Is it the Journey or the Destination?
Broadly speaking, there are two types of game players. There are those who enjoy the process of playing, whether it’s immersion in the game’s theme and setting, or just figuring out the most interesting way to utilize the game’s mechanisms. And then there are those who enjoy the accomplishment of winning. Both approaches to gaming are equally valid – the trick is to find the right players and the right game.
Vantage, the new board game from superstar designer Jamey Stegmaier, is part choose-your-own-adventure, part ‘90s-style point-and-click adventure game, and definitely for those players who enjoy the journey and don’t really care about the destination.
A Whole World to Explore
In Vantage, players take on the roles of the crew of a doomed spacecraft that is about to crash into an unexplored planet. Everyone makes it safely to an escape pod, but they find themselves scattered across the world, each on their own separate adventure but able to support each other remotely.
The game’s rich setting is described via text and artwork on over 400 double-sided location cards. Each player’s starting location is determined randomly, but the cards aren’t shuffled – one location leads consistently to another, which should enable players to build up a view of the world that is consistent from game to game. Each location offers a selection of actions, broadly grouped into six categories: move, look, engage, help, take, and overpower. But the actions aren’t often that basic, and are tailored to the specific location. For example, a move action at a location with a tree might be “climb,” or a look action could involve examining the tree or the surrounding ground.
Each player gets one action each turn, which normally involves rolling one or more challenge dice. There’s no failure in Vantage – the challenge dice roll is merely to determine the cost of the action in time, morale, or health, based on the results of the roll. The number of dice can be reduced by spending skill tokens (acquired at the beginning of the game and occasionally as rewards for taking actions), and the dice results can be mitigated by cards in your tableau, as well as in those of the other players.
The other 900 cards in Vantage represent the items you acquire, characters you meet, and skills you learn over the course of your adventure. These are placed in a 3×3 grid with your character card in the center (limiting you to 9 active cards). Most of them have boxes where challenge dice can be placed in order to cancel their effects. Some can hold any die, but most are conditional to a particular die result or type of action being rolled for.
We’re All in This Together
In addition to mitigating your own dice results, many cards have the ability to mitigate challenge dice rolled by the other players, which is one of the crucial game elements that stops games of Vantage from being a bunch of people playing solitaire at the same table. All players have a vested interest in paying attention to what each player is doing on their turn, and while each player is on their own separate journey, the group achieves victory together, so you want everyone to succeed at what they are doing.
The other way the game keeps all the players involved is in what happens when an action is resolved. When a player attempts an action, another player looks up the card number in a booklet that corresponds to the action type. First they read (aloud) a brief sentence describing the challenge and how many dice are to be rolled. After the roll has been resolved, they read the rest of the entry, which describes what happens as a result of the action. Again, there is no failure in Vantage, so the result always happens, regardless of how the challenge dice fall. These results depend entirely on what action was being performed and where, and can range from moving to a new location to discovering an item or character who may or may not join you on your travels.
What Are We Doing Here, Anyway?
It’s important to note that other than the challenge dice rolls, there’s very little in Vantage that happens randomly. The cards are never shuffled, and nothing is procedurally generated. Even the starting locations for each player are only semi-random, rolled from a list for each character that presumably places them somewhere that won’t be too difficult for their particular set of skills.
Each game starts with a randomly chosen mission, but it should be made very clear that this is only a suggestion for more goal-oriented players. Ostensibly the game is won by accomplishing the mission, or by fulfilling the requirements on one of a number of destiny cards that can be discovered over the course of the game, but really these elements are there to provide an open-ended time limit for than anything else. The rules of Vantage are very clear that “you may define success through anything you pursue and achieve.”
When I play adventure board games like Talisman, or even tableau-builders like Race for the Galaxy, I often find that the ending actually gets in the way of my enjoyment of the game. Just as my hero has the right balance of followers and equipment, just as my galactic civilization has all its industrial machinery firmly in place…the game is over.
In Vantage, the game is over when the players want it to be over, with a few caveats. The game ends in victory if a mission or destiny is fulfilled. As soon as one player has filled up their 3×3 tableau of acquired cards, a default destiny card is put into play, which gives players the option to have their characters be rescued after a few more turns. Or, when a player gets down to zero time, morale, or health, the group is instructed to read an entry in one of the booklets that will give them a choice whether to continue the game or not.
It’s a fairly clever way to give the players agency as far as when to end the game: they can finish up whatever storyline or mission they’ve been working through, or if they feel like the ending was too abrupt (usually when a player unexpectedly runs out of time, morale, or health), they can get an extension and keep playing. But it’s also pretty vague, which more goal-oriented players might find a little annoying.
Don’t Call it a Campaign Game
The marketing for Vantage (and even the first page of the rule book) is adamant that it is not a campaign game. Each game is meant to be a standalone experience, with no progress saved and no final battle or other decisive conclusion after playing multiple times. With 800 locations and multiple possible actions on each one there is a lot to see and explore, but since nothing is randomly generated you will occasionally run into a quest or storyline you’ve seen before. However, you can always try a different set of actions, approach the quest in a new way, or just avoid it and move on to something else.
Final Thoughts
There are a few little gripes I have with the game. The biggest is that the vast majority of the artwork and text on the locations is presented as though you were facing north, which can lead to occasional confusion: in one game I moved south by climbing over a mountain, but the new location had me facing the mountain I had just climbed over, and the available actions were pitched as though I was approaching the mountain for the first time.
More generally, navigating through the locations can be difficult, especially if you’re trying to get to a particular location (to fulfill a quest, for example). A card will say “go to the northwest,” but not tell you how far or how you’ll know when you’ve arrived at the correct location. The game is definitely at its most enjoyable when you’re simply meandering through the locations without a clear objective in mind, but again, this might be a problem for players who want there to be a clear objective.
None of the things you’ll encounter in Vantage are truly random: they’re all based on moving through specific locations that are always connected in the same way, with A always leading to B, and so on. I think this will mitigate one of the main problems with games that depend on discovery and surprises: replayability. After repeated plays you’re at least somewhat likely to encounter things you’ve seen before, but with experience you may get a different and possibly better outcome from the encounter.
At the end of the day, Vantage provides an excellent game framework for exploring an unfamiliar environment in a natural, organic way, without the “cheat” of an overhead view from a map or game board. The world it describes is rich and immersive, with interesting characters to meet, and things to do. But if you are the type of gamer who needs a decisive way to win the game, then this one may not be for you. This is definitely a game about the journey, where the destination barely matters at all.
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