Destinies

Destinies would never normally have crossed the threshold of my vault. The 15mm miniatures, in a Joan of Arc sort of style, do nothing for me beyond keeping the game’s table footprint small, and a mandatory companion app is exactly the kind of dependency that usually makes me pass on a game. I skipped it on Kickstarter without a second thought. During the pandemic, though, I spotted it on a shop shelf, checked that it seemed to work best with two and looked at the price, and that was how the familiar “ka-ching” happened at the checkout.

The game includes five scenarios: one standalone and four linked into a campaign. It supports 1-3 players, but in practice I see it mostly as a two-player game. Everyone chooses a character from its fairly large available cast and moves through a sandbox world reminiscent of a simple old CRPG, trying to fulfil their destiny before their opponent does. Each round, you choose where to go, the app presents some options, you roll dice, enter your successes into the app, and continue exploring.

What stayed with me most is the dice-and-successes system: it is quick, easy, and innovative enough that I could happily imagine it as the basis for a proper RPG. The QR codes are also a very smart solution for linking the physical game to the app. The app has its issues: scenario writing is often linear and not always completely logical or fully developed, because the scripting engine clearly does not have many conditionals. On the other hand, the app can be updated and receive new material, potentially even a scenario builder.

I would not present it as a game with endless replayability. After the roughly 10-12-hour campaign, I find it hard to imagine someone returning, and the repetition in its procedures does become noticeable. But for a handful of sessions, it is a very pleasant and fresh proposition for the genre. Compared with games like Fallout, I find it much more comfortable to set up and run, without the deliberately abstract construction that Fallout needs in order to support multiple scenarios.