Borissimo

Hey Pink! Hope you don't mind if I jump in here with a big one from the recent AMA. Obsidian hasn't released all of the pricing details, but here's what they did reveal in the AMA: - Perils of the Lost Coast will be free - Each adventure deck (including the first) will cost $4.99 - You can buy a "season pass" that is "heavily discounted" and will include all of the adventure decks, characters, and promos as they come out - 2 of the 11 characters will be available for free alongside Perils of the Lost Coast; the other 9 will need to be "earned" or purchased via the season pass (Nathan wasn't clear on whether you could buy characters individually without getting the season pass) - The team has an internal schedule for how frequently releases will come out. Publicly, all they could say was that it would be "weeks" between releases. This means the worst case scenario is that only AD1 is available on launch and AD6 won't come out till mid July (HUGE grumpy face from me if that's the case) - The game will actually have a F2P model that, in some as-yet-unspecified manner, will allow you to "earn" additional characters and adventures without spending real money. Absolutely zero details have been given as to how this model will work Those were the highlights from the AMA for me personally, but you may find other things in there that interest you.

PinkRose answered this above, but if you're curious for more detail -- There's a lot of terminology in PACG -- adventure path, adventure deck, base set, scenario, class deck -- that can make it kind of hard to understand exactly what you need to play the game. Here's the best way I can explain it: the Rise of the Runelords card game consists of 6 adventure decks, and each adventure deck is like 1 chapter of a book. If you want to read the whole book, you need to read all 6 chapters. Each chapter has a name: Chapter 1: Burnt Offerings Chapter 2: The Skinsaw Murders Chapter 3: The Hook Mountain Massacre ... and so on The book also has a prologue: it's called Perils of the Lost Coast. The prologue consists of 3 scenarios, while each of the chapters consists of 5 scenarios. When you buy the Rise of the Runelords base set in cardboard form, it comes with the prologue (Perils of the Lost Coast) and chapter 1 (Burnt Offerings). If you like the book and want to keep reading, you need to buy chapters 2-6 separately. The digital version of the game will be different. You get the prologue for free, but not chapter 1. You need to buy all 6 chapters separately if you like the prologue and decide you want to read the whole book. But as we learned in the AMA, it will apparently be possible to unlock the chapters for free in some manner -- perhaps by reading the prologue over and over, or reading it really good. Yeah, the book analogy gets kind of tortured here, so let's just drop it. Lastly, I would not call Perils of the Lost Coast a tutorial. It could perhaps be called an introduction, but it does not teach you how to play the game -- only the rulebook does. The first scenario of the prologue follows the exact same rules as the last scenario of adventure 6. If the digital game has a tutorial, and I imagine it will, then that will be something developed specially for the digital game by the wonderful folks at Obsidian.

Thanks to all the devs for doing the AMA! It was amazing. For those who missed it, the most mindblowing thing in it for me was that the game actually WILL have a F2P model, in that adventure decks can be "earned" through gameplay. I don't even wanna bother asking for the details on how that'll work, because as dying as I am to know that, I have 100% confidence such questions will not be answered here. Suffice it to say I'm wildly intrigued. Sadly, the devs did not reveal the exact timeline for adventure deck release dates, but they did say it was "weeks." Whether that's weeks between each AD or weeks for the whole thing, they didn't say -- I'm obviously hoping for the former. One other thing that surprised me is that they did reveal the price point: It's $4.99 per AD. Unlike with the physical game, AD1 is not free, I'm guessing because Perils is free. I can see why they went with a F2P model for this one -- at $5 per adventure, the whole thing's gonna cost $30, which is WAY beyond the pale for iOS board game apps. All in all, I think that Nathan & Co's response to the pricing problem is very, very smart. And finally, Nathan revealed an interest in doing all of the PACG base sets at some point. Of course, this isn't a firm commitment or anything, but I was thrilled to see that this desire is there. Here's hoping the entirety of PACG will be on our tablets 5 years from now.

I think it's better to post multiple questions in multiple posts, so that people can vote on each of the questions individually. Evidently, the guy who put 14 questions in one post and all the people who upvoted him disagree.

I'd love to receive more than 0 updates via the newsletter, but honestly, if I had to choose between getting 0 updates and getting the game on March 29, or getting daily updates and the game releasing even a day late, it's like not even a close call -- as long as I have Pathfinder Adventures on my iPad on March 29 with more than 1 adventure deck (ideally 3), I'll forgive the developers pretty much anything.

I really hope that the plurality of the word "decks" in the phrase "Additional adventure decks will be available for purchase at launch" can be taken at face value. This means we'll get the introductory scenarios as part of the free launch, and at least decks 1 and 2 will be available to purchase. Given that "s" at the end of "decks," it'll be pretty disappointing at this point if only deck 1 is available on release. I'm still holding out hope that decks 1 through 3 will all be available on March 29, since one of the screenshots on the site does show role cards.

I wouldn't worry about this. It sounds like we'll get Perils of the Lost Coast for free (the 3 scenarios in the base set) and buy the adventure decks from then on, so there's no need for any of the janky free-to-play mechanics -- those are typically not used for games that have an up-front price point. Releasing Perils of the Loast Coast for free is a genius idea! But yeah, add me to the list of people who'd love to know how long these "regular intervals" are and, essentially, by what point all of the decks will be available for purchase. I have a feeling March 29 will be only a partial release. I'm also looking forward to seeing if this newsletter will produce a greater than 0 number of emails.

Fantastic news!! The next two months are going to be among the longest of my life. I was a little concerned by this phrase from the announcement: "Additional adventure decks will be available for purchase at launch, and regular intervals thereafter." Can you clarify exactly what this means? I was under the impression that the full adventure path would be available for purchase when the game launches (because, after all, anything less wouldn't really count as the whole "game"), but this phrase makes it sound as though we'll be able to buy some but not all of the 6 adventure decks on March 29. Depending on how long a "regular interval" is and how many decks are available for purchase at each interval, it won't be till weeks or even months after the March 29 "release" that we will actually be able to play the whole game. It would really take the wind out of players' sails to only be able to play, for example, through Deck 2, then have to wait 2 weeks for Deck 3, then another 2 weeks for Deck 4, etc. I would love to be told my understanding of that little phrase from the announcement is wrong, but I'm very excited by today's news nevertheless!

I have no privileged information -- all of the following is just speculation. I've been wildly excited for this game to come out for over a year. It's been painful to see the release date pushed back twice, and to have practically zero word from the developers all the while. At the same time, I can't blame Obsidian for the silence. There are just a handful of us who are on the edge of our seats waiting for this game to come out; most of the rest of the world either doesn't know this game is coming or doesn't care. Posting updates is a marketing thing. Marketing costs money. In this case, marketing would bring joy to the die-hard fans who've been slavering for this game for months, but these fans are going to buy the game regardless. Would marketing bring in new fans? I doubt it. So we have a situation where there's something to be lost (money, time spent away from development) and nothing to be gained by releasing news. If this game is to succeed, it will have to do so on its merits as a game, not on its marketing efforts. An app like this doesn't have mass appeal, so it relies on positive reviews and word of mouth. Thus, it makes sense for Obsidian to focus as much effort as possible on creating an excellent game, even if that means missing deadlines and angering a few militant fans (who, again, are going to buy this game regardless of what Obsidian does or doesn't do on the marketing front) with silence. I don't think this game is unimportant to Obsidian. There are many indications that this is a labor of love, such as the expanded story, the tweaks to basic cards (e.g. different varieties of basic Chainmail), and the inclusion of new cards (Blacksmith's Son, as a humorous complement to the Shopkeeper's Daughter). The biggest indicator that this game matters to Obsidian, actually, is the very thing we're most annoyed about -- the release delays and the lack of updates. If they really didn't care, they could have shoved it out the door months ago, and they could have done plenty of marketing updates instead of spending their time polishing the game. Back in June, I predicted that this game wouldn't see release until the second half of 2016, and I'm sticking to that prediction. If a few extra months of development make the difference between an amazing game that everyone raves about and a mediocre game that everyone quickly forgets about, it's obvious what Obsidian will choose. I'm pretty sure they're going to miss another deadline (or two) and really try to make this game perfect. If I'm playing it and making YouTube videos about it before New Year's 2017, I'll be happy. And for what it's worth, I don't mind threads like this one, empty as they are, because I like to see that I'm not the only one who's raving with anticipation for this game to come out. I want this game to have fans and I want it to succeed, because I would LOVE to see S&S, WotR, and all of the adventure paths make it into the digital landscape at some point. As much as I yearn to gaze upon the Pathfinder ACG on my iPad, the thing I want most of all is for this franchise to be a blockbuster success.

It makes me sad to see so much negativity on these forums because I'm really excited about this game and really grateful to Obsidian for making it. I'd rather get a digital version of one of my favorite board games of all time in 2016 or even 2017 than never get one at all. I respectfully disagree with the idea that the development team "should" have done more marketing, weekly updates, etc. These things look simple to the consumer, but they require time and resources that a small dev team might not have. So I don't think that a lack of weekly updates, etc is the culprit here. If anyone at Obsidian reads this and is open to constructive feedback, I think the issue is simply a matter of expectations. We were told the game would be released in Q1 of 2015, and that didn't happen; then we were told emphatically that it would definitely be released this fall, and now that doesn't look like it's going to happen either. In general, minimal marketing surrounding a game is okay, but when silence is coupled with incorrect expectations, that's when people start to get frustrated.

... should we assume a release date of December 21?

A while back, in the Paizo forums, I predicted that this game wouldn't see release until the second half of 2016. I would be more thrilled than anyone to be proven wrong, but my advice here is the same as my advice there: try to forget about this game, assume it won't come out for another year, and be pleasantly surprised if that should turn out to be untrue.

I am SO excited for this game! There's one huge detail about it that that hasn't been mentioned, however: will the entire RotR adventure path will be available right off the bat, or will we only get Burnt Offerings up front and have to wait for the remaining 5 adventures?