Adventurous Fantasy RPG from Dawn Fist Games Review

What follows is a short review for the fantasy RPG, "Adventurous" from Dawn Fist Games. My goal is to put a really awesome RPG that you may not know about on your radar.

Adventurous is written to be an introductory level game for players new to fantasy role-playing games. Within this context, the experience that it seems to deliver is very similar to one that a player might experience when playing Dungeons And Dragons for the first time. All the character classes sound like Dungeons And Dragons character classes, and all the powers and abilities of those classes have (for the most part) a focus on combat options. This is not a knock against the game. I think that it succeeds in everything that it's trying to do. It's just an observation.

While Dungeons And Dragons may inspire the contextual nature of Adventurous, the game system is very different. The game uses six-sided dice exclusively. I feel this was a smart choice for a game aiming itself at new and "non" players. Almost everyone can find standard six-sided style dice laying around somewhere.

The book spends a few pages up front going over the game system. Players roll a number of six-sided dice depending on an Attribute score. 5's and 6's on the dice indicate successes. A single success is known as a weak success, while two or more successes are a strong success. If two of the dice that contribute to a strong success are 6's, then you have a strong success with benefits. The player who rolled the double sixes gains an Experience Point, and if they don't already have it, the party gains Momentum. (More on that in a moment.)

A weak success is good enough for most things like making an attack or climbing a wall, but if the task is something that is impossible to do without specific training like reading a magical script or picking a complex lock, then a strong success is needed. In combat weapons do damage based on your level of success. A weapon's damage might be listed as w3/s6. This means that the weapon inflicts 3 damage on a weak success and 6 damage on a strong success.

Adventurous has its own version of Advantage and Disadvantage. If you have Advantage in doing something you simply add an extra die to your roll. If you have Disadvantage at doing something you take one die away. These effects can cancel each other out, but they don't stack.

In place of 5E's Inspiration, Adventurous has Momentum. A party gains Momentum when any player rolls double sixes. Momentum is a toggle value like Inspiration. You either have it or you don't. But unlike Inspiration, this is a party resource. Anyone can spend it, and then a roll of double sixes from any player can restore it. Neat! Momentum lasts until the party rests in any capacity. When you slow down and take a break, you lose momentum. Makes sense.

Characters have five attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Willpower, Knowledge, and Charisma. 1 is the lowest any attribute can be, and 5 is the highest. Five is the highest value possible even with magic effects and modifiers. Players will never roll more than 5 dice.

The first step of character creation is to choose your character's race. Your choices are Human, Elf and Dwarf. The options here are pretty slim, and they are also purely aesthetic. A player's choice of race has no mechanical benefit. Personally, I really like this. It sees players making a choice based solely on role-play, and I think that's a good habit to get into. Also, it means that if a GM wants custom races in their game as player characters, this is super easy to do. I can play that Holstaur that I've always wanted to play.

Following Race, the player must choose a Class for their character. There are eight Classes to choose from: Warrior, Rogue, Wizard, Paladin, Hunter, Cleric, Warlock, and Druid. Each class has a sort of "signature" special ability. And then every class has an "at will," an "encounter," and a "daily" power. One of each. 

Each level after 1st players gain one new special ability but there are only 4 such abilities per class, and max level in Adventurous is 5. This seems perfect to me for an entry level RPG, or for experienced players looking for a good low stress option for a short campaign. 

The game book includes rules for exploration, hirelings and social encounters. It also includes a bestiary and various examples of treasures, mundane, magical, and cursed. There's even an example campaign setting: the Westlands. This setting is both small in scope and light in details. This is just the kind of thing that I like to see. I like a loose framework to get me started that I can then build on. The Westlands are perfect for this.

The game book doesn't include a sample adventure, but there are some good ones available from Dawn Fist Games on their DriveThru RPG page. I like Adventurous a lot. This is a great game to just jump into and start playing. For beginners and for seasoned gamers looking for a comfort food RPG experience Adventurous is awesome! 

Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part 8 (82-81)

#82 Dingo's Dreams

Dingo's Dreams is part BINGO and part slide puzzle. There are four sets of 26 tiles in the game and two kinds of cards. There are the location cards, which your "BINGO Caller" calls out during play, and there are objective cards that show a pattern that players are competing to finish to win a round of the game.

Tile sets (called Dreamscape Tiles) are assigned to players and show locations (Dreamscapes) on one side and an animal on the other. Each player picks an animal and gets that matching tile set. The animals are cute and have an Australian focus, but practically speaking I think that this is because Dingo sounds like BINGO. So, this theme provided a fun play on words. The "theme" serves no other purpose, but the art is beautiful.

The tiles show locations on the back. There are 5 locations in 5 colors for a total of 25 tiles. Each player also has a 26th tile that has their animal on both sides. Players shuffle their set of the 25 tiles with locations on them and then create a 5x5 grid of those tiles with the location sides turned face up. This 5x5 grid is your BINGO card. (Your Dreamscape)

Each turn of the game has two phases. First is the Walkabout Phase. In the Walkabout Phase the caller (the Dreamer) flips the top card of the location deck of cards (The Walkabout Deck) and calls out that location. All players then simultaneously flip that location tile in their personal Dreamscapes (BINGO Cards) so that their animal side is now face up.

That was the BINGO step of the game. Now comes the slide puzzle step. 

Remember I said that each player has 26 tiles and that one has their animal on both sides. You made your board with the tiles with locations, and that 26th tile was extra. Now, you slide that extra tile into your BINGO card, slide puzzle style, pushing a different tile out the other side. (This tile is now your spare tile.) You are doing this to move the tiles that show your animal side into the positions shown on the objective card. The step of the turn is called the Dream Phase.

Dingo's Dreams is light and breezy. You could play this with anyone, gamers and not gamers alike. I just love it! In fact, Dingo's Dreams is my 82nd favorite game of all time.

#81 Disney Lorcana

Disney Lorcana is a collectable card game. Collectable Card Games are games where players buy packs of cards and then use their card collection to create a deck and play a game against other players. In Lorcana the cards are themed around Disney characters and all the cards are bright and beautiful.

Gameplay is fairly simple, play a card face down in front of you. This card represents ink. Ink is what artists use to draw animated characters. So, in this game, "ink" is what they call the resource in the game that is used to play cards. Cards have an ink cost on them. You just put down one ink at the start of your turn. So, you can play a card that costs one ink.

Used Ink replenishes at the start of every turn and you can keep adding to it. This will enable you to play better and better cards. The cards are mostly Disney characters. These characters can go on quests (which earns you Lore Points which is how you win the game) or they can challenge other characters. When one character challenges another character, the loser of the challenge is embarrassed and has to go home (is discarded.) 

Game play is simple, but cards break the rules in different ways (which are always clearly described on the cards.) It is these "exceptions" to the rules where games like Lorcana really shine, and it's what makes the construction of new and interesting decks and the collecting of new cards so interesting.

Julie and I played a ton of Lorcana when we first got it. The game is so much fun and is so engaging. There is a cooperative version of the game that Julie and I are really looking forward to. (It features Ursula the Sea Witch!) Until then, Lorcana is my 81st favorite game of all time.

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Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part 7 (85-83)

#85 Fallout Shelter: The Board Game

Fallout Shelter is a worker placement game played with cards. Players are collectively contributing to the building of an underground shelter following a nuclear holocaust. This is the comic book type of holocaust which has left the earth covered with mutant monster things. 

Every player has their own level in the shelter and then there is a shared level at the top which begins pre-built to start the game. Players go to areas to collect resources and build rooms to add to their part of the shelter.

Monsters attack and their cards get placed over random rooms in the shelter making those areas unavailable until the monster is defeated. Defeating monsters is worth points and building onto the structure is worth points.

Players can buy gear to make their character more powerful for fighting monsters. They can also go search outside the shelter and sometimes bring back awesome stuff. Fallout Shelter is a worker placement game with adventure game elements. It's my 85th favorite game of all time.

#84 Akrotiri

Akrotiri is a pick up and deliver, sailing, tile laying, exploration game. Players travel from islands collecting goods and delivering them to other islands to sell for money and points. It's really fun, and it's my 84th favorite board game of all time. 

#83 Mandala

Mandala is a two player only card game, where players place cards out on a shared board, to collect sets and to score points. Cards are played to one of two regions, called Mandalas. Each of the two Mandalas is split into three areas. There are two fields. One is your field, and is the area of each of the two Mandalas that is directly in front of you. The other is your opponent's field, and is the area of each of the two Mandalas that is directly in front of them. Between the fields in each of the Mandalas is an area called the Mountain. The Mountains separate your fields from your opponent's fields.

These areas are all illustrated on a cloth game "board" that is kind of like a big handkerchief. This is an interesting choice. The cloth seems weird as a game board at first, but it is very attractive and surprisingly functional. The cloth surface makes picking up the cards much easier than it would be on a slick hard cardboard game board.

On your turn you can play cards to your field or to the mountain. Cards on the mountain will eventually be drafted for scoring. Cards in your field are not scored but make up a sort of area majority contest with your opponent, because the player with the most cards in their field gets first choice in the draft to take cards from the mountain, and this can be really important.

Players can place cards in either Mandala on their turn, but for each Mandala, each of the six card suits can be represented only once. If your opponent plays the yellow suit in the Mountain of the left Mandala for example, you cannot play yellow in your left field. You can only play yellow to the Mountain to add to the existing yellow that is there.

Once all six suits are represented in a Mandala, that Mandala is scored. To score a Mandala, players draft cards from the Mountain. As I mentioned, the player with the most cards in their field will get to draft first. When you draft, you take all the cards of a single suit. If there is a large number of cards in a given suit, this can be a very desirable choice, which is why choosing first can be so important.

One last feature of the cloth play mat is the row of seven card spaces directly in front of each player that spans their side of the "board." These spaces tell the player what the cards that they draft are worth. When you take a suit from the mountain, you must place the first card of that suit face up in the first open space in this row. Now all other cards of that suit are worth 1 point each. 

The first card from the next suit that you draft goes face up into the second space in the row. Now all cards of that suit are worth 2 points each. This continues until all six suits have been assigned values. Each of the first six rows only holds one card, and these must all be of a different suit. All other cards that were drafted, but weren't required to occupy a scoring designation spot in the row are placed face down in the seventh space of the row. These cards are the cards that you actually score.

Mandala feels like a classic card game. It's a puzzly little abstract game for 2 players. The cards are beautiful, the cloth "board" is beautiful. The gameplay is engaging, challenging, and fun. This makes Mandala my 83rd favorite board game of all time.

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Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part 6 (88-86)

#88 Marrying Mr. Darcy 

Marrying Mr. Darcy is a hard game to recommend. I absolutely love the game, but … let me see if I can explain. Based on the Jane Austen novel "Pride And Prejudice," Marrying Mr. Darcy sees players take the roles of female characters from the novel as each tries to earn the hand of their favored suitor.

On a player's turn, they draw a card from the Event Deck and they do what it says. This almost invariably involves drawing cards from a second deck of cards called the Character Deck. The Character Deck is mostly made up of favorable qualities like, Wit, Beauty, Reputation, and Friendliness. When you draw cards, you usually draw several but must choose to keep only one. This you add to your tableau to build up your character to make you more appealing to your chosen suitor.

Each character scores differently based on the fella she likes from the novel. So, players will be trying to win the hand of "their guy." Other factors to consider are Dowry and Cunning. Some suitors expect a dowry of a minimum level, and while most don't want a woman of high cunning (heaven forbid) the player with the highest cunning is able to roll for her marriage proposal first.

Ah, you saw that didn't you? "... roll for her marriage proposal … " So, yes. You draw random events in order to draw more random cards in order to roll the dice at the end of the game to hopefully win the hand of the suitor that you want. Marrying Mr. Darcy is very random. As a game, it is a little bit of a mess. As an experience, Marrying Mr. Darcy is amazing! It's so much fun. But, if you are a hyper competitive gamer looking to out strategize your opponents. You should probably turn around and walk the other way.

For me Marrying Mr. Darcy is amazeballs! It even has a zombie expansion! (You heard that right!!) Marrying Mr. Darcy is a great thematic experience that is super light and easy to table. The game is more about enjoying the experience than the game play. So, it's one for themers, not thinkers. For me, it's my 88th favorite game of all time. 

#87 Fabled Fruit

Fabled Fruit is a campaign card game about jungle (and other) animals making fruit juice. Cards on the table represent action spots and Fabled Fruit is a worker placement game. Each player has only one worker. You choose your spot and you take your action. Those actions put fruit cards in your hand. When you have the right combination of fruit cards you can make juice. The first player to make a certain number of juices (based on player count) wins the hand. 

The trick to the game is the worker placement spots. These are cards. At first you have six spots. These are each made up of six different cards. These different stacks are made up of four identical cards. So, worker spot one might be a stack of four identical cards and each of these cards instructs the player to draw three fruits into their hand. Worker spot two is a stack of four different cards that tells the player to do something else … and so on.

On the bottom of the cards is a formula consisting of different combinations of fruits. You can go to a location if you have the correct formula and make fruit juice. If you do this, you take the card from the top of the location showing the formula that you just completed, and you place it in front of you face down. The face down side of the location card shows a juice bottle. (It looks like a wine bottle. I think all of these animals are really making wine and getting drunk.) Tahdah! You have made juice. You are on your way to winning the game.

Don't worry, even though you have taken one of the location cards from the stack, there are still three left. So, the location is still there to be used on future turns. However, everytime a location card is removed, it is replaced with a new one from the location deck. Now there is something new that players can do on their turns. 

The location deck is numbered so the locations are in a specific order. Every location has four copies. When you add a location from the deck, if there is already a copy of that location in play, you put the new card on top of its matching location. If there isn't a copy of that location in play, you add a new location spot to the board. This gives Fabled Fruit its campaign quality.

You can play as many hands as you want, and then save your progress when you put Fabled Fruit away. So, that way the new locations come out to start your next game. The location deck is huge, and you will play many game sessions before you complete it. 

Julie and I have played all the way through Fabled Fruit once. I am not sure that we will play through the whole campaign again, but this one holds some really fond memories for us, and it's a lot of fun to just pull out and play every once in a while. That's why Fabled Fruit is my 87th favorite game of all time.

#86 CV

CV is a card drafting game where players roll dice to gain resources to buy cards that represent important events during different stages of a person's life. 

Cards will often provide permanent resources (like the cards in Splendor) that will improve your ability to get better cards later. Events on the cards are things like, getting a job, going out to dinner, buying a house, getting married, and having a baby. 

Like Marrying Mr. Darcy, the dice rolling in CV make this one feel pretty random, and a large part of the enjoyment of the game is in the experience as you watch this fictional life unfold in front of you. 

It is an experience that I really enjoy and the art on the cards is lovely and funny and it often tells its own story. All of this makes CV my 86th favorite game of all time.

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Board Game Top 100 (2024) Part 5 (90-89)

#90 Livingstone

In Livingstone, players are part of Livingstone's expedition, moving down the Zambezi River in Africa, collecting precious gems and meeting with indigenous peoples to gain the favor of the Queen.

Livingstone is a light dice drafting game. Each round you roll a number of dice equal to twice the number of players. Players then take one die on their turn to perform an action. The higher the die that you choose, the stronger the action, but there's a catch. When it comes around to your turn again, you can only take a die that is higher than any you have taken on a previous turn in that round. So, do you take a few weaker actions or one stronger action? Actions include pulling precious gems from a bag, placing a camp, drawing a card, or just getting money. 

Gems have different values, including several that are worth nothing. Gems pulled from the bag stay out (until the single white gem is pulled that puts all sold and worthless gems back in the bag) so it can be valuable to wait until several worthless gems are culled from the bag before pressing your luck with this action.

Each round a little boat moves down a river. When you place a camp you must place your camp in the column above the boat. The higher the die you have chosen, the higher up the column you can place your camp and the more points it is worth. However, at the end of the game points are also scored for having a majority of camps in each row, and here lower rows are more valuable.

When you draw a card, you always only get one regardless of the number on the die so this is a good option when you decide to take that 1 die. Cards can give awesome benefits. Some cards let you exchange gems for victory points. So, you might not want to sell your gems right away, but one of the cards in the deck is a "Mine Collapses" card, and if that is pulled, all gems go back in the bag, even those that were being saved. This creates yet another push your luck element.

Finally, you can just get a number of coins equal to the die face. Placing camps costs money and is the main way to gain victory points. So, everyone needs to get money in order to place their camps. In addition to this, every player has a little treasure chest in front of them. At any time during their turn, a player can put money in the chest. This is your offering to the Queen. In a multiplayer game, the person who gave the least amount of money is automatically eliminated from the game. In a two player game you roll 4 dice at the end, and any player that donated less than the value of the four dice is eliminated. It is possible for both players to lose the game.

I love this game. I have fond memories of playing this with Julie and our two kids. Livingstone is a light family game with dice drafting and press your luck. Which are two of my favorite things. That makes Livingstone my 90th favorite game of all time.

#89 The Quacks of Quedlinburg

In Quacks players are potion brewers concocting curative brews to sell to gullible patrons. Your player board is a big cauldron. You pull ingredients (tokens) from a bag and put them into your cauldron. Garlic is bad for your brew. If you get too much you bust. Quacks is a press your luck bag building game.

In your cauldron the spaces are numbered. The more stuff that you get onto the board (into your cauldron) the higher the numbered space you reach. This gives you resources to buy better ingredients and victory points. If you bust, you get either victory points or you can buy ingredients to add to your bag, but not both. 

You can also get gems at certain points along the track. If you end your turn on a space showing a gem, then you get one. Gems can be used to get certain things, probably the most valuable of which is moving your starting point in the cauldron. This allows you to begin further and further up the spiraling track that gives you points making future turns more and more powerful.

Ingredients have special powers when you play them. Some allow you to mitigate the garlic so that you won't bust so fast. Some give you points. Some push you further along the track in your cauldron. Stuff like that. Powers for the various ingredients are written on cards and these can change from game to game creating a lot of variability.

Quacks is a neat little push your luck game. I believe that this one lands somewhere in Julie's top 20. For me, for now, Quacks of Quedlinburg is my 89th favorite game.

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