Quick Look: Rucksack Preview
Publisher: Self published
Year Published: 2019
No. of Players: Up to 20
Ages: 12+
Playing Time: Not Listed
more info on BoardGameGeek.com
Review
giant spider’s web and I need to get free before the spider comes and considers
me dinner. I look in my bag to find I have 5 things—so here’s what I did…
placed in a scenario with five items. It is your task to create a plan the rest
of the players will vote as being the best. But, they get to tell their plans
also. And, they have different items in their Rucksack.
 |
| Some Scenarios. |
Rucksack is designed to get your creative juices
flowing, and the storyteller has a captive audience. After hearing the plans,
the group votes on which one was the best.
role-playing games to see what they would come up with in this game of creative
planning designs. Some of those plans were quite outrageous and everyone
enjoyed what came out of the challenges.
 |
| More Scenarios. |
Rucksack is a great game for anyone interested in creating
plans that you usually only see coming out of some of the wonderful novels and
short stories out there. I think it works best for a group of 4–6 players, but
you have to have a least 3 to declare a winner of a round. This gave a lot a
variety, and moved things along at a pace that you could work on your plan
along and remembering what the other players came up with.
Scenario deck we used contained 50 cards. Some of the scenarios are duplicated,
but we didn’t run into any duplicates while we were playing.
item cards in the Rucksack deck totaled 100. There are items that are very
useful for the scenario.
 |
| Some Items. |
Setup
who the starting player (head player) is. They draw a Scenario card, read it
out loud and place it where everyone knows what it is. The scenarios vary
widely. Some are of survival, others are exploration, and some started us out
with, “How did I get here?”
to start building your plan.
Gameplay
player draws items out of their Rucksack. The head player draws a card from the
Items. They decide if they want to keep it, or keep the next card. It’s one or
the other and you have to decide without knowing what the next one is. Once
they make their decision they place the card face down in front of them and the
next player is up.
 |
| More items used. |
Drawing
cards continues in the same fashion. The only difference comes in when a
discard pile has been started; for the rest of the phase of drawing cards the
top card on the discard pile is also in play. A player has the option to first
gather in the top card of the discard pile or draw.
drawing till everyone has 5 cards.
head player turns over their items and describes their plan how all five items
are used in the scenario. Go around until all plans are presented and then vote
on which one is the best.
winner of the best plan wins a point. The Item cards are gathered and shuffled
up. The next player is now the Head Player and a new round begins.
 |
| Some items that had to be used. |
The
first player to score 3 points wins.
Theme
and Mechanics
building and voting on the plan you like best. This did lead to some attempted
bribery and favoritism, but it was all in good fun.
Artwork
and Components
art; this is about the telling of the plan, not about looking at the cards. I like
the fact that the art was minimalistic. It allowed players to focus in on the plans
instead of the artwork on the cards.
The
Good
- The
range of the number of players - You
can also vary the number of items
Final
Thoughts
provided a good jumping off point for the creative personalities involved. Our
group of writers jumped in from the beginning and enjoyed the evening of
gameplay, gamesmanship, and creative one-upmanship.
Players
Who Like
- Storytelling
- Voting
for the best
Daniel Yocom – Reviewer
Daniel Yocom does geeky things by night because his day job won’t let him. This dates back to the 1960s through games, books, movies, and stranger things better shared in small groups. He’s written hundreds of articles about these topics for his own blog, other websites, and magazines along with stories, after extensive research. His research includes attending conventions, sharing on panels and presentations, and road-tripping with his wife. Join in the geeky fun at guildmastergaming@blogspot.com.
See Daniel’s reviews HERE.
