As we all lead such busy lives, or lives which make it hard to sit down together for hours, on a regular basis Steve ‘Beardo’ decided to buy the Pathfinder Card Game.

It is great in the sense that you can pick up and play, without really needing a back story, or having to fit a character into an already formed campaign. However, it takes away most of the actual role-playing involved too! 

We started playing a couple weeks ago, and for two sessions had the same 5 people playing, with the same character. But from the time I am going to be putting my notes up about, one person couldn’t attend (a halfling bard) and was substituted. His customised deck will be kept until he can play next time. 

When you play the game, you have the piles of your location, which contain: 
Monsters
Barriers (traps and ambushes)
Items
Blessings
Allies
Weapons.
The location cards say on them how many of each card are included in the pack.
 
When setting up your game, depending on how many players, you have 7 location decks, and so you need the villain of the game, as well 6 of his minions, shuffled individually at random into each location deck.

You also start with your own random deck (hand). The amount of each type of card is determined on your own character card. You hand is also you health point. Every damage cause, you lose a card. If at any point, you haven’t enough cards to have a full hand you die.

The length of the game is shown by a ‘Blessing Deck” which, on each players one card is turned over. You can then use that blessing if you have a certain card in your hand. When the deck is empty the game is over. 

The aim of the game is simply to kill the main villain. 
You search through the decks looking for the minions and the villain. If you encounter the villain, and successfully kill him, all over locations need to be closed, either permanently or temporary for that turn, or he can escape to one of them. Each card has it’s closing requirements written upon it, however to close a location for good, it needs to be after killing a minion and if unsuccessful then you have to proceed and clear the whole deck.  When killing the minions you do not have to worry about them escaping to another location.

So travel the scenarios, find items and weapons, even meet new friends and allies, or a nasty burglar who steals your stuff! Help the locals kill the bad guys, and have a laugh with your friends. You find your own story when playing. We had a screaming goblin which no one seemed to kill, and our halfing seemed to be drawn for all the biggest of monsters!!