Test Run With the Radiance Adventure Engine 4

Part 4: Actual Play

This is part 4 of my test run with the Radiance Adventure Engine from Oddfish Games. Read Part 3.

Down to the Nitty Gritty

I drew a blank with the Feast detail card, so decided to ditch it a draw a new detail, which was Vampire, with the additional words thirsty, undead, pale, bloody, cursed. Now we’re talking!

Fernando summons Laura and he’s freaking out. Rufio has sent a video message from Morisa’s own phone, showing her tied to a chair in the hands of the competing cartel Los Zetas. They will not harm her if Rufio is allowed to escape the country. But Los Zetas are mad and unreliable, there’s no way Morisa is the least safe.

The storyline will be: Laura must overcome Los Zetas, a ruthless narco cartel, and find out where they are hiding Morisa.

As mentioned in part 3, when resolving paths in Radiance, you use actions. This is where your chosen RPG system steps in to resolve tasks or conflicts. The path card tells me to take an action with moderate difficulty. Radiance offers a handful of different action types to choose from. I decide this calls for an extended action, where Laura’s goal is to locate the whereabouts of Morisa.

Laura has a move called Conectada, which let her locate a specific cartel member. She’s looking for old Esteban, who is kind of an expert on Los Zetas. The roll is +Face and comes up 8, which is a weak hit. She finds Esteban terminally ill in a private hospice, drifting in an out consciousness, but at least she doesn’t owe him anything.

Esteban manages to give Laura the address of a house in Durango, but is unsure how up to date the info is. She decides to scout it out on her own, which calls for a Push Your Luck move. She sits in her Saab and watches the house, and it does seem like there are a few people coming and going, mostly with food. The roll is +Grit and I get a 10, strong hit! Laure calls Morisa’s mobile when some of the men are leaving the house, and it rings in one guy’s pocket - Morisa must be here.

This solves this extended action and thereby the first path of this story card. Time to draw another path and see what happens.

So far we’ve been through all the basics of Radiance - there are some additional rules that trigger in certain cases, but let’s take them as they come.