Here I'd like to share some of Martin's notes about each adventure as well as some thoughts about the nature of the game.

So this is one box, with 5 (actually 6) games inside it. They have an overarching storyline and you carry items and abilities forward with you. Each one of these adventures will take between 60-180 minutes to play, depending on your dice rolls and choices. So there are some elements that you will know if you play again (just like a regular Choose Your Own Adventure book) but there are also things you may not find on your first pass, you might hit a dead end and fail, you might have TERRIBLE (I promise you, you will!) dice rolls and die and need to restart.

This is not a legacy game where components are destroyed. You can enjoy the adventures multiple times, especially if you play with other people and let them make the choices the next time around. You can run this for your kids, you can lean into the RP element and act in ways that might mean you drive your other party members crazy and mean you miss important stuff. It's really fun to run this as a GM. There is a tonne of value in the box.

Quest for the Orb of Lucis

This is our sample adventure, it's available for free on TTS and Tabletopia, you'll be able to access the links for these below and we are including it in the Collectors Edition. Martin originally designed this to send out to content creators so you could see the gameplay (this is a dungeon based one) without spoiling the adventure. This one is not based on any books and is a little shorter than the other adventures. It's a great way to learn the game, possibly nab a couple of extra items for the campaign and just adds a bit more gameplay to the box. Your heroes do not level up at the end of this adventure. You could play this at anytime however.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Based on the extremely successful flagship book that launched the series. This adventure is all about getting the loot - specifically that belonging to Zagor the Warlock. This is very much a standard dungeon crawl. To access the final room you are informed that you need to find three keys, similar to the book. One challenge in adapting the books to card game format is trying to make sure players succeed. In the book you have to guess the right combination of keys without any clues, so its random. In the card game you are presented with clues to help you select the right key, although those clues may not be so obvious.

Island of the Lizard King

This is a rescue mission where you are travelling to the said island to rescue fishermen who have been captured by the Lizard King. One thing I wanted to avoid was to present players with one dungeon crawl after another. I felt that that would become too samey. I also wanted to see what the base system could cope with. Island of the Lizard King is mostly an open air adventure, so there are none of the constraints you find in a dungeon. The challenge for me was how to make sure players do not go straight to the end - there has to be a narrative plotline that you generally follow in sequence. The big difference with this game is that you do not have dungeon cards. Instead you are presented with images of what you can see. Thus one of the early images is a view of the beach where you land. You then travel inland, where you can see forest. Later you reach marshland, and so on. There are different paths to take but they are all handled by the encounter cards. The adventure also introduces the idea of rations. You start with so much food and as you progress the adventure will tell you when to expend food. Run out of food and you lose stamina. Food can be gained but also lost - either stolen or traded away. It represents a resource that you have to carefully consider how you use it. Certain items and events have been set up to allow you to be creative in how you solve specific situations. So far in playtesting nobody has come up with the 'best' solution, but that does not mean they cannot finish the adventure.

Deathtrap Dungeon

We are back into dungeon crawl territory again. I had to change the background story to allow for a party of adventurers to enter the dungeon. In the book heroes enter on their own and the aim is to survive the various traps and creatures. The title hints at how many times you are likely to die. However, in my adaptation you enter the dungeon as a party of four. In this case you have been asked to rescue Baron Sukumvit, who built the dungeon. He has been kidnapped and is being held hostage. You are told initially that the dungeon is safe. On entering you find this is a lie, but to help you you are given five magic coins that have the power to bring someone back to life. This was my way of allowing for instant death encounters that do not then mean restarting the adventure. When playing solo it does not matter how many times you die, but in a group it would become tiresome to keep restarting the adventure. As with Warlock there is a final problem to solve that can only be done by closely observing the dungeon tiles. I should also add, without adding spoilers, that when playtesting this game a player managed to find an amazing solution to a situation that I had not thought of. For me this was an example of how you can actually role play without the need for a GM.

Forest of Doom - Part One

We are back into the open again. This time you have been given the task of finding the warhammer of King Gillibrand of Stonebridge. The town is about to be attacked by the forces of evil and he needs to hammer to rally his forces. The hammer is said to be hidden in the Forest of Doom. You have three days to find it. In this adventure you have a top down view of the forest, with trails showing where you can go. Numbers on the trail relate to encounters, which you can choose to engage with or ignore. The problem you have is that every time you move to a new card you expend one time counter. You have eight time in all and when you run out you have to rest for the night (which may or may not be interrupted by local beasties). As the adventure progresses you become aware of something really bad in the forest - not saying any more. However, this thing is behind the coming assault on Stonebridge. Not everything in the forest is evil and depending on how you interact with certain folks you may end up gaining allies for the future battle. This adventure also contains an NPC, but I'm not saying any more as they are key to the story.

Forest of Doom - Part Two

This is where we leave Kansas. This adventure does not appear in any of the books. The Forest of Doom story is about finding a hammer to help the king fight a battle. I thought it would be cool to allow the adventurers to then fight that battle. This is not a dungeon crawl, this is the Helm's Deep in card form. You get a few days to perform some micro missions to help your situation, then you have to direct the defences of Stonebridge against the forces of evil. I am very happy that the card system allows me to switch from dungeon crawl to open air and then an actual battle. I'm not going to say too much more but there is a climatic scene where much will be asked of you to win the day.

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