Tag Archives: Pathfinder ACG

Pathfinder ACG: Perils of the Lost Coast

Last week, I finished the first adventure in the Rise of the Runelords base set for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (not to be confused with the first adventure in the Rise of the Runelords adventure path for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game.)  At this point, our heroes have busted a brutal bandit leader, put down a poisoner, and blasted a black dragon back where he came.  My deck lists and some tidbits after the jump: Continue reading Pathfinder ACG: Perils of the Lost Coast

Starting Up Rise of the Runelords

I recently pulled out my copy of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – I’ve decided I’m going to work through this adventure path for my 2017 New Year’s Resolution to play through a campaign.  It has 33 scenarios across 7 adventures, and my current plan is to blog my decklists and any notable encounters after each adventure. Continue reading Starting Up Rise of the Runelords

Automatic Creation of Tab Separators

As part of my work to organize my Pathfinder ACG box, I found that I needed a way to create alternating tabs in a general way. In particular, a few times, I found myself in the position where I had designed the tabs in photoshop only to realize when I was done that I had forgotten something. Or, in the case of Wrath of the Righteous, that there were new cards that needed to go in the middle of the sequence. Since this would require re-ordering all of the tabs following it, this became a bit of a task.

To solve this problem, I decided that I wanted to write a program to lay out tabs for me, and automatically take care of that alternation. To prototype, I create a short function in perl that had the basic imagemagick commands that I would use, and took a big list of tabs as input. The script automatically “-flop”ed the template to perform the horizontal mirror, and placed the appropriate text in position from the correct edge (i.e. positioned from the left edge on the left tabs, and from the right edge on the right tabs). I used this prototype to figure out the basic features I would need, and created the tabs for Rise of the Runelords and Wrath of the Righteous. Continue reading Automatic Creation of Tab Separators

Pathfinder ACG: New Box

It finally happened – I got rid of the Pathfinder ACG box insert. At first, I was rather pleased by the insert (in contrast to every other box insert I have ever had) – it seemed to support sleeved cards in the volume needed by the game, and all the components had a nice place to fit. This all came crashing down, however, when I noticed that the card sleeves kept ending up with bent corners. At first, I thought it was because of the cards themselves (they have rounded corners), but then I realized that the bottom edges of the insert were also rounded (presumably to fit the cards better), which led to the card sleeves bending to compensate.

This was a deal-breaker. Bent sleeves made the cards significantly harder to shuffle, and made it so that they didn’t sit flat on the table. Most importantly, it was damaging my card sleeves, which would decrease their life significantly, and, in turn, could cause a decrease in the life of the game itself (which is the whole point of card sleeves). As soon as I found this out, I began devising a new box solution.

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Enhancing Pathfinder ACG

One of the things that I have done a lot since I got my 3D printer is make game enhancements. There are oftentimes things that I can do to make a game smoother, easier to set up/tear down, or better organized. For Pathfinder, my group struggled a bit with location deck organization. Using the recommended setup, our group found that location decks took up a bit too much room on the table, and, inevitably, someone would need access to the deck on the opposite side of the table.

To help alleviate this problem, I designed location card holders.

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Pathfinder ACG

I recently started playing the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, and, though I haven’t played it very long, I am intrigued by the design space it explores. In some ways it reminds me a bit of an MMO world, everything has a little bit of fluff, and they all interact to make a living world in a sort of fractally generated way (even if, at times, it’s somewhat chaotic or mixed up – but I don’t worry about that). Each card has a plot element associated with it, each location has a micro-story with mechanics to back it up, each scenario is the leg of an adventure with its own goals, and each adventure has an arc. While it certainly fits into the “role playing lite” segment of gaming, I’ve found it a nice reprieve from Descent with more of a focus on story, and less on the dungeon crawl.

Mechanically, I also find the game pretty sound. I was a bit worried going in that the combination of dice, player decks, location decks, and the blessing deck would get pretty chaotic and squash any meaning from player choice. However, after playing it, I found that they actually do a pretty good job of making choices matter (which, I believe, was one of the explicit design goals).

Continue reading Pathfinder ACG