For vanilla Roll Player, we have a house rule for the re-rolling of dice. If you re-roll a die and roll the same number it originally was, you roll again. I don't think it impacts outcomes very much, but it greatly increases our enjoyment.
Great Video and great game. My wife and I have a real great time playing this. Usually my wife is not that keen of more complex games but this game seems to be a very good sweet spot that she enjoys. We are currently at adventure 4 and I am baffled at how well the story is written and how good the choices you make influence future Events during the same or future adventures. It just feels so much more lively and meaningful if you make decisions that not only have an immediate effect but do something in the future. This also helps you to not min-max every decision based on stats and mechnanics but rather dive into playing your character in a RP way.
After hearing rave reviews from many people and after seeing how Roll Player is like fantasy Sagrada (kinda?), I was 100% sold. Thanks for this extensive breakdown of what makes this great. My copy should be here in a week or so! :)
I'm also playing solo right now, and I totally agree with you. I'm excited to try and play with others in the future! Plus, additional future content will be fun!
We love Roll Player Adventures too. We played 3 chapters in November & had to put it aside for awhile, but are starting back up this week & can leave it out now to play until we finish. So excited to see what lies ahead for us. It is one of the best games we've played!
I really appreciate your observation of moments in the game where you felt pushed to "cheat" and your willingness to examine why that happened -in roleplaying games, a lot of people think ignoring the dice is a fundamental part of games rather than, as you said, your right as *players*, and assume that there is nothing the game could do to avoid these moments. It maybe sounds like Role Player Adventures suffered a little from a lack of variable fail states, where maybe it would have been more effective narratively at certain points if the result of the skill check was not whether you succeed or fail, but what it costs; a lot of modern roleplaying games are good at this and it sounds like both design spaces would benefit from some cross-pollination.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I recall there being some variable fail states in Roll Player Adventures, but there were still times where I really wanted a full success and was willing to sacrifice for it if the game let me.
@@jameystegmaier Yeah I think maybe having not played Roll Player Adventures I didn't do a good job of describing what I meant: less so multiple different fail states throughout the game and moreso giving players the ability to choose from multiple options for what happens on a failed skill check, or maybe as you said tiered success levels, that kind of thing! Thank you for your videos! Happy new year :)
Great video, Jamey! I backed the game on Kickstarter and we're currently playing through the campaign with 4 players. I have a lot of the same observations, even down to wanting to cheat, because we just didn't want to lose a fight or skill check for story purposes (especially my 8 year old son for example tries to sneakily put a bonus play token back, to just play one more card to get the last die etc...) ;). We're only in scenario five now, and I agree that the familiars are maybe a bit underutilized, the first option to acquire one only came up in scenario four, and we were very disappointed that even though we tried very hard, we couldn't get enough gold together to buy one! I also find using stamina to use items a bit tedious, and we sometimes checked the outcome in the book, to make sure it was worthwhile or sometimes just not spend the stamina... (also, often the book said that we would get a stamina cube back after just having paid a stamina cube to use the item! That was so far the only thing that felt a bit annoying to us...) It's the same in our group that we use the items the least that allow to reroll a die. But I noticed that a lot of those reroll-cards can be chained together and it doesn't count against the play limit, which would allow to reroll a die several times in one combat round, if a person has several chain mail items for example...probably to make that option a bit more attractive! Did you play with the expansion that gives the characters a background story? I thought that I would leave it out in our playthrough (my kids who I'm playing with are still pretty young, so I thought that it would maybe make it too complex for them...), but after I realized how easily it can be implemented, I decided to just go for it. And we are really looking forward to those personalized mini stories for each character in the adventures! Thanks so much for the video! It made me even more excited about continuing to play this great game, and I'm really looking forward to the finale! :)
Thanks for sharing your experiences with this game, Vera! They sound very similar to mine. I don't have the expansion, but it's neat to hear how it adds to each character's individuality.
Familiars: They could've added them a bit earlier in this, but it feels like they needed to include them for Roll Player imports and didn't *necessarily* want to include them in RPA. It may just be that they didn't want to introduce the dual-colour die concept until new players were more comfortable.
Thank you for the rich insights, Mr. Jeremy. I bought Roll player because my son loves D&D. It seems like Roll player adventures is the way to go now. Regards.
We also had a hard time not “cheating” with items, because it is so easy to see if combining two items gives you something or not by the length of text and description underneath.
We played this at four players with imported characters from Roll Player and the expansion/enhancement Nefras Judgement. It was the most fun we’ve had in a non-legacy game in a while and are planning to run it again later this year. I highly recommend playing with Nefras Judgement. It made everything even more immersive and thematic. As to your comment about the item usage and “cheating”. I think, in my no one asked for opinion, games that are so story driven and chose your adventure, little things like sneaking a peak at an item usage isn’t impacting anything in the game, truly. Ease of use is intended. The writers worked hard on those details to embarrass you for using a medallion in a keyhole and using the item without paying the cost is no big deal. The game will fail you forward no matter what, your future experiences may differ or interactions will change but gameplay itself isn’t impacted. I looked at it (because we did the same thing a couple times) as the same sort of mechanic as Pandemic Legacy failing you to the next month in the story even if you failed twice. My crunchy heavy punishing game loving heart took some adjusting to that way of thinking but once I accepted the narrative and story element it never bothered me again.
Anyone played cantaloop as well as roll player adventures? From jameys description some of the game mechanics that made cantaloop such a great experience are present in roll player as well (combining items, story conditions for progression etc ), which would mean an insta-buy for me.
Me and my wife just got Nefra’s Judgment in yesterday and plan to start the game tonight now that we have it all. One thing we noticed is that if you import a character from Roll Player over to this one you start with way higher stats. (I mean starting with a zero rather than starting at let’s say 14 on an imported character). Do you think an imported character will make the experience better (like you said you exhausted 3 times and lost earned xp) or will it make the game too easy?
Speaking as someone who ran the campaign solo with a single imported character, I didn’t find it too easy. I exhausted 2 or 3 times as well. Having the stats to pull the right dice is nice, but rolling the right numbers and having the right cards to manipulate those dice still plays a big factor. It might make it a LITTLE easier, but it still took me a good amount of skill and luck to make it through.
@@Stryyder awesome…glad to have input from someone who has done it. We really like the Roll Player game and importing someone over to adventure sounds great
We just did a four player run with Judgement and imported characters and actually DID find some things a bit easy but that was largely due to the luck of the particular characters and their build/skills. However it did not detract from any of the enjoyment at all.
The only thing I disagree with you on is balance at scale. The game starts getting really easy since there are no hand limits. I've invested in extra bonus plays and I pretty much pass everything now. Why no method for limiting your hand. For example maybe not a card limit, but a card value limit based on scenario progression.
Hello Jamey! I was really excited for this game and I just bought and played the introductory scenario. However, I m not sure that my gf will continue playing it, so I wonder if it worths to play it solo. Is the experience the same as with 2 players or should I find another player to join me? Thanks!
From what I can tell by playing 2-player and from some of the comments below, I think this game should work just as well solo as it would with other players.
