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A Journey Begins...
Venture Forth has many inspirations, but it all started with Talisman. I have always admired that game because of its grand scale. It creates a rich world for players to explore and allows for lots of different interactions. I wanted to make a game in the same vein but incorporate modern design principles, such as reducing the time frame to an hour and adding control to the encounters that players face instead of relying on random card draws. In addition, I wanted to explore a reward system that didn't involve grinding (killing monsters to get stronger so you can kill more monsters).
In Venture Forth, you assemble a party of adventurers in a mythical ancient Greek world. You start the game with a single character that you pick from your starting hand. This character will give you direction as to what your goals are since he has ambition – that is, a description of how you can score points in the game. For example, the Philosopher has this ambition: "Encounter an adventurer desiring knowledge". His ambition will be fulfilled every time you encounter another adventurer with the knowledge icon. Unlike other adventure games, not all of the heroes have the ambition of killing monsters – although there are still quite a few of them who do!
Each time your character achieves his ambition, you consult his level card to see what your options are; the level card (starting at level one and going to level three) describes ways to turn your adventurer's "will" into points (and possibly level up). As the game progresses, your adventurers will gain and lose "will" and you must try to have enough will on that character when his ambition is met. Just like real life, when an opportunity arises you must be motivated to act or else you gain nothing!
So, now you know what your adventurer wants, but how do you help him to achieve it? Well, luckily you have a hand of cards full of enemies and adventurers that you can play to the board. One of the basic actions in the game is to just play a card onto one of the path spaces between two sites. Ideally, you want to create a nice route from one site to another that is full of opportunities for your adventurers. In addition to filling in a route, when you play your card, you can collect resources depending on the space the card is played - this is the main way to gain will and gold.
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Hellhound - Art by James Denton
Once there is a path filled with cards, you can venture forth! This means that you get to travel down the path with your party and encounter each card along the way. There are two types of encounters: adventurers and enemies.
If you come across an adventurer along your path, you have the option to recruit him for gold or leave him there. You have a limit of five adventurers in your party, so recruit wisely. Sometimes you want to recruit an adventurer whose ambition compliments someone else in your party. Sometimes you need that extra power to defeat monsters. Sometimes you want the guy because he will help you score treasure at the end of the game. You can amass a strong party that can defeat anything in the game or play with just a party of a few - both ways can be competitive. The trade-off for a big party is that it takes time and resources to recruit those guys while the trade-off for a small party is that the monsters will hinder your options.
Enemies are the other things that you can encounter on your journey. Enemies are pretty simple in this game, having a power number and a desire. The power number is how much total power your party must have in order to defeat it. If you don't defeat it, you will lose whatever it wants to take from you (like will or gold). The adventurers powers range from 1 to 3, while the enemies range from 4 to 12. Those seem like pretty steep odds of survival. The fact is that you will be defeated at some point - you must decide when it is acceptable and when it is not. Besides the base power of the adventurers, to increase your power you can also exert (discard one will per adventurer per encounter) to double that guy's power. You can also use the abilities of some treasures that you collect along the way to help boost your power.
Speaking of treasure, some paths that you travel along will have an explore token that you can pick up after your journey is done. Most of the tokens give you a reward of some kind, like a treasure card or gold. Treasure has two uses. First, each treasure has a one-use special ability that can help you with your strategy. Second, each treasure has a point value that can be scored if you hold onto it until the end of the game. However, you can score only one treasure for each adventurer you have and that treasure must be desired by that adventurer. For example, an adventurer who desires knowledge (scroll symbol) like the Philosopher is able to score "Map of the Underworld" which is a knowledge treasure.
In your downtime between travels, you can make an offering to the temple at your site. There are varying benefits to doing this depending on which temple you are at. Some benefits include gaining extra actions or moving to a different location.
In Venture Forth, your success will depend on several factors. You must plan ahead and be prepared for what lies before you. Be wary that the path you create may be taken and spoiled by an opponent. If you pay attention to your opponent's adventurers, it may give you clues as to which actions he may take. The board may be full of terrifying monsters, but sometimes you just have to take a deep breath and venture forth!
Design Origins
Resources: In order to gain gold or will, you have to place an encounter card on the board. For example, if you play a card on a space with a gold symbol, you gain one gold. This is a very simple idea but it seemed to work with this game for several reasons. In an early prototype, players gained resources automatically at the beginning of their turns. However, during my playtests it seemed that players were inclined to forget to take their income. By making them gain the resource by placing a card, it connected the player's action with the resource generation so he was more inclined to remember. As a nice benefit to this system, there are a lot of interesting decisions to be made based on which resources you need and where you want to place your cards on the board.
Gorgon - Art by James Denton
Wandering Encounters: After you venture forth, any encounter cards that aren't defeated or recruited will become wandering - the card is turned sideways. If the card is already wandering, it is discarded instead. This system arose because the board would inevitably become filled with huge monsters like krakens and dragons that nobody could defeat. I wanted there to still be a threat, but not something that would make for a frustrating game experience. The wandering system allows for the game board to refresh itself over time, and it also prevents the players from taking the same lucrative paths over and over.
Explore Tokens: Explore tokens are seeded along paths on the board by playing cards (similar to the resource generation method). After venturing down a path, you can take the explore token along the path and take its reward (like a treasure or gold). The pile of explore tokens acts as the timer for the game - when the pile is empty, the end of the game is near. This system was developed to do a few important things. First, all players can get a sense of when the game will be coming to a close so they can plan accordingly. Second, it allows for a fairly consistent game time as well as an adjustable one - you can make the game longer of short by adding or removing tokens from the pile. In addition, the system adds more spice to the decision making for the player. If the path you are planning on venturing down next turn doesn't have an explore token, you will need to figure out where best to place your card in order to seed an explore token on that path.
Despair: Whenever you are defeated by an enemy, you must give up what is shown on the enemy card, sometimes will, sometimes gold. There was a problem with this system - what happens when you don't have what they want? Ultimately, I came to the idea of despair. For each will or gold that you can't give up, you must gain a despair. Despair is the crushing sadness that lingers with your adventurers after they have been thoroughly defeated - at the end of the game, despair makes you lose points. Now I had this extra "anti-resource" that heroes were gaining, but I had no way of getting rid of it. So I thought about it a bit thematically. As in life, your sadness may go away whenever you have an uplifting moment. I came upon the idea that whenever you level up, you can get rid of one despair. I was able to create a system where despair both entered and exited the game through normal game play, but also affected your decisions in meaningful ways.
Where There's a Will, There's a Way...
I'm very excited to see the final product coming together, and I appreciate everyone who has come out to chip in at out Kickstarter campaign. Venture over there to check us out, and thanks for reading!
Dan Manfredini
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