ST01: Weirding Woods

Created by Oliver McNeil

The Storymaster's Tales - Weirding Woods is a fantastic blend of traditional tabletop role-playing games and choose your own adventure gamebooks. It takes a rules-lite approach to its gameplay, clearly taking its inspiration from the mechanics of the old Fighting Fantasy books.

Which is by no means a bad thing (I mean, I built this whole website around FF books!).
It's a simple, solid and ultimately satisfying platform for people of all ages to get the same kind of fix that a well prepared D&D adventure would provide.

An example of the playing area after a few turns

The gameplay is super easy to pick up, you just:

• Choose a pre-generated character
• Pick a quest from the book.
• Make a note of the objective.
• Place the first card.
• Begin exploring.

Each time you move either N/S/E/W to a blank area, you draw a card, find the card's details in the quest book and resolve that encounter.

An example of one of the many story card encounters

Be it an enemy that you'll throw dice at, a trader to trade with (or rob!), or maybe a settlement where you can find some new quests to embark upon. There's just so many story cards that could show up, there's no telling where your adventure could lead. Each card is beautifully illustrated too with this incredible black and white fantasy art style.

There will also be a number of choices associated with each card giving it that choose your own adventure feel. You just need to find the relevant page in the quest book and see what options are available.

The Rulebook / Questbook

Because of the random nature of card games, every single adventure is going to be unique. You could find your objective in the first 2 card draws, or it could be 30 or 40 turns before you reach your goal. There's also no limit on where you can go exploring, you can easily backtrack across the cards to find new areas or revisit old ones. If for some reason you had to flee a battle, why not come back later on when you're stronger and better equipped!

A sizeable deck of loot!

Although my favorite part about this little game is that it's totally playable solo. No compromises need to be made if you just want to venture out on your own. A perfect fit for the Gamebook Adventurer.

Weirding woods is simply brilliant. It cherry-picks all the best bits from our usual bloated RPGs and dishes them up in a format that literally anyone can digest.

A must-have in your dungeon-delving board game collection for sure.


Reviewed by Harrison Marchant