Relic Runners - From Days Of Wonder

The ancient relics had lain dormant in the darkest reaches of the jungle since time immemorial. But once word of their discovery broke out, all manner of would-be archeologists rushed in...

Days of Wonder introduces a new, large-format board game of jungle exploration. Relic Runners are fearless explorers, traveling the jungle in search of lost temples full of forgotten treasures and relics. Armed with nothing more than a trusty pith helmet and a nose for rare antiquities they'll explore temple ruins and shrines and undertake daring expeditions in a race to unearth the most treasure.

The goal in Relic Runners is to be the explorer who earns the most Victory Points (kept hidden from the others). You score Victory Points by: exploring three different types of Temples; increasing your capabilities via the Explorer's Progression Table; and perhaps most importantly - capturing Relics during well-planned Expeditions.

Players move their explorer figure among trails on the jungle board map - travelling routes to different stacks of Ruins and Temples. While an explorer may only move once along an unfamiliar trail, visiting a Ruin often earns the right to lay a new Pathway. Pathways enable the explorer to mark his familiarity with a trail. giving him the right to move freely along it. This makes it possible to take longer forays along multiple jungle trails - a key to having successful Relic Expeditions later in the game.

Explorers will encounter three different types of temples - layered stacks of various tiles in Ivory, Blue and Purple. Typically, each layer deeper a player explores in a temple, the more riches they will find. Some Temple tiles simply add victory points; some will give the explorer additional capabilities in the jungle; and some provide them with additional tools to work with in their explorations.

To explore any Temple or Ruin the player must spend a Ration Pack. These are limited in number and explorers will need to return to Base Camp regularly to replenish their rations. Of course, some Temple visits may give an explorer the ability to earn additional Ration Packs, making it possible for them to stay away from Base Camp for longer periods of time.

Once the last tile of a ruin or temple is removed from the board a Relic that matches the Temple's color is placed on that location on the board. A Relic can be used as either the starting point or ending point for a Relic expedition, one of the most lucrative ways of scoring Victory Points. An explorer can complete a Relic Expedition by beginning his turn on a shrine containing a Relic, and ending his move on another matching Relic. He can then take the Relic of the shrine he ended his move on and place it on his Explorer's Chart, immediately scoring the number of Victory Points equal to twice the number of Trails he moved along this turn. The longer the Relic Run, the more points he earns.

Following on Days of Wonder tradition of quality games and components, Relic Runners features a richly-illustrated jungle board map and beautiful Temple and Ruins tiles, plus 20 highly detailed Sculpted Relics. For 2-5 players, ages 10 and up. It takes approximately 40 minutes to play.

If you are in Puerto Rico, check out The Gaming Pit, in Guaynabo, where a few Relic Runners board games are about to arrive.

Dungeons & Dragons Goes PDF: Every Edition Available Again!

I almost entitled this entry How Nostalgia Broke My Credit Card.  The reason is simple, Wizards of the Coast, in association with DriveThruRPG, has made available for download in PDF format over 80 classic adventures and rulebooks.  I think I want to buy more than my credit card limit allows.

I still remember the first time I played Dungeons & Dragons.  It was 1980 and I was in 7^th grade.  I rolled a rogue and we played the adventure included at the end of the blue rulesbook edited by Holmes.  It had to do with a wizard’s tower and the sprawling dungeon he created under the tower, and ended with access to a seaside cave where pirate ships were docked.

While Holmes rulesbook is not available right now, Tom Moldvay’s 1981 Basic Set rulesbook is.  So are a lot of old time/original Dungeons & Dragons modules.  I quickly found some of my favorites: X1 - Isle of Dread, Q-1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits, D-3 Vault of the Drow.  The list goes on…

With this renewed web offering, Wizards of the Coast is attempting to please players of all editions, all six of them.  You can search for your favorite rulesbook, supplement, module or adventure, by name, edition, setting (Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Greyhwak, Planescape and Ravenloft), as well as by product type (sourcebooks, core rulebooks, RPG media).

Many of these products are at very reasonable prices.  You can buy 1^st Edition’s D-3 Vault of the Drow or 3^rd Edition’s Bastion of Broken Souls for $4.99.  Compilations and sourcebooks, like 1^st Edition’s T1-T4 Temple of Elemental Evil or 2^nd Edition’s Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins, are going for $9.99.  Rulebooks are a little more expensive.  For example, be prepared to pay a hefty $19.99 for 3.5 Edition’s Dungeon Master’s Guide II.

Yes, you can find all of the products offered in DnDClassic.com as pirated torrents on the internet.  However, not only is that illegal, many of the pirated reproductions are of bad quality.  Buying them from Wizards of the Coast/DriveThruRPG gives you a high quality scan that has the added bonus of being searchable.  Good luck searching a pirated PDF for a particular NPC or item, particularly if it is several hundred pages long like the aforementioned T1-T4 Temple of Elemental Evil.  More importantly, buying legitimate copies rewards the authors for their work and encourages Wizards of the Coast to make more of their offerings available for download.

Finally, I wish you good luck accessing DnDClassic.com.  Apparently, this untapped market for PDF versions of classic and not so classic products from TSR Hobbies, Inc. and Wizards of the Coast is so large that the servers are frequently overloaded.