A new aspect to the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game is the launch of the Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild: Season of the Shackles. This allows players an opportunity to play a new story on a regular basis. Tanis O'Connor, Pathfinder Adventure Card Game designer with Paizo Publishing, answered some questions about the game’s new organized play.
DN: What would you like to communicate regarding the organized play launch for the Pathfinder card game?
O'Connor: The Adventure Card Guild is a great way to play a new story with new characters, new people at a convention or every week at a local game store. We’re hoping to make it appointment gaming.
DN: What aspect of the card game’s organized play are you most excited about?
O'Connor: The Adventure Card Guild allows players to explore the possibilities of a new product we’ve just released — the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game class decks. This allows people to play up to 28 new characters. I can’t wait to see what people think of them.
DN: How will the organized play for the card game differ from the Pathfinder roleplaying game organized play?
O'Connor: We’re borrowing many concepts from the wildly successful Pathfinder Society roleplaying campaign such as Chronicle sheets for record keeping and the idea that you can take your character and sit down at any table to play. The Adventure Card Guild, however, doesn’t require a game master or hours of preparation. It’s as simple as printing out the one-page scenario, setting it up with a Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles base set and sitting down to game.
DN: Will the scenarios be available for purchase later? Will the scenarios be delivered as a PDF?
O'Connor: Scenarios will be delivered as PDFs, basically as an 8.5-inch by 11-inch card. Retailers will get a new scenario for free every week, and every month when the new Skull & Shackles Adventure Deck expansion is released the previous month’s scenarios will be bundled and sold on the paizo.com store.
DN: Are there any new aspects to the second adventure campaign for the adventure card game Skull & Shackles over the previous Rune Lords campaign?
O'Connor: Oh, goodness yes. The story begins with the characters being press-ganged, rising up against their pirate captor and becoming freebooters in their own right. We’ve got ships, pirates, sharks, pirates, horrible sea monsters, pirates and also pirates. Mechanically, the Skull & Shackles set focuses a lot more on skill use and on a greater variety of challenges, both at the individual card level and at the scenario level. It’s a more intimate and less epic story, and I think it’s a lot of fun.
DN: What will groups need in order to participate?
O'Connor: To play, each person will need to have a class deck (retail price $20). We encourage people to register those characters at paizo.com/pathfindersociety and download the adventure card guild guide to organized play. To run a scenario, event organizers will need a scenario, a copy of the base set, the character add-on deck if they want to run for 5-6 players and all the released Skull & Shackles adventure decks.