Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Fall of Magic Arrives

About two weeks or so ago I took delivery of The Fall of Magic, a project I had kicked into in late May, and a nice item it is too.

The box it comes in is reminiscent of the sorts of games my great grandmother had hiding in the back of her closet. More like the box in which you'd find a tenor recorder than a game. Inside is a really neat idea.

The chief component of the game is the map, which is presented on a linen scroll that the players unroll as they advance through the game, depicting a road and towns along the route, each with four locations picked out. There are counters for the players, cards that extend the map when the players reach "the islands" and a die for the rare random number needs.

The conceit of this GM-less RPG is that the magic in the world is dying. We don't know why. The players are students of The Magus. The Magus is undertaking a journey or pilgrimage. We don't know why. All the things we don't know about the magic, the Magus, the journey and the other players will hopefully be made manifest as the journey progresses.

Each turn a player can move his/her counter along the road to a new location or move the (non-player) magus to the next town. As each player moves, he or she adds a little more detail to the story of the journey, prompted by hints determined by that player's location.

There's a bit more to the game than this, but that is the gist of what the game is about. It is a cooperative storytelling, a cross between Fiasco! and Tokaido to put it entirely too broadly.

This game also represents something of a rarity: a game Kickstarter project that ran for less than a year and delivered what it said it would only about three weeks late. That should make it eligible for some sort of Kickstarter award.

I can't wait to play.

Pictures to follow later when I have time to arrange them; Watch this space.