Four Against Darkness Beginners Guide 2.2.pdf

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Four Against Darkness
A Beginner’s Guide
Four Against Darkness
A Beginner’s Guide, v.2.2
What is Four Against Darkness?
Four Against Darkness
is a solitaire dungeon-delving/fantasy
adventuring game.
Who is the Publisher?
4AD is published by Ganesha Games, a company mainly known for their
miniature games such as
Song of Blades and Heroes, Mutants and Death
Ray Guns,
and the solo-coop game
Sellswords & Spellslingers.
Ganesha
Games has been in business since 2007. Ganesha has won an Origins
Award for the Napoleonic skirmish game
Song of Drums and Shakos,
and was also nominated with
Song of Blades and Heroes
and with
Osprey’s
A Fistful of Kung Fu,
written by Andrea Sfiligoi. Ganesha
Games is just two guys (Andrea and Damon) running a game company
from Italy (Andrea) and Malaysia (Damon, who originally hails from
Reno, Nevada). Ganesha Games has run several successful Kickstarters
for the production of miniatures and related rulebooks.
Tell me how to play
No miniatures or fancy equipment are needed. All you need is the core
book, pencil and eraser, two six sided dice, and grid paper, and you can
start playing.
You choose four character types from the classic classes (warrior,
wizard, rogue, halfling, dwarf, barbarian, cleric, elf ), equip them, and
start adventuring in dungeons created by dice rolls and by your choices.
4AD is a nostalgic throwback to the early days of roleplaying, so, while
it is NOT a retroclone, it includes a few rules that are homages to that era
(treating elves, dwarves and halflings as classes is a nod to that era).
When you enter a room, you generate its content on a series of random
tables. You meet monsters, wait for their reaction or fight them,
hopefully defeat them (or decide that discretion is the better part of
valor!), manage your resources (healing, spells, life points, equipment),
grab treasure, dodge traps, find clues, and even accept quests from the
monsters you meet. Your characters can level up and become better at
what they do… IF THEY SURVIVE.
How is the combat system?
Like everything else in the game, the combat system revolves around
rolling a target number on a single d6. Dice can explode, that is, if you
roll a 6, you roll again, and add the result, so it is technically possible,
even if unlikely, to roll ANY number. Player characters go first, unless
they were surprised, and then it’s the monster’s turn to attack. Monsters
never roll dice in 4AD: you, the player, roll dice to defend from their
attacks, trying to beat a target number and modifying the roll according
to your armor and shield, if any, or any special bonuses you might have.
Do I need miniatures?
No. 4AD is NOT a miniature game. You may use miniatures to
remember your characters' marching order if you wish, but that's it.
So is this just another rpg?
4AD is NOT a full roleplaying game, although people who like old
school rpgs will probably like it. You may run it as a simple cooperative,
GM-less game if you want, just have each player control a separate
character. However, since many have asked it, in the current version of
the rules we added a couple of pages of suggestions to turn 4AD into a
RPG.
It is not exactly a game-book or a choose-your-own-adventure book.
There is no prose to read or numbered sections to go to, even if we do
that in some of the supplements.
The book is 90 pages with plenty of black and white illustrations, plus a
flowchart that summarizes the various phases of dungeon generation.
This is just random tables, there is no player
agency!
There are more choices than it is initially apparent in a game of
Four
Against Darkness.
At its core, it is a resource management game with
elements of press-your-luck. Will you waste your precious Life points
fighting against monsters that are too strong for your party, or will you
flee to fight another day? Will you invest 500 gold pieces in resurrecting
your dead warrior, or it’s just simpler to enlist a new party member?
There is also a mechanic that lets you collect Clues and let you discover
secrets– basically, they let you insert small story tidbits into the game,
such as discovering you are the last in a line of dragonslayers, or finding
the map to an ancient Dwarven treasure.
In addition, the adventures play more like gamebooks, in that you choose
from a list of options, or generate semi-random encounters. In a way, the
adventures have more story elements than the basic game.
Should I get the paperback or the PDFs?
Hard to say, it really a matter of portability/ease of play vs aesthetics.
While nothing beats a paperback book for collecting, the PDFs will let
you print only the relevant tables and keep all the books on a tablet. The
core book PDF is bookmarked, so you can quickly jump across sections,
and comes with pocketbooks of the main tables, so you can print out the
pocketbooks (if you have good eyesight) and play just with the
pocketbooks, referencing the full book only when needed.
Where Should I buy the Books/PDFs?
Our main PDF vendor is Drivethrurpg/Wargamevault.
Another good source for PDFs only is our gumroad store
www.gumroad.com/ganeshagames
This is good because gumroad lets
us make slightly more money than other vendors (they take an 8,5% cut
instead of a 40/45% cut like the major sellers). We are planning to move
our core site to gumroad in the near future.
Our main store for printed books is
www.lulu.com/songofblades
on
Lulu.com. All the 4AD books are on the first two pages of our Lulu
catalog. Lulu ships from many different countries and shipping costs are
always reasonable. They also have FREE SHIPPING codes now and
then, so always check the home page of their US site to see the free
shipping code and use it at checkout.
Most of our books are also on Amazon through Createspace, the print-
on-demand branch of Amazon. If you have Amazon Prime, buying from
Amazon comes with free shipping. One plea though: Amazon takes a big
cut of the money, and in addition we pay 30% taxes (as Ganesha Games
is a foreign entity, the US Government keeps 30% of our profit on every
sale). So please leave a review and share your purchase link on social
media: at least you will help to sell more books and make up for the loss
with a higher numbers.
How Many Books Are in the Series?
At the moment of writing, the line includes the following:
CORE BOOKS
Four Against Darkness (the only essential book, character levels 1 to 5)
Four Against the Abyss (expert characters of levels 5 to 9)
Fiendish Foes (a mini booklet of just 8 pages of more powerful monsters
for character levels 3 to 5)
Adventure Modules
Dark Waters
Caves of the Kobold Slave-Masters
Treasure Hunters of Charlemagne
The Three Rings
The Knight of Destiny
Buried Secrets
Caverns of Chaos
Man-Eater!
Coming Attractions (to be published in 2018/early 2019, titles
subject to change)
Four Against the Netherworlds (exploration of infernal planes)
Prisoner of the Ape-Men (barbarian adventure)

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