Legends Untold: The Weeping Caves

10th November 2019

Gaming Sunday continues at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.

Next up was; 'Legends Untold'. Legends Untold is a sort of hybrid card game RPG. The players take on the roles of nascent heroes thrust into adventure by circumstance.
These heroes will form a party and explore either caves or dungeons, whilst the role of 'GM' is played by various decks of cards.

There are 2 Legends Untold games,  'The Weeping Caves' & 'The Great Sewer'.

What's in a game?
Legends Untold packs a lot of cards into a relatively small box. These include:

• Hero cards: These oversized cards are the player characters. They each have 6 stats rated from 1 to 3 and the stats for a dagger (A basic weapon all PC's have.).
• Talent cards: Each PC has access to various talents, these are listed on cards. When talents are used, they become 'exhausted' and are 'tapped' (Turned sideways.). Talent cards are also used to track wounds, when a PC takes a wound, then a talent becomes 'drained' and is flipped over - irrespective of whether the talent is exhausted or not.
• Equipment cards: These cards include cards for weapons, outfits and kits. Players will accumulate these over time. Kit cards can be exhausted like talents.
• Scenario cards: The game has various scenarios and even a campaign. These are all detailed on the scenario cards.
• Location cards: Oversized cards that depict various locations. These cards contain information on lighting, exits, environmental effects and encounters.
• Environment cards: There are lots of environmental cards. Events, discoveries, barriers, foes, obstacles, booby traps and loot.
• Character tokens: These are used to show character status, such as poisoned, unconscious etc.
• More tokens: Tokens for environmental effects, searched areas, supplies etc.
• 4 dice: Normal 6 sided dice.
• Rule books: Normally I wouldn't bother mentioning rule books. But Legend Untold has a 'read this first' booklet which is 48 pages long and an actual rule book that is 60 pages long! There's some repetition between the 2 booklets, but even so, that's a lot of rules.

There are some nice illustrations on the cards, but mostly they pictures are quite small as many cards have a lot of text on them. The other tokens are of a reasonable quality, (Nothing to write home about, but enough I guess, to blog about!). 

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Readiness tracker & a scenario card.

Barrier, obstacle, event & encounter cards.

3 foe cards & a booby trap card.

4 location cards.

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How's it play?
​The setup for each game depends on which scenario card is used. The scenario will tell the players the number of card to put into each of the game's decks.

• Location deck. The scenario will list a starting location and any specific locations. Any remaining locations are randomly drawn and added to the location deck.
• Event deck: Event cards are randomly drawn to form the event deck. This deck is used to determine both encounters and the passage of time.
• Barrier deck: Created from the barrier cards.
• Obstacle deck: Created from the obstacle cards.
• Adventure deck: This is created by using foe, discovery, loot and booby trap cards.
• Player's decide on which characters they will be playing and take the relevant equipment and talent card.

And now the game is ready to start.
The game is divided into 4 phases.
Scouting phase

• The players decide who will be 'The Scout' and who will be 'The Guard', remaining players are in 'The Centre'.
• The party should decide whether they are 'sneaking' or not and which exit to take. Each exit is either 'light', 'dark' or 'ambient'. Sneaking takes more time than simply exploring.
• A card from the location deck is turned over.  The location card will have a 'feet' icon, this is the entrance to this location. The card will also have 3 numbers, one each for light, dark and ambient. The player designated as the scout makes a scouting test versus the relevant number. Sneaking adds +2 to this roll. The result of this roll will determine the party's 'readiness', the party will be either 'careless', 'bold' or 'alert'. Each status will have an impact on later actions.

Adventure phase

• When the party enters a new location, it will list what the party must deal with.
• Obstacle: A card from the obstacle deck is turned over. This will results in either a 'trial' or a 'trap'. A trial is a type of 'test', see below for more on tests and traps.
• Enemies: If the party must deal with foes, the party must turn over cards from the adventure deck until a foe card is drawn. When drawing cards from the adventure deck, any loot cards drawn before a foe is drawn is put to one side and will be the reward for defeating the foe. If a booby trap card is drawn before a foe card, it must be resolved.When a foe card is drawn, it must be defeated. See below for combat.
• Discovery: Discoveries are like non-combat encounters. Cards must be drawn from the adventure deck until a discovery card is drawn. If a loot card is drawn before a discovery card, it becomes the reward for successfully resolving the discovery. If a booby trap is drawn before a discovery card, it must be resolved. When a discovery card is drawn, it will take the form of a test, the party can choose to attempt the test or ignore the discovery.

When the adventure phase is completed, the game moves on to the next phase.
Exploration phase

• Each location card may have one or more 'search zones'.
• Barrier: Draw a card from the barrier deck and resolve the card drawn.
• Search: First the party must decide whether to do a 'quick' search or a 'cautious search. A cautious search take time. Draw 3 cards from the adventure deck when searching, any loot cards drawn are treasure that has been found. Any booby trap cards drawn must be resolved.

Rest phase

• The party automatically have a short rest after the exploration phase. This allows them to 'reset' talent and kit cards they used during scouting and adventure phases.
• The party may choose to rest longer in order to 'heal' drained talent cards. It takes 2 time to heal a wound. Negative condition such as fear and poison are also removed.
• If the location card has a campfire, then healing takes half the time.

That's it for what happens in a turn. But how it happens is detailed below.

Time and events
As explained above, the scenario will determine how big the event deck is. A common size is 6 cards.

• When the party uses up time, the top card from the event deck is discarded face-down into the discard pile.
• When the last card in the event deck is reached, it is turned over and the event is triggered. After the event has been resolved, the card is removed from play (You cannot get the same event twice!). The remaining cards in the discard pile becomes the new event deck. Thus the event deck will dwindle in size over time.
• Sometimes the party will get lucky and will gain time. When this happens, a card from the discard pile is returned (Still face-down.) to the top of the event deck. The game even provides a couple of tokens use if there is no discard pile.
• What happens if the event deck is totally depleted? If this happens; then the party can longer choose to take actions that will use up time. If something forces the party to use time, then a PC must exhaust or drain a talent.

Tests
Legends Untold has lots of different types of tests. Lots of them.

• Basic test: This type test will have a pass/fail result.
• Table test: This type of test will have varying degrees of success and failure.
• Staged test: These tests require multiple success to get an overall success.
• Party test: Yeah, as the name suggests, these test require all of the PCs to pass in order to succeed.

not only are there different types of tests. There are different rules for each time. Some can be tried more than once, others can only be tried once. Some tests can be avoided, some cannot. Some will give you a choice of tests that use different stats and will have different success/failure outcomes etc.
Like I said, lots of types of tests.
Traps
There are 2 types of trap. A normal trap which is encountered when drawing a card from the obstacles deck and a booby trap drawn from the adventure deck, either before combat or when searching.

• ​Trap: What happens when a trap is drawn from the obstacles deck will depend upon the party's readiness. If the party is careless, the trap is immediately triggered. If the party is bold, then a test must be made, on a success the trap is avoided, failure means the trap is triggered. If the party is alert, then the party can decide to back to or to make the test.
• Before combat: If a booby trap is drawn when looking for a foe in the adventure deck. Readiness once again makes the difference. If the party are careless, the trap is triggered. If the are bold or alert, the trap is avoided.
• When searching: When searching, the party must decide whether to do a 'quick search' or a 'careful search', a quick search costs no time, but a careful search costs 1 time. If the party are quick searching when a booby trap is drawn, it is automatically triggered, if they were searching carefully, the trap is avoided.

Combat
Combat in Legends Untold occurs over a number of stages.

• Engagement: The party rolls for surprise. Depending on the result, either the party, foes or no one is surprised. Sneaking modifies the the chances of success. If one side does win surprise, it gives a bonus for the first round of combat.
• Ranged combat: PCs may decide to engage in ranged combat if they have ranged attacks. During ranged combat, attacks alternate between the PCs and their enemies (Provided the enemies can launch ranged attacks) until all ranged attacks are resolved. Each ranged attack (For both PCs and foes.) is conducted by rolling against a chart which will give an outcome from a variety of results.
• Melee combat: Any remaining PCs will engage their enemies in melee. Unlike ranged attacks, enemies do not roll to attack in melee. The weapon charts used by PCs determine if an enemy wounds a PC or not.
• Morale: Under certain conditions, enemies will retreat from the fight. PCs can also choose to retreat during this stage of combat.

OK, there are more rules than this. But this is mostly what will occur all the time.

Endgame
Each scenario has its own victory or defeat criteria.
Generally, if all the PCs are knocked unconscious, it's a defeat.
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Campaign
Legends Untold includes rules and components for a campaign. The campaign is about saving the refugees of an invasion
During the campaign, PCs will increase in level as it progresses. Additionally, the results of a scenario will have some impact on later scenarios in the campaign. This includes rating the players on how many refugees they managed to save.
It's sort of like a legacy game but without being asked to rip up any cards!

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What a starting character looks like.

The cave entrance & 3 explored caves.

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Overall
There's a lot to think about here. The game certainly packs a lot of stuff into a small box. But is it good stuff?

The exploration mechanics are quite good. Choosing to follow light or dark routes both have advantages and disadvantages. I like how the readiness rules interact with traps.

​I like the event deck and how it works. I like how as the event deck gets smaller, events become more common. It gives players the feeling that they are working against  the ticking clock.
Decisions regarding the spending of time become very important.

I like how talent cards are also used as hit points. It removes an extra element of bookkeeping from a game that already has a lot of things going on.
Losing an ability when wounded makes you feel weaker.
When PCs gain levels, they gain additional talent card, thus they also gain more hit points.

But perhaps there are too many character stats and thus tests related to them. More often than not, I found that stats became irrelevant, because across all the characters, they always tended to be someone who gave a +2 bonus.
Not only that, there are so many rules regarding tests, that the rule book is never closed.
I understand need for variety and the need to make all PC stats relevant. But tests could use some streamlining. In my mind more complexity does not equate to more depth.

Combat is equally clunky. It's quite confusing that ranged and melee combat are the same but also different. In melee , it's good that both attack and defence are resolved in a single roll. But why couldn't the same philosophy be applied to ranged combat? I know that the game needs to differentiate between PCs and foes who do and don't have ranged attacks. But I feel that combat needed more work, more testing and more streamlining.

Finally, the setting is quite uninteresting. It's pretty generic and uninspiring. Because of the I found it hard to engage with the game. Perhaps it as the steep learning curve. Or perhaps it's because I've played quite a lot of RPGs over the years

However, it's quite an ambitious game in its own way. I'm not willing to write it off without trying it another couple of tries.