More adventure sets after Skull & Shackles?

[jcikal]

Assuming S&S sells well, will there be more 6-pack adventure sets like Runelords & S&S after the S&S cycle ends? Assuming this is so, will there be a Cthulhu adventure at least in consideration?

[Hawkmoon269]

They plan to do two adventure paths a year starting this summer and to stick to the Pathfinder universe. I'll dig up the links if I can find them.

[Hawkmoon269]

Here is one:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qo4j?New-Pathfinder-Adventure-Card-Game#5

[ryric]

I imagine they will continue to use plotlines from existing adventure paths. No use reinventing the wheel when they have so many well constructed adventures to build off of. So it's unlikely there will be one that explicitly features Cthulhu, but:

-Carrion Crown has a horror theme, and one of the adventures is specifically Lovecraftian in nature. This adventure path may end up in the card game at some point.

-Other APs have elements of this nature. I expect we'll see some Lovecraftian stuff in adventure 6 of Runelords, for example.

Spoiler:

Leng features somewhat heavily in the tabletop RPG adventure

I figure sometime in the next 3-4 months we'll be told what the AP after Skulls&Shackles will be. Then the rampant speculation can begin.

[Lament]

I've been skimming the threads but I haven't found anything solid for this question.

Will there be any additional content for the persistent characters after Runelords? Thanks

[Vic Wertz]

We don't currently have plans for new scenarios for characters who have completed Rise of the Runelords, no.

[spinningdice]

I have a theory that Jade Regent will be next, allow the inclusion of Samurai and Ninja characters, as most of the others will be covered by the S&S path.

[3Doubloons]

spinningdice wrote:

I have a theory that Jade Regent will be next, allow the inclusion of Samurai and Ninja characters, as most of the others will be covered by the S&S path.

There's still a lot more to come after S&S in terms of character classes

[ThreeEyedSloth]

I hope sales don't drop off sharply for them once they switch over to two whole sets a year. I know I've heard a lot of grumbling from fans of the Rise of the Runelords set at my FLGS, and I don't think any of them are planning on sticking with the game once it cycles to monthly releases.

[Brainwave]

Yeah for all that I enjoy playing PACG, two entire sets a year is a bit much for me as well. I might be somewhat more likely to stick with it if at least one of those continued already existing characters, since for me that's half of the fun. Overall, buying an entirely new AP that's unrelated to any of the others (but not necessarily that different from the others) every 6 months is fairly unappealing.

[feylund]

Brainwave wrote:

Yeah for all that I enjoy playing PACG, two entire sets a year is a bit much for me as well. I might be somewhat more likely to stick with it if at least one of those continued already existing characters, since for me that's half of the fun. Overall, buying an entirely new AP that's unrelated to any of the others (but not necessarily that different from the others) every 6 months is fairly unappealing.

I kinda like the faster rolling out of adventure decks... ive been playing with a group of 4 that meets weekly starting last week and we go through about 3-4 scenarios a night, so a faster release schedule would be appreciated. Also my two cents about the next path, i would love to see wrath of the righteous done up.

[greek2me]

I'm totally of the opinion that if you want to wait two months to buy the Adventures, rather than getting them monthly, it's a lot easier to do that than to buy a new Adventure each month when they only release them semi-monthly.

So...I don't see why some are grumbling about the quicker release. If it's a budgetary thing (assuming you are patient enough for an actual budget, which I'm not), then budget away and wait. :)

[cartmanbeck]

As far as grumbling about the increased release schedule, let me just say this: I helped with the playtest of the Skull & Shackles set, and I promise you that the quality of the game (and the difficulty, at least in the playtest) has only gotten higher. I expect that trend to continue as the PACG team gets more and more feedback from players and playtesters.

[Mike Selinker]

Spoilers!

Oh, wait, you can say that.

[cartmanbeck]

Mike Selinker wrote:

Spoilers!

Oh, wait, you can say that.

:-P I wouldn't say anything truly spoiler-ish without permission from you or Vic, trust me.

[Steve Geddes]

Is it true the game is getting harder in future APs?

[vietorn]

I am excited at the prospect of getting a pack every month.

[oneplus999]

Steve Geddes wrote:

Is it true the game is getting harder in future APs?

I'm in cartmanbeck's group, can confirm. We breeze through RotRL but S&S was pretty hard for us. After lots of balance changes, by the end of the playtest it felt like it was in that sweet spot for us of still letting us win most of the time, but always convincing us the odds were against us and death/loss was imminent :)

That said, in the RotRL beta I remember parts being pretty hard that aren't this time around. but that might have more to do with going from a 2-player game to a 4-player one and knowing the game better now.

[Steve Geddes]

Cheers. I struggle as it is, but I figure I can always add the equivalent of hero points if it gets too hard for me.

[Mike Selinker]

Guys: Please stop saying things about what's in the playtest set.

[oneplus999]

Whups, my bad, took "you can say that" as an "ok" to discuss difficulty.

[Mike Selinker]

My fault. I did not notice the parenthetical in cartmanbeck's comment. Yeah, let's leave stuff like that inside the playtest group, please.

[oneplus999]

Mike Selinker wrote:

My fault. I did not notice the parenthetical in cartmanbeck's comment. Yeah, let's leave stuff like that inside the playtest group, please.

Got it! Will stick to talking about how fun it was :)

[Vic Wertz]

We'll just point out that the difficulty of the playtest will not necessarily be an indication of the difficulty of the finished product. Indeed, determining appropriate power levels is one of the reasons we playtest.

[Steve Geddes]

Cheers, Vic. I wasnt really asking about the playtest - I was more wondering whether you had formed an "official view" as to whether RotRL was too easy. I've heard that view put several times but havent really known what you, Mike and the rest of the development team think.

[Vic Wertz]

I personally suspect that most (but not all) of the people who report that RotR as a whole is too easy are probably doing something that's making it easier than it should be. (And the easier they say it is, the more likely that's the case.)

Mike and his team are experts at this game, obviously, and while they pretty much never die, and rarely lose, they do come close to dying and losing a *lot*.

I also think that maybe the difficulty ramp up could stand to be a little steeper in the first couple of adventures, And more importantly, I think we can get away with introducing more unusual scenarios a lot sooner than we thought we could.

[Brainwave]

I definitely think you're correct about all of that.

Also, I think some people's definition of "easy" are different from others, which is why someone posting about how the game is overall too easy for them is kind of pointless unless they are going to give a LOT of details about how their games play.

Personally I think if you increased the difficulty to the point where characters died with regularity, you'd get much more complaints than what you get now. Especially now that you have quite a bit of adventures to run a new character through to get them back on the same level with the party.

[Hawkmoon269]

I'd love to see a video of Mike and his team playing a whole scenario. That would be awesome.

[Mike Selinker]

That's a really good idea.

[mlvanbie]

How often are we expected to run out the blessings deck? Have characters retire from exploring due to poor health? Fail a check against a bane/henchman/villain?

It would also be interesting to have statistics on these things from various play groups with information about characters used. Some combinations may work a lot better than expected. Seoni's effectiveness is probably directly related to the amount of healing she can expect.

[Calthaer]

Mike Selinker wrote:

That's a really good idea.

Watching you & Chad play a bit of the game via the "Watch it Played" video, where they zoomed in on cards and highlighted specific effects / checks on them, was what really sold me on the game. You guys explained it really well, you could tell how the game mechanics generally worked, and the close-ups showed what the cards were like.

I, too, think it would be interesting to see statistics from a variety of groups on how they play the game.

[Youperguy]

I have found the difficulty ramp in RoR to be fairly good. I do feel that adventure 2 was a bit to easy, but I can see the ramp up in 3 and 4, and I am fairly happy so far.

We will defiantly get S&S, as for the next set it depends on what it is. Right now we are having a lot of fun playing RoR. I could defiantly see us skipping an AP if we aren't finished with the previous one.

I do hope, down the line, someday for in future, we get an advanced adventure set which could be played by any group that has finished any of the APs. I am sure an adventure 7 or 8 would sell well once 3 or 4 APs are out.

[Bidmaron]

Since Paizo has never produced a follow-on to their adventure paths, I doubt whether they'd do it for this game either.

[Vrog Skyreaver]

although I would imagine that it won't be long after Rise is completed that you'll see homebrew adventures that take place after the end of rise.

[Bidmaron]

That, Vrog, I think we can count on, just like fans have added to the end of some of the adventure paths.

[Nathaniel Gousset]

Vic Wertz wrote:

I personally suspect that most (but not all) of the people who report that RotR as a whole is too easy are probably doing something that's making it easier than it should be. (And the easier they say it is, the more likely that's the case.)

Mike and his team are experts at this game, obviously, and while they pretty much never die, and rarely lose, they do come close to dying and losing a *lot*.

I also think that maybe the difficulty ramp up could stand to be a little steeper in the first couple of adventures, And more importantly, I think we can get away with introducing more unusual scenarios a lot sooner than we thought we could.

I think you have to separate Character death with game difficulty, they are somewhat tied but not so much.

Currently starting AP4 and the game finally seems to reach a balance point where things get harder.

The game is nearly impossible to balance right because it depend of the number of heroes played, the level of dedication of the players and the choice of the heroes. Some scenarios can be very hard to a group and a breeze to play for another, just because one of the group have several Diplo/Charisma character while the other have none better than 1d6.

That's being said, with a balanced group, of average skill and size, playing correctly by as the rules (as correctly as you can considering how many time there was twist and change and all) the game was indeed pretty easy until now.

I think that the scaling of encounter doesn't really follow character power curve... but they can't. They can't because the same character can have as much as +3 difference to as simple skill roll and as much as +5-+7 on a combat skill roll depending on the power and skil feat the player choose to buy. That's far too much amplitude to predict.

Scaling are also very hard to do because cards have too much showtime. Encounter cards culling is not strong enough and you can keep seeing cards from base set up until AP6, while your chance to encounter cards from the current AP just go smaller as you advance. The smaller you character group is the bigger the effect too, because less heroes = less location = less encounter = less cards culled.

Finally the Henchman and more importantly the Villain doesn't scale at all due to the number of heroes in the group wich doesn't make real sense. Because a 2 heroes group will have a harder time against a Villain than a 6 heroes group. Vilain can expect to face all and every power from all the characters in the groups, with no cards kept. As I said this make roll against villain in average in the 30, but up to 50 since AP0, and it goes worse and worse as things go.

I agree with your starting comment that "most (but not all) of the people who report that RotR as a whole is too easy are probably doing something that's making it easier than it should be", what they do is play for the win, construct a well balanced team of heroes and play very tactically and cooperatively against the system... wich does not push back enough.

Yet the game is still fun to play because progressing is fun.

Character death is a no occurrence wich is good giving the permadeath penalty. The odds that a character die without the player takingabnormal risk are so thin that we never saw a death yet. We did sometimes have to park one character up a closed location until the end, but it happen just once or twice. We don't abuse healing (still on basic cure) as usually only Liri heal herself.

AP4 seems to have make player damage more prominent and thus armor finally usefull and perhaps even needed. But weapons are still the best bet and evade cards a waste of a usefull spot and explore.

Too many cards lack the basic or elite nametag. A skill 7 check is just wasting an opportunity to see a more thematic card from the current scenario. Cards should be either Basic, Elite or Veteran. I understand that keeping the best cards hidden in a throve of junk make for their rarity and thus interest. But I think that should only apply to boon. Banes should rotate more often to keep the flavor of changign area. Getting attacked by Skinsaw cultist, falling bells, Goblins and other mobs while exploring AP4 and AP5 (and even AP6) doesn't really give the feeling of a progression.

About Adventure Set post RoR. That's a bad idea. The interest of the game is in the character progression wich have to be both limited and sensible. You have to earn less feat than possible on your card to make taking decision on what to take sensible. By the end of RoR your heroes have achieved something, they are elite and above the opposition. Adding another level of difficulty will take them back to the starting point and won't be in essence more different than just starting a whole new adventure with new characters. Except that a new setting permit new mechanism and new character interaction and provide for a better and more renewed experience than just a ressassing of existant.

[Troymk1]

Nathaniel Gousset wrote:

Scaling are also very hard to do because cards have too much showtime. Encounter cards culling is not strong enough and you can keep seeing cards from base set up until AP6, while your chance to encounter...

That's really your opinion only.

To my mind scaling an elite level adventure/encounter was the place that a good GM could always shine.

I invite the Design team to attempt that challenge sometime in the future. As there is no greater pleasure than continuing the story of a well loved character.

That is true in this genre as it is in others (Film, Literature, Video-gaming)

[Vic Wertz]

Nathaniel Gousset wrote:

I agree with your starting comment that "most (but not all) of the people who report that RotR as a whole is too easy are probably doing something that's making it easier than it should be", what they do is play for the win, construct a well balanced team of heroes and play very tactically and cooperatively against the system... wich does not push back enough.

I think you misunderstood me—when I say these people are "probably doing something that's making it easier than it should be" I'm not referring to applying good strategies and tactics. I mean that I think they're likely playing something *wrong*, like acquiring cards from the blessings deck, or playing certain cards when they're not supposed to be able to, or applying bonuses that they shouldn't have, or closing locations without doing all of the right things first.

[Nathaniel Gousset]

Vic Wertz wrote:

Nathaniel Gousset wrote:

I agree with your starting comment that "most (but not all) of the people who report that RotR as a whole is too easy are probably doing something that's making it easier than it should be", what they do is play for the win, construct a well balanced team of heroes and play very tactically and cooperatively against the system... wich does not push back enough.

I think you misunderstood me—when I say these people are "probably doing something that's making it easier than it should be" I'm not referring to applying good strategies and tactics. I mean that I think they're likely playing something *wrong*, like acquiring cards from the blessings deck, or playing certain cards when they're not supposed to be able to, or applying bonuses that they shouldn't have, or closing locations without doing all of the right things first.

I understood what you meant, I just counter it because I do think a lot of the people that complain that the game is too easy, noticely on BGG, don't make mistake. We posted several of our session and no error were founds. I am convinced that for people with boardgaming experience and a decently build group, playing with no house rules to increase difficulty the game is indeed too easy to succeed. Just look at how many people do play with House rules to keep things interestings.

The strategy to win is very very basic. The push your luck element is fairly controlable and as the encounters aren't really difficults the global odds of success are only on the player side. With the basic scenario building you only have to close 2 location then find the vilain and the game is won. Vilain combat check are currently too weak to face each hero of the team using one blessing on the roll plus the support spells, plus the ranged weapons plus the discard powers...

In AP4 the monsters are finaly ramping to the average combat rolls of our AP2 players.

Sure, if you split your skill feat over 3 skills and don't focus on your power you can have a harder time as a hero with +3 to a check will be in worse position than one with +6. But for the people that do concentrate on getting the better of their character, succeding on check rather than avoiding them, favor auto success items rather than bonus ones, max blessings with card feats, add spell feat to caster rather than weapons, armor nor items, don't even consider an ally if he doesn't provide free explore, dont concentrate on acquiring ephemeral loot but on sucess and speed, to sum it, for people playing correctly, the game is too easy.

It doesn't make for a bad game or an un-interesting experience and getting loot and crashing opposition is fun. But the winning odds and the difficulty are nowhere near the standard of other cooperatives games. And the gameplay and tactics are really basics, solving the scenario is no rocket science and you need very very bad luck to lose a scenario on time.

I do agree that some people were playing incorrectly at the game launch, but thoses are long gone. Don't dismiss people that tell you the game is too easy because they have argument and proof to back their says other than "I really think there is something you ought to be playing wrong".

[Steve Geddes]

Have you played much (or at all) with just one character? That's what I have most experience with, and I find the game tough.

[Bidmaron]

Nathaniel, the people you are talking about on BGG do not constitute "most." "Most" are those that rarely are on the boards, usually only to gripe about it being too easy. In many cases, when we've probed that on these boards, we've found them making egregious errors -- most of them would have been prevented by simply reading the original rulebook.

The reason this 'game is too easy' push concerns me is because those of us who can only play one game a week (and I think it is a sizable portion of the players, but that's without any data) are about to have to reevaluate our subscriptions. This push will undoubtedly affect S&S (as some on this board have noted), and the issue rate will be monthly. With five scenarios/set, us once a week crowd will not be able to keep up if we lose even one game.

I think people are missing the point. It's a cooperative game. The game should be challenging but rarely result in a loss. As I've noted before, challenge doesn't mean you have to lose a certain percentage of the time, it means (in my opinion), how close did you feel to losing? That's challenge for a multi-player game.

And I think that's the other point 'the game is too easy' crowd misses. There aren't that many cooperative games out there. People are used to losing a game x% of the time where x=(n-1)/n, where n is the number of players. But in a conventional game (well, most of them anyway), there is a winner 100% of the time! No one complains that those games are too easy because there is always a winner.

For those such as yourself who think it's too easy -- house rule it. That's where PACG I think misses the boat. There should be official, sanctioned 'advanced' rules options for folks like yourself. The game shouldn't be targeted for advanced players, but it should support them.

When S&S comes out, the tone of the game's difficulty will change, even if Paizo doesn't do anything to make it 'harder.' Once people can't finish a deck before the next one arrives, the boards will get interesting in the other direction.

I also disagree with your point about encounters scaling. In a six player game, you cannot wantonly use blessings, or you will lose on time. That point has been made on the boards time and again. Plus, I find that I rarely have those blessing mid-game -- most are in my discard pile from having explored with them.

[Nathaniel Gousset]

@Bidmaron, I actually agree with you except on 2 points :

-" There aren't that many cooperative games out there."

Sorry but there is A LOT OF cooperative games out there, some of the best games of 2013 were cooperative or semi-cooperative games. Really plenty of choice for people.

-"you cannot wantonly use blessings, or you will lose on time. That point has been made on the boards time and again. Plus, I find that I rarely have those blessing mid-game -- most are in my discard pile from having explored with them."

I am speaking about the Vilain and Henchman, not every encounter. We usually kept our Blessing for exploring AND the Vilain fight. No point to hold any cards againt them.

I don't know how you manage to empty your deck of all blessing by midgame.... because they are usually mixed in the whole deck and I dont start with all in my hand. So we basically always have some blessings in hand during other player turn. Staff of Healing, Father Zanthius, Pog and Cure Spell are also great to got thoses back.

There is also the fact that blessing is the second area where we maxed up our cards feat, after spells (and first category for Valeros).

Finally you say you want to separate Loss to Challenge, but that is artificial. We currently never lose... but we aren't usually challenged either as the blessing deck is usually half full by the end (except one or two scenario). How can a game be qualified as challenging if you never lose it ? Try some of the very good Cooperatives games out there: Agents of Smersh, Robinson Crusoé, Forbidden Desert, Sentinels of the Multiverse,... there you will have an idea of what is a challenge, when you have to actually put effort AND luck into your play to grab victory out of the jaw of defeat. In PAGC you usually only encouter defeat when luck kick you in the nuts with a 0.1% odds in the Henchman placement.

You only play once a week so the game is stimulating enough ? sure because you don't have time to experience how the lack of actual challenge could dull it for the other people... that is not a reason not to expect a better challenge. And that is not a good point for PAGC, it just show that it lack both in content AND interest. There is not a lot of game that hit the table as few as it (but as regularly). We know we only we get 5 play out of each extension pack... that is not enough.

[Calthaer]

There are eleven characters in this game, each with a play-style that is different by a pretty significant margin. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone, or any group, would feel like they've seen everything an adventure deck has to offer after only one play-through with one particular set of characters. C'est la vie and all that, I guess.

[Oroniss]

I am pretty happy with the difficulty level the game is set at. I haven't had many losses with a solid party with good synergy and (hopefully) smart play, but there have been enough close calls to make it interesting.

I would also much prefer the official game to err on the side of being too easy rather than too hard. I find it much more satisfying to house-rule in changes that make the game more difficult than to do the reverse (which just feels like cheating).

Having said that, I would welcome any somewhat "official" options as to the best ways to up the difficulty level while still retaining some balance. I have read a few of the threads here and some suggestions I like, others less so. Still, more options are always good.

Just my 2cp.

[Gurzigost]

I just want to say that I play this game because it is well balanced for solo (I play two characters). If the difficulty gets to a point that my characters die and I have to restart the whole adventure I would quickly lose interest in the game and most probably not buy more adventures. I do plan to start future adventures with different characters but would want to finish (and have a good chance to do it) with the current two characters I'm playing; Lem and Valeros.

I'm one of those players that don't have a huge amount of time to invest in having fun and if something is frustrating enough I don't even bother. So far this game is amazing for my play style, time and difficulty aversion.

What I really love about this game too is the minimal deck building. for instance a game that I can't play is LOTR LCG because it is ridiculously hard for solo and requires a tremendous amount of deck building which I hate.