Welcome!
The Year of Rotting Ruin and the other adventure paths sold as PDFs at Paizo were written for Society play. Therefore, they use the default Society rules, as outlined in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Society Guide.
If you won a scenario your character has not won before, your character gets a hero point. You may immediately spend that hero point (and only that hero point) to gain a feat; the maximum number of each type of feat you may have is equal to your character’s tier.
If you gain a card feat, add a card of that type that has the lowest level from your Player Deck to your character’s deck. If your character is Tier 3 or higher, you may instead choose a card of the appropriate type that has a level at least 2 lower than your tier. If a card in your Player Deck lists your character as the Owner and has a level no higher than your tier, you may instead choose that card.
If you gain your third power feat, first, you are rewarded with a role. (see Roles on page 20 of the Core Set rulebook). Use your role only when playing scenarios that have a # of 3 or higher.
So, those adventure path scenarios don't mention hero points because they are assumed.
Of course, you still receive whatever other rewards are mentioned for each scenario - loot cards, deck upgrades, and such.
Also, if you aren't playing in actual Society games being reported to Paizo, you can bend the rules any way you want. These Society adventure paths are terrific additional material regardless of how you play them!
If any of this is unclear (due to language barrier or my inability to explain things well), please let us know!
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To be clear—if you're playing these scenarios outside of Society, I would recommend gaining a hero point with each scenario completed, and ignoring deck upgrades entirely.
I have been working on "converting" the Society APs to regular play. Most of that work is fairly simple and follows much of the advice given above, simply de-Societifying things. For example, when a reward says that a character may temporarily replace some boon in their deck with some boon from the game box and that they must return that boon to the game box at the end of each scenario, the reward can be changed to [Boon type]: Boon Name. Similarly, some rules adaptations can be ignored, such as the modified rules for Traders in the Season of Plundered Tombs and the Season of Faction's Favor. Where Society play makes it necessary for adventures and scenarios to be played in any order (because you never know who is going to be at the table and where their characters are in APs), de-Societifying everything means that adventures and scenarios are played in order.
There are two areas where I am looking for input. The first is feats and the second is deck upgrades.
I've followed the convention of Hero Points. Realistically, most members of my current group will ignore the aspect of spending Hero Points to not die - they'll just not die as a matter of fact since that's how they play the regular APs (I'm the only one that plays permadeath). I'm pretty sure that the other members of the group will like the re-rolls, especially since a few of them are notoriously unlucky with the dice rolls. What I like about Hero Points is that they allow players to have more control over how their characters advance. What I don't like about Hero Points is that they limit character advancement by tier (though I've used adventure deck level in my codification). I analyzed the progression for the boxed APs and found that each is unique, and each has varying end-states and mid-AP snapshots. For example, characters have 6 skill feats, 7 power feats, and 8 card feats at the end of Rise of the Runelords; while characters have 7 skill feats, 11 power feats, and 9 card feats at the end of Wrath of the Righteous (in both cases, characters gain two card feats after completing the last scenario, so those don't really matter unless the character goes through one of the promotional 7 scenarios). It's also important to note that one of the rewards after completing the final scenario of Adventure 3 is that characters earn role cards and power feats. One of the joys of getting a role card is checking off one of the role-specific power feats.
Hero Point progression doesn't follow the box APs, however. Instead, players will most likely use their Hero Points for one of each of the feats after completing the first, second, and third scenarios in an Adventure. That's not really a huge deal, but that post-Adventure 3 role card/power feat satisfaction will have to be allayed until the character successfully completes an Adventure 4 Scenario. That's a very minor nitpick, I'm sure.
My main concern with Hero Point progression, however, is that some of the APs have scenarios/adventures whose rewards grant feats. The Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild Guide covers this on pages 9 and 10, but I've modified that a bit. I'm just calling them "bonus" feats that allow a character to have 1 more of a feat than the adventure deck level without the conversion to a Hero Point if they already have #+1 feats (I'm not using # in my codification because this group isn't familiar with Core terminology and I don't want to muddy things further).
I'm working on expanding my reward analysis to include the Society APs, but my gut instinct is that the "bonus feat" concept should be fair. However, I have never participated in Society play (not for lack of wanting), so there may be nuances that I'm missing but which experienced Society players will be able to describe.
The advice to ignore deck upgrades works well enough for characters designed for the AP (e.g., Crowe in Wrath of the Righteous). However, there are multiple characters that really benefit from cards that are in their respective decks. For example, the Barbarian CD characters might make great use of the various war paint items while the Gunslinger CD characters might make great use of the various Firearm weapons and Ammunition items. Often, these boons are not found in an AP's cards. One solution is to shuffle those decks (or specific cards in those decks) into the game box. Another is to allow characters to use deck upgrades as in Society play. I've chosen a middle ground option that is based on *not* shuffling any cards from decks into game boxes while recognizing that characters might benefit from boons in both the game boxes and their decks. Under this, a standard "reward" at the end of a successfully completed scenario is 1 deck upgrade - replacing a boon in their deck with a boon from their CD deck (this follows normal Society rules). In addition, if a scenario/adventure reward allows a "bonus deck upgrade," an additional deck upgrade may be taken. In both cases, the deck upgrade is optional - there may be times when the boons they have available are better suited to the nature of the AP.
And something that I just considered while composing this post is that initial deck building should allow for some number of boons from CDs. I'll have to work that into my rules.
Note that the standard Society rules for CDs apply in my rules, so any version of Seoni can use the Sorcerer CD, any version of Harsk can use the Ranger CD, etc. Also, where various Society APs allow other characters to be played using certain decks (e.g., playing Alain from Wrath of the Righteous using the Paladin CD), those are allowed for deck upgrade purposes without having to earn them as rewards.
As with my feat progression idea above, this compromise seems fair to me, but my complete inexperience with Society play means that I'm just guessing.
Does anyone, especially those with experience in Society play, think that these ideas are unbalanced in any way? If so, do you have suggestions for alternatives?
Quick follow up...
While I haven't conducted my detailed analysis of the reward progressions for the various Society APs, I realized that limiting feats in Season of the Righteous may be a disservice since it appears that the season follows the Wrath of the Righteous progression in allowing for considerably more feats (than #+1) as a result of the Knights of Kenabres.
At this point, I'm wondering of bonus feats should simply allow for "more" than #, with players somehow differentiating between the standard (Hero Point-based) feats and bonus feats somehow (my group uses laminated character sheets, so it's simply a matter of using a different color to mark bonus feats). Or perhaps that might be an exception built into the Season of the Righteous, with other APs limiting bonus feats to #+1.
I think a more detailed analysis of each AP is necessary.
Okay, I went through the various Society APs and it looks like bonus feats (i.e., those that are specified as rewards rather than as a result of using Hero Points) don't need to be limited to #+1. Here's the basic rundown. The boxed APs are shown first, their stats showing the total number of each feat that each character should have at the end of the AP (and where they gain feats for the final scenario/adventure/AP, the number of those feats they have as they start that scenario are shown in parenthesis). The Society APs are shown immediately below their respective boxes, assuming that each character will earn 6 of each feat as a result of Hero Points and listing only those feats that are specified in rewards.
6 skill | 7 power | 8(6) card
Season of the Runelords
1 skill | 0 power | 0 card
6 skill | 7 power | 8(6) card
Season of the Shackles
0 skill | 1 power | 1 card
Season of Tapestry's Tides
0 skill | 1 power | 2 card (with 1 additional skill OR power OR card feat as a reward for completing Adventure 5)
11(10) skill | 11(10) power | 9(7) card
Note that 5 of the skill feats are the result of medals on the Knights of Kenabres card
Season of the Righteous
5(4) skill | 3(2) power | 1(0) card
Note that 3 of the skill feats are the result of medals on the Knights of Kenabres card
7 skill | 7 power | 7 card
Season of Plundered Tombs
1 skill | 0 power | 0 card
Season of Factions' Favor
1 skill | 1 power | 0 card
The only Society APs in which characters can gain more than #+1 in one or more of those feats are Season of Tapestry's Tides (with power feats potentially being 8 OR card feats being 9) and Season of the Righteous (with skill feats ending at 11 and power feats ending at 9 - being equal to or less than the total numbers of the same types of feats in Wrath of the Righteous).
Since Wrath of the Righteous is widely considered to be extremely difficult, even with the number of feats each character has, it seems clear that the Season of the Righteous requires a similar number of feats. Season of Tapestry's Tides might be debated, but the end-state isn't markedly different from Skull & Shackles.
So I'm not going to limit bonus feats to #+1. Instead, players will have to somehow annotate bonus feats, either marking them differently or identifying the number of each.
All of this supposes, of course, that the Society APs aren't easier than their boxed counterparts, not requiring the additional feats (where those are noted). I lack experience there, though, so I'm relying on experienced Society players to keep me in check.
That's an incredible amount of work that you did, Jenceslav. Thanks! While it's not quite what I'm working towards, it will definitely be very helpful if I move forward.
At this point, I'm doing two basic things:
1. Transferring the various APs from cards to a printed file.
2. Adjusting the Society APs to regular play.
The reason for the first is that my gaming group is getting a little longer in the tooth and reading the small print on the cards has become challenging for many of us. Also, having some rewards spread across two or more cards makes it easy to forget some things, especially "During This Scenario" powers. And this is especially true in the case of the Season of Tapestry's Tides AP where numerous scenarios and adventures have rewards that are powers that can be used for the rest of the adventure path. By consolidating all of these rules/rewards onto a single page that uses much larger font than the cards, it's easier to read and remember everything. The lone exception (so far) is that all of the reward powers for the Season of Tapestry's Tides are recorded on a separate sheet and checked off as we earn each one (which is still much easier than writing them down on Chronicle Sheets or referring back to various pages through the course of game play. An added bonus is that I can update things based on FAQ entries, ensuring that we're using the latest official rules for each adventure/scenario.
Another added bonus is that these files are formatted for mini binders, and though those are larger than 3 cards (Adventure Path, Adventure, Scenario), each mini binder contains all of the APs that use a boxed set. This allows me to easily refer to a large number of scenarios for inspiration in my own efforts at Adventure Path/Adventure/Scenario creation - I simply have to peruse through five or six mini binders rather than refer to a large number of cards and Society files.
The reason for the second is simply to make it easier to play through the Society APs as a regular party, just like playing through the boxed APs.
Something I'm not doing [yet] is updating text to Core wording. Some of the players in my group are resistant to learning new things. While Core wording is much more economical, incorporating that wording into these files would complicate things with the group. Aside from the adjustments from Society to regular play and FAQ updates, the only changes I'm making are using "their" in place of "his" and "her" (except in the narrative text) and fixing any spelling/grammar errors (though I'm sure I'll make my own in this endeavor). One day, once this group completes/masters the classic APs and gets to the Core Set/Curse of the Crimson Throne AP, I'll update these files to use the Core wording. In the meantime, I'm keeping things as consistent as possible with the old wordings.
As for the "in this order/in any order" issue, there are also examples in other APs: Demon's Heresy (Wrath of the Righteous 3), The Half-Dead City (Mummy's Mask 1), and Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh (Mummy's Mask 6) also allow for some of the scenarios to be completed in any order. In practice, I've changed all of the Society adventures so that the scenarios are completed in A-F order except where the narrative suggests that scenarios can be completed in any order. In this, City of Secrets (Season of the Runelords 2), Lost at Sea (Season of the Shackles 1), and a Pirate's Life (Season of the Shackles 2) allow for some of the scenarios to be completed in any order. Other exceptions include the optional (generally P) adventures/scenarios. In all of the other cases, however, the narrative suggests a sequence for at least the majority of scenarios, so it was just easier to apply the "in this order" change in the vast majority of cases, allowing the Read the Following Aloud and Development text to be read aloud without amendment.
Here's an example of what one of these scenarios looks like: Best Served Col (Skull & Shackles 5)
Both sides of that Scenario card are shown in the Paizo blogs (here) and the FAQ update is also freely available on the Paizo website, so I'm not giving anything away. I'm fairly confident that the files for the boxed APs can similarly be shared, but the Society APs/scenarios can't be shared because they give too much away that people would normally have to pay for (though the files don't include the card images).
Thanks again!