Daniel (@dungeondive) previews the Natives & Legends expansion for Dragons Down, his game of the year for 2024, and spends the opening minutes on two things that aren’t components. First, the campaign: no stretch goals, everything already at the manufacturer, delivery expected inside the year — an approach he calls consumer-friendly after years of waiting on crowdfunding. Second, the adventure journal, which he played a few games without and missed badly; tracking your hero’s discoveries builds a story you can retrace afterwards.
The expansion’s most striking change is subtractive. The small scraps of flavour text on the civilization cards are being removed — priests are no longer the priests of the sacred grove, just priests — completing the game’s commitment to telling you nothing and letting you invent it. He connects this to Shadows of Malice, whose designer he thinks should have held the line on having no art at all.
Content-wise: a gnome lineage, eight classes including a Beast Master who can tame roaming monsters and fly the realm on a hired juvenile dragon, a Necromancer with a retinue of four skeletons, and three new native groups you haggle for with the existing dice.
He notes one game where no new natives appeared at all, and likes that — an underpopulated realm is itself a story prompt.
Removing the last of the flavour text: bold commitment to player imagination, or throwing away a hook?