Bardsung
Brandon Blackburn, Guest Contributor
I first encountered Bardsung on Kickstarter where it advertised itself as a “cooperative RPG dungeon explorer for 1-5 players.” The game seemed larger than life: 66 minis in the base game alone, celebrity guest writers such as Rhianna Pratchett and Jonathan Green, component collaboration with the miniature terrain titan that is Dwarven Forge, reviews comparing it to Gloomhaven. I backed it immediately and patiently awaited what would be the largest game box I had ever purchased. The issues began when I opened the box.
There are times when Bardsung just works. In those moments, Bardsung shines through its intricate interactive mechanics and varied combat, as well as totes more immersive exploration possibilities than nearly every other game I’ve played. The trouble is, however, that Bardsung doesn’t always work. While individually, Bardsung’s many elements speak to the exploratory open-world feel of a fantasy roleplaying game, as a cohesive whole, they end up playing as confusing, unwieldy, and overbuilt. Compounded by poor organization, the same elements which originally endeared me to Bardsung ended up harrying rather than augmenting opportunities for interactive narrative and immersive gameplay.
I hesitate to write a review that focuses too heavily on what a game is not or one that doesn’t consider what a game’s trying to accomplish. And while I will discuss the major elements of the game that I feel don’t work, I have to note that Bardsung gets a lot right. I could right an entire review, for instance, on just the game’s miniatures. Each one is whimsically complex while still reading coherently as a complete creature. Whether fearsome, heroic, or strange, the careful and meticulous design of even the simplest of the miniatures is worth celebrating. Another element of gameplay would be the Mortal Wound cards, which impose conditions in addition to hit point damage. Such a mechanic adds further consequence to the damage player characters receive. These cards imply a subtle shift from “damage taken” to “injury sustained” and create the potential for greater and more nuanced stakes in combat encounters. A character with a Mortal Wound becomes a vulnerable person rather than simply a tool for dealing damage to faceless hordes of enemies.
Even though I often see Bardsung categorized as a dungeon crawler, I would categorize it as more of an exploration-driven adventure game with dungeon crawling elements. Indeed, the exploratory elements of the game seek to give the feel of a more expansive world with potential for many different avenues of inquiry just beyond the veil. The elements that come into focus are rendered sharply by player-driven selections from rich narrative elements: Should you trust that hooded stranger? Is it worth opening that room to look for treasure? Can you survive the next encounter without needing to take a rest? These choices affect gameplay in minor or significant ways, all of which add generatively to the surrounding world. Best of all, because of the number of scenarios in the box exceeds the number of scenarios a party will actually play over the course of the game, Bardsung has good replayability—even more so when the Fables or Lost Levels expansions are included. Here, the card-based modular elements such as items and spells shine because they allow for high customization in even the most minor elements of the game, offering surprise and consequences to all decisions, big and small.
I ran into trouble playing the game, however, because it prioritizes its numerous narrative and flavor elements over playability. There are three major types of issues with the game that hindered my ability to engage fully with it, each building upon the other to affect my overall experience: (1) organization, (2) number of features, and (3) cohesiveness.
Organization
By organization, I mean the way elements of the game are laid out, categorized and stored. I’m referring not only to physical pieces, but also information, as well as design. One example that encompasses all three of these elements are the game’s map tiles. The tiles are one of the most modular and interactive features in the game, but they are also difficult to use. They are one of the elements players will need to access most often during gameplay, but there’s no clear way to organize them in the box. Whenever I needed one, I found that it was always the one that had slid under something, so I would have to take all the inserts out of the box to find it. Then, when I had finally found the piece I needed, I found myself struggling to read it. Each piece is split into zones, but the lines separating each one often look like terrain elements. While each piece of tile art is a beautiful scene unto itself, gameplay requires knowing where zones and doorways are, especially for a first-time player, and the design hinders this critical mechanic. All of these issues could be fixed by simply labeling the pieces 1–20, sides A and B, and drawing more prominent lines on them.
Number of Features
My second critique of Bardsung builds on the first. The game simply has too many elements for them not to be organized more intuitively. During play, these read as overwhelming rather than eclectic, and hindered my ability to engage with them. For examply, the multitude of cards paired with the poor organization of the box design meant that it was a hassle to find the particular card I needed. The lack of index in the rulebook made it hard to locate specific rules when I forgot them. While no individual mechanic is all that difficult to grasp, Bardsung has a ton of ways to run even the most basic of actions (opening a door to a room, for instance), which with the in-box organization as it is, means that a player is likely to spend more time looking for pieces than actually playing with them.
Cohesiveness
At the level of the gameplay itself, Bardsung seems to have an identity crisis. It positions itself as not quite dungeon crawler, not quite combat simulation, not quite open-world explorer, and not quite role-playing game. This indecisiveness expresses itself through the game’s mechanics. Games skewing more towards TTRPG than boardgames allow for complexity in story and world, but the actual mechanics are usually more or less the same for everything: roll dice/draw cards, add or subtract numbers, and then something happens based on a table of some kind. Furthermore, rulebooks for these games tend to be organized with reference in mind, so information is readily accessible and easy to reference mid-game. Dungeon crawlers like Gloomhaven, however, prioritize clear labeling of their many pieces and parts so that they cannot be confused with one another—standardized usability is the focus. In the case of Gloomhaven specifically, this standardization happens in the form of clearly-marked hexes for maps, sleeves and sliders for stat and hp tracking, and bisected cards to simplify combat. For Bardsung, I have spent entire afternoons with friends puzzling over rulebooks, trying to figure out how to run the most basic in-game mechanics and being unable to. It all feels like an impediment to playing the game rather than an invitation to enjoy it.
Takeaways
It’s difficult to express how much I desperately wanted to love this game, and there were moments in playing it where I felt like I understood what the creators were trying to convey. In those moments, when each delightfully nuanced element of Bardsung worked together, it was truly an amazing game, promising the highs of the blockbuster Gloomhaven. In those moments, I felt immersed in the world, excited by combat, and wary of every decision I made.
But Bardsung needs to get out of its own way. It needs to streamline its exploration mechanics and eliminate some nonessential elements with an eye to playability. If it’s going to have so many modular elements, they need to function together more intuitively, like Gloomhaven’s envelopes and rotating trackers. Finally, the rulebook and the box need to be redesigned. As they stand, it’s almost impossible to keep things organized.
Bardsung doesn’t necessarily need to be simpler, but it needs to better balance complexity with playability. I would be eager to play another edition of the game with more of a focus on cohesiveness and organization, and will certainly be on the lookout for what the designers’ next game.
