Into the Storm

I can get closer to the eye than you any day.

— A deck cadett to another

History

The game came to be after Raleia ventured out on the Stormsea and came back.

The intent was to deliver the story in an interactive way while informing captains about how dangerous the Stormsea can get as well as to teach about risk management when getting close to a maelstrom.

During the Golden Age the game spread across the border to Venira and has since become a common game in all known regions.

Execution

The goal of the game is to create as many scientific discoveries as possible while preventing the loss of the ship.

The players start at the edges of the storm and must move closer to the centre, called the eye of the storm, in order to gather scientific discoveries while going around the storm. The closer the ship is to the eye, the faster it gathers discoveries, but with increased risk.

The risk comes by the fact that the ship gets harder to control and that going into the eye or colliding with another ship is an automatic loss of the ship(s) and the end of the game for the player(s) controlling the ship(s).

In order to secure the discoveries one must get the ship out of the storm. In order to represent limited supplies the game ends after a certain amount of time as set by the players beforehand. If a ship is still in the storm at the end of the time it counts as destroyed.

Variations

As with any game there are a lot of variations, many of which exist to make the game feel more realistic or more fun. A list of common variations:

• The inclusion of crew members, the loss of which counts negatively towards discoveries.
• Ships with different properties, like different speeds or time before running out of supplies.
• Random events, like lightning, sea monster, etc.

Components and tools

The game consists of:

• Game board: The game board has a circle in the centre, from which eight spirals emanate. Each spiral arm has a symmetrical number of points on it (generally around 12).
• Ship tokens: One ship token per player.
• Dice: Six sided.
• Science tokens: Tokens which represent scientific discoveries. Can be replaced by writing the amount down instead.

Variations can change the content.

Participants

There can be up to eight players. Each one tries to achieve the same goals while following the same rules.

Primary Related Location

Stormsea