Am I the only one who thinks this game may have sustainability issues in the near future?
-If they do not release new and approved character decks with a wrath of the righteous I believe people may get frustrated and bored.
-lack or known connections to Pathfinder Society. The two games truly need to be linked. Linking them will cause amazing growth for both.
I know there is discussion that both will come sometime but for this game sooner will be a lot better than later.
I'm pretty sure we'll see some new class decks around the release of WotR. But even if we didn't, has anyone really exhausted all the characters from the class decks they would enjoy playing in organized play? You could even play as the same character you've played in S&S but choose the other role.
I can see how a connection with the RPG would be beneficial. And I think it was said at some point that they planned for the card guild to have rewards that were usable in the RPG society. I'm fine with that, and I can see it being good marketing. But that won't be of any benefit to me. I don't play the RPG at all. And there is no way I could find the time too. That is a big part of the reason I love PACG. It lets me feel sort of like I'm playing an RPG with no where near the time commitment.
But I understand you run a store, so you might have a better feel for this than I do.
I don't know about sustainability issues, but growth is an issue. I'm running games at a local store on Saturdays. Mostly cause it's the only day I have available to actually run something like this. My sessions so far consist of me. Nobody else, although I do frequently get asked questions about the game. I'll answer to the best of my ability, but it does get frustrating to not have a group going on this. It brings to question whether the store is willing to continue picking up product or support the organized play. Sadly, that seems to be a common trend in my region instead of a singular incident.
One potential player actually asked if there was a Paladin deck. He didn't seem interested in the classes I mentioned, even when I described how there are a few oddballs among the heroes among them. It simply reinforces something I take to heart. Some players feel they need to connect to a certain class and tend to build characters and indeed card decks that revolve around that kind of vision.
Connecting the adventures to the Pathfinder Society might help to some degree, but I'd see that more for the season's mini-scenario or for a season finisher. I'm just trying to round up players and get things going, even if I do have to inevitably go through a marathon run of scenarios.
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Am I the only one who thinks this game may have sustainability issues in the near future?
-If they do not release new and approved character decks with a wrath of the righteous I believe people may get frustrated and bored.
-lack or known connections to Pathfinder Society. The two games truly need to be linked. Linking them will cause amazing growth for both.I know there is discussion that both will come sometime but for this game sooner will be a lot better than later.
Are you talking about the game or the PFS Adventure Card Guild?
I think the game is doing fine on it's own. I know that more people have purchased Skull & Shackles than Rise of the Runelords. (Although a couple of people that purchased RotR did NOT purchase Skull and Shackles. One because I was buying it so he'd play with my copy. And the other because he was upset that RotR characters were "done" when the Adventure Path was finished.) I have seen several purchases of the S&S set at the stores where I play.
If you're talking about PFS Adventure Card Guild (PFSACG as opposed to PFSRPG), this is it's infancy. I think there are some issues that need to be ironed out. Several of us agree that the class decks don't support the 4 characters included very well. I think the current class decks need to be refined a bit and maybe re-released. We are expecting new class decks some time after the release of Wrath of the Righteous (WotR) next year. We hope that some of the feedback provided hits those products. Otherwise we'll have similar issues.
One of the things that I do is I have two sets of class decks that I bring to each session. I have one set that is a public set so that players can look at the cards and characters to see what interests them. They can use the deck to play the game and decide if that's something they want to purchase. And then I encourage them to buy a deck. (The other set of class decks are for my own characters that I play. I have six currently and am working on a seventh soon.) So for that player that doesn't want to play because there isn't a paladin class deck, I would have let him look at the rest of the characters to see if something peaked his interest. It has worked.
We had an initial surge when PFSACG was started. Of that, I've had two dropouts from the start. One because of scheduling and the other moved back to his home area (was in my area due to work). It wasn't because of interest. I've added another store and am now playing at three locally. I'm hoping to add more after this season. So overall, there is interest there.
But I'm not sure how that translates to business for a store, though. I know that interest in the game from PFSACG players has translated to sales of the base set and not just class decks for a couple of the stores. But for the newest store, not so much. And I realize that playing the game where people can see it will bring in traffic to the store.
As far as interconnectivity between PFSACG and PFSRPG is concerned, there has been talk about doing this with boons but nothing has happened yet. And then you have the players that do RPG that don't do ACG and the reverse. How do you make it fair? What kind of boons? I think they're still trying to figure that out. And while I understand that you think that's needed, I'm not sure it actually is. I have very few players of PFSACG that are also RPGers. (Although I am anxious to find out what these shared boons would be.)
I know I am enjoying S&S more than ROTRL mainly because I have played half of the S&S RPG campaign and the game makes more sense and has more depth when you know more of the backstory. Not only does the scenario make more sense, but you can see why the scenario design is done the way it is and interpret it. For example the first scenario where you start off with one card and build up as you defeat henchmen, which mimics being pressganged with nothing then slowly building up your strength and equipment on the ship. This is not explicitly stated as the story reason for why the scenario is written the way it is and I am sure many people would not have considered the "why" of the story and just accepted the mechanics at face value. I did this is ROTRL.
Sadly we are playing through the ACG at a much faster rate than the RPG, so I am about to run out of plot :)
One potential player actually asked if there was a Paladin deck. He didn't seem interested in the classes I mentioned, even when I described how there are a few oddballs among the heroes among them. It simply reinforces something I take to heart. Some players feel they need to connect to a certain class and tend to build characters and indeed card decks that revolve around that kind of vision.
Tarlin is a Paladin in all but name. Even Kyra seems to have turned down the healy and jacked up the slashy in her Class Deck version.
If you squint a little, they've done a pretty good job covering the "feel" of pretty much all the core classes, even if they don't yet have dedicated Class Decks.
Barbarian: Wrathack
Druid: Agna (for the animal affinity aspect) or Arabundi (for the spellcasting nature warden)
Monk: Meliski (drunken style indeed!), maybe even Lesath or Wu Shen.