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Let's Play The 7th Continent Demo
Jam Warrior
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The 7th Continent is a crazy CYOA style game with a pulp exploration theme made from a bazillion cards. It's on Kickstarter at the moment so forum rules say I can't link it, but I can tell you I think it both looks ace and utterly ridiculous, especially the cost. Full disclosure I am a backer.
Anyway, they've released a print 'n' play short demo, and I want to play but I can't be doing with all the printing, so I figured let's give it a go as a forum CYOA play by post. Might work, might not, either way I'll learn something about how the game runs which will either cement my purchase or cause me to back out.
I'll talk through the rules as we go but the rulebook can be found here if you like to read ahead.
So without further ado, setup step 1. Choose your adventurer:
We have three choices.
Decoding some of the symbols:
- Blue hand is an Idea Card. You have a hand of them and they help you do stuff.
- Black Box is an inventory item card.
- Red hand is a State Card. Universally bad stuff like 'Frightened' or 'Injured.'
- Empty white box is an action. Empty white box in red explosion is a compulsory action.
- 'Consequences' are what happens when you fail an action.
So Dimitri shakes off bad states with aggression, Ferdinand sneaks past otherwise compulsory events with stealth, and Keelan uses will to get a do-over if she fails an action.
Using the wonderful built in forum tools vote for your favourite adventurer now!
Dimitri = Shiny
Ferdinand = Witness Me
Keelan = Lovely Day
Jam Warrior on
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Already backing and can't wait to Play Your Own Adventure with my wife next year.
Somewhere in between this and the next bit of story text I believe we wake up lost and confused, drifting at sea on a bit of driftwood with no memory as to how we got there.
So we flip the first card and find our surroundings:
Okay some basic mechanics. We have an action deck consisting of 8 idea cards and a curse card. This is both how we achieve things and also our life meter.
Here is an example idea card:
Actions available are noted by the little white box with a symbol showing the type of action, a blue diamond showing how many action cards you'll need to draw, and a star showing how many stars you need to be able to get from those action cards to succeed. At this point the stars are the only bit we're looking at on the cards. The curse card has no stars.
Usually there is a minimum amount of cards to draw, but you can draw as many as you like. The downside being you keep one idea card to be an idea in your hand after the action is resolved, and the rest of them all go to the discard. Once the action deck is empty you re-shuffle it and start drawing again from the discard, but this time if the curse card comes up, GAME OVER. So you can burn through your deck for greater odds of success but if you're not careful you'll also burn through your life force and end up expiring prematurely. There are actions on the island (such as eating) that will let you reshuffle cards from the discard back into your action deck.
So from where we start our obvious options are:
- Go to the beach (agree)
- Investigate the graveyard (awesome)
- Find path into fog to our east (shiny) at which point we will draw a random event card before putting down the next map tile
- Or maybe you can spot something else...
Normally I'd also be asking you how many action cards you want to draw but these all require 0 stars to succeed so we'd just draw the minimum number required.
The collection of symbols down in the bottom left of the map card show this is grass terrain, the cost to move here from other map cards, and that flint is an available resource on this card (we'll come to that when it's relevant)
Flips to a card we attach to the side of the map square.
So wood is now available on this map square as a resource, and a new option has opened. The symbol after the action means that on a success we replace this card with the gold card of the same number. The bit in black afterwards is the consequence of failure.
I will here point out that the rules say to be sure to take note of the flavour text and art on the cards as they can sometimes contain clues or hidden secrets.
- Go to the beach (agree)
- Dig the grave (awesome - and preferably post to suggest the number of action cards to draw)
- Find path into fog to our east (shiny)
9 cards in action deck. 0 ideas in hand.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
1 with a half star
1 with 1 star
1 with 2 stars
4 with 1 whole and 1 half star
1 with 2 half stars
The half stars have to be opposite halves to work to create a success.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
First we draw an action card as the minimum draw is one.
Hooray we made our zero success target! A plan to make a shovel goes into our hand of ideas and I'll deal with that later. For now let's see what lies under card number 006:
Insightful indeed. We get a new card to attach to this map square.
The lock icon means you can't draw more than the stated number for this test (the '+' is a typo), and the stairs mean that the consequences of this action may involve wiping out the map and starting a new area (i.e. demo end).
Right then, let's talk about the idea card.
The symbols at the top are the test you'd need to take to craft this item and turn it from idea to inventory. The bits with the flint and bamboo are saying that if you are standing on a map square with that resource you can reduce the minimum draw by that amount. So if you had access to both on the same square it would essentially be free to build.
The dice is the number of uses the item has.
And the bit at the bottom shows what tests you can use this item to help with. If the icon for the test matches the brown icons then using the shovel lets you reduce the minimum action card draw and get an auto star. How very handy.
So options:
- Swim (agree)
- Dig (awesome)
- Explore (shiny)
- Build (witness)
Action deck 8, Ideas in hand 1 (shovel)
Good point.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Building the shovel with access to flint for a single action card draw which goes straight into our ideas hand.
The we'll skip the formalities and get straight to the grave digging as that's clearly where this is headed.
One use of our shovel makes it a zero card zero draw with auto success, three uses remain.
Your efforts resulting in a cryptic note and access to bone as a resource. Also apparently losing the wood resource which is a little disappointing.
Swim (agree)
Explore (awesome)
7 cards in action deck. 1 idea in hand. Shovel (3 uses).
Your idea card in hand won't really help with this and neither will your shovel. So the only question really is how many action cards to draw?
Swim (agree)
Urchins 1 card (awesome)
Urchins 2 cards (shiny)
Urchins 3 cards (witness)
Urchins 4+ cards?! (lovely)
7 cards in action deck. 1 idea in hand. Shovel (3 uses).
Also, lashing together a couple of sea turtles sounds good. Do we use our back hair?
We grow a beard. Clearly we should've picked the French dude after all for a head start on that.
So triple success, woo. We can only keep one of these cards in hand and must decide before we carry on.
Forewarned = Agree
Raft = Awesome
The 'white square +5' in a flag on the raft card means that if you use this item on a test and the the card you are told to draw as a result also has a white square flag, then you actually draw a card 5 numbers higher than the one shown.
Also as gamemaster I'm totally going to rule that the bone card should also have wood on it.
- Turtle catching (agree and suggest a draw amount)
- Pathfinding (awesome)
- Swimming (shiny)
- Raft building (witness and suggest draw amount or use of idea card)
Action deck 5
Idea hand 2 (Raft and You Learn By Doing)
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Draw and add to hand:
Success!
Or not...
That was the only 004 card so drawing it again won't help.
- Pathfinding (awesome)
- Swimming (shiny)
- Raft building (witness and suggest draw amount or use of idea card)
- Other cunning plans
Action deck 4
Idea hand 3 (Raft and You Learn By Doing, Remember)
The "-> 0+ 0" marker?
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
The red X represents your location.
- Pray at strange altar (agree)
- Spot/Notice (eye) on the beach (awesome)
- Go and See/Visit (finger post) a different bit of beach (Shiny)
- Build raft (witness)
- Go back west (lovely)
- Anything else (post)
I am pretty good at understanding rules and games but for some reason I have no clue what's happening here. It literally the most confusing thing I've ever witnessed.
I feel like I am watching this:
I'm gonna go read the rules and see if I can contribute in the future somehow
edit: ok, reading the rules made this make much more sense. Time to start voting on things in the future.
That blue flag icon is the one that matches the raft and means we'd draw a different result card if we used the raft to succeed.
- Pray at strange altar (agree)
- Spot/Notice (eye) on the beach (awesome)
- Swimming (Shiny)
- Build raft (witness)
- Go back west (lovely)
- Anything else (post)
Action deck 4
Idea hand 3 (Raft and You Learn By Doing, Remember)
:hydra:
Woohoo!
Top three cards of the action deck are:
Order nominations please!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
0 by itself. But there are cards with half stars facing either way (as on Think) that pair up with it to complete a full star. So Scholar + Think is 2 stars; only Think is 1 star; only Scholar is 0 stars.