Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Fateforge, a dungeon crawler board game published by Mighty Boards. In Fateforge, you are leading your party on an adventure using a familiar dice rolling system.

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve tackled a campaign game for BGQ and I was pleasantly surprised to find Fateforge cross our path. The components looked great on the publisher’s Mighty Boards display table at Gen Con. I count myself lucky to spend some time again with a dungeon-crawling cooperative narrative adventure.

Fateforge is app-assisted and designed by Gordon Calleja of Vengeance fame. It utilizes a dice action mechanism like that previous system but is now set in a fantasy world.

It is important to note that Fateforge requires a device to utilize its app. The app provides the overarching narrative, battle setup, and enemy information, and it also tracks important character statistics. Players begin in the app, learning a bit of the world, and cycle between narrative and battles over the course of three acts.

Each act’s progress is tracked as players complete battles and take respite to heal, train, and purchase new items. The rest of the scenes are unique in Fateforge as they provide players with a set amount of time to spend toward available options. Do you seek new equipment at the blacksmith? Or would it be better to follow a side quest for potential new allies or hidden locations? There can be a lot of avenues to pursue, and the time crunch makes decisions matter.

After a section of the narrative that reveals more of the world and sets actions in motion, players enter battle. The app provides the location setup. Setup consists of a specific set of tiles, gems, chests, and traps, among other items that are uncovered along the way. It also indicated which enemy cards and tokens to gather and place. Each fight has a specific round structure as well as objectives that must be met by that time.

There are five characters in the base game. Each has their own dice pool and set of skills