My play through of Isekai Adventure: The Death King with a group of friends was more fun than I expected. The layout of the game from start to finish was full of creativity and well thought out mechanics by the author, a developer of two indie games according to their portfolio. A fan of Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, I was looking forward to playing the game. I admit, it was a little different than other homebrew campaigns I’ve played in the past. Nevertheless, the author put together a perfect introduction to the game and a Game Manager manual that gave the would-be Dungeon Master and players plenty to work with.
A campaign of six players, all fantasy characters with their own class, stats, and abilities, the players find themselves in a fantasy realm after the narrative introduction. We learned about the state of the world, the characters, and how the game would progress from the very start. Described as a hybrid between Dungeons & Dragons and “Create Your Own Adventure” stories, my group was introduced to the first main choice that would set the theme of the rest of the game in terms of narrative, progress, and level of difficulty. We actually played more than once to see how different choices would play out, resulting in differences between experience points players earned, items received, and changes in narrative respective of the choices we made. It’s always nice to have a little replayability.
Isekai Adventure: The Death King proved to be a tabletop game well worth playing. Simple enough for anyone new to D&D campaigns, but different enough that veteran players would find new mechanics to enjoy, the ability to shape our characters and playstyle throughout the campaign was very fun indeed. The author made it clear how many experience points players earned, as well as any resources they gained at the end of each chapter of the overall story. This gave everyone a chance to plan ahead and keep track of their player’s stats and attributes for developing their character and playstyle based on the list of available abilities each character could learn throughout the campaign.
I’ve played few games where the choices the player makes affects the story and/or the world on consoles before, but on pen-and-paper is quite different. The author did a great job of stringing the different acts in the overall narrative and the scripts together. My friends and I didn’t have any trouble following along and completing the story. We had a lot of fun, and as I said, we played more than once to see how our choices would affect gameplay. Going through a second time, we also had a better understanding of the mechanics and how to develop our characters to make instances of combat more rewarding. Depending on the initial choices made, players could find themselves put up against quite the challenge, but even then, enemy troops were modified depending on those choices to avoid overwhelming the players and putting them up against unbeatable odds of victory.
10/10, would play again.