First Foray Into 4AD

So there I was, on vacation, with no work to do and nothing to write out or focus on. My copy of MÖRK BORG that I ordered was hung up somewhere in the mail, so I had nothing to read for my trip. Then, remembering that I had a copy of Four Against Darkness and a copy of Lairs, Dens and Burrows (recommended to me on Reddit as a good companion to the core book) I decided to gather them up and teach myself the system while I was out and about in the world.

Well, I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy this game is to play. I wasn't prepared to play the game that first day, but digging out my notebook and using a die-roller app on my phone, I was able to actually play the game while sitting outside and watching the sun go down in Tahoe. The hardest part of the game was just the part of flipping back and forth between rules as I was playing, but they're simple enough that they start to stick after a while. My next step is going to be copying the pages with the tables so I have good reference sheets to work with.

I didn't finish the whole dungeon while I was out traveling, but I did explore a few rooms with my intrepid band of badass women before I got home and had Star's help with my gaming experience.

Keeping a log of everything we encountered was easy. The game plays smooth, fast and intuitive, with some serious RNG mechanics that actually remind me quite a bit of Talisman, which I love.

Keeping track of my party's details and marching order was only a little difficult, and only until I got home and got some good physical representations of my adventuring party out on the gaming table. In this shot, I was using Dragon Dice.

I explored the whole dungeon using the dragon dice, and started page-flagging the important rules that were more hidden so I would have an easier time playing the game. I also started sorting out the miniatures I was going to use to represent my party and started painting them.

I also picked up a couple more books in the series. Tales From The Adventuring Guild inspired me to expand my party and start my own adventuring guild to tackle dungeons with. Here is a picture of that shaping up, though the photo is darker than I'd like.

Ah, the four ladies of my first adventuring band. From the right (front) we have Vestra the Rogue, Senna the Dwarf, Stella the Cleric and Kaela the Elf. If I remember correctly, all of these models are from BriteMinis.

Playing through one dungeon and drawing the whole thing out, I realized that I could do something even more fun. I could use my Tomb Delver Cards to build out the dungeon. 

More on that after I beat it!

+