Shield of Rannick - Adventure Path

[Ron Lundeen]

What do you do when you've gone through the entire Rise of the Runelords path for the PACG? Rearrange the cards and do it again!

The Shield of Rannick adventure path is an entirely new 30-scenario adventure path with an independent story. It uses only the cards from the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords Base Set and the six adventure decks--no need to print your own cards (but you will need all six adventure decks to play it).

You can download it from WelbyBumpus.com for free.

Get it, play it, and let me know what you think (and how I can improve it!).

[NyteJKL]

This was originally posted on Hawkmoon's community content thread, posting it here instead...

Ron Lundeen wrote:

...and done! I've thrown together a website to host this. It's the Shield of Rannick adventure path, and it's hosted at welbybumpus.com. (Right now, it's the only product there, but it's nice for me to have a place I can put more!)

After a quick review, one correction is that scenario 3-A has the flavor text for 2-A.

As for the scenarios themselves, if you are still taking feedback, I have some concerns regarding the following:

Spoiler:

when you start mixing in the sihedron medallion into the blessing deck and have to shuffle it back in when encountered. Seems that can be pretty deadly when you start running down to say 10 turns left. An unlucky group may draw the medallion on subsequent turns potentially all 10 remaining turns. This even gets worse when you have 2 or 3 medallions on later scenarios. Additionally, it seems like you would end with an endless loop of the medallion if you run out of blessings (e.g, 1 card left in the blessing deck, advance the blessing deck and flip it over and it is the medallion card, shuffle it back in the blessing deck, and advance the deck again to encounter and resolve the medallion again and so forth)... Eventually the characters die from the loop since the medallion is is usually a negative effect like damage or encountering a monster

[Dave Riley]

I'm impressed by the effort! I scanned the first few adventures, I like how you've committed to creating weird/unique scenario mechanics using mostly the stock cards without a lot of proxying, and I'm down with anything that sticks a card in the blessings deck. I'll save my comments on balance until I actually try it, but encountering Nualia on the second adventure with only Basic cards and one skill feat (and, I suppose, Svevenka) under your belt seems scary. :D You did what I personality was really interested, getting some of the late-game cards in the mix earlier, so they don't just show up right as things are coming to a close.

My wife and I are usually pretty hungry for Pathfinder content, but we've been behind the curve thanks to work and the holidays. After we're done with S&S AP4, I'll see if she wants to try this out instead of immediately playing Isle of Empty Eyes with our other party. It'd be a good excuse to try some of the RoRL characters we didn't use the first time around. :D

[Ron Lundeen]

NyteJKL wrote:

After a quick review, one correction is that scenario 3-A has the flavor text for 2-A.

Fixed!

NyteJKL wrote:

As for the scenarios themselves, if you are still taking feedback, I have some concerns regarding the following:

when you start mixing in the sihedron medallion into the blessing deck and have to shuffle it back in when encountered. Seems that can be pretty deadly when you start running down to say 10 turns left. An unlucky group may draw the medallion on subsequent turns potentially all 10 remaining turns. This even gets worse when you have 2 or 3 medallions on later scenarios. Additionally, it seems like you would end with an endless loop of the medallion if you run out of blessings (e.g, 1 card left in the blessing deck, advance the blessing deck and flip it over and it is the medallion card, shuffle it back in the blessing deck, and advance the deck again to encounter and resolve the medallion again and so forth)... Eventually the characters die from the loop since the medallion is is usually a negative effect like damage or encountering a monster

I am definitely still taking feedback.

Six of the scenarios require you to shuffle the Medallion back in; for those, the possibility of seeing the Medallion several times when the blessings deck gets low is the intent: you're incentivized to hurry, since bad things are happening to you more often.

What isn't intended--but I now see is possible--is a situation where there's nothing but Medallions left in the blessings deck; you don't ever get a turn, because you keep revealing then shuffling then revealing then shuffling. In that case, you've lost. I'll work on a way to clarify this--suggestions welcome!

[Remara]

After a quick glance am eager to try out with the husband. Nice work on the flavor text and arrangement - thanks for adding to the fun!

[Ron Lundeen]

Remara wrote:

After a quick glance am eager to try out with the husband. Nice work on the flavor text and arrangement - thanks for adding to the fun!

Thanks! I'd love to hear how it goes!

[Frencois]

Ron Lundeen wrote:

The Shield of Rannick adventure path is an entirely new 30-scenario adventure path...

Great work Ron.

[Tyquaius]

Fantastic job. There was no mention of the Set Type indicator of P for Promo. Are we not supposed to be playing with the promos?

[ThreeEyedSloth]

This looks fantastic! I've been debating whether to off-load my copy of Runelords since we finished it. This sounds like a really fun way to revisit it though, especially since I never had the chance to see some of the characters like Sajan in action.

[Ron Lundeen]

Tyquaius wrote:

Fantastic job. There was no mention of the Set Type indicator of P for Promo. Are we not supposed to be playing with the promos?

You can, but I'm not counting on anyone necessarily having or using those. We expressly removed them from our box for playtesting, because some of them (looking at you, Fire Sneeze and Poog) are pretty powerful for B-level cards.

I'd treat P cards as B, C, or 1, just like in other games. I'll clarify when I make some edits.

[ThreeEyedSloth]

We're going to start this on Sunday and play through it as quickly as possible. I'm grabbing some of my PFSACG local players that never had a group to play the base games with, only organized play, so they can see what "campaign mode" actually feels like compared to OP.

I didn't want to be limiting at all in terms of character choices, so our line-up consists of Ranzak (me), Ezren (Class Deck), Oloch, and Lini (RotR).

I'll post my progress each week in this thread with feedback as we run through the adventure path.

[Ron Lundeen]

ThreeEyedSloth wrote:

We're going to start this on Sunday and play through it as quickly as possible. I'm grabbing some of my PFSACG local players that never had a group to play the base games with, only organized play, so they can see what "campaign mode" actually feels like compared to OP.

I didn't want to be limiting at all in terms of character choices, so our line-up consists of Ranzak (me), Ezren (Class Deck), Oloch, and Lini (RotR).

I'll post my progress each week in this thread with feedback as we run through the adventure path.

I'd love to hear all about it! I'm particularly interested in how you fare in those scenarios where the Sihedron Medallion is shuffled back into the deck. I've been kicking around a minor rules revision for that--as well as a few other edits that the fine folks at BGG have spotted--but I'm not quite yet ready to release version 1.1.

[ThreeEyedSloth]

Yeah, I was hoping a solution would get posted before we get to those scenarios. :P

Unless you come up with something different, I'm just going to plan on all scenarios with multiple Sihedron Medallions will just banish them instead of shuffling them back in.

If you want to share some of those edits privately before we begin our campaign, I'd love to check them out. :)

[Dave Riley]

We're in adventure 3 and loving it. Playing with locations +1. Accidentally played with 5 locations on 3-A, which should only have 3 with two players, I think? Gotta say, after 3 failures, I think you made the right choice in scaling the number of locations back. :D Though, in part our losses can be blamed on some severely low die rolls against villains...

In love with the Sihedron medallion mechanic. Love how it changes up. We haven't been repeatedly screwed by it showing back up in any of the scenarios where it gets shuffled back in. And somehow Erezen keeps making his Dex 6 checkse to evade the Kreeg Ogres.

[ThreeEyedSloth]

Upon closer inspection, I think the only scenario that really causes an issue with the Sihedron shuffling is 5A. The others all banish or display the Medallion, and the other one, 5D, banishes it on a successful defeat of Vekker.

I think if you just change the text on 5-A to banish instead of shuffle, everything works fine.

[Aolhelm]

It seems like changing the text so that you're instructed to advance the blessings deck again BEFORE resolving the Sihedron special effect (and shuffling it back in) would work, wouldn't it? That way if there's nothing left but Medallions, you simply time out (as should be expected). It reduces the chances of hitting multiple medallions in the same turn, but otherwise doesn't change anything.

[Dave Riley]

Weird, that's how we've been playing. I would've sworn it said in the rules to do so. We reveal the Sihedron, flip the next card, and then shuffle the medallion back into the deck.

Just checked. I guess technically in the rules the steps are Advance Deck > Deal with Sihedron > [Shuffle, sometimes] > Advance Deck. So yeah, that could cause some problems! Without thinking about it, we were just doing it that way I guess because it seemed most logical.

[Ron Lundeen]

Dave Riley wrote:

Weird, that's how we've been playing. I would've sworn it said in the rules to do so. We reveal the Sihedron, flip the next card, and then shuffle the medallion back into the deck.

Just checked. I guess technically in the rules the steps are Advance Deck > Deal with Sihedron > [Shuffle, sometimes] > Advance Deck. So yeah, that could cause some problems! Without thinking about it, we were just doing it that way I guess because it seemed most logical.

Agreed it's more logical, and likely the best solution. I've been running through a few options, particularly at a low blessings deck size, in order to find the best solution (while preserving the groans around the table when the medallion is revealed!).

[Ithaqua47]

Wow, I can't tell you how much I appreciate the work you've put into this. 30 scenarios is absolutely amazing. Purchasing the base set and all the expansions is an investment and even though the game itself has great replay value because of how many characters there are, eventually the adventure path would get stale.

This is such an amazing way to keep the game fresh. I look forward to even more adventure paths (maybe a Skull & Shackles one next please? =D).

Thanks again, my entire Pathfinder group is super ecstatic.

[jones314]

Dave Riley wrote:

Just checked. I guess technically in the rules the steps are Advance Deck > Deal with Sihedron > [Shuffle, sometimes] > Advance Deck. So yeah, that could cause some problems! Without thinking about it, we were just doing it that way I guess because it seemed most logical.

I would suggest advance deck > deal with Sihedron > get a new blessing > sometimes shuffle. Haven't got to the later decks with two or even three Sihedrons shuffling back in. Could get murderous so maybe an extra rule that don't shuffle back in if remaining blessings < 4?

[Ithaqua47]

Just putting my two cents on the problem with encountering medallions infinitely: I agree with a previous suggestion that once you encounter a medallion, before you shuffle, you draw until you get a blessing, then shuffle. If you draw another medallion before a blessing, ignore its effect and shuffle it back in with the other medallion after you find the next blessing. That way you won't encounter more than one each turn (but even then it's an incentive earlier in the scenario to move your butt in gear so you don't run into something bad happening almost every turn).

Or, if you don't like the idea of ignoring the effect of a second medallion, make it so there is less of a penalty. Perhaps each character must recharge a card. Or discards a card (take one damage that can't be reduced). Something manageable.

[LudwigO]

Hi all,

for the moment I am in the adventure 3 and take a lot of fun with my 2 characters group (Valeros ans Lem).
I love the Medallion mechanic and agree with DarkRaven with encountering medallions infinitely.

I created cards using my templates to thank you for the fun I took playing your adventure path Ron.

Here are samples if you want all just ask ;):

Adventure Path (Front)
Adventure Path (Back)

Scenario 1D - The Goblin problem (Front)
Scenario 1D - The Goblin problem (Back)

Adventure 2 (Front)
Adventure 2 (Back)

Scenario 3E - Witches of the Mountain (Front)
Scenario 3E - Witches of the Mountain (Back)

[MightyJim]

LudwigO wrote:

Hi all,

for the moment I am in the adventure 3 and take a lot of fun with my 2 characters group (Valeros ans Lem).
I love the Medallion mechanic and agree with DarkRaven with encountering medallions infinitely.

I created cards using my templates to thank you for the fun I took playing your adventure path Ron.

Here are samples if you want all just ask ;):

Adventure Path (Front)
Adventure Path (Back)

Scenario 1D - The Goblin problem (Front)
Scenario 1D - The Goblin problem (Back)

Adventure 2 (Front)
Adventure 2 (Back)

Scenario 3E - Witches of the Mountain (Front)
Scenario 3E - Witches of the Mountain (Back)

These are really nice quality- I'd printed the AP off as a PDF, and not had a chance to start playing it- would really like to get the full set of cards to print.

[Frencois]

LudwigO wrote:

if you want all just ask ;)

Asking :-)

[Ron Lundeen]

LudwigO wrote:

I created cards using my templates to thank you for the fun I took playing your adventure path Ron.

I love this! I'd only ask you to wait a day or two if you mock up 4C or 4D, since I'll have a few tweaks there in response to some comments.

New version coming soon.

[Ron Lundeen]

Dave Riley wrote:

We're in adventure 3 and loving it. Playing with locations +1. Accidentally played with 5 locations on 3-A, which should only have 3 with two players, I think?

I'm compiling edits from the various discussions, and this caught my eye--you should have the normal 4 locations with 2 players in adventure 3-A...were you talking about one of the other scenarios?

[LudwigO]

Ron Lundeen wrote:

I love this! I'd only ask you to wait a day or two if you mock up 4C or 4D, since I'll have a few tweaks there in response to some comments.

New version coming soon.

Well I already have done all the cards to play with :)

But I can wait your new version before uplaoding the cards.

Right now I change the cards to fit in printer's template.

Frencois wrote:

Asking :-)

Here is the first adventure.

Adventure 1 (back)
Adventure 1 (front)

Scenario 1A (back)
Scenario 1A (front)

Scenario 1B (back)
Scenario 1B (front)

Scenario 1C (back)
Scenario 1C (front)

Scenario 1E (back)
Scenario 1E (front)

[LudwigO]

Bonus :)
Because I love the art I found

Scenario 2B (Back)
Scenario 2B (Front)

Scenario 4D (Back)
Scenario 4D (Front)

[Joe Wreschnig]

A lot of the art you've used for the cards is not licensed for free use. I recognize this swamp and this Dragon Age concept art for example.

You can build personal cards however you want, but if the plan is to host and distribute them somewhere, you should stick to the Paizo CUP and cc-by (not cc-by-sa) stuff, or other artwork that's freely licensed.

[LudwigO]

Joe, you're right.
I found all those illustration on the web and didn't check if they were free to use, because it was for a personal use.

But if you think I'm not in a legal framework I trust you and I won't share anymore works.

I don't want any problems I just made that for fun and spend time. :)

PS : what does mean cc-by and cc-by-sa ???

[ThreeEyedSloth]

CC=Creative Commons

[LudwigO]

Thanks ThreeEyedSloth.
I understand better now.

[Dave Riley]

Ron Lundeen wrote:

I'm compiling edits from the various discussions, and this caught my eye--you should have the normal 4 locations with 2 players in adventure 3-A...were you talking about one of the other scenarios?

My bad! I misread that somehow and I think concreted the idea in my mind by thinking "well geez with two pretty hard villains, it must be one location less to balance it out." I hink when we did it with four we still barely beat the clock (but we had some perilously bad rolls against villains across the, like, four times we played it).

[Ron Lundeen]

Thanks to everyone for the thoughts and feedback here--I've uploaded a new version of Shield of Rannick to WelbyBumpus.com (you'll know it's the newest version because it has v2 in the file name).

In the new version, I've cleaned up some text, improved some of the story, and clarified the Sihedron Medallion rules in each scenario. This took a bit of doing, since what you do with the blessing deck is different based on what you're doing with the Sihedron Medallion.

* Banish or Display: you reveal the medallion, banish or display it, do the thing it makes you do, then advance the blessing deck.

* Shuffle: you reveal the medallion, do the thing it makes you do, then advance the blessings deck, then shuffle the medallion back in.

This is now set forth in each scenario, so should be clear--let me know if it's not!

For those interested in the gory details, here's one of the cases we went through in hammering this out:

Let's say you're playing 5A: Unearthing the Battlefield. You've done not so great, and your blessing deck has two medallions and two blessings in it. For your turn, you flip the medallion. You have to look at the "When the Sihedron Appears" section immediately and do what it says, so you make the check, then advance the blessings deck (say you flip a blessing), then shuffle the medallion back in. Now you've got one blessing and two medallions in your blessings deck.

At the beginning of the next turn, you flip a medallion so you again do the steps in "When the Sihedron Appears"--make the check, then advance the blessings deck--but you flip another medallion when you do. Since you've revealed a medallion, you immediately perform the "When the Sihedron Appears" step: make the check, then advance the blessings deck (flipping over the final blessing). Then "shuffle" both medallions back into the empty blessings deck. Your blessings deck now consists of two medallions, and that's it.

At the start of the next turn, you'll flip a medallion, make the check, then flip the other medallion and make the check, then try to advance the blessings deck again but fail to do so, immediately losing the scenario.

It's pretty rough when you get down that low but--and here was the important point for me--you're out of the infinite loop.

[jones314]

Ron Lundeen wrote:

Let's say you're playing 5A: Unearthing the Battlefield. You've done not so great, and your blessing deck has two medallions and two blessings in it. For your turn, you flip the medallion. You have to look at the "When the Sihedron Appears" section immediately and do what it says, so you make the check, then advance the blessings deck (say you flip a blessing), then shuffle the medallion back in. Now you've got one blessing and two medallions in your blessings deck.

What if the second card is also a medallion? Apply its effects again before shuffling and advance, to get a blessing? So ultimately you will run through one blessing a turn but could get hit with up to two (in this scenario) medallions a turn as the deck gets low, right? Or do you ignore a second medallion?

[LudwigO]

jones314 wrote:

What if the second card is also a medallion?

I think the answer is here. No matter when it happens, if you have to Medallion in arow you will do like Ron explain.

Ron Lundeen wrote:

At the beginning of the next turn, you flip a medallion so you again do the steps in "When the Sihedron Appears"--make the check, then advance the blessings deck--but you flip another medallion when you do. Since you've revealed a medallion, you immediately perform the "When the Sihedron Appears" step: make the check, then advance the blessings deck (flipping over the final blessing). Then "shuffle" both medallions back into the empty blessings deck. Your blessings deck now consists of two medallions, and that's it.

[LudwigO]

Ron Lundeen wrote:

you'll know it's the newest version because it has v2 in the file name.

It's just a detail but in the file you call it v1.1

And I also noticed that for the 6C Scenario there is twice the same location "The old Light"

[bertje]

Ron Lundeen wrote:

I've uploaded a new version of Shield of Rannick

Spectacular, thanks!

I'm at the end of advanture pack 1 of Skull and Shackles so it'll be a while before I have time to play this, but it sure looks great! Very creative, and no new cards needed.

[Ron Lundeen]

LudwigO wrote:

Ron Lundeen wrote:

you'll know it's the newest version because it has v2 in the file name.

It's just a detail but in the file you call it v1.1

Page one has v1.1, but it wouldn't accept that as the file name, so I renamed the file name to "v2" instead. I'm terrible at version-naming things; you can tell I don't do programming!

LudwigO wrote:

And I also noticed that for the 6C Scenario there is twice the same location "The old Light"

Oh, snap! Yes, that's an error that was once slated for correction but didn't get corrected. The second appearance (that is, the location for 3 players) should be the Dam. I'll fix this in the next version.

[Cotton Tree]

This is stellar, by the way. Can't wait to finish my set of Adventure Decks so I can play this too!

Well done.

[Ron Lundeen]

Ron Lundeen wrote:

LudwigO wrote:

LudwigO wrote:

And I also noticed that for the 6C Scenario there is twice the same location "The old Light"

Oh, snap! Yes, that's an error that was once slated for correction but didn't get corrected. The second appearance (that is, the location for 3 players) should be the Dam. I'll fix this in the next version.

Fixed this, by the way, but I have no other changes.

Someone at BGG suggested a printer-friendlier version, and I'll have that in the couple of days.

[Ron Lundeen]

Just dropping a note here to mention that the printer-friendly version of Shield of Rannick is now also up at www.welbybumpus.com.

[ThreeEyedSloth]

Yes! I've been waiting for a printer friendly version. Thanks Ron!

[k7e9]

The adventure path looks fantastic. We will definitly try this as soon as we're done with our current playtrhough of RotR.

How would you rate the difficulty of Shield of Rannick in comparison to RotR?

[Andrew L Klein]

Any chance of this getting put up to DriveThru?

[ayumequi]

Hi, my group has finished RotR and we were thinking to start it again (with new heroes of course). Searching through BGG I've found Shield of Rannick. I'm trying to convince them to start it because I like the idea to reuse all the stuff of RotR in a different way and to try the Sihedron Medallions mechanic. If not maybe I will start it alone. I will post my impressions once I finished it.

[ThreeEyedSloth]

k7e9 wrote:

The adventure path looks fantastic. We will definitly try this as soon as we're done with our current playtrhough of RotR.

How would you rate the difficulty of Shield of Rannick in comparison to RotR?

It's definitely harder. You encounter henchmen and villains from Adventure Decks higher than the one you'll be on. And the Sihedron Medallion in the Blessing Deck is a new me el of tension, and in some scenarios, the Medallion can really screw you over.

Its great. Personally, I find the difficulty level perfect. It's harder than RotR, but feels less artificially difficult and cheap than S&S.

[ThreeEyedSloth]

Andrew L Klein wrote:

Any chance of this getting put up to DriveThru?

No need. There aren't any new cards whatsoever, so you never need to proxy. Unless you need printed cards of the scenario text/locations, but it works just fine printing it out and putting it in a binder.

[Andrew L Klein]

Sure it works, but that's no fun to me compared to having an actual card. Proxying in OP works too, but I'm buying every custom card available when Paizo puts them on DT.

[LudwigO]

I created all the cards for my personal use Andrew.
I specify it because I didn't get all the permission to use the arts for the cards. Some art are from Paizo blog under their Community Use Policy and others not.

But if you want I can send you a compressed file of all the cards.