A downloadable game.
We just played this game over a zoom call and had a great time! It is very quick to learn and play (we did it all in under an hour) and we felt like we were able to tell a complete story of our duel. We told a story of a bowman with a PhD in adventuring lashing out in righteous fury against a swordsman poking fun at him who wants to duel just for fun. If the bowman won, the swordsman would give up adventuring forever, and if the swordsman won, he would get an honorary adventuring degree. In the end, the bowman came out on top, but amended the terms of the duel because he found a respect for his opponent during their fight. Here are some of our thoughts after playing:
The subtitle of the game describes it as being about bluffing, though the rules did not specify how the bluffing manifests. After searching the rules for any mention of it we ended up just hiding our dice choices from one another entirely. We did not reveal our dice at any point throughout the game and found that to be reasonably fun, though perhaps revealing after each bout would produce similar results but offer more strategy?
It gives a good framework for telling a story in a way that is easy to roleplay and feels natural. The motivations, weapons, and venue in addition to prompting the players to describe the terms of the duel gave us some great ideas for our characters and how they would interact.
It felt like the onus was on us to tell the story. We were left wanting game mechanics to facilitate storytelling or roleplaying beyond just a reminder to talk between bouts.
Thanks for making this! We had a blast with it!
P.S. I would prefer this as a selectable text file (pdf or a txt)
:)
