Escape the Dark Castle - Game Review

Escape the Dark Castle is a cooperative card game for one to four players. The setup is easy and the rules are simple. A game takes about thirty to forty-five minutes. It is recommended for players fourteen and older, but I believe a mature ten or twelve year old could play.
The rule book is written well and we had no problems with poorly written rules or misunderstandings. The artwork is decent and all black and white. Escape the Dark Castle is a substance over style game, which I greatly prefer to the alternative.
Escape the Dark castle is a dungeon crawling card game that changes every time you play. It comes with a stack of forty-five cards, called chapter cards, that represent the areas of the castle your team is trudging through. The cards could be monsters to fight, NPCs to make deals with, options to steal items, or wonderful cards that allow you to find an item, with no combat.

A standard game uses fifteen chapter cards and then a big bad at the end, that you must fight. There are three big bad guy cards, in the base game. The big bad is no joke and can easily kill an entire party, if the party rolls poorly. In three of the five games I played, the result was the group getting to the big bad and dying. You could use more than fifteen chapter cards, but this would increase the difficulty of the game.
Setting up the game is simple. Everyone chooses a role to play and each role has strengths and weaknesses. Each role has three stats: wisdom, cunning, and might. In my experience the two most important stats are might and cunning, so in a four player game, I would suggest three players take characters with maximum of each stat, but the final character take either a might character, with secondary cunning, or a cunning character with secondary might.

The Servant and Death - A Dark Sun Fable

A merchant from Gulg once asked his servant to run an errand for him. While at the market, the servant went around a corner and saw Death. Death terrified the servant so much, that he returned to his master as quickly as possible. The servant begged and pleaded to his master, "Please, let me take the fastest kank to Altaruk!"
Seeing how terrified his servant was, his master granted his request and the servant fled Gulg, as fast as the kank would carry him.
Later that day, the merchant went to the market himself and saw Death there. "Why did you frighten by seravnt?" He asked.
Death answered, "Actually, it was he who startled me. I couldn't understand why he was in Gulg, because I have an appointment with him tonight, in Altaruk."

Session Seventy-One: Fort Isus

Note: For those unfamiliar with Dark Sun, psionics are called the Will for wild talents and the Way for trained psionicists.

As the elves drew their weapons, they began calling an alarm. Julius and Kalino leapt forward and cut some of the slaves free, but they were confused and afraid. Alaxander yelled at the slaves to go through the dimensional portal, while attacking an elf with the way. Shade attacked the same elf and was able to drop him. Vashti used her minimal combat magic to engage the elves.
Unfortunately, more elves ran into the building and began fighting with the group. Vashti felt part of her body turn to ash, as an elven defiler cast a fireball spell. The spell managed to strike every member of the group, but killed quite a few slaves as well, including some children.
This act infuriated the group and they all directed their attacks toward the defiler. After he died, the group started pushing the slaves through the large dimensional portal. After a little while, the elves decided that the fight was not worth the slaves and they fled.
The group went through the portal, which lead to an open area near their temporary home in Nibenay. Once the group was certain that none of the elves followed them through the portal, and Kiara joined the group, Alaxadner opened another portal to Kuresh. They went through, taking the slaves with them.

Player Character Social Class

Social class is extremely important in the Tablelands of Athas. Was your character born in the sandy wastes, a slave-tribe village, or a city-state? These optional rules allow a player to roll randomly for the social class that they were born into, or lived most of their youth in. It is possible for a character to be born into a free-citizen family, but raised in slavery to pay a debt. If that is the case, the character has a slave social class.
Some of the social classes may not be appropriate for certain races, such as a thri-kreen noble. The decision about what is appropriate for a character is ultimately determined by the DM.

Roll 1D10 to randomly determine a characters social class.
1. Noble
2. Templar
3. Merchant - Large Merchant House
4. Merchant - Small Merchant House
5. Merchant - Independent Merchant
6. Free-Citizen
7. Criminal
8. Nomad
9. Villager
10. Slave