Daniel (@dungeondive) reviews Klik’s Madness, the narrative campaign expansion for Valley of the Dead King, examining how it bridges board game mechanics with game book storytelling. Rather than promoting it as objectively superior, he acknowledges it’s genuinely well-made while not matching his personal preference for emergent narratives over pre-written stories. Klik’s Madness impresses through tailored heroic moments based on character race/class combinations, persistent location details that appear meaningfully in the narrative, and a smart time-tracking mechanic that creates urgency without feeling oppressive. The marriage of board and book components feels balanced, never overshadowing the sandbox experience. Though Daniel ultimately prefers Valley of the Dead King’s pure exploration-driven gameplay, he respects the design quality and recognizes it will delight players seeking directed narrative within their hex crawl adventures.
What’s your preference: emergent narratives built from random encounters, or carefully crafted campaign stories?
I think our favorite games utilize randomness to build emergent narrative. Things like SoB and Core Space: First Born. But for Hexplore It we definitely prefer using the books. The core games are fine, but we find them a bit too easy (most games end in snowballing victory) and sometimes we feel too disconnected from the thematic details. But the books just bring so much life to the world. Absolutely love them, and they’re the reason we keep buying the core boxes.
I especially liked in Klik’s Madness how acting like an ass would not only bring you to potential fail-states, but that the game would reward you for it if you were using a class that was appropriate to roleplay that way (like the Rabble Rouser). It always sort of slapped your hand and reset things back to before the decision, so it wasn’t campaign loss. Like a GM entertaining your bad ideas and then going, “Ok, so you stop daydreaming and now what do you really do?”
Are you buying more core boxes to have additional character and class options for the campaign books? Or are you buying more boxes just to play the games without the books?
If it’s the latter, do you have a favorite game box to play in? I’ve enjoyed my failed play of Kilk’s madness and look forward to the Fall of the Ancients someday, but am also interested in getting an additional game within the system.
Honestly, we usually use the classes that are specifically for whichever set the book is using. Mostly because they’ll have more triggers in the book. We’ve been buying more sets as they come out to support the company mostly, so that they’ll then make more of the books. I might’ve skipped Sands of Shurax and only grabbed Mirza Noctis and then stopped if it weren’t for the promise of them making a campaign book for each box.
So, we only played the first two before the books started getting made. And we’ve still only played those. Of them, I prefer the 2nd one for normal play. But I didn’t play the first campaign nearly as much so it might just be due to familiarity?
Mirza Noctis looks awesome if you’re into the theme though. And has great reviews from series fans. I’ve read up on it plenty, and it really sounds like they took all they’d learned from previous iterations and made the best version here. But I don’t have firsthand experience. If I were to go play one right now, I would choose this one because it’s the core box I’m most excited about.
And I know Sands of Shurax is a mish-mash of systems that most people weren’t thrilled with. Like they threw every idea they had into it and it’s just overwhelming. I even read a review where someone won the game without exploring because they just ran the gladiator side-game until they were ready for the boss fight… Or something to that effect. I’ve never even cracked this box open and I know I’ll play it before the campaign book, but I’m not exactly very excited about it.
And then the newest one I haven’t heard anyone’s opinion on. It’s neat that it gives two themes. I think the boards are double-sided and has a Chinese inspired theme on one side and an Aztec inspired theme on the other. And I’m also under the impression that there’s some kind of tower defense elements to it. But again, I didn’t pay too much attention to this box and haven’t looked into opinions after delivery either.
So all that said, unless one of the other themes is really drawing you in, I’d go for Mirza Noctis as the most well-received core box that I know of.
