Pathfinder 1E [Paizo Publishing]Paizo Announces Four GameMastery Releases For June

[JoshuaFrost]

Paizo Announces Four GameMastery™ Releases for June

Including the brand new Critical Hit Deck™!

March 9, 2007 (BELLEVUE, Wash.) – Paizo Publishing®, LLC, a leading publisher of fantasy roleplaying game accessories, announced four new releases for their popular line of RGP accessories, GameMastery.

Tired of the same old double damage? Wouldn’t you rather chop your opponent’s head off in one clean swing or put an arrow through his heart? Paizo Publishing presents an all-new addition to its GameMastery™ line, the GameMastery Critical Hit Deck, releasing this June.

Rolled a critical hit? Draw a card and apply the result! Each of the Critical Hit cards in this 52-card deck has four different results based on weapon type, all of which are compatible with the world’s most popular fantasy roleplaying game. Chop off a head, slice through a tendon, poke out an eye—crushing your enemy has never been this much fun. Critical Hit Deck retails for $9.99 USD.

GameMastery Flip-Mat: Tavern, the long-awaited addition to the Flip-Mat line, debuts this June and features a classic, two-story tavern with a bar, kitchen, secret meeting room, innkeeper's quarters, and stables on the first floor and sleeping quarters connected by a long hallway on the second floor. The Flip side features rolling grassland and a mysterious, solitary bush. GameMastery Flip-Mats are designed to make your game portable and affordable. They're made with durable, laminated card stock and can handle dry erase, wet erase, and even permanent marker. (Permanent marker is erasable on a Flip-Mat!) Flip-Mat: Tavern retails for $12.99 USD.

Also appearing on store shelves this June is the next Item Cards installment, GameMastery Item Cards: Dragon's Trove. Dragon's Trove is an all-new 110-card double deck boxed set featuring exotic weapons and treasure pillaged from the lairs of ancient dragons. Each card features a stunning illustration by Vincent Dutrait on one side, with a text description and room for notes on the opposite side. The fifth installment of the Item Cards line, a GM can hand these out when their PCs get treasure and watch as players learn to love managing their booty. A code on each card helps GMs track which card corresponds to which treasure. The Dragon's Trove double deck boxed set retails for $19.95 USD.

Finally, we have the ninth installment in the Map Pack line, GameMastery Map Pack: Sewers. Sewers contains 18 full-color 5 x 8-inch map tiles, stunningly crafted by cartographer Corey Macourek, that unite to form a completely customizable sewer adventuring area. For use with the world's most popular roleplaying or tabletop miniature campaigns, and useable by experienced GMs and novices alike, this product fits perfectly into any game master’s arsenal. Good GMs can never have too many maps! Sewers retails for $12.95 USD.

ABOUT PAIZO PUBLISHING
Paizo Publishing®, LLC is a leading publisher of fantasy roleplaying games and accessories, board games, and the world's only official DUNGEONS & DRAGONS magazine, DRAGON and DUNGEON. Paizo's GameMastery line offers game masters fun and useful tools to improve their fantasy roleplaying experience. Titanic Games, Paizo's board game division, unites the greatest game designers to create compelling, challenging games like Kill Doctor Lucky and Stonehenge, the world's first Anthology Board Game™. Paizo.com is the leading online hobby retail store, offering tens of thousands of products from a variety of publishers to customers all over the world. In the five years since it's founding, Paizo Publishing has received more than a dozen major awards and has grown to become one of the most influential companies in the hobby games industry.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Ooh, I like the flip mat.

 

[Morrus]

I've held off the Item Cards sets so far simply because there weren't very many out - and I wanted to either use them or not use them, instead of using them for some items and using homemade versions for the rest. Are there enough cards available now, with all the sets, to last a whole campaign?

 

[RBB]

Item Cards: yes

I've held off the Item Cards sets so far simply because there weren't very many out - and I wanted to either use them or not use them, instead of using them for some items and using homemade versions for the rest. Are there enough cards available now, with all the sets, to last a whole campaign?

I think so. I've got enough magic item cards now that I find them really usable (I bought at least one display case of the randomized ones), and the Adventure Gear non-randomized "mundane" set is very well thought out. No crap, most all usable for my Arcana Evolved game--everything except the Spell Book, really. You'll be tempted to ask each of your players to pop $10 US for their own Adventure Gear, but it isn't mandatory. The mix of magic items in the other sets is good--we'll see if they can come up with some cool swankier treasure for the Dragon's Trove.

 

[Morrus]

I think so. I've got enough magic item cards now that I find them really usable (I bought at least one display case of the randomized ones), and the Adventure Gear non-randomized "mundane" set is very well thought out. No crap, most all usable for my Arcana Evolved game--everything except the Spell Book, really. You'll be tempted to ask each of your players to pop $10 US for their own Adventure Gear, but it isn't mandatory. The mix of magic items in the other sets is good--we'll see if they can come up with some cool swankier treasure for the Dragon's Trove.

But what heppens when the PCs defeat a bandit lair and rrecover 12 +1 longswords, 15 potions of cure light, 15 of cure moderate, 7 assorted other potions, 15 suits of armour and shields, and a half dozen rings/amulets/cloaks, etc?

And then defeat something similar the next week....

 

[ShinHakkaider]

But what heppens when the PCs defeat a bandit lair and rrecover 12 +1 longswords, 15 potions of cure light, 15 of cure moderate, 7 assorted other potions, 15 suits of armour and shields, and a half dozen rings/amulets/cloaks, etc?

And then defeat something similar the next week....

Personally, I only use the Paizo treasure cards for "special" items. For 12 +1 longswords, 15 potions of cure light and so on I'll just use TOGC's blank item cards. I'll print out a bunch of them an just write the details on the cards and hand 'em out. It's good because the players can keep track of usage and discard them when theyre done or just hand them back to me for recycling.

I think mixing and matching the sets (TOGC and the Paizo Cards) are the best bet. The Paizo cards are really nice looking though and I prefer to use them more but the TOGC cards are definitely more cost effective and utilitarian.

 

[Morrus]

Well, I bought a crapload of 'em (4 each of Avdneturing Gear and Item Cards I, 10 of each of the two booster packs)! I have enough rods, staves and wands to outfit an entire army of wizards (though my part has about 3 between them!), but not a single longspear and only one greataxe!

Theya re very, very pretty. I like them, I like the size and the presentation. I'm not that keen on the idea of having to write notes on them to say what they are, but I guess it's either that or produce an infinite number of cards.

I think it's safe to say I'll buy later sets.

 

[Morrus]

Well, used 'em tonight for the first time. They went down a storm. However, despite having a few hundred of the darn things, I still didn't have enough in there to run one session, let alone a campaign. I only had the one rapier card, one feather card (for feather tokens - needed 3 tonight), 5 "gem" type cards, 2 chain shirt cards, only a lute for musical instruments, no hats... etc. I'll forgive 'em for not having the Talisman of the Sphere card (despite it being given to the party in the very first AoW adventure!) or the Hand of the Mage card on account of them being somewhat unusual items, and I'llc ertianly overlook them not having a card for the rug with the shifting geometric patters to be found in an Age of Worms adventure!

On the birght side, I do have 40-odd unused rod, staff and wand cards....

The large number of potion and scroll cards was very useful - burned through about half of them today, though.

In summary - very nice. Players loved them. But not enough range in there (and I'm not talking about the unusual stuff). One rapier but 40-odd rods, staves and wands is not a good ratio! I figure I could increase that, but only by spending hundreds of dollars to get a reasonable number of each of the more common stuff, which would give me hundreds of unused cards when it comes to some other stuff.

Not sure what the solution would be - obviously selling them individually isn't practical. Maybe smaller themed sets would be better; I really never need another rod, staff or wand!

I did have a great idea tonight which I may try. I had the idea of using an item slot diagram, but instead of a space to write what's in the slot, put a clear plastic card holder instead. Then you can see at a glance what item is where. Another couple of larger card holders to represent backpack, other containers, etc. Mount it all on a sturdy piece of card. It may end up a bit large, though - it would need about 20 card holders on the one sheet of card, so it may not be practical. But I'll play around and try to make a mockup of it. Should be fun!

They complement EN Publishing's Fantasy Money really well. Shopping was fun, actually exchanging cards for money. They have a nice, durable, tangible feel to them.