Sword & Sorcery: Arcane Portal

After the core box and a fair few other dungeon crawlers, I still think Sword & Sorcery is comfortably the best GM-less one I have played. Arcane Portal trades goblins for spiders and other venomous insects, and this second campaign is every bit as good as the first. It may be better; a few things have clearly been tightened up.

With no GM, the group has to hold the adventure together as it pushes through the dungeon and deals with whatever the campaign sends its way. The enemies are not just a change of wallpaper. Spiders and insects give the whole thing that properly unpleasant sense that something poisonous is about to land on you.

The player interaction is cooperation under pressure: you coordinate, settle on a plan, and try not to let the pace collapse. There is no GM here to rescue the table when the rulebook comes out. Teaching it is still a little awkward, especially to non-gamers, and without an experienced player to steer proceedings, rules look-ups and downtime can become tiring. Someone needs to hold the lantern. Who has it?

The story and supporting text are fairly vanilla beside other games in the genre, but I do not come here for an audiobook. I come for tension, action, and death, and Sword & Sorcery: Arcane Portal delivers all three in abundance.