Errata for Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game

Sometimes a task sits on your list for a while, like the following has:

5/14/2017 - The Purification spell should say "Discard to remove an encounter card from a space on the board, or reduce the danger level by one there." instead of its printed text. Because it comboed with the spellbook to stop the game from ending.

But it's done now, and in the official record for people to find.

See the entire errata page for the game here.

2015 in Review

At the begining of 2015, I had a game release event for Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game, at Off the Wall Games. It was a fun time, and I sold all the copies I had made, which was the culmination of over a year of work making it.

In 2015, I did a lot of work on the online games, to make them compatible with mobile devices and tablets. That spurred on a lot of changes to layout, internal changes for speed, and refinement of the game play of almost all the games on the site. All in all, a very satisfying experience, with more work to do.

Additionally this year, I posted more articles about game design here, including Don't confuse 'good design' and your own preferred style of game play and Don't be Perfect.

And lastly, I started a series on symbolism in games. Which was a really fun thing for me. I hope to keep thinking about it in the future.

I hope the coming year is good for you!

Quest Setup Video for Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game

About nine months ago, I a made some videos that show certain aspects of Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game, both as a way to promote it and as an alternate way to explain some of the rules.

I successfully sold out the small run of the game, and now I am thinking of making another run, or doing something more with it, like take it to a publisher. All around it has been a fun and engaging project, and led to good things I couldn't have foreseen.

This video is about how to set up the quests at the beginning of the game.

Warning Counter example video

This shows an example of how the warning counters work to make a space more dangerous in Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game. It features the 3 player version.



See other posts about this game.

A collection of free Scenarios for Arcane Journeys

The great thing about these scenarios is that they can be mixed and matched with each other and the other published scenarios, in order to customize a game of Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game, adding variety and even more longevity to the life of the game.

Today I am telling about 4 scenarios:

1) "Rush the Boss". Kill 1 red enemy instead of 3. This makes for a shorter game, and changes your strategy because you can take bigger risks and specialize in one stat.

2) "Scrambled Eggs". Shuffle all the tiles together and lay them out totally randomly, instead of making sure there is one of each terrain on each side. Makes for some interesting swings in power for some characters, and sometimes makes the board more dangerous by clumping the cities together.

3) "48". Instead of trying to kill three red enemies, you are trying to get to 48 points first. Each green = 1 point, yellow = 4 points, and red = 16 points. Really fun because you can play it by boosting up and trying to defeat the more powerful monsters, or you can run around killing a whole lot of easy ones.

4) Quest Variants. Change how much money shows up in the game. Click the link at the beginning of this entry to see them.

The River and The Camp - More Free Scenarios for Arcane Journeys!

The first time I thought of having scenarios for Arcane Journeys, which are ways to play the game without having to buy more parts, was while developing The Sea expansion with a friend. A few of my ideas were very interesting, but we decided not to use them in The Sea, so I spun them off into The River scenario.

The River: A scenario that rearranges the usual board layout, creating separate land masses you must cross a turbulent river to reach. Get it here.

After playing a different fantasy adventure board game, I realized one of the ideas in it could be adapted to play in the world of Arcane Journeys quite easily, and I came up with the second scenario, The Camp.

The Camp: A simple scenario where all the cities are gone, and a small camp of people travels around the board, being your only source for items and healing. Get it here.

From there, I came up with a bunch of other scenarios, that are listed on the website, and will be featured here in the future. The things I love about scenarios are their simplicity, their no-cost to play, and the way they increase the play time and interest in the game, making it into more of a game system.

Read more about Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game.

The Hermit and The Spiral - Free Scenarios for Arcane Journeys

I came up with a fun scenario a bit ago, and played it's second draft the other day, and decided it was ready to show to the world!

The Spiral: The cities are harder to get into and out of, and you spend much more time out in the wilderness. The map is laid out in one long line, and getting places is a little harder, but more gold stays around over the course of the game, so when you get to a city, you tend to have a lot more purchasing power than usual. Get it here.

Along the way, I made another mini-scenario, The Hermit, which works well in The Spiral, but can easily go into any scenario of regular game. The hermit is an independent piece that wanders around healing players. Get it here.

Read more about Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game.

Game Release Event went great!

Photos from my game release event this weekend for Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game. It was fun and I sold more copies than I thought I would. A big thanks to Off The Wall Games for letting me run it at their place.

Reports back from people who got copies are that they played it and it is great. I am really glad people enjoy it.

Now to sell a couple more copies and take the last one around to larger publishers.

Photos from the event:

Arcane Journeys Game demo, coming up this saturday January 31!

Off the Wall Games in Hadley, MA, is having a social BBQ day on January 31, and they said I could have a spot there to demo Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game, so you can come by and have some BBQ, see the place, meet some new people and play my game, or play another game of mine.

I hope you stop by.

See the Facebook event.

Arcane Journeys - Setting up the board video

I made a series of videos about setting the Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game, as a way to reminder or teach players about the game. This one details how the board is initially laid out.

2014 in review for Arcane Journeys

In the past year, I

1) completed the first run of Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game, made many expansions, videos and scenarios for it.

2) Ran a contest for a book of my games.

3) Wrote some game design entries, with my favorite ones being, Theme is a Metaphor, and My Favorite Tools when Designing a Board Game.

4) Started a youtube channel for Arcane Journeys, with videos about my games.

5) Listed some games on DriveThruRPG: Tribes, Armies of the Dead, and the first edition of Seven Treasures.

6) Put out my book of games on the Kindle.

7) Put out some videos and new rules for Armies of the Dead.

8) Edited some older online games, on a whim, The Well, and the Subterranean Realms.


Plans for the new year include having demos and shows of Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game at local stores, and development of more scenarios and expansions for that game.

Two new Characters for Arcane Journeys!

The Wilderness Explorer, who gets bonuses when on the same side of the board as the tower, and the Exiled Baron who simply starts with 20 gold, instead of 2 or 3.

Scenarios and Expansions for Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game

I made a page to collect all the expansions and scenarios, whether released yet or on the way, for Arcane Journeys.

Expansions are new printed items that add on to the existing game, and I have to produce, whereas scenarios are new ways to play the game with the existing parts, and don't cost anything to get! Both really add more fun times to the game.

Visit the page.

Video Playlist for Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game

I made 4 short videos about how to setup the board, and examples of play for Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game, as an additional reference to the rulebook. Also, it was fun to do. My friend Bob Wilson helped and starred in some of them as well. Here's the start of the playlist:



Official page for the game.

Read more blog posts about the game here.

2 Character Mini-Expansion! Dragon Knight and Wise Woman.

I whipped up a new mini-expansion of two characters, the Dragon Knight and the Wise Woman, for my fantasy adventure board game. The ideas came to me as I was thinking of new items to put into another expansion. This game has a lot of room for cool new abilities to be invented, and the more characters there are to choose from, the better.

To summarize the characters: The Dragon Knight gets bonuses when at a volcano, which no one else so far has, and the Wise Woman can move between inner corners of the board, which allows her a much greater control of her moves.

The official expansion page.

See other posts about Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game expansions: Character Expansion 1, Item Pack 1 and Item Pack 2.

Errata #2

I made some minor changes in wording for Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game. Mostly things like changing 'avoid conflicts' to 'avoid enemies', since the former was from early drafts of the game before the wording was finalized, and changed references to 'places' to 'locations'. Also changed the price of the Hero's Helm to 5, from 7, since no one ever bought it. All to keep things as clear as possible, and make the next edition even more clear from the beginning.

See all the changes here.

The Fantasy Adventure Board Game - Quick Setup video

I made a series of videos that shows aspects of my fantasy adventure board game. This is the first one, which shows a sped-up overview of setting up the game.



See the webpage for this game.

Item Pack 2!

I told my friend the other day, "I might not have figured out everything in life, but I know how to make stuff." And so I am going with that. I invented a new pack of twenty items for Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game.

As I make more and more stuff for the game, it gets harder and harder to make unique interesting things, so I racked my brain and came up with some fun stuff, including lots of "swap" effects: swap places with a player, swap items, swap your stats around. Also, a few new cursed items that are cheap, but do bad stuff when another player lands on you.

There are ten copies of this item pack, to go with the ten copies of the first edition.

Mini-Expansion!

One of the things I love about Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game is that it is easy to make more great content for it. So, this week I made a mini-expansion of twenty new items.

One of the themes in the new cards is food: Yummy biscuits, dwarven crumb cake, fish liver biscuit, spicy bone broth. Food is items that heal you slightly and give you a little boost in another area as well.

I also added some higher cost cool items like the staff of the lost wizard and the ring of quick healing.

If you want a copy, send me an email. It is $3.

Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game

More Minis!

A friend bought a copy of my game and has been sprucing it up with miniatures scavenged from other games and bought. He paints them with a white primer, if needed, and then puts a coat of solid color over them, to use as player figures for the different characters.

I love the result.