Hob’s Hobbies hosts playtest for role playing card game

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Hob’s Hobbies was host to a playtesting session for Deck of Many Dungeons on July 22 as a way to gauge the game’s readiness to be submitted to potential publishers. 

Game designer Laura Smart said Deck of Many Dungeons has been a passion project of hers for nearly a decade, and she is excited to see it so close to completion. 

“Deck of Many Dungeons is a fantasy role playing game similar to Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder … but it is entirely on cards, so it is a lot faster to create characters because you do not need to write everything down,” she said. “I have gone through a lot of different versions of it. I was playing with my friends and then I would go home and I would have to spend months making changes to it because there was so much that needed to happen.”

Smart explained Deck of Many Dungeons is designed to fill a void in the fantasy role playing game (RPG) genre for which she feels there is no game that simplifies many of the core concepts and mechanics common among similar games. 

Creating the game and refining how it works, she added, has ultimately been an intensive labour of love, as it has yet to be reviewed for publication.

“I’ve been making games since I was young, but I’ve never really published anything. I make video games, I make card games, everything. This is, this is the one that’s gone the furthest for sure. This is the closest to publishing I’ve ever been, and I’m planning on pushing through until it happens,” she said. “I have not talked to publishers yet. That is the reason we are doing this here today, is because I have gotten the game to a point where I do not expect to make any changes to the actual game or the way it runs.”

Smart said a critical step to creating a game is for a person who has never heard of it before to be able to pick up the box, read the rules, and understand them well enough to play.

Ultimately, if a potential publisher is unable to understand the game, they will not want to publish it under their brand. 

Smart also intends to speak with comic creators in her hometown of Regina regarding further playtesting events prior to the official release of the game. 

“I don’t want this effort to go to waste. I want to see other people get to play this thing that I’ve created. I want to see other people have fun with it,” she said. “I feel like a game like this does not exist yet in this format … I have played so many different kinds and I love so many from the rules-heavy to the narrative-heavy, but I have never seen another quite like this with everything being based on cards.”

More information regarding Deck of Many Dungeons can be found online (www.deckofmanydungeons.com).