Just really excited about playing Fall of the Ancients (the CYOA campaign for Hexplore It Vol. II, Forests of Adrimon). We played Klik’s Madness awhile back and absolutely loved it. These two books really elevate the Hexplore It experience for us. And it makes me wish that more companies offered completely new gameplay experiences for their games at the cost of a thick book.
We’re still early on in Fall of the Ancients but you can tell they learned from the first book and have improved on the formula. FotA feels less on rails. It doesn’t have chapters, instead letting you explore the map (open world) and do things as you see fit. And we came very close to losing a couple times, so the difficulty at 2 players is keeping us on the edge of our seats.
If you like CYOA narrative adventures that also have strong game mechanics I cannot recommend this one enough. I’d say the biggest downsides are that it makes the Hexplore It game into a much larger experience, taking a couple weeks to play through instead of a single night. And sometimes you forget about or didn’t realize there was a trigger and miss going to a Chapter Passage when you were supposed to. It has moments of “Oh shit, we completely forgot to read this section” while learning the game. But it smooths out with a little experience. The gameplay aids really help too. But it can sometimes feel like everything you need to be aware of at any one time is a bit much. But if you aren’t put off by that, it’s absolutely worth it.
EDIT: See Below For Further Thoughts As I Play (No Spoilers).
Sounds worth a look. The base VotDK game didn’t have enough flavor for us (oh why are there not equipment cards. Shopping is fun! More fun than filling in a hexside with marker!
Well, it still has those root mechanics (like gear upgrades filling in a side of a hex). Though they also have character sheets to track things on instead of just dry erase boards.
But instead of being a high level simulation of a fantasy campaign, the books fill the game with detailed events, characters, descriptions, and choices to be made. So there’s definitely much more flavor to be had here. You actually meet the inhabitants of the world and interact with them, instead of just reading their names and following some mechanics to simulate an interaction.
I personally enjoyed moments in Klik’s Madness where my drunken half-bear Rabble-Rouser constantly pushed bad choices (for roleplay reasons) which would lead to fail states. And the game would punish you and then pass it off like a daydream and rewind to before the choice. And sometimes it would reward me for doing this as a Rabble-Rouser class. Reminded me of an annoyed GM dealing with a player trying to break the game all the time.
Klik’s madness has been at the top of my list for the next campaign I plan on playing through for a while but keeps on getting pushed aside. I need to commit to it.
I will say that while FotA is definitely less linear, KM felt like it had more role-play choices during singular decisions. It could just be that we’re playing differently, since in KM we had characters that would take the less common paths. But I don’t feel like our player characters are developing as much this time around.
I’ve got a stormcaller fairy with the wrathful trait, and I’ve not really found any instances to let her angry little personality effect the decision space.
Despite that we’re still having a great time with it. And there’s a lot more other positives that outweigh this. Just something I was thinking on while playing.
For anyone following, we’re getting close to the end now (we’ve not been playing nightly due to intrusive life issues).
But I wanted to update with another factor that I feel is an important consideration for potential players. The game itself can feel a bit sloppy in some moments. Like the mechanics and components aren’t quite up to the task they’re being given. This is most apparent in rare circumstances where you’re fighting 4+ enemies at once. The Battle Board was not made to track this many enemies. Honestly, it’s not really made to track more than 1, but 2 is doable, and 3 starts to push it. And depending on what you’re fighting, trying to track the number of statuses being thrown around in these over-sized combats can feel like an exercise in absurdity. Sometimes you just have to fudge things the best you can and move along, hoping you did it all correctly.
And on another note, while we are enjoying the game, it still feels like our characters don’t have much personality in this one. It’s been awhile since we played Klik’s Madness, but I distinctly remember that not being the case there. So, again, I think this must be due to them going wide with the open world nature instead of deep with each set of choices having more role-play options regarding how you might act (like being aggressive vs diplomatic, or vengeful vs forgiving). There are branching paths in each little area, but they’re more about choosing what you think might be the best path through than choosing different ways that your character might act. Choices are often just about whether or not you have the time to spare, where on the map you want to go next, or whether you want to continue down a narrative path or not. More important choices seem fewer and far between, such as things that might affect which factions you side with.
Good feedback. Sounds like I’d prefer KM. But honestly I have Runebound and all the big box expansions so I don’t know why I’d ever play my 6 boxes of Hexploreit (sp?) again. :(…
The maps are cool but there’s so little flavor what with the art being where you can’t see it, no items or gear…
Yeah, I don’t think we’d have picked up more than the one box for Hexplore It if it weren’t for these CYOA books themselves. But I do like that for the price of a big book you can get a whole other experience out of the game.
In regards to art, they do seem to be working on that. All my monster cards and the cards for power-ups in the first two volumes now have art on them. Which is a big plus. But I don’t think those changes were integrated into the base games. The power up cards with art came with Fall of the Ancients. And the monster cards with art comes with an expansion deck (the encounter deck) for each volume, which also changes how you set up circumstance cards.
yes. You have to buy the decks over again. I think I bought one. But I don’t want to invest more in the game.
I really want to love it because I spent so much money on it, but I think it’s just designed for a very particular sort of brain that doesn’t happen to be mine.
Some people feel it is this incredible tool for emergent storytelling
Oh, yeah, we did not get emergent storytelling out of the base game. To us the normal way to play just feels like a very high level simulation of a D&D campaign, compressed into a couple of hours, and without a lot of flavor. Also, with a snowball mechanic because you’re always so much tougher at the end than anything else ever could be.
So how did this turn out for you? I’m going to get it with the Mountains of Godai campaign. Might pick up Mirza Noctis too. Ironically probably not going to get Mountains of Godai lol.
Editing this to clarify I’m going to get the campaign book Fall of the Ancients. I have Forests of Adrimon and just set it up last night.
Well, I got a few comments above that tracked some thoughts while we were playing. In the end we enjoyed it quite a bit. I think I liked their first book better, but a lot of players prefer this one. So that’s just about differences in design choices. Though I think it’s great they try different things with each book.
But if you have and enjoy Forests of Adrimon, I would almost certainly get this book for it. I feel like these books heighten the base game’s experience by quite a lot. And it’s the reason I keep buying additional versions of the core boxes. The only reasons I wouldn’t recommend them is if you aren’t into games with a lot of narrative (but then why are we even talking about it?). Or if you really have a hard time when mechanics get a bit sloppy/unclear. Because at some points in the book you’ll have to make some judgement calls about how to play things out that aren’t quite clear or push the normal mechanics of the game beyond what they’re supposed to handle. And it doesn’t always feel as thoroughly cooked as it could’ve been. But, I still think it’s very worth it if you can handle a little bit of jank here and there.
