Folklore The Affliction 2nd Edition

Product Information

Silly subtitles aside, Folklore: The Affliction, takes direct inspiration from Gothic European folklore and mythology. We are talking about the pre-Disney tales popularized by the Brothers Grimm with a bit of Mary Shelly and Bram Stoker sprinkled in for good measure. For those of you who have enjoyed The Witcher books and video games, Folklore is channeling that type of world. The setting itself is some timeless east European-esque region called Kremel, that feels like it could be found in modern Hungary or southern Germany. There are tropes abound, complete with a religion that is basically a generic pre-Reformation Catholicism or possibly Greek Orthodox. The setting and many of the details are given a haziness that allows the audience to generally recognize the setting without focusing on the anachronisms that pop up at a steady pace. Ultimately, I find the setting to be appropriate for the folklore inspired plots that players navigate. Just don’t come in expecting something as thoroughly developed as what you may expect in a proper tabletop RPG or in the Witcher games/books. Folklore the game, like its namesake is just familiar enough to let you ignore the conflicting details and focus on the yarn. Please note: The second edition of Folklore: The Affliction contains cardboard standees instead of the plastic figures from the first edition. A set of plastic miniatures will be available to buy separately later in 2018.

Embark on a cooperative epic adventure that is Folklore the Affliction. Find and destroy the source of the evil spreading its claws into the heart of the land, decimating its people and resources. Free the denizens from the scourge of vampirism and lycanthropy and expand your power and abilities. Are you a survivor, or will you play as your ghost? Will you fall to the bloodlust or the taint of lycanthropy yourself? Create a group of up to five saved heroes in the setting then use the Next Hero Arrow or the Side Menu option. You move carefully through the stone hallway, lit only by a patch of moonlight and the smoldering stump of a torch in your hand. Sweat drips from your forehead – if you make a sound, it could be your last. Somewhere in this estate hides a creature who is neither living nor dead, who drinks the cherry blood of his guests, and whose gaze warps the mind of all who meet it. You clutch the wooden spike tightly to your chest, your pounding heart daring you to drop it. Finally, you find the door that leads to the master bedroom. You hold your breath, savoring it as you reach for the cold iron knob... The beats of game play are an interesting echo of what can be found in Green Briar Game’s earlier title Grimslingers. In both games you play out a relatively on rails mission based RPG. You are given a story based directive (typically something like “go to X location”). You journey across the game map and encounter random story events and combat along the way. You arrive at your location for a nifty series of tests and/or story events. You are then given a new story based directive, wash, rinse, repeat. I know that sounds pretty dull, but in practice it works out quite well. In my earlier review of Grimslingers, I was pretty vocal that I felt the quasi-RPG narrative found in the game was its best attribute. For those of you who played through Grimslinger’s campaign, you will find a very familiar story telling system. If you haven’t played Grimslingers, I would compare Folklore to a mash up of Eldritch Horror and Mansions of Madness 2.0. Imagine Eldritch Horror except that every once in a while you have to pause the game and play out 15 minutes of story narrative and exploration on the Mansions of Madness game boards. Again, it sounds like a mess, but in practice it is compelling and addictive. The best compliment I have for Folklore is that its a game that is hard to walk away from, and when you do, its hard to stop thinking about. I obviously haven’t made it through every story in Folklore yet. The base game comes with 6 stories with 2 or 3 chapters each (each chapter is a solid gaming session). The big box expansion comes with another 9 stories that seem slightly longer and more challenging then the base game. There is a third expansion adding even more stories in PDF format. The icing on the cake though are the crafting and Rumor expansions that add oodles of extra content to spice up the game. If I were to look into buying Folklore, I would suggest trying out the P&P demo to test the water and if you think the game has legs, go nuts and just get these expansions out of the gate. I would also suggest taking a pass on the very expensive large neoprene map. I’m not sure if this is going to be widely available, but this version of the map is just too big to be practical for most game tables, and worse yet it comes folded up in the box, complete with creases.There’s also a strong nostalgia element as the game utilizes percentile D100 rolls and other small winks towards D&D creator Gary Gygax’s past. These touches are appreciated and help to convey the overall atmosphere and tone of play. This isn’t a huge problem as the game feels well play-tested and for the most part smooth. But there is an outside possibility you run into a random event in the early going that’s unduly harsh, such as your only weapon beingstolen. This would be devastating as you’d be completely ineffective in combat and your agency squashed. Thelikelihood of such swinginess diminishes as you grow in wealth and might fortunately. Ultimately this is just a cost of doing business in a GM-less system that wants to retain dramatic moments. If you’re interested in the concept of this wonderful game then that cost will be negligible. Your overriding experience and memories will be centered on the developing narrative and the growth of your characters. You’ll take on hulking beasts that would make a grown warrior wet their trousers. You’ll forge out into the night and make a name for yourselves. Or perhaps you’ll turn into a ghost trying. First off the obvious. This is the Second Edition printing of the game and does NOT CONTAIN miniatures. And it doesn't need them honestly. I do love minis but at this point I would rather have less overall but better quality with my games from now on. I really do believe that the main characters and boss characters should be minis and the rest be standees. I love how Gloomhaven does that with the main characters at least. Board games are the bee’s knees. Roleplaying games are the bomb-diggity. Mix these two and too often it never quite works out. What should be peanut butter and jelly ends up more like peanut butter and fish. I don’t care what weird combinations of food your kid eats, ain’t nobody eating PB & F.

Folklore is all about diving into the action. It requires no dungeon master and allows everyone in the group to adopt the role of gritty hero fighting off the tides of madness. You choose one of several archetypes and fill out a small character sheet just as if you were playing a simplified version of good ‘ol Dungeons& Dragons. We love games here at Geek & Sundry, and love keeping you in the loop about them. If you want to keep up with the coolest games in tabletop, look no further than our tabletop game show Game the Gamehosted by Becca Scott every Wednesday at 4 pm PT on Twitchand Alpha. The Fall of the Spire expansion contains six more stories, featuring new mechanisms for combat and town events.Folklore: the Affliction is a fantastic experience, but it’s one with some quirks. One possible nag is the reliance on large tokens for the bosses – dubbed Afflictions. There’s a precedent for this with Descent 1st edition’s Road to Legend expansion, but it is something to keep in mind in case theincongruity of plastic and 2D cardboard characters is a big sore point for you. On Game the Game, host Becca Scott talks about tabletop gaming news and is joined by guests to play a variety of great games. If you want to learn about what’s new, exciting, and coolin the world of modern tabletop, join her on Wednesdays starting at 4 PM PT on Twitch and Alpha. Want more board games & RPGs? This doesn’t mean that Folklore is hard. In fact, I would say that with a good party of 4 characters or more, you should be able to survive, but be warned. Less then 4 characters is pretty much a hard mode for the game. The game isn’t particularly well skewed to handle smaller parties. You can of course get around this by having players play multiple PCs, but I know there are a lot of gamers out there who despise that sort of solution. While Folklore serves as the perfect bridge to full blown RPGs, there are quite a few nods towards the grizzled veterans of pen and paper past. First of all, this setting is pure Ravenloft, which just so happens to be the best AD&D setting ever crafted. We have brooding villages, vampires skulking in the shadows, and werewolves crawling among the reeds. It’s a difficult way of life and nothing comes easy. The mechanisms dovetail wonderfully with this setting as resources are scarce and pain is bountiful.