Member Reviews
April G, Bookseller
I had a lot of fun with this book, and as someone who has never played a TTRPG, I'd say it's a good introduction to the process of playing a game (I do nerd vicariously through a friend who plays TTRPG's, and I play RPG video games). The reader is taken through selecting an adventure party, each of whom has different skills and abilities to consider, creating back stories for them, and starting on their quest- to find five ingredients to create a potion to heal the Queen, who has been poisoned. There are several ways to achieve this, and the reader must make choices about which way to go. Each quest map has at least two paths to follow, with monsters to defeat and items to find that will be immediately helpful, or useful in the future. Each monster can be defeated by one of the party member's skills at the beginning, regardless of which characters have been chosen; however, the difficulty level gets harder the further the reader gets into the book, and often, more creative methods must be thought of. The prompts encourage creativity, planning, and story telling throughout, encouraging the reader to fill in details about the story- when they stay at an inn for the night, for example, what foods do they eat for their meal? How do they get along with each other? Do they sleep well? The way the story is structured throughout gets the reader used to working with a GM, and reacting to the environment they find themselves in. Additional characters can be recruited, as well as creatures befriended that can be helpful, items can be traded, mini quests performed in exchange for items, information, etc, new spells learned- there's all kinds of things that can help the reader along the way. At one point, near the end, the possibility that one of the reader's party will die comes up, depending on if certain conditions are met, but otherwise, the danger level is set by the reader, and how they imagine the story going. There are many adventures awaiting the reader here, depending on what characters they choose for their party, what choices they make, what items or additional party members they acquire, etc. I enjoyed my adventure, and I would feel more comfortable trying a game with others after going through this book a few times. I can imagine this would definitely be fun for the intended audience, kids about 8-12. Of course, middle-aged geeks/nerds could have fun with this too!
#NetGalley
Cass M, Bookseller
It’s a shame to me when books aimed at bringing D&D to life fall so flat. I’m not sure if it was the fact that the pages were way too busy with the harsh lines in the art and the amount of text info dumping but this did not do it for me.
