy as to render the entire path Candyland.

I think the game is easy enough as it is, and if you would like it to be easy, just play it the way it is designed. If you want to be creative, combining rules and classes, making new scenarios, integrating game innovations from other legacy/persistent games, than that's something else entirely. I read some of the licensing info again. Some things I want to do feel like they might be pushing license agreement a little. I haven't decided if I'm just going to do them anyway, but rest assured nothing I ever do will be out of the desire to make money or harm anyone's business.

The community use policy makes it difficult to completely spread one's wings, as generous as it is in many ways. I have questions about why Drivethrucards appears to be a twilight zone in this department, I don't think everyone is reporting their DT card purchases to the Community Use project database. Can I turn DT cards into a module? Can I port that module to Tabletop Simulator, where it can be played by thousands of people and then grown into something else? (See the Endless World Mod as an example of a collectively grown, persistent sandbox made out of chained mods).

All I want is for people to have fun, if I have spent a bunch of money on something that limits my creativity or my fun, the inner hacker in me gets angry. And then I get all muscley, and then I have to buy new clothes. It's a waste of clothes.

I'm looking for Pathfinder Tales, or Forgotten Realms books, (Or Raveloft, dragonlance, greyhawk I guess) about Necromancers.

I have a new player bringing a Arcane Necromancer to the table, and I find reading novels a good source for RP/understanding the means and motives of character types and tactics.

So any good Necromancy novels out there?

50 Shades of Pale? Sounds like a hit.

As I have no respect for the proper way of doing things, I always break games whenever I can.

I haven't tried the Obsidian app yet; I adopted the Linear movement system from its original creator (I believe, please correct me if I'm wrong), Alex Fiedler on Boardgamegeek. To me there is no other way to play this game now. However, class decks break boxes they aren't really meant to be in, the promise of blending box sets is far easier said than done.

During a redo of RotR, we had a party of four, using all 8 locations and linear movement, and Alhazra was just oracling through everything.I think we failed a scenario once. It has been a cakewalk until A6, when I threw in more barriers from Mummy and Wrath, as well as some of the Runelords favorite demon pets, but only those that complement their deadly sins motif.

Late in the game, I stepped in as quasi-GM and said that the Runelords were wary of Alhazra's Osirionite gifts, and brought forth trigger cards from the depths of ancient and forbidden tombs. The problem is that without patches like Trigger, all our old stuff can't really be re-used very easily without getting very creative on the fly. I introduced Linear ranged attack penalties at the beginning; limited movement cards like Haste to one space/card, unless they involved the word "teleport" in them. and similar changes. I'm working on a complete renovation of Skull & Shackles as I absorb some of the newest material I've missed out on; it could really use a proper hug. This is on the side of a couple other game projects I've been designing for some time.

I think more than just a guide for advanced players is needed, there should be a real handbook for getting all the content to work together and what sorts of things to think about when blending boxes. I didn't buy this game for organized play, I bought it for its creative potential, as a new way to RP and use cards to make modular worlds. I see it as a creative tool, as much as the DM's guide is. Tabletop Simulator has been my favorite way of exploring these concepts. (I patched Fiedler's linear movement system as a tileset in the workshop, if you are a TTS user: PACG Linear on Steam Workshop, other things in the works)

Why don't we just do this? Just write a guide.

Jungian, bards, jacks of all trades, foils, little guys that end up humbling table commanders by doing weird stuff (I love Meliski). I love magicry of all kinds, but tend to like it to have some mystery. Barbarians were my favorite thing when I was a kid, but don't feel too much of a connection to the deck of same name, something I wish I could fix with a custom class deck of my own.

“Descriptively reference” and “cover art” tells me that the answer is no, images cropped from the pdfs will be a no-go.

You can wait for a formal answer from Paizo, and I’m sure they’ll give it, but start off assuming that you can’t.

I know this seems painful, well, it is. You've got a megaton of great art, that you even paid for! But you can't use in your own creations.

The Community Use Package from Paizo is extremely generous, I spent many nights combing the blogs for images and was able to get hundreds of them. It's a bit annoying to see them popping up again and again in other peoples' projects, but for my first adventure I actually wrote game illustrators on Deviantart (the pros not the doodlers) and asked if I could use their art in my non-profit, personal Pathfinder mod. 4/5 times they said yes, and we ended up with a whole lot of original art, It was great.

Other than that, hit Boardgamegeek and ask around for collectives that share fantasy/game GNU-licensed art (their game design forums and geeklists are invaluable for every part of the process). It's not the easiest thing to find but it can be done. I am surprised there isn't an organization of fantasy illustrators who are willing to separate from their concept art pieces not slated for sale. If there is I'd love to know about it.

Oh and always be polite and accept No with grace and a thank you. :)

Edit: There is one more option... Hire an artist. With crowd funding, you can find someone in Poland who probably worked on Mysterium or something who will make beautiful things for you. I've seen kickstarters do that, guys with no experience making games getting connected with these fantastic illustrators. Begging is my preferred tactic.

I have a friend who is able to find PACG character engines before the game even starts. He got Alhazra (from the class deck) and discovered what we thought was an infinite loop of examining top cards involving the Eagle being returned to the top of the deck, and her special power trigering a drawing of a card. We couldn't just stop the game to read errata, and we weren't happy with allowing Alhazra to gain omnipotence, so we just made a house rule that for each time she sends the eagle to scout more than once she must make increasingly harder Wisdom checks (mind melding with birds gets to be tiring, after all). Worked out pretty well, but this is clean and makes sense.

As I just finished work on an adventure that blends Skull & Shackles and Rise of the Runelords, I think I can take a shot at this.

Yes, you can combine two box sets together, it just takes more admin time. The characters created for each boxset and their expansion pack characters are intended to be used for that boxset.

Jirelle and Lirianne don't really work so well in Rise of the Runelords, as their powers are very ship and firearm specific. The same would be true with characters who have an emphasis on Craft checks, since ROTR doesn't offer as much bang for your buck in potions and ship repair.

I tried to combine the two worlds, so that characters from both ends could find themselves useful at varying times. It does increase the challenge of the game overall.

You will find, in combining sets, that it is a pain to run more than one game out of a box, since the cards will end up in different places and can be irritating to track down. Furthermore, character sheets might get a little messy since players will be writing in cards from sets not intended for them, though you have this problem when adding Character Class Deck cards to a non-OP home game as well.

I imagine Wrath of the Righteous will pose similar problems for players who want to combine boons from different decks.

I think as the game ages, the homebrew scene will concoct more custom adventures that combine different locations and encourages some more grand strategizing. I enjoyed playing my adventure from both boxes, it's like the world gets twice as big all the sudden. It's fun. :)

Hello all. Myself and Ludwig Orsingher have been hard at work improving the not-ready-for-primetime release of the first adventure in the Cult of the Black Ibis adventure path.

This upgrade features many, many changes:

* A greatly improved and polished PDF file that contains a list of card proxies for those who don't want to print and play.

* An original high res map that details the areas that the adventure path covers.

* Completely new art on many cards. We've replaced the public domain stuff with images from professional artists contacted through Deviantart!

* Rule tweaks and typo corrections.

You can check it out here.

We spent a lot of time on this, and the 2nd adventure in the path is already on its way. We've already secured a lot of permission from artists for new art, and the adventure itself has been mostly written.

I hope you enjoy.

If we design our own cards outside of the Card Creator in say, Photoshop, can DriveThruGames print those, assuming they adhere to the Paizo Community Use Policy?

i bought the whole ROTRL series. i'm considering getting S&S but i'm not that into the pirate scene...plus i'm also playing several other games (im only at adventure3 of ROTRL) :)

This has been the most common thing I've read as to why people aren't buying this. Maybe it's burnout from the Arrrr! Pirate Day! type of stuff. The same thing that killed 1980's robots and ninjas.

It's a shame because it's amazingly fun.

I am currently playtesting a PACG adventure that I wrote several months ago with a design partner for a re-release over on BGG. I know the pain and disappointment and feeling like death is inevitable and scenarios too easy or too hard. I enjoy the process of helping to fix games. I would love to volunteer to playtest the new class decks.

I am also no stranger to non-disclosure agreements. ;)

Possible for anyone to let me know if the above images are okay?

Hello all. There is an ongoing "debate" over on BGG about whether or not it's considered okay to crop images released in the Paizo Community Use Package, i.e. those images found on the web fiction section or that were published on the Paizo blog and downloadable file packages. It is agreed that Paizo doesn't want us messing with their logos or titles, but not completely clear from the wording of the policy that we can't resize and crop other images.

I am reworking my first fan made adventure, and it would be nice to get a definitive answer.

Here is an example of a villain I made. The original image has been cropped about 50% to give a better look.

Here is a location I made, where the cropping is to provide emphasis on the slave labor aspect.

I can't wait to start 5 with my S&S group.
I love the *sorta spoilers* new trap henchmen!

Having the new base set classes and the 4 in the add on pack is more than enough to keep me busy with Wrath... :)

I have whatever flu is going around too. Booo flu.

Radillo's power was FAQ'd to only apply to cards played during an encounter. Buoyancy is not played during an encounter, therefore it doesn't work.

Thanks Hawkmoon!

I let people make new characters and give them the matching feats of the other players, but they must start with all basics.

I do the same thing if someone dies during a scenario and wants to keep playing with a new character. I think it's a balance between fairness for the players who worked their way up, letting the new player enjoy him or herself, and preserving everyone's pride.

Hi there. I was playing a 4p Skull & Shackles game last night. One of the players asked about Radillo's "add a spell to your hand" power feat. He wondered if he could infinitely recycle Buoyancy cards (an automatic check to recharge) using this feat, and thus examine an entire location deck in one turn. Buoyancy allows you to "Discard this card to examine the bottom card of your location deck and put it on top of that deck."

I told him "No, you can only use a power feat once for each check."
Because, in my mind, being able to cycle through a location deck even though "Anyone can play a card whenever the card allows it" just seems ridiculously powerful especially at level 1.

Assuming that I'm understanding Radillo's power correctly, what if he had TWO buoyancy spells, could he then cycle through a location deck in one turn that way?

This might seem like a really obvious question. Maybe I'm missing a rule somewhere where you can't play the same spell twice during your turn.

I am playing a 4-player game. One of the players only wants to play the gunslinger Lirianne despite being warned that she might have issues in ROTR. He is allowed to draw cards from the S&S base set, but other than that we haven't had too many problems and he's been as useful as a normal ranger class so far.

I am designing an adventure series that incorporates both boxes, as part of the selling point of the game was that you could mix anything together if you wanted to. That's proving to be much more difficult.

Power feats are not the same as the powers on cards in your hand. As long as you aren't using the same power feat twice for the same check, I believe you are legal. The rules are the same in any case.

I am reworking my first adventure, An Heir to Hell's Throne, and the 2nd adventure in that path is in the works, The Oracle of Mediogalti.

I had a death in the family recently, so I've not been able to commit much time to hobbies, nor have I had much energy for that matter. Been a rough year, but this game has been a very needed and fun distraction.

This is one of the best threads on this subject I have read. I love working on new content and storylines for PACG and have friends who are very eager to play what I've been doing. I've also been permitted to use a lot of artwork from some very talented illustrators over on deviantart.
It really isn't that big of a deal to make custom cards as Hawkmoon said. I am happy this stuff is exciting to other people as well.

Cool. Thanks a bunch.

Did a forum search for this guy, and nothing was returned.

I opened my Island of Empty eyes pack to find the two awesome promo cards, but also a Bikendi Otongu undead wizard role card with token/story on the front. Is this just a teaser card, a mistake in packing, or was there supposed to be a whole character in the pack?

What Orbis said. Some characters start out stronger but have a slower rise (Alahazra), but Oloch has a kind of caveman bashing and light support role until he gets buffed up. If you look ahead he's pretty badass.

Hey all. So I came up with a death house rule to use with class decks. This is NOT PFS legal. Do NOT use this for anything except home games. Just posting in case anyone else wants to try it. ;)

If your character dies, you are removed from play during this scenario. Return any cards you acquired to the box. Reform your deck according to your character card and shuffle. Draw d4 (or a higher die to make this worse) cards from your deck. These cards are banished back into your class deck. Replace them with cards from the B set with the basic trait.

There was a little thread over on BGG about alternatives to permadeath here.

I was playing an S&S game with friends, and the Shopkeeper's Daughter somehow wound up mixed up in the box. I drew it 3 times in a row and failed, so my character (Jirelle) was in essence wasting 3 turns to consummate her desires with a wayward, very lost young lady in the Warrens (or some dungeon somewhere). It was just pathetic and funny at the same time.

I'm playing ROTR with Meliski with a 4p campaign and I love him. I'm continuing a solo S&S game with Siwar, Wu Shen, Oloch and Melendra, and it's been tough.

I'm really looking forward to getting Meliski to Brawler. I love that eventually he's able to do pretty much anything.

Siwar is definitely a harder sell. She's ally-based but doesn't come with any special power relationships to her ally cards. The Lem-like d4 is nice and the Task ability has come in handy for the task-heavy S&S adventure path, but she needs a little more oomph.

I've started working on adapting Carrion Crown for the PACG. It was the first Adventure Path I've ever GM'd from start to finish, so it holds a special place in my heart. Plus, the somewhat narrow focus of "gothic horror" makes for a fun challenge to adapt to the card game format.

Not sure if it's okay to share that stuff re: Paizo Community Use Policy, but I'd love to see what you've done anyway.

Well I'll be... Thanks for that.

Shark Island is pretty easy to close if you put your strongest fighter there, since you can attempt to close with the defeated summoned shark. So you just kill 2 sharks in a row. I know that when you summon a monster it is banished after the encounter, but I'm pretty sure you can still follow the rules of the card even if it's summoned.

I try to close it as quickly as possible.

Reminds me of my years of being a copywriter. Function in every word.

Just got permission from a couple amazing artists on Deviantart to use some of their work. Original art oooh yeah!

Yes, as I recall from reading the use policy like 20 billion times because I was terrified of breaking the rules, you can't take any of the official writing, with the exception of names and locations and the employment of Paizo's card products. My adventure path focuses mainly on the area between Mediogalti and a non-canon city of refugees called "The Republic of Etria." There's a little bit of Shackles in there but mainly I chose a place that probably won't make it into an official product any time soon. I hope.

Is that a Brian Eno reference?

I have written about 50 pages (single-spaced) for the adventure path I am working on.
It's become quite a beast.

My process is to first sketch out a story arc, in the same way you would a screenplay or novel.
Then I outline the scenarios, rewards, and special rules, then break those into new locations. I generally end the scenarios with official boxset locations, so that 3-4 player games get to experience all the new content.

I am caretaking a sick person in my family right now, so I have a lot of off time to work on creative projects. If anybody is interested in doing anything for it, from rewriting\editing flavor text to scenario design, monsters, illustrations (that would be friggin amazing), I am very open.

I've outlined all the new locations and scenario rules for the 6-scenario second adventure, and it's kinda crazy.

I agree that homebrew is likely neglected because of Paizo releasing so much stuff. Perhaps in that 1-2 month lull after A6 in S&S is released, before wrath of the righteous, people might be looking for some use out of their old boxes. Hopefully that will be the beginning of a real homebrew community on here.

Wrath will be coming out and likely with a new set of Class Decks, starting the process all over again.... I think this is kind of a nice problem to have.

This is of course true, but there's going to be people who want to maximize their investments, won't there be? If you dropped $100 on two boxes, plus another $200 on adventures, wouldn't you want to keep using those boxes instead of waiting for the next one? I really don't want to throw away ROTR, I like it. It's useful. The cards still have a lot of life left in them.

My apologies for double posting this. I don't know how I did that.

If so, I would sure like to see them.
I am feeling lonely out here.

I think the lack of interest in homebrew adventures\scenarios is in part due to the fact that Paizo is so dang prolific. Do any of you anticipate a surge of interest in fan-made content?

Meliski is amazing because he gives you an excuse to drink more beer than everybody else at the table.

What Theryon Stormrune said.

Hawkmoon269 wrote:

Correct. They are intended for use with any adventure path.

That also means that the characters included with the adventure path are specially tuned to that path... Right?

The manual says that it is not efficient using SS characters with RotR due to the missing plunder stuff in Rotr...

I am currently playing a 4-5 player game with mixed characters from both boxes.

The two S&S players in my ROTR campaign are allowed to choose to draw from either the S&S or ROTR box when drawing cards. The party has an S&S Lini and Lirianne, and obviously Lirianne is going to want those gunpowder weapons. I gave the player a caveat that he would have problems finding cards that satisfied the pirate\gun stuff, but he really, really wanted to play a gunslinger, so I worked around it.

Honestly, he's turned out to be one of the most important badass characters in the party, so anything is possible. Whatever makes people happy.

I've had to custom make all my own templates in Gimp. Sigh.

Unfortunately, I used Word to create my adventure PDF for my first custom adventure, and it looks really crapola. I've been searching for a mac PDF editor that gives me good flexibility and formatting ability, but doesn't cost as much as Acrobat Pro. I used Acrobat for work for a while a couple years ago, but have little experience in the third party PDF editing software world.

What non-Acrobat PDF editors do you use or recommend, if any?

I think Gary Weilding's card is too overpowered.

As for shopkeeper's daughter, all thieves tools come with a pair of synthetic narcolipsies. Narcolipsies slide over the user's lips, and when used in kissing, cause the victim to sleep for hours. This is convenient for times when it might be otherwise difficult to leave.

I think it's a great idea, and I agree with isaic. I would shuffle PSIONIC trait spells into the spell deck. You could also have some psionics that arcanes or divines could use so that they have more shelf life. Look forward to seeing any customs you make!

There's a lot more interest in custom stuff over on BGG.
As long as you adhere to the Paizo community use rules you should be fine.

I leave it up to choice, mainly for admin reasons.

If a person wants to draw from the B's in their class's deck, they can choose to, if they want to pick from the RotR base set, they can do that as well.

I have a game where 2 people have chosen to play S&S characters for the RotR adventure path, despite my cautioning against it. I am allowing them to draw their cards from the S&S box.
So far the game is playing just fine, everybody is having fun.

If you read the stickies at the top of this Homebrew forum, they will answer many of those questions.

There isn't much of a public content creation community yet. I'm sure people are making their own cards, but it isn't really shared online as far as I can see, other than new character cards. Paizo has released all the card templates to the fanbase. You can make anything you like, so long as you adhere to the Paizo community use policy.

I am working on my own adventure path, and it's more challenging than it may seem, especially without playtesters.