Order of Eventide

I recently picked up, Order of Eventide (OoE), a solo/co-op dungeon crawler tabletop game akin to Four Against Darkness (4AD).

First Impressions

I happened to see a couple of glowing references to it in a Reddit thread on solo RPGs. It was $9.99 on the Kindle so I took a chance.

Here are some of my thoughts as I read through it the first time.

• The artwork is good, albeit AI-created. I don't care about that but some do. My issue is not AI but the amount of art. I'm not a fan of a lot of art in rulebooks. I just want good rules.
• You play with 4 heroes, like 4AD. Logical.
• Wow, they have a lot of difference races. Not my thing, but I guess modern audiences prefer that. I'd probably just stick with the old standards.
• Odd class system. 
• You start with one of 4 classes - fighter, hunter, mage, or adventurer (I guess that's like a rogue). 
• Then when you reach the second tier (whenever that occurs), you unlock new classes. I guess you dual-class.
• Then there is a third tier. And paladin is third tier. So I need to level up to play a paladin. Not keen on that either.
• There doesn't seem to be a level cap. This is my big issue with 4AD - there is an effective cap at level 5, unless you switch up all your dice.
• They don't have experience points or gold pieces. Instead, they have Essence and Glowstones. Why not just use plain language?
• You get ambushed by wandering monsters when you backtrack through a room. More shades of 4AD.
• All hits do 1 point of damage. I see a lot of 4AD here.
• I like how they do dual wielding, You roll 2D6 and take the highest. This fits my experience with dual wielding in LARP. It is extremely rare to attack with both weapons simultaneously. Generally, you use one to feint or defend and strike with the other. OoE seems to simulate that in a simple manner.
• It is a D6 system. Huzzah! 🎲
• They make a big deal about Surges (roll a 6) or Blunders (roll a 1). Surges or Blunders can have a variety of effects.
• There are 3 types of enemies - horde, forsaken, and behemoths. Forsaken and Behemoths kind of fit into 4AD's minions and bosses or weird monsters dichotomy. Hordes are undead but seem similar to 4AD vermin.
• Again like 4AD, enemies never roll dice. When enemies attack, roll for the characters to defend. I like this.
• There is a built-in setting. For example, the campaign starts at town called Kara's Vale. The characters join an Order to fight evil. The Ordermaster is headquartered in Kara's Vale. Generally, I'm not fond of prescribed settings; I prefer to make my own. But I can see the appeal.

This takes us about a third of the way through the 200+ page book. So far, it's just making me want to pull out 4AD.

But now it starts getting interesting. There are six regions in the game world. Each region has different charts for creating the dungeons. This gives the adventures in each region a distinct feel. There is also a different big boss (sorry, Master Behemoth) for each region. Once you defeat all those bosses, there is a final boss of the campaign. As much as I don't like built-in settings, I rather like this premade campaign structure. It gives a sense of purpose for your characters.

The rest of the book mostly fill in details on classes and races.

Quick Synopsis

Based on my initial readthrough, my impressions were:

• It is a lot like 4AD. That's a good thing, but it also begs the question - why not just play 4AD?
• The rule differences from 4AD didn't really appeal to me. For example, I'm never going to play a Sylveran (looks like a bunny person).
• But I really like the campaign structure. Dungeons in each of the 6 regions of the game world have different enemies and therefore different feels. This made me want to try the game.

What's Next?

I was going to include a short playthrough in this post, but it already got very long. I will create a separate post for my playthrough. Stay tuned!