Event Cards

Welcome everyone. As you may have already noticed in the previous posts, there are separate stacks of cards for each region on the map. Those are the adventure cards for: Wastelands, The Rarog’s Desert, Ancient Woods, Sim-Maggor Mountains and The New Stitrir Provinces. These are still not all of the stacks you’ll find in The Descendants of Volos board game.

There are 4 stacks full of equipment like armors and weapons, one for each grade. First is the “Shop”. These are the items a player can buy in towns. Probably not good enough to fight a boss, but it’s at least something to start with. Then we have two stacks: “Common” and “Rare.” You can find them during your adventures, either as loot after defeating an enemy or as a reward after fulfilling some quests. The ultimate gear is the “Legendary” stack. You can acquire these items only after defeating the bosses in the 2nd stage of the dungeons. In addition to the gear, you can acquire trinkets, which have their own stack of cards. A trinket can be anything. A ring, a magical scroll, a potion, and more. Yet another stack of cards is the Companions. A companion can be hired in the tavern or met in a random situation during your adventures. One more stack of cards contains “Actions”. You draw this card when you enter an Inn, a Tavern, a Shop or the Temple of Knowledge. As you may have noticed in the image above, the stack of “Action” cards is still missing the graphics. We are going to paint it soon. The remaining 4 stacks are “Talents” that players earn when getting to a higher level. We’ll show and explain all the details about the equipment, trinkets and all other cards in the next development diary posts.

Today we’ll focus on the adventure cards, and the ability to make choices.

In the above example, you are facing a decision to pick. You can either tell everyone the truth about his heroic death which is a good deed, or you can take the credits and tell everyone that you killed those monsters – a bad deed. The first option gives one experience point, the second gives you a random Rare item. The option you choose affects you in a different way, depending on the type of your personality. On your character card, in the “Record” section, you’ll find your personality type: either good, bad or neutral. If you have bad personality and you do a bad thing (second option in this case), you will regenerate one exertion point. (We will explain the exertion points in the future development diary posts). When you are a bad person and do a good thing, you will lose one exertion point. It’s the same if you are a good person and do a bad thing, then you lose one exertion point, and regenerate one point if you do a good deed. Neutral characters do not suffer any penalties, but also do not get any additional benefits from making good or bad choices.

In the above situation, you meet someone who asks you for help defeating a Drowner. Combat is a very simple thing in The Descendants of Volos. We’ll explain it in the future development diary posts. For now, it’s enough to mention that it’s based on throwing die. One D12 to attack, and one D10 to defend. As indicated in the card, the Drowner from the above situation fights with a yellow attack die and with a yellow defence die. It causes physical damage (a copper-coloured sword icon), with 3 damage and 4 critical damage. It has a total of 7 health points. If you decide to fight (first option) and if you win, you gain 1 experience point and 1 random trinket. You may also skip the fight, however, if you are a member of a faction with a red banner and a symbol of two axes – “The Beast Killers”, you will suffer a penalty. Because by running away you will hurt your and your faction’s reputation, it will cost you one exertion point. The third option is even worse – you avoid the fight, but also do a bad thing by taking payment in advance. As explained before, if you have a good personality, you’ll suffer one exertion point to do a bad deed. So… if you belong to the Beast Killers, have a good personality and also want the gold, it will cost you 2 exertion points in total in this case.

Another situation where your help is needed. If you choose either option A or B, you don’t have to consider any of the remaining options. Option A says that if you are intelligent (your dominating attribute is intellect), or if you belong to the faction of Svaraseer (famous for their magical skills), as indicated with the symbol, then you can help by healing the wounded. You lose one turn and take an hourglass token not to forget about that. In return, you gain 2 experience points. Otherwise if your nationality is Itemerian (once again, you can check your nationality in the “Record” section on your character card) then you can help as an interpreter in return for some gold. If you don’t fulfil the above requirements, you can do a good or a bad thing: you can either share all your food for 1 experience point, or use the chaos to steal the money. 

Not all events are about helping out the strangers. Sometimes you must face your own problems and help yourself. In this case, you start to realise that you might be an alcoholic, and it’s time to say – Enough! If you manage not to enter an inn or a tavern for 5 days, you’ll gain 2 experience points. However… sometimes it’s important to enter an inn or a tavern, because you can regenerate your health points there. Sometimes you may simply forget yourself – isn’t it so much like in a real life?

In many board games, the events are in the form of a vertical card, usually with pictures. We’ve decided to make them horizontal and drop the pictures. That allowed us to fit in way more text, which we believe works better on imagination than graphics.

The event cards are not only situations. Some cards can be an enemy with a dedicated card format, or an item that you find on your way, just like that. We’ll show them in the next development diary posts of The Descendants of Volos board game.