Adventurer's Guild from Character Creation to First Adventure by Brian Kellner
Grey Mindraptor's body screamed in pain as the Young Cyclops' club slid past his parry attempt and thudded into his chest. The toothy grin of the child cyclops pumped adrenaline through Grey's body. "Where is Rock Lizzioni?," he thought in desperation. His thought was nearly punctuated with a club as the cyclops bashed again. Grey hopped backwards just in time. Noticing Rock by his side, Grey decided to move back into combat. This move just drew another attack from the monster. A root grabbed Grey's boot as he tried to repeat his previous escape. The club met his shoulder with a horrible crunching noise. Grey decided he had enough and yelled, "Beat feet - let's hit the street." Rock Lizzioni decided he'd rather not face the cyclops alone and joined the retreat with a "Zoiks!!". As he fled from the combat, Grey hoped Fay had some healing left.
Adventurer's Guild is an open-ended, character-based game with loads of combat. It is set in a fantasy world with lots of great detail. You start out as a character just beginning a life of adventuring by fighting battles in the Guild arena to gain experience and hone tactics. After a few turns, you'll be ready to head out to explore an adventuring site if you want. Here's a look at how that process went for me.
The rulebook starts right out with character creation. A sample is included which really helps to understand the process. First of all, you have to pick your sex and race. Sex doesn't affect performance, so you can play whatever you want. The race choices include human, lizardman, ogre, goblin, dwarf, half-troll, halfling, elf, minotaur and half-elf. There's nothing special about humans, but they have no penalties to raising any of their characteristics scores (more about those later). All the other races have some special attributes. Lizardmen have natural armor and a tail they can whip around, dwarves have thick heads and resistance to magic, half-trolls have regeneration and natural armor and elves start with some spells and progress at spells faster than humans. In return for these advantages, each race is penalized in the cost for increasing their characteristic scores. All the races seemed very balanced to me, so the decision was tough. In the end I picked a half-elf because I wanted to progress at spells faster, but I didn't want to suffer the full elf penalty for increasing strength and stamina.
After picking a race, you get to set some physical attributes. You pick your height (within racial limits) and light, average or heavy weight. These choices are well balanced. for example, if you're taller you can strike down on opponents and wield longer weapons, but you also have a tougher time avoiding attacks. I picked a height of 68 inches and average weight.
Next you select either a good, neutral or evil alignment and the guild where you want to start. Your later actions can affect your alignment, so I picked neutral to start out and named my character Grey to reflect his outlook. I decided to begin at the Antar guild, but I'll probably visit them all eventually.
The next part of character creation is really interesting. You get 50 development points to spend on characteristic scores, weapon training and handedness. Choosing to be ambidextrous is a one-time, yes or no choice. If you're not ambidextrous, it costs you nothing, but you suffer a penalty for using a weapon in your off hand. I decided to be right-handed leaving my left hand free for spell casting. Weapon training costs 4 points per weapon, and it's recommended that you don't train in more than one weapon to start. There are a great variety of weapons and shields (which also require training). Each weapon is described by its optimal range, damage, minimum height, strength and dexterity to use, and fatigue factor (how tiresome it is to wield). I picked a short sword based mostly on its low fatigue factor.
Strength, dexterity, stamina and cunning are the four characteristics on which you can spend the rest of your development points. Strength determines the amount of damage you do. Dexterity is important for avoiding blows and wielding certain weapons. Stmaina decides how long you can maintain the effort of fighting and sustain damage. Cunning helps you in almost all aspects of battle and in gaining skills easier. You get to divide up the remaining development points among these characteristics however you want (within the racial maximums if you're not human). I decided I wanted to be best at cunning with a good dexterity and stamina and give up some strength since I was going to be using a light weapon.
This takes care of designing the character. For the first turn, the only things left to do are pick an action for after battle, create some messages to say in battle and lay out a battle strategy. After your battles, you can join the challenge pool (which will pit you against a random opponent), practice your skills or work. I asked the game masters if I could have a special challenge fight against my friend whom I dragged into the game with me.
The messages really add character to the game. You can put in up to five messages and specify times when they are said such as the beginning of the fight, when you wound your opponent and after you win.
The last thing you do is set up your battle orders. First you specify what weapons and armor you will carry. I picked a short sword and leather armor. I decided not to wear a helmet to keep the weight down. Next you decide a beginning strategy and a secondary strategy (if you want one) and set what conditions will cause you to switch between them. There are three basic parts to a strategy: closing/retreating, attacking and defending. Closing/retreating is used to move you into the range you want to fight at. I set mine up to mostly keep moving me until I got into short range. The attacking sections describe what you'll do if you decide not to move. These sections are broken down into long, medium and short range attacking. At long range, I just rested. At medium and short range, I mostly attacked with my short sword but occasionally faked an a ttack or tried to punch with my left hand. The defending options are dodge, parry retreat or ignore the attack and hope it doesn't hurt you. I decided to dodge a lot and parry with my sword or retreat a little. I set my strategy to switch when I was pretty hurt or tired and made my secondary strategy a little more conservative.
With my character done, I was anxious to start. My friend had designed a lizardman named Rock Lizzioni who was very strong and wielded a long sword. We mailed off the characters with a request to be matched against each other in a challenge fight.
I was very excited when the results package came. It started out with a little description of the time right before the Battles Day, and then leaped right into the battle descriptions. I fought individual battles with seven other characters of about equal power. After the dust had cleared, I had won 4 out of my 7 matches and placed fourth in my group. Rock Lizzioni did better. He won 6 out of 7 and placed second. The game masters ran the challenge fight we asked for, and Rock beat Grey for the second time that day. Grey ended up with a power rating of 66 while Rock was rated at 88. (Power is measured by characteristic scores, win-loss record, weapon skills, etc. and is used for forming battle groups.) I was pretty satisfied with the results of fights, but I wanted to see where my strategy might have gone wrong.
I reviewed the attacking and defending statistics which are conveniently gathered at the end of the battle reports. I noticed that I was not attacking from medium range very often. Looking back at my strategy, I remembered thinking that I would be quick enough to get into short range and attack before my opponent could react. Reviewing my turn showed me I was not as quick as I hoped. It seems that I was not quite strong enough to ignore the weight of my armor and weapon. I modified my strategy so I would stay and fight more from medium range. I also spent the experience points I gained from the fights on raising all my characteristic scores one point and increasing my short sword skill one point. I also spent some of the knowledge points I gained on learning how to fight as a team.
Turn 2 was great! I won 6 out of 7 in my battle group and placed first. Rock Lizzioni's orders didn't make it through the postal system, so he sat out the turn. My power rating rocketed up to 120, and Entertainment Plus gave me a free T-shirt for placing first in my group! I gained a good number of experience points and knowledge points too. To top it all off, I gained several short sword skill points and dodge/retreat bonuses. I noticed an adventurer saying he wanted to go adventuring in three turns. His power was just a little higher than mine, so I decided to write back.
I reviewed the results and my strategy and made some small adjustments. I decided it was time to start making the most of my half-elf advantage, so I looked at the Combat Magic spells available. I decided on the Power spell which makes attacks more powerful and allows me to sustain more damage. It was kind of a risky move because casting spells tires you out, and it cost almost all of the experience points I had available.
On turn 3, I won 4 out of 7 which was good enough for third place. Rock Lizzioni returned and took second place with a record of 5 out of 7 despite losing to me. The Power spell seemed to have a pretty good effect, but it was definitely making me tired. I still gained some points, but it was definitely a let down after last turn. I noticed someone else has responded to the same offer for an adventure that I saw last turn. I decided to send messages to both characters suggesting that we go on an adventure in three turns. I looked through my results trying to see what caused my downfall. I lost one battle because I got thumped in the head leaving me too dazed to defend myself. I could probably avoid that if I wore a helmet, but that would slow me down more. Another battle I lost because I wasn't quick enough. I decided to increase my strength, dexterity and cunning. That should speed me up enough to get back on the winning track. I also learned some basic magic capability, so I can cast some useful spells on an adventure.
Uggggh. Rock Lizzioni and I both went 3 out of 7 this turn. Rock was experimenting last turn with a different stragegy and didn't get orders in one time to stop experimenting. Once again, I had one loss due to a head shot and one from not being quick enough. My friend and I were both a little depressed about these results, so we decided to go on an adventure next turn. I sent out a message to the other two players telling them we still want to go with them on the following turn.
I decided to raise my strength again and make a few adjustments to my defense strategy. I also learned a spell which should help protect the whole group for the entire adventure.
Before the adventure can start, I buy my own short sword and leather armor (the guild won't let you take those out of the arena) and hire a Healer (Fay) to come with us. The adventure starts out with a great description of our journey to the Isle of Isurus. When we get there, we discuss splitting up experience points and decide to do it based on individual accomplishment. I cast my Protection spell, and we start wandering down a trail. We decide to pick the path which we think will lead us to the most combat (something you can decide in your adventure orders). We are quickly set upon by two thugs. I get knocked in the head and basically get pummeled on until I retreat. Rock, however, is quite impressive and wallops the thugs into submission while Fay mostly just waits to heal us. The adventure continues with me showing glimmers of competence punctuated by some incredibly foolish moves such as positioning myself between two killer beetles or charging the cyclops as described in the beginning of this article. In the end, we just exhausted our Healer's ability and were forced to return to the guild.
I probably received one of the all time low scores for an adventure, but it was great fun anyway. I still got quite a few experience points, and Rock Lizzioni did great on experience points. I learned some important things about combat desire and team cohesion settings, and I'm looking forward to the next adventure.
Adventurer's Guild and Entertainment Plus both deserve the excellent ratings they enjoy in Paper Mayhem. The game is well thought out, well balanced and full of new things to be discovered and enjoyed. The company seems very responsive, and the players are really active. I've only been playing five turns and there's a great deal of the game I haven't covered here. Perhaps more importantly, new things seem to be added on a frequent basis. This leads to my one minor complaint about the game. The rulebook needs a little better organization. Fortunately, a totally revised rulebook is due out in the next few months.
Adventurer's Guild costs $9.75 per turn if you run only one adventurer. While this might seem high compared to other games, it is a bargain as an entertainment value. On my last turn, I received 11 pages of adventuring results, two pages of character stats and strategy, and 18 pages of arena battle results, city report, group statistics, adventurer standings and messages between adventurers. Additionally, you can earn credits to reduce the turn cost by doing well in battle groups, mastering a weapon or running additional adventurers. If you're looking for a game where you can develop a character the way you like in a well-designed system, Adventurer's Guild is an excellent choice.
After writing this article, I received my sixth turn. Rock Lizzioni and Grey Mindraptor died on their next adventure. I guess we should have listened to the warnings in the rulebook. It hasn't slowed us down though. We sent in new character setups and are already planning strategy for our first adventure. Drop a note to Morpheus in the Antar Guild if you'd like to come along.
For more information on Adventurer's Guild, contact:
Entertainment Plus More, Inc.
PO Box 2578
Appleton, WI 54913-2578