20th August 2025
Eleven gamers joined three tables, each hosting a single long game for the night.
Tales of the Arthurian Knights made it’s debut, after Jyo found she did have a chance to unbox and punch ahead of the evening, but only just. The game revolves around the Knights of the Round Table, if the name hadn’t already given that away, and re-implements the design of Tales of the Arabian Nights. It works as a more involved multi-player version of the old choose-your-own-adventure books popularised by Ian Livingston and Steve Jackson in the 80’s (ahh, fond memories). Each player controls a character on a quest to do glorious deeds and make their mark on history, with 12 skills split between Martial, Spiritual, Courtly and Wilderness that improve to aid them in their search for glory across the British Isles, Normandy and Brittany. They also have tracks for Romance, Divinity and Villainy that may affect their journey. The main component in the game is “The Book of Tales” - a hefty tome of around 1500 encounter paragraphs. When you move to a space you draw an encounter card, these may show a milieu, a location or a character. Milieu cards represent weird encounters or strange phenomena, and are placed on another card depending on the Age (3 ages in a game) to provide a four digit number. Location cards represent Places of Power, such as Stonehenge or Camelot, and have 3 four digit numbers on, each corresponding to an age. Character cards have 2 digit numbers on, and require you to draw a Feature card that also has 2 digits on - so you may end up with an Amorous Giant, a Mad Hermit or a Rogue Queen and so on.
Whichever 4 digit number you end up with corresponds to a paragraph in the Book, which is read out and generally offers you a choice of 2 options on how to proceed, often involving a skill check against your skills, or lack thereof. This may lead you to another paragraph explaining the outcome, or another choice. Certain outcomes may see a Status card attached to a character, 26 cards varying from becoming Accompanied by a retinue, being Betrothed to a romantic partner, being Wounded in battle or taking on a Beast Form. These may be permanent, but are more likely to last a certain number of turns. Each player also has a quest card to complete, sending them to certain locations, gaining another quest when complete, and another at the end of each age. Grand Quests may also be available, needing several mini-quests to be completed, and all knights may try to take a piece of the glory for these. Throughout the game you are looking to pick up Destiny Points, and the player with the greatest destiny after 12 rounds is the winner, with their name resonating down through the ages.
Three brave knights set out to gain glory for Arthur - a very young looking Sir Percival (soon to be known as Baby P) under the tutelage of Steve, Sir Gawain for Jyo, and Sir Palomides for Darren. We assigned our starting skills (3 chosen from a randomised 6), jumped on our mounts and charged into the night, with Percival already bemoaning the lack of a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast before commencing his quest. It soon became apparent we may not have all have been the chivalrous knight’s we thought we were, with Baby P bravely letting an Ogress roast and eat a poor fellow, but vowing to teach himself some logic for future encounters. Sir Palomides found a sunken castle, and whilst investigating found a young maiden - ably voiced by Steve for the benefit of the entire club - who beseeched him to rid the curse put on the family. Keenly strapping on his sword and shield that he’d been honing for just such an encounter he waded into the marshes to confront the hairy alligator beast responsible. Unfortunately, and to foreshadow many of the following adventures, it seemed that skill with mounts rather than weapons was required here, and so Palomides found his plate armour just a touch too cumbersome for marshy terrain, fell and swallowed half the filthy swamp, and finding himself plague-ridden, slowing his adventuring somewhat.
Meanwhile Sir Gawain found a crafty manticore had taken a lowly royal family hostage and was demanding to become lord of the town, with an upkeep of a tasty human morsel each day. Gawain pointed out the foolishness of the manticore’s long-term strategy, suggesting a short term ransom and escape may be the better course of action. Proving more worthy than his contemporaries, Gawain was effective in persuading the dread beast to take flight to foreign lands with some loot, and was proclaimed a hero, with much feasting to be had. Baby P’s continuing quest further led him (in a roundabout way due to his inability to read the correct numbers, several times) to try his hand at flirting with an older handmaiden escaped from Orkney, who rebuffed his charms in short manner, leaving him pining for Muriel for the rest of the game. He also travelled to Orkney, where instead of doing battle with the followers of Mordred, he decided to challenge them to a drinking contest, which he managed to win by craftily stuffing himself with walnuts - eating is cheating. He did manage to find a holy lance at one point though, drunk and forsaken in love though he might be.
A trip to Stonehenge did get Palomides a retinue of grave robbers, although it meant missing out on exploring the glowing portal that was clearly full of promise and wonder. Keeping such bad company did mean he became Covetous, which meant that if at any point an encounter offered a choice to steal something he would have had to take that option. He also became Doomed at some point, meaning his prowess with sword and shield was to naught avail, as all his dice rolls were treated as 1. His final encounter was with an amorous Queen, but only in the sense that she was fooling around with one of her son’s friends, and Palomides failed miserably to distract the son from noticing the tryst. After dealing with the manticore Sir Gawain travelled the lands, righting wrongs and upholding the knightly virtues, even whilst becoming Obsessed along the way, but at the end failed to creep unnoticed towards a witch in order to discern what foul ritual she was planning, and was driven Mad by the experience. His good deeds so far however meant that it was Sir Gawain’s name that was sung loudly in the halls and whose exploits entertained future generations, with a mighty 55 Destiny Points going to Jyo. Baby P did manage to net Steve 44, despite his failings, but Palomides only gained a lowly 34, no doubt because he was looking for the ancient Albion doughnut precursors.
In all a very fun game, with much hilarity, not all due to Steve’s voice acting, and sure to be seen again.
Four intrepid expedition leaders, Neil the Explorer, Baroness Kathy, Dave the Falconer and Professor Steph, set out to explore the Lost Ruins of Arnak with the Spider Temple from the new Twisted Paths expansion. This expansion introduces a new resource, dark tablets, used to invoke altars for powerful benefits as the players progress through the temple, but scoring negative points at the end of the game.
The asymmetric abilities of the expedition leaders meant the players leant into slightly different strategies for gathering the resources, tools and artifacts needed to explore the island, overcome its guardians and reach the higher levels of the temple. Kathy used her plentiful income to build up a deck of useful tools to aid her efforts, while Steph stuffed a few lucrative artifacts in her suitcase. Neil hustled around the island discovering new sites, fuelled by a supply of tasty snacks, and Dave sent his well-trained eagle companion out to bring him back extra resources.
As they explored, all players discovered dark tablets and quickly embraced the temptation to use them with little concern for the consequences. By the end of the game, all players had climbed high up into the upper tiers of the temple but only Steph had made it to the final step. This proved to be decisive once all the points were tallied and a large chunk of everyone’s score was removed as a punishment for embracing evil.
The last table of 4 players tried Wyrmspan (a second play at the club since session 93). Iain focussed on every goal and did very well, which included using the extra scoring from the plains dragon guild, which was the chosen guild for this game. Richie maximised his dragons and was able to play some great combos to put things down for free eventually filling his caves. Jeremy did well on the first objective but struggled to find the right dragons. Graham got quite a few caves explored and filled, but failed to get combos working, fell short particularly on end game scoring and cached resources / cards, and brought up the rear. (But still enjoyed it and would play again!)
- Total Session Attendance: 11
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