Rochester Gamers Community

About 3 weeks ago I asked myself, "If Reiner Knizia were to design an adventure/RPG board game, what would it be like?"

I started jotting down a few things. First, it would be as abstract as possible (Ra, most others). It would have to involve rows & columns (Kingdoms, Beowulf, Atlanteon, his new one about robots). It would involve some kind of push-your-luck mechanism (Ra, Amun Re). It would use cards with symbols to pay for things (Blue Moon City, Lord of the Rings). It would have a set collection mechanic (Ra again, Dragon Land). It would involve drawing tiles from a bag (T&E, that one egyptian one). You would draw cards at the end of your turn (Knights of Charlemagne). It would involve an auction (Modern Art, ummm... Ra). And it would be impeccably balanced and sublimely elegant (most of his).

After thinking about it I thought I could maybe hit most of those (except for the "balanced" and "elegant" ones, and I kinda gave up on the "auction" one) and decided to pursue the idea a little.

I created a prototype this weekend and solo playtested it a few times. It's more of a brainburner than I expected, but maybe that's because I was playing all four people and had to reexamine their cards every time to see what they could do. Each playtest clocked in at 90 minutes but I'm hoping that can be trimmed down.

Each player is an adventurer on their quest for fame, fortune, etc. They are either the Bard, Warrior, Wizard, or Rogue. Each class has a single primary skill (Bard - Guile, Warrior - Fighting, Wizard - Magic, Rogue - Stealth) but other than that (and the nifty artwork I downloaded illegally without giving any credit to the original artists) they are the same. There are four decks of "Skill" cards in the game -- one deck for each attribute. The skill cards simply provide the players with Skill "icons" representing the four different skills, and the decks are pretty much identical but with the icons changed to match the skill for that deck. Players each start with one card of their primary skill type. They keep these hidden in their hands.

The board is a 4x4 grid that looks like a generic adventuring landscape (minus the requisite castles and villages cuz I was too lazy to draw them -- it has trees though, and a road, and a lake, so there).

Each row and each column is labeled with one of the skill icons (remember that for later).

On a turn a player will draw a tile and place it on the grid. The tile is a quest component (either a piece of Treasure or a Challenge -- a monster or dungeon). Drawing and placing a tile allows a player to draw cards from two of the skill decks -- which decks you draw from is dictated by the skill icons for the row & column that you placed your tile on. So you'll get to draw two cards of maybe the same but usually different skill decks every turn. In this way, the board gets populated with monsters and treasure for the players to slay and loot, respectively.

It helps a little to consider every row and every column a different quest, but with components that overlap.

On your turn you also place a Claim token on any row or column that doesn't already have one. This represents your intent to go on that quest. But claim tokens can be placed on both sides of the grid, so if someone else places a claim token on the other side of a row you already claimed, that's legal and you might have to plan differently.

The other thing you can do on your turn (if you decide not to draw a tile) is to start a Contest. That's where everybody goes on the quests they've claimed. It starts with you. Pick one of your claim tokens and try to complete that Quest. You have to discard cards from your hand that have enough icons to beat all the Challenge tiles on your Quest. So if there's a Goblin tile there with 3 Fight icons, 1 Stealth icon, and 1 Guile icon, you need to discard cards that have a total of 3 Fight icons, 1 Stealth icon and 1 Guile icon on them to beat it. If there's also an Ogre with 3 Stealth, 2 Fight, and 1 Magic icon in your Quest (row/column), you also have to discard additional cards to beat that. If you can beat all the challenges in your Quest (row/column), then you can take all those tiles as your reward and take your Claim token back to your store. Then the next player gets to try to solve one of his Quests. This goes around until all the Claim tokens have been removed.

Deciding whether to start a Contest, and which Quest to do first, is where the brain-burning kicks in a little. You have to figure out which quests you can solve and try to guess which quests your opponents can solve. You have some idea of their skills (you can see the backs of their cards and each skill has a different card back) but you won't know for sure what they have since each Skill card can provide different icons (but will always provide at least one of the skill type of the card).

Some of the Treasure you can win is equipment that you can equip to get permanent icons added whenever you try to solve quests.

You keep the Monster tiles you've defeated too and can use them to Level Up -- getting yourself some special abilities and/or additional icons. This hopefully will be a tough decision, as the monster tiles themselves are worth points at the end of the game.

The game ends when all 32 quest tiles have been drawn. Total up points then.

Balancing the "Level Up" abilities is the biggest problem I see right now and is hard to solo playtest. But after two solo plays I've seen enough to get excited about. I hope to take it to GenCon and other gaming events in the next few weeks to get it ironed out a little.

Later!