Call to Adventure

Call To Adventure

Merry Christmas everyone! Tonight after the festivities on zoom, Amanda, Hector and I sat down for a game of Call to Adventure. I’ve yet to play a Brotherwise game I didn’t like and had kickstarted this one back when I first heard about it. For those who don’t know Amanda is an on again off again fantasy author and our mutual love of storytelling is a big part of why we started talking in the first place, so this game seemed a natural fit for us. Although this is not our first game, today we are playing for the first time with the “Name of the Wind” Expansion.

The components for this game could be used for a masterclass in component design because although there aren’t many, every single one is both thematic and gorgeous. The card art is both excellent and consistent, something I don’t think many designers take into account. If you have one solid artist for the whole game, or a least a clear and consistent art style direction, it always turns out better than having a bunch of artists working in different styles, no matter how good they may be individually. MTG players are probably more aware of this than most, but the excellent art, coupled with a very clear and consistent direction makes for a beautiful experience. The runes and experience tokens are great looking as well as functional and the box insert and storage solution is damn near perfect.

The gameplay itself is something like a tableau builder with story development and rune casting, as the players develop their character and tell that character’s story with the cards they collect throughout the game. Players start with a few cards representing their characters beginning and middle which determine their starting and special abilities, and a hidden destiny, which functions as an end game scoring bonus, providing some direction. Players take turns attempting challenges, adding traits to their characters and defeating enemies, following either a heroic or tragic path (or a combination of the two).

Most cards are gained by casting runes. All characters have access to the three basic runes, as well as any applicable bonuses they have for each challenge, and players may also cast dark runes for extra chances at success, but with the risk of become more corrupt, eventually losing the ability to use dark runes and taking a point loss at the end of the game. There are also hero and anti-hero cards which can be used to manipulate the game in various ways throughout. Each player is allowed to gather 3 cards for each “act” of their characters story and when one player has completed all 3 acts, the game ends at the end of the round. Final scores are calculated and whomever has the most points is the winner at which point players can tell the story of their character based on their cards.

Amanda and I are both fans of another game, which is almost just a storytelling exercise called “Once upon a time”, which is a fun activity but has nearly no game to it. In terms of telling a story over the course of a board game, this has a lot more meat to it than either Once Upon a Time or similar storytelling games such as Arabian Nights. Although Call to Adventure is not super deep, it’s fun and has enough game to it to keep it interesting and not just make it into a glorified writing prompt or series of random vignettes.

Unfortunately the Name of the Wind Expansion actually weakens the story by a great deal while adding very little to the gameplay. While I am a big fan of Patrick Rothfuss, the expansion swaps out a lot of the general cards from the deck for a lot of specific events from The Name of the Wind and Wise Man’s Fear. This is probably a great thing for fans of the series, but I feel like this leads the game to telling someone else’s story. The names mechanic makes for a great catchup mechanism, but I don’t think it’s worth including at the expense of making the game largely incomprehensible to those who aren’t familiar with the source material.

Overall I would recommend Call to Adventure to two main groups of gamers. First, those who enjoy creating a story as the game progresses and second, those who are looking for a theme rich gateway game. Either way, skip out on the Name of the Wind expansion unless you’re a huge fan of the Kingkiller chronicle.

Note: As I have not read the Kingkiller chronicles, I did need Kage to tell me what many of the cards were referencing from the expansion, which was a bit annoying. I love this game, the pictures, and how at the end you can piece together a story for your character by going through your original picks and all of the cards you gained until the end, which we always do verbally. I definitely recommend this for fantasy lovers, especially if you like choose your own adventure type stories/book, LARP, etc.

The Teal Deer

Game: Call to Adventure
Designer: Johnny O’Neal, Christopher O’Neal
Price: $40
Players: 2-4
2 player Scaling: Players much quicker, but best with the right group of 4
Playtime: 45-60 minutes
Estimated Lifespan: 10+ games for the base, Name of the Wind expansion is probably played out.
Average Play Frequency: Quarterly
Complexity: 2
Components: 5
Bang for Buck: 4
Value for Time: 5
Fun Factor: 4.5
Overall: 4.5