Daniel (@dungeondive) introduces Pauper’s Ladder (provided by its creator, Paul Stapleton of Bedsit Games), pitching it as the game a young Peter Gabriel and Pete Seinfeld might design after a night of Talisman and Prophecy — a breezy prog-rock-flavoured overland crawl that sits snugly between those two classics. Rather than a brave hero, you play a lowly “pauper” of Brighthelm, roaming a land of random encounters and quests to claim three of five virtues (generosity, knowledge, fellowship, bravery, magnificence) and win the tournament left behind by the beloved late ruler Growlium Skaggert.
Each pauper has a bird companion (a second token to explore with), a unique unloseable item, and a hand of recipes to complete via set-collection. You move region to region — forests, swamps, mines, mountains, cities — drawing from each area’s encounter deck; combat is a simple card-draw against a strength target, with the spoils kept as trophies, traded for gems, or used as recipe ingredients. He plays with a house rule (a three-card combat hand, used before redrawing) that makes routing more meaningful.
A charming, dead-easy-to-learn delight — no US distribution, so it’s pricey to import, with a Moon Towers expansion incoming.
Does a charming, luck-driven Talisman-adjacent crawl appeal to you — and is a small-creator import worth the premium over another big-publisher Kickstarter?