MagnificentMagpie's page

I think one of the main weaknesses of PACG is that you can't easily grab the game with a bunch of friends and start playing, unless you've been playing the entire game with those people so far.

So it would be cool if like one or two of the B scenarios were not part of a B path or the adventure path at all, but just separate, box content-scalable and repayable scenarios. Kind of like an adventure path independent default play mode, which you can play whatever the current contents of your box, with a fresh character scaled up to the box level in some very simple, very quick way (perhaps some kind of drafting mechanism could be fun? Or integrate it in playing the actual scenario in a clever way, I don't know, I'm not a game designer).

That way PACG doesn't only become more of a stand-alone game, it crucially also becomes a stand alone experience when you want it to. And if the scenarios are implemented with enough variability that playing them more often doesn't necessarily feel like actually playing the same scenario, it actually would also be something you could play with your characters after finishing the main adventure path.

It's far from trivial to implement a scenario with this kind of flexibility and variability, if it even can be done at all. But if done well, it would increase the value of the base set for pretty every type of player.

Despite my reservations about difficulty you've inspired me to pick up WotR at some point.

This might be a good place to mention that Stephan's SnS playthrough has been one of the main reasons why I went from 'what is this game?' to 'I want this game!'. Great work!

Bro, I'm from Europe too

How has your experience been with getting your subscription to the NL? I guess the price of an adventure pack is just below the customs limit (for now, who knows what will happen to the dollar/euro exchange rate). I'm considering a subscription for the next set.

There's some story guides for Rise of the Runelords and Skull & Shackles I worked on with BGG user Kittenhoarder that might sway your opinion. I created supplementary guides for the Blessings Deck and the Hero Origin stories that will assist you in picking up the Pathfinder lore within the context of the card games (I assume of course you have general D&D Monster Manual knowledge, because I didn't do a guide for the creatures.)

You can find these projects registered under the Community Use section of Paizo's website. It contains the necessary links to Boardgame Geek so you can download the files.

As a matter of fact, we're already using the story guide for SnS! Thanks a lot for your work on it, we feel it really adds to the experience.

We're really enjoying SnS, and I'm very happy with my choice. From what we've played of SnS and from what I've seen from WotR, SnS was definitely the right choice for us, both thematically and difficulty-wise.

Also, I must have been drunk when I said I liked the SnS characters less than the WotR ones. DRUNK ON DAMIELS AWESOME POTIONS THAT IS.

[A bunch of awesome words about how he feels about Skull and Shackles]

Thank you! I had kind of made up my mind, but reading your post pretty much took all doubt away. I immediately went ahead and placed the order.

I checked out an indepth description of the WotR adventure path, and that got me pretty excited about how the card game would turn out. Especially Adventure 5 sounds like it'll be pretty amazing! So then I started considering going for WotR after all.

However, following comments on the difficulty (and looking at the amount of adorable animal allies in SnS), made me switch back to SnS.

Specifically:

Wrath's difficulties do tend to be more slavering clawing mashing in your face damage rawr kinda threats, while Shackles tends to be ships crashing, you're drowning, someone sang away one of your party members kinda threats.

DROWNING! CRASHING SHIPS! SCARY SONGS! That sounds more like my cup of tea than icky demons. Keep that walking worm thing away from me!

In addition

So why would I question the assumption that Wrath is far more difficult? Because once you hit AP1 things get much easier.

and

At this point I feel Wrath has been harder (only played the base set, though). However, it feels more 'fair' so to speak. S&S, especially certain later scenarios, can be very RNG dependent (The Bell Tolls, Bizarre Love Triangle, and Admiral Thune immediately spring to mind)

Made me think on the nature of difficulty in a PACG, and in WotR specifically. One of the ways they (will) compensate in WotR for the more difficult checks is with the mythic paths, ie making you roll d20s. That pretty much means that you'll be more at the whims of bad luck than when you roll smaller dice to make smaller checks.

A lot of the game and it's difficulty is working around RNG, and that includes the shuffling of the decks and the rolls of the dice. The scenarios mentioned by isaic16 have a heavier shuffling RNG, but WotR will probably have an higher roll RNG overall. I'm actually more comfortable with the first kind than with the second as a tool to increase difficulty (and I'm pretty sure WotR will use its fair share of it too). Dice to decide outcomes are fine and exciting, but manipulating decks is a bit more interesting to me.

Anyway, thank you all for your insights! As a sidenote, I'm also pretty interested in the upcoming set. Mummies and tombs and ancient treasures? Count me in! I might even try that subscription thing after all when it comes out. As long as I get the big box locally, shipping/customs is actually fine.

Thank you for your reply!

Theme: Both S&S and WotR are based on established RPG adventure paths (available for purchase here on paizo.com), if you don't mind spoilers you can look at the product descriptions for the RPG adventures to see roughly what the storyline is for each one.

Scenario Variety: See "Theme" above; the scenarios are straight out of the RPG storyline. When the story throws unique things at the players is when the scenarios get to break out of the norm. When it doesn't, then they don't.

Oh, thank you, that's actually really useful information. I'll take look at them.

S&S does ramp up in difficulty far more than RotR does as you go onwards, decks 5 and 6 are very brutal.

Is that because of a huge jump in difficulty in AD 5 and 6, or is it more gradual?

consider also the release schedule. S&S is fully released, you can get it now and play nonstop and finish it in short order. WotR is still being released, with each new adventure deck (5 scenarios each) coming out once a month.

That's a good point, though I'm not sure how fast we'd blaze through the scenarios really. With my GF I'd see 2~week happening, but with our large group it'd probably be fine.

Also consider if you want the promo cards. If you do, your best bet is picking up a Card Game subscription here on paizo.com as you'll get every promo shipped to you as part of the sub.

I'm in the EU, so I don't think getting the game directly from Paizo would work out, with shipping and customs, sadly enough.

My recommendation is get both ;)

I knew this one was going to show up :P

I'm looking to get started with PACG. I've been having trouble deciding between SnS and WotR. I've done plenty of research in the game in general, and in SnS and WotR. I've been watching Stephan's great SnS playthrough on YouTube, I've been following the WotR first impression thread, I've studied all blog posts regarding both SnS and WotR in detail and have religiously watched a depressingly brief unboxing video of WotR in 0.25 speed at least 5 times.

Despite all this I still have trouble deciding, so I humbly request anyone with an opinion to throw it at me with full force. Hopefully I'll have a clearer idea on how to proceed after I regain consciousness.

***Theme***
Of the two themes, SnS attracts me more. SnS seems to go for Fun, while WotR seems to go for Awesome. I care more for having fun than being awesome.

I sort of hoped WotR would be Fun AND Awesome, with dimension hopping through crazy worlds, fighting weird creatures (I'm not familiar with the Pathfinder universe), but instead there's Icky People With Insect Legs in The Depressing Wasteland(TM). Give me eel people and three-headed sharks any day!

Is this impression sort of accurate so far?

***Characters***
The WotR characters seem much cooler to me (and as an added bonus they suffer less from wardrobe malfunctions than our SnS friends). I can't really pinpoint why, but they seem more unique and interesting in looks, personality and mechanics. And I like the idea of cohorts (though I guess the sea turtle allies from SnS make up for them).

But since this is all rather vague, and I don't expect to gain much new insight here, let's move on to the main counterbalance to my SnS theme preference:

***Difficulty***
Hubris comes before the fall, but I am confident to say that we are co-op game veterans. We own about 25 co-op games, which we play regularly. And even the harder ones we usually win (think Ghost Stories on the highest difficulty). We enjoy planning things out and do well at managing information, resources and chance.

The general opinion so far seems to be that the difficulty of the PACG adventure paths is WotR>SnS>RotR.

From what I've seen so far, SnS isn't actually that hard. In Stephan's playthrough, he makes quite some dubious tactical choices (understandable! He's on his own and narrating at the same time), he keeps rolling 1s, and he keeps forgetting to swash his buckles in order to get rid of said 1s, yet he still seems to do quite well.

Does the difficulty of SnS ramp up later on, or is the sailing generally this smooth? And if so, is there an elegant and interesting way to boost the difficulty a bit, or is it really intrinsic to the game?

From what I read about WotR, it's pretty hard, but the opinions seem to be divided on whether it's unfairly hard, or just needs more careful management of information and resources than previous PACG adventure paths. Has anyone played through enough of WotR to give a more nuanced opinion on this yet?

The idea of a more challenging game attracts me, despite preferring the SnS setting. However, the nature of the challenge does matter. Is it just Stupid High Numbers hard, or is it Play More Carefully hard?

***Scenario Variety***
SnS already seems to do quite well with offering non-standard scenarios. How does WotR compare to that (so far, obviously)? Is it similar, or have they taken it even further?

Phew! So, tl,dr; Is my view of SnS=Fun and WotR=Awesome accurate, how do the difficulties of SnS and WotR compare, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and how does the scenario variety of WotR compare to SnS so far?