I'm not sure quite how you figured that it's personal preference when the rules state that if you play the campaign, then you play them in adventure order, and with each new adventure, you shuffle in the cards from that adventure pack into the appropriate places within the box.
The only one you can add straight from the start is the Character Add-on set. The rest shouldn't be added until the party actually begins that adventure.
Once they're added, they stay until something says otherwise, even when you move on to the next adventure.
There are places in the box to put the adventure decks and the character add-on deck so you can store them if you get them before they're being used, or as a place to store cards once you start removing them.
I suppose it may be personal preference if your play group decides not to play the campaign and instead decides to simply play scenarios in a pick-and-choose manner, though.
If you add in all the cards from adventures you haven't yet reached, it can throw the power balance out of whack by giving extremely powerful items early on while also encountering extremely difficult monsters.
As you start each adventure deck, you add all the cards from that deck to the pool of cards you are already using. Since B & C decks are the same level...
When you play Perils of the Lost Cost you will have only B & C cards.
When you play Burnt Offerings there will be B, C, & 1 cards.
When you play Skinsaw Murders there will be B, C, 1 & 2 cards.
When you play Hook Mountain Massacre there will be B, C, 1, 2, & 3 cards.
And so on.
There is a rule about removing cards from the pool of "in play" cards. It is on the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path card and starts to apply with Hook Mountain Massacre. But other than that, you don't remove cards from the pool when you build locations or draw random cards.
The difficulty of acquiring and defeating cards scales with the growth of your skills and powers, so you don't want to go up against something that you aren't equipped to deal with.
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Yeah, the basic idea works like this:
Combine all the base set and add-on cards (if you have the add-on)
Play the intro adventure Perils of the Lost Coast
Now add in adventure deck 1
Play adventure deck 1
Add in adventure deck 2
play 2 etc.
The spaces in the back of the box are there to hold your physical boxes for the extra decks. Many people use those boxes to store "removed from the game" cards as well.
Eventually as you play the other cards are mixed with the base set, but done in stages.
I hope this helps clear things up!
I add the cards into the sections of the insert instead of keeping them in their boxes. I then use these to keep them separated out until the approriate adventure starts:
http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/99645/deck-dividers
It also helps if you go back and start another "campaign" with a different group of players and need to sort out stuff from higher adventure decks while you play a lower adventure.
Welcome to PACG! Godspeed on your adventure!
Others have described how you add each Adventure Deck to the mix of cards in the box as you start playing each adventure in turn. And also how you will eventually start removing cards from the game as the Rise of the Runelords path card describes. However, let me expand upon one thing:
Since what cards are in your box depend on the adventure you are playing, if you have more than one group of players/characters, and they are at different points of the adventure path, you might find yourself adding and removing cards on a regular basis.
Basically, my first play group is on Adventure Deck 2 right now. So we play with B, C, 1 & 2 cards. (I also have Deck 3, but since we haven't started playing that adventure yet, the cards stay in the small box in it's place at the back of the insert.)
When I play with my second group, who is only on Adventure Deck 1, I have to remove all the 2 cards from the box and put them back into the small box to keep them out of the way. (Note: You can leave Locations, Scenario, Villain, and Henchmen cards in the box regardless of what deck you're playing, because those cards are never randomly shuffled/used in gameplay.)
And lastly, my thirds group is only on the base Perils of the Lost Coast adventure, so I have to make sure only B and C cards are in the box for that group.
Depending on which groups I play with, in which order, I may be adding or removing cards in various ways. Things will get even more complex when I have to track the list of cards removed from the game for each group! But I've gotten pretty good at it, and I can set up a game (adding/removing deck cards as needed, assembling the character decks, and setting up the scenario decks) in about a half hour before my friends arrive.
Good info Pixel. That is what I use my deck dividers for, to switch from one group to another. And I track the removed cards (which doesn't start until deck 3) with a worksheet I have in here:
http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/98267/game-accessories-layout-guides-remo ve-from-game-wo
There are other potentially helpful things you might find in there. BGG has lots of helpful things in the files, so you might want to check it out.
It's a hassle in its own way, but you can also just leave them in and whenever a character encounters a card for an adventure path higher than the one they're on, they put it back in the box and draw a different card.
I took out the divider that the box came with almost immediately, actually. I am a sleever, so others out there can relate. When you have the sleeves on the cards, there is not enough room in the slots for each card type, which is a little unfortunate...
Anyways, to the point, I still keep the order suggested in the box, just because I did not feel like coming up with anything else, but I use the sleeve boxes as dividers. I use dragon shields, so the boxes are actually pretty sturdy. I place all of the cards that I am not using into the divider box in order. That way, I can just pull out the next however many cards when my group gets to the next adventure.
I imagine that I will be doing the same thing when the next AP comes out as well. I do not think that I will have enough sleeve boxes from the get go, so I will just use deck boxes, since I come from a TCG background, and just have a hundred or so lying around.
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I'm a sleever too. I built a foam board insert using basically the same layout as the insert that came in the box.
But recently I bought this. And it is great. I love it.
Vic has hinted that there might be something different available for Skull and Shackles for sleevers, but nothing specific has been said yet.
I'm a sleever to. I built a foam board insert using basically the same layout as the insert that came in the box.
But recently I bought this. And it is great. I love it.
Vic has hinted that there might be something different available for Skull and Shackles for sleevers, but nothing specific has been said yet.
Oh. My god.
Bought instantly. I wanted something like this pretty bad, but I didn't want to make it (not least because it'd probably look bad).
Thanks a ton for posting this.
I'm a sleever to. I built a foam board insert using basically the same layout as the insert that came in the box.
But recently I bought this. And it is great. I love it.
Vic has hinted that there might be something different available for Skull and Shackles for sleevers, but nothing specific has been said yet.
Well, here is another thing that I will need to convince the wife is a good idea. Hehe. Thanks for the post.
I am really wondering what the Paizo team has in mind, however. Maybe the S&S AP will come with an insert than is different from the one that came in RotR. That would be interesting.