h2ofowler's page

Just got home from Gencon and wanted to drop my impressions of the PACG organized play. First, as some have said, 2 hours is too short if the people sitting down need to construct a deck. I strongly recommend having completely pre-built class decks if you run an event. In the room, they had the entire class decks to borrow, but the individual characters were not built. Yes, having an entirely built character deck reduces choices, but it would really speed up play.

Other than that, I had a blast. I played 5 sessions total and won 4/5. I played Scenario 1 twice with Valeros (failed first attempt and completed second) and Scenarios 1-3 with Ezren. I'm not in love with the Class deck version of Ezren, but I got to level him up a bit and think he will come into his own as he progresses.

I will say that it seems the class decks using the characters found in the base Skull and Shackles set do better at the scenarios. They are focused on barriers and monsters that appear in the new base set so this makes perfect sense. That does not mean that you cannot use the other characters. I do, however, suggest carefully reviewing the class deck variants to find one that has the most advantages in the S&S base set.

Overall, I had few complaints. The staff was great; the scenarios were very interesting. My only item I really want to know is when I can download the Gencon scenarios. I am itching to run this at a local game store and at my community college game club night.

Very good job to all. Way to go to Mike for bringing it home to NC!

Okay, got my box sets in yesterday and luckily had a family gathering last night. I presented a box set to my 12 year old and 8 year old nephew and one to my 9 year old niece.

First impressions, they LOVED the pawns and fretted over picking exactly the one they wanted to be their character. My 8 year old nephew went so far as to try to keep the fighter pawn from my niece's set because it was the one he picked as his (I had to explain that he had one just like it in his set).

Second, they wanted to play immediately. Therefore, I had the mayor of Sandpoint send them out to Farmer Malachi's farm where a goblin raid had taken place the previous night. They made their way to the farm and nearly took out Malachi when he came around the farmhouse corner...they just knew that noise around the corner had to be goblins!!! After a short roleplay of meeting Malachi...the group set off in the direction of goblin tracks.

Since we did not have time for the full mini-adventure(and my 8 year old nephew kept saying..."Get out the Maps!!"), I used the open side of the flipmat to run an encounter where 5 goblins were laying in wait in the tall grass. The goblins succeeded on stealth against everyone but the rogue and combat began. It was a fun encounter with everyone killing at least one goblin. Everyone was involved and had fun. The night ended with a meal at farmer Malachi's house and an invitation to stay the night and return to Sandpoint in the morning.

Overall, the new character sheets were great. Everyone was getting to the point of knowing where their basic stats were by the end of combat.

Excellent job Paizo!