Story Realms Preview: Adventuring Kits Part 4

If you haven’t yet, check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of our Adventuring Kits preview to learn all about Story Realms’ fun take on basic adventuring equipment.   Today we’ll be finishing up our preview of Adventuring Kits by revealing the final two starting Adventuring Kits for the game.  First off, we have the Daredevil Kit!

The Daredevil Kit

The Daredevil Kit is for the hero that isn’t afraid to take big risks and doesn’t let dangerous terrain get in the way.  This kit is well suited for a player that wants to feel like a classic, high fantasy rogue that scales walls and performs amazing feats of acrobatics.  Of all the Adventuring Kits, the Daredevil Kit is probably the best suited for the player that just wants to seem cool.

The final Adventuring Kit we have to reveal is a favorite amongst the Growing Up Gamers crew.  It’s fun and a bit silly, but it has still proven very useful.  It’s the Fancy Pants Kit!

The Fancy Pants Kit

The Fancy Pants Kit is for the hero that likes to look good, smell good, and eat well.  Of course, it’s not all flashy accessories, that shiny, silver dagger can do a lot more than just look pretty.  Though it may seem a bit odd for going out on an adventure, the Fancy Pants Kit is actually the only kit that’s worked so well it hasn’t been revised since its inception.  It’s because the Fancy Pants Kit is one of the best embodiments of what makes Story Realms so different.

The Philosophy Behind Adventuring Kits

Story Realms is not a game filled with complex rules systems that have a hundred different ways you can stab a monster with a pointy stick.  The rules are designed to be relatively simple.  The reason for this is not to remove options, but rather to open them up.  The game is designed to accommodate and encourage players coming up with creative solutions to problems.  In this way, that Bottle of Perfume is just as effective as the Grapple Launcher or Climbing Gear.  It just depends on the situation and the player’s plan for how to use it.  With this in mind, we tried to fill the Adventuring Kits not just with classically useful items, but items that players would have fun using in interesting ways. 

This game needs more delicious pie!

The best example of this is the Fancy Pants Kit’s Delicious Pie.  When we first started testing the game beyond our own design team, we still had a lot of kits filled with more straightforward items.  However, we saw people having way too much fun with that Delicious Pie and coming up with some amazing uses for it.  A short and incomplete list of what I have seen done with that pie includes: using it to cheer someone up, using it as a bargaining chip, tricking a foolish monster into diving down the wrong hole after it, splattering it on enemies faces to blind them, and even filling it with dynamite as a nasty trap.  It led to a design catchphrase that we’ve bantered about and someday I want to get put on a T-Shirt.  “This game needs more Delicious Pie.” 

We realized that we needed to focus on creating as many moments of pure joy for the players as we could.  We went back over all kits and made sure each one had an item that we thought was just pure fun.  Something to draw a smile.  In general, we’ve used that phrase to guide our thinking across the entire game.  At every turn, we are trying to make sure that we are giving the players and the Storyteller the tools to do something exciting and creative.  We don’t want to railroad them into solving every challenge by bashing the problem with weapons or using the same gear that’s in every other fantasy themed game.

So That’s All the Adventuring Kits?

We hope you enjoyed this preview of our Adventuring Kits.  However, these are not all the Adventuring Kits that come with the game.  These are just the ones available at the start of the game.  If you glance at the side of the card back, you’ll notice that it says Wayfarer’s Kits.  This is to designate it as a particular set of six kits.

The game comes with an entire second set of six more Adventuring Kits that become available when you reach the main hub city of the game.  If the game is successful, you can also bet that more Adventuring Kits will be included in future expansions to give the players lots of cool choices about how to equip themselves.

A Final Note to Growing Up Gamers Fans

We are super excited about Story Realms, and we are obviously eager to talk about it.  We will be doing even more Story Realms previews in the near future.  However, we don’t want Story Realms to run away with this blog too much either.  To that end, we are currently revising the Escapade Games website so that it will have its own blog to host future Story Realms previews.  We will still let all our Growing Up Gamers know when those previews are available to view, but we will keep the bulk of that content off this site.  We want to get this blog back to focusing more on what it’s meant to be.  We’ll be bringing back a lot more of the game discussions and reviews, educational topics, and wacky family antics real soon.  If you’ve been missing that stuff and craving more of it, hang in there and thanks for sticking with us!

Story Realms Preview: Adventuring Kits Part 3

All this week, we are previewing Adventuring Kits from our upcoming storytelling adventure game, Story Realms.  In Part 1 and Part 2 of our preview, we revealed the Wanderer Kit, the Wizard Kit, and the Healer Kit.  Today, we bring you the Mischief Kit!

As you can see, this kit allows you to get yourself into a wide range of trouble.  Whether it’s playing games, playing tricks, or just breaking and entering, this Adventuring Kit has got you covered.  Now to be clear, Story Realms is not a game of moral ambiguity.  The players are always the heroes and their goal is always to save the day.  The Mischief Kit isn’t really meant to facilitate felonious skullduggery.  Instead, it’s the gear for the heroes that like to avoid charging into battle and would rather overcome a challenge with a little deception or playful trickery.

How This Stuff Works

Seeing these Adventuring Kits and their eclectic assortment of items might make a person wonder what the specific rules are about how these items work.  The short answer is: they just do.  Outside of the images and the names of the items on these cards, the game does not provide any detailed rules about what you are supposed to do with them.  For an experience gamer, this may seem shocking and a bit uncomfortable.  All I can say is that we’ve been playtesting and it simply just works.  Story Realms provides the players with challenges that encourage the player to come up with creative solutions.  The items in an Adventuring Kit are kind of idea starters.  They help shape the type of actions the player will decide to take.  Think about it, do you really need lengthy rules to tell you what happens when you throw a smoke bomb?  I’m guessing you probably know that it lands and makes a lot of smoke.  This probably makes it hard to see.  Maybe it could even cause someone to cough and hack a bit.  The Storyteller and the players are free to interpret the use of an item as they see fit and describe its effects in whatever way best suits the story.

I must, however, admit that in our last preview I told a little white lie.  I said that every rule you needed to know about the items in an Adventuring Kit was right there on the card.  That’s not actually true.  There are no detailed rules to describe the function of each individual item.  However, there is one rule, not written on the cards, you need to know about how all of these items work.

The Right Tool for the Job

The reason that the game doesn’t worry too much about specific rules for an item is that any heroic use of an item in your Adventuring Kit is tied to a Skill Roll.  Which Skill you use depends on what exactly you are trying to do.  We’ll talk more about skills on a later preview, but for now just know that there are only six skills and each skill has a certain number of dice you get to roll (1, 2, or 3 specifically) to try to accomplish your goal.  If you use an item from your Adventuring Kit that is appropriate to the task you are trying to do, that’s called having “The Right Tool for the Job” and you get to roll 1 extra die. 

Trying to escape a horde of monsters?  Smoke Bombs make for a good getaway!  That’s +1 die to your Move Roll.  Have to pry open a locked door?  Crowbars are good for prying open things.   That’s +1 die to your Might Roll.  In this way, the game gives a simple but effective way that items in an Adventuring Kit can have a real impact.  Remember that Story Realms also gives players access to powerful magical artifacts that DO have unique rules and strange powers (printed on the item card), but that’s not the purpose of Adventuring Kits.  Adventuring Kits are simply the fun and creative tools players can use to aid any task they might try.

Why not have more swords and armor and traditional stuff?

You may notice that while our Adventuring Kits are filled with fun and interesting items, they don’t have as much of the mundane, traditional adventuring gear that you might see in other games.  If you're curious about exactly what went in to choosing these types of items, you should check back in later this week where we will talk about the philosophy behind the Adventuring Kits and reveal a few design goals you can see at work across the entire game.

Story Realms Preview: Adventure Kits Part 2

More fun with Adventuring Kits!  Last Friday, we kicked off a week long preview of Story Realms Adventuring Kits.  These cards are the Story Realms solution for making adventuring gear fun and easy.  We started by revealing the Wanderer Kit and the Wizard Kit.  This fine morning we are continuing our preview by showing off the Healer Kit!

The Healer Kit

As you can see, healing in Story Realms is a little more herbalism and little less trauma surgery.  Magical healing is also possible, but even then, a properly mixed poultice might aid the effort.  We’ve tried to keep the items in the kits a mix of straightforward and surprising.  A cooking pot is fairly self-instructional, but that jar of goo might be anything!  Adventuring Kits are meant to be used creatively and spark imaginative solutions to the challenges of the story.  Of course, with an Adventuring Kit like the Healer Kit, you might feel a bit specialized.  Sure, you’re totally prepared to gather strange plants, mix odd herbs, and cook up something crazy, but what if you need something a bit more practical?  Well thankfully, you probably remembered to pack it in your pocket.

The Power of Pockets

In Story Realms, we want players to have fun with their adventuring gear without ever having to pour over lengthy equipment lists to make sure they packed the right thing.  To this end, we try to build the challenges of every adventure in such a way that there are multiple avenues of success.  You’re never stuck just because you forgot to bring along some rope.  However, with only six items to an Adventuring Kit, there is the strong possibility that a player may want to pull something out of their pack that simply isn’t there.  That’s why every Adventuring Kit has two pockets.

These pockets are full of possibility!

Twice during an adventure, a player may attempt to pull absolutely anything that could reasonably fit into a backpack out of these pockets.  In playtests, we have seen players try for handy things like rope ladders, pretty things like gemstones, and crazy, madcap things like wrist-mounted, automatic chicken launchers.  All valid ways to go on an adventure.  If you can think it up, you can probably find it in your pack.  Getting what you want is not a guarantee, however.  You have to roll for it.

Grab Rolls

Whenever you search your pack for something, you have to make a Grab Roll to see if you dig out the right item.  To do this, you simply roll two dice.  A single hit on one of the dice means you pull your heart’s desire right out the pocket.  The odds are strongly in your favor to succeed (75% for the math-minded), but once in a while you will go searching for a trusty knife and come up with something else entirely.  If the roll doesn’t succeed, you still put a marker on the pocket to show that it has been “used up” for the adventure.  However, you don’t come away empty handed.  Instead, the Storyteller gets to decide what you’ve found in your pack.  This gives the Storyteller an opportunity to present the player with something else useful to the situation, an odd item to use creatively, or simply add a little humor.  The Storyteller can decide on anything, but the game provides a list of twenty suggestions that includes a silver hammer, a mysterious mask, and a fluffy pillow.

How Do the Rules Handle Players Who Can Pull Anything?

People experienced with storytelling adventure games might be a bit daunted by the idea of players with the freedom to pull out any item.  I mean, how does a Storyteller stat out an automatic chicken launcher on the fly?  Couldn’t a particularly creative player completely overpower the adventure or worse, bring it grinding to a halt?  In Story Realms, our goal is make sure the focus stays on the fun.  We want the story to keep moving forward, and we don’t want players to have to look up a bunch of odd equipment rules.  That’s why we printed all the rules you need to know about how equipment works right on the Adventuring Kit!  Take a close look.  Do you see them?  Try squinting.  I find that when I cross my eyes, spin around 5 times fast, and then look, “something” definitely shows up.  Still can’t see it?  Well then you should check back later this week for part 3 of our preview.  You’ll learn all the rules you need to know about how adventuring gear works and what it means to have the right tool for the job.

Story Realms Preview: Adventuring Kits Part 1

Adventuring gear is a bit of a mixed bag in most adventure games.   Shiny magic items with fancy tricks are always fun, but what about the simple, mundane gear that the heroes bring along to get the job done?  It’s fun to imagine all of the cool gear your hero might be carrying, but it can be really tedious to plan for every little thing you might need.  Do you really want to spend time in your heroic adventure game shopping for rope, tents, climbing gear, and a laundry list of minor items you may or may not ever need?  Some adventure games sure think you do.   Some games still include lists of over 30 items to consider purchasing all the way down to paying a few coin to buy a single torch.   Hope your valiant hero didn’t forget to shop for that on the way to the deep dark caves.  Hope your hero also remembered to buy the flint and steel (sold separately) to light it. 

The Story Realms Answer to Equipment

Story Realms makes gearing up your character simple and fun by using cards called Adventuring Kits.  An Adventuring Kit contains a set of themed items to take along on your adventure that are each fully illustrated on the card.  Just pick one of six different Kits and you’re ready to go.   

Over the course of the next week, we will be revealing all six Adventuring Kits from the game.  This preview art has been generously provided by our publisher, Game Salute.  The illustrations for the Adventuring Kits were done by the amazing artist Kelly McClellan and the design of the cards was done by our incredible art director, Dann May. 

Yesterday, through Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook, we previewed the Wanderer Kit.  An Adventuring Kit filled with items for survival and fun while wandering the wilderness.

The Wanderer Kit

Today we are also showing off the Wizard Kit. A wizard in Story Realms isn’t any particular class of hero.  Though some heroes are better at it than others, anyone can do magic.  Instead, this kit is just a set of items that are useful to any hero interested in manipulating the magical elements and looking the part of a storybook wizard!

The Wizard Kit

Never Stuck With the Same Gear

As a hero, you are never stuck with same Adventuring Kit from adventure to adventure.  Any time your hero is in a town, market, or some other place with an abundance of supplies (usually at the start of each play session) you can change to a new Adventuring Kit.  This way you can pick equipment to suit your current quest or just try out something new.

What if it’s not in the Kit?

A keen observer will notice that there are only six items to an Adventuring Kit.  What if you want something that simply isn’t there?  A particularly keen observer will also notice that the bottom of each Kit has two pockets.  Perhaps what you are looking for is packed in there.  

Tune in later this week when we reveal another Adventuring Kit and discuss how these pockets help ensure that a hero can be prepared for anything.

Talisman and Runebound: The 6 Year Old Perspective on Two Awesome Adventures

by Julian

Which One Do You Want To Play?

Since playing Story Realms, my daughter, Sabine, has become more and more interested in playing other adventure games.  While she enjoyed Story Realms' imaginative tales, quick play time, and ability to play with her family and friends, she wanted to try some of my more traditional adventure board games.  I wasn't so sure she'd enjoy them.  Adventure games can be kind of long and complex.  They often have lots of cards to read, combat systems, leveling systems, special equipment, and more.  However, I thought we’d give some a try.  The first one she was interested in was Talisman.  There’s a new version out these days, but the one I own a 2^nd edition box from 1985.  I’ve seen the new version though and they really don’t seem that different.  Here’s what Sabine had to say about Talisman.

Sabine Explains and Reviews Talisman

Expert Opinion Incoming

 There are gold tokens that you can use at shops.  And there are blue craft tokens and red ones.  Oh and the red ones are for Strength.  You try to move around the board to get into different places.  You roll dice to move around the board.  The places are the different rings around the crown.  Whoever gets to the crown wins.  The cards will have monsters on them and sometimes they will have gold.  Sometimes they will have good things and sometimes they will have bad things.  One player rolls for the monster and you roll for yourself.  The monster will have a strength too.  You can either beat him in craft or beat him in strength but you have to beat him to win the battle.  As a player you start out neutral and there is a guy that can change to good or bad with a power. 

I like Talisman because it is just a very good game.  I like that it’s a crown you are trying to get.  Buying stuff is my favorite thing about the game.  Also, I like what the board looks like.  My favorite and kind of the only character that I’ve had before is a Troll.  I like the Troll is very, very strong.  And I like its skin color.  The color of its skin is green.  Though I don’t like the big bumps on him.  They are brownish green.  I would give this game a score of 100 billion.  I really like the game.

You can't tell, but I'm totally losing right now.

The Parent Perspective on Talisman

Talisman went pretty well.  That game is fairly simple and fairly random.  My daughter ended up winning  both games we played and I didn’t have to help her that much.  I certainly wasn’t playing easy.  Talisman is fun for its ridiculous variety, but there are so many random cards to turn over and so many die rolls that determine everything that you really can’t strategize.  This makes it a pretty good choice for playing with the kids.  Be warned though.  Sabine had fun but started to lose interest towards the end.  Even with 2 players, this game took almost 2 hours to play.

After playing Talisman a few times, Sabine started showing interest in Runebound which is a way more complex game.  I wasn’t sure if it would work or not, but we tried it anyway.  Here’s what Sabine had to say.

Sabine Explains and Reviews Runebound

You see, it's like this!

You move with symbols on the dice you roll.  There are different symbols.  You have to see if you have all the symbols to get to each place.  Best to start with the green dot and level up to yellow, level up to the blue, and level up to the red.  Somewhere in the red deck there will be a dragon, the one who you are trying to fight.  But you are not working together.  You are trying to defeat it first.  The dots are things you put on the board.  On the other side they have number.  You draw the cards of that color to see what monster you have.  Once you have a monster there will be a task you have to do before battle.  Then you battle.   There are different symbols for different things.  They mean different things that you have to roll higher than on the bad guy.  You get to add what you have of them to the die roll.  You win the fight by getting higher than his score each time. 

I like Runebound because it has a red player.  Well two, but I like to be a certain one.  I liked the player I was because it was good at fighting.  I also like what the board looks like.  It has some forests.  It has some rivers and roads.  It has hills and mountains and that’s what the board looks like.  I like the name of Runebound.   If I were giving a score to this game I would say 300.

Combat is kind of complex, but Sabine still loves to fight monsters!

The Parent Perspective On Runebound

I was surprised how well this one went.  Runebound has a complex movement system involving dice, symbols and terrain types.  This game definitely took more prompting from me than Talisman, but Sabine actually got the hang of movement pretty quickly.  She sort of understood combat, but I had to give her advice about when to attack on most fights.  We played with the soft KO optional rule and also a house rule that you can heal all wounds by spending just 1 gold in a town.  I actually recommend both of these rules for anyone playing Runebound.  It takes away a lot of the drudgery of lost combat and speeds up the game a bit.  We didn’t actually get to finish Runebound.  We got interrupted about an hour or so in.  Runebound takes even longer than Talisman, but it was still a lot of fun.

Talisman VS Runebound

Sabine says, "There can be no winner! Adventure games rock!"

 When asked which she liked better, Sabine had this to say:

“I feel I like them the same.  I like things in them differently.  I like the craft and strength in Talisman and I like the name, board, and characters of Runebound. “

I had a surprisingly good time playing both of these with my daughter.  If you and your child have the focus for 2 hour game, I’d recommend either one.  However, I think Talisman is actually a little better suited for kids.  It’s very similar to the “roll and see what you get” style of classic kids board games and the combat is as simple as rolling a die and adding 1 number to see how high you could get.   The standard victory does involve getting to a magical crown and then killing off the other players, but we just played that first person to the crown wins.  It’s not that far off from how the game usually goes.

I have played a few adventure themed games that more designed for kids, but it was a lot of fun to play a “grown up” adventure game with my daughter.  Have any of you had a good time playing an adventure game with your kids? Leave us a comment and let us know all about it!

Family Dance Party: Guest Post at Muse of the Morning

by Julian

Hi all,

I have a guest post on my wife's blog, Muse of the Morning about how to have an easy, impromptu, family dance party.  Her blog is filled all kinds of crafty stuff and great ideas for family fun.  Definitely worth checking out!  And it earns me brownie points at home if you do.

My daughter Sabine, getting her groove on.

As for this blog, it's been awhile since we've done a Story Realms Update so I will just say this.  We've been talking about playtests for quite some time now, but we really are sending out print and play sets tomorrow for those that are interested.  If you haven't already, go to Escapade Games and sign up to be playtester!

Other stories in family adventure gaming, my daughter Sabine has been getting very interested in adventure board games.  She's played the classic game of Talisman and also played Runebound 2nd edition.  I'll be writing up her review of the experience later this week.

Drooling over Goblins Drool, Fairies Rule!

by Randy

Wowed. That's what I was... wowed. I sat down to play a rhyming game with cutesy art with the kids, and I ended up playing a reasonably in-depth strategy game. That's how I felt after playing Goblins Drool, Fairies Rule. And I love this game.

Stretch goal already met, box will be upgraded to a collectable tin!!

Goblins Drool, Fairies Rule! is a game by David Luis Sanhueza of the Game-O-Gami game development studio. It is for 2-4 players, but also has a single-player variant for solitaire lovers out there. It consists of a deck of double-sided tarot-sized cards. Each card has a fairy on one side, and a goblin on the other, each with their own name, which rhymes with certain other fairies and goblins.

Jack is too little to read the cards, but he was rooting for the "Yucky Goblins" all the way... and laughing at the rhyming names and detailed pictures

The rules are very simple. On your turn, you play one of your cards (which are face-up in front of you). You check for a rhyme with other cards in the center (the Fairy Circle), and flip all cards that rhyme with the one you played. You then compare the symbol on the card you played with the ones in the Fairy Circle (for instance, Pixie Power rhymes with Dusty Dour,  Petal Flower, Nappy Hour and Sweet and Sour), and take all that match the card played. And then play passes to the next person, until one person either has no goblins left, or has collected six fairies. See... simple, right?

Angie wins! Boo-yaa!

The brilliance of this game is its elegance. That above is basically the gameplay in a nutshell. But with five rhyming groups, and two sets of binary suit symbols (sun/moon and mushroom/frog), it can be as strategic as you care to play. Since opponents' cards are face-up, you can plan your plays in such was as to prevent them from getting the fairies they need, or to try and make sure that they end up with a goblin. The emergent strategy should be enough to make even strategic gamers think hard... yet be able to play with young kids.

Julian and Sabine discussing various rhyming options

I played this game with my daughter, and she loved it. My daughter is an emergent reader and this game was great for her. The theme and art appealed to her, and she got a chance to practice reading skills. It was a blast watching her sound things out. She found out quickly that you couldn't just compare the last couple letters to check for rhymes.

Katie practicing her rhymes

I highly recommend this game. It is currently on Kickstarter and has met it's funding goal (and then some!) Now is your chance to get it and preorder a copy of this great game.. Some time after the Kickstarter campaign, of course, you'll be able to pick it up in stores, but there are some awesome  rewards and stretch goals available only via the Kickstarter campaign, such as an art book, stickers and double-sided puzzle. You don't want to miss this one, it's an excellent game and GORGEOUS!

Ok, maybe the grownups were getting a little too competitive with this one! But C'MON, FAIRIES RULE!!!