‘Roll Player Adventures’ Board Game Review
Choose your own adventure games have been increasingly popular over the past three or four years, and whilst I’ve seen a few different spins on the formula, I’ve never seen as big a box as that of Roll Player Adventures. With ten substantial scenarios and a smaller side quest, there’s a lot in that box as well.
If you’re familiar with Roll Player, you’ll be delighted to know that Roll Player Adventures includes a feature to import characters from of your own creation into the game, whilst for anyone else, there are some twenty pre-made characters to choose from. However you set up, you’ll record key stats on a clever player board that uses slotted paper to ensure full customisability between games.
You’ll draw cards from armour, skill, weapon, trait and scroll decks, and these will later allow players to manipulate dice during skill checks and fights. A nifty campaign tracker will be set out with card play and dice limits (per encounter) to be determined based on the number of players – and then you’re ready to play.
Having chosen a scenario, the player will place a map in the centre of the table and use the game’s single miniature to track the party location. They will then open the relevant scenario book (there is one per scenario) and have the encounter book, the tests booklet and a few other bits handy. With that done, one player will be chosen to begin reading the starting passage of text.
The first thing that impressed me about Roll Player Adventures (aside from the simple setup process) was that the writing is actually quite good. Most passages of text are brief enough to read out loud without leading to discomfort, but the message conveyed always comes through. Characters are named and generally described sufficiently, whilst locations and activities come to life extremely well.
At the end of most sections, the players will need to make a choice – perhaps to sneak past an enemy or try to subdue them. In many cases, this will lead to a test of some kind – or possibly a fight. Either way, the resolution is similar, with the players needing to draw dice from a bag and then use them to place over specific spaces on either the appropriate page in the tests booklet or the monster card.
There’s more to this than pure randomness though – because before drawing dice, the players can spend stamina in one of the key attributes (strength, wisdom, constitution and so on) to draw dice of specific colours. This is needed because certain spaces on the test and monster cards need specific colour or value dice.
Players will almost always want to invest in at least one or two dice to reduce the randomness of what they draw, but with stamina a limited resource, this may not always be possible. Alternatively, this is where your cards come in – weapons and armour may be played to change the face of a die, whilst spells and traits can do even more interesting things. These tend to be extremely helpful in certain scenarios, and between the stamina mechanic and card play, there’s quite a bit of agency despite the focus on dice rolling.
Whilst tests typically occur in a single round (with either a pass or fail outcome), fights may be resolved over several rounds (up to three, as far as I have seen.) Each round, any die spaces left uncovered (plus the current round space) will deal some consequence – usually wounds – to the player. When a wound is taken, each player must stack fatigue from the supply on their fatigue area, and if this is ever equal to the characters health, then they are exhausted (and could die, which leads to its own consequences.)
The outcome of many tests and fights can lead to a player being able to draw new traits, items or other cards – including unique or rare cards from the discovery deck or rare items deck. These cards all form part of the narrative attached to your character, maintaining one of Roll Player’s key tenets – that the character development is fundamental to the story.
Of course, it’s no surprise to learn that you can carry your items and attributes from one scenario to the next, and Roll Player Adventures plays out like a series of short stories linked by common characters who really do develop over the course of the game. There are very clearly at least two outcomes to each scenario as well, and this means that replaying Roll Player Adventures with new characters at least a second time, is entirely viable.
The only thing that might put some people off is the size of the box really, which does make Roll Player Adventures tough to store. Aside from that, the writing, production quality, simplicity of play and rewarding mechanics and story all stack up for a great experience. Whether playing solo or with a friend (one to two players feels optimal) you’ll have a fantastic time with Roll Player Adventures. For me, this is probably the best choose your own adventure experience I’ve had to date, and certainly the one that offers the most “proper gameplay” alongside an excellent narrative.
