Tabletop Tuesday: Expedition - the role-playing card game

The worst part of playing old school role playing games is that the Dungeon Masters don't really get to join in on the fun. That and they have to have nearly encyclopedic knowledge of hundreds of pages of books. That was never really my problem since I never DMd but I imagine it sucked for the guys in our group who did. The people at Fabricate IO saw it as a problem and attempted to solve it with Expedition: The Roleplaying Card Game. Half role playing game, half card game, half video game and all fun. I was never very good at math. 

In Expedition an app serves as a de-facto DM and the players pass around the phone or tablet, so the burden of being the storyteller/rules explained doesn't just fall on one person. When I was in charge of the app, and there is some dialogue, everyone, inn keepers, city guards, princesses, and sell swords all sound like extras from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.Trust me my voices don't get in the way of the fun. 

At a recent game night I downloaded the app on my phone. Spread out the cards, read the one page of instructions and we started out on the Intro Adventure. This adventure, gets your feet wet and explains the game mechanics. One near feature is the game changes depending on the number of players and by the choices you make. So also half choose your own adventure. There is even an option to play a single player version. The rules are easy to follow and very intuitive. By the second time through you have got it down.

One of the decks of cards it comes with is adventurer cards. This stack has "pre-rolled" stack of cards has characters of different classes and abilities. And for the first time in all the years I have played role playing games, I played as a primarily magic user.  Would I be able to role play without a sword or an axe? "The Bumbling Mage". I ended up with some offensive abilities, most of which harmed a specific target. Some which harmed the target and all my allies. And healing spells which I kept failing my rolls on. I am an expert dice roller, so it must have been the included d20s fault all those 2s and 3s kept showing up. So I reached into a dice bag and found a clear blue with glitter inside d20 and started really being effective. 

There are several adventures on the app and there is the ability to play ones created by other users or create your own. 

In about an hour our humble party of adventurers, a mage, a ranger and a musician managed to defeat giant rats, crooked city guardsmen, and some whiskey soaked spiders. Super easy to set up and super easy to play. 

Is this the game to satisfy the super hardcorest D&D player? Probably not. Is it a game that anyone who can read and role a die can play and have a good amount of fun with? Yes.

NOTE: I was given a copy of Expedition by the creators to facilitate this review. But all the opinions expressed here are totally my own.