Quick Look: Quest Calendar: The Dragon Staff of Maladoria (2020)
Designer: Thomas A Bedran
Artists: N/A
Publisher: Sundial Games LLC
Year Published: 2020
No. of Players: 1
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 1-3 minutes*
* Role play 6 days a week without a GM! Weekends are combined.
Find more info on BoardGameGeek.com
From the Publisher:
An rpg built into a desktop calendar. Choose one of 6 heroes. Go on a campaign that lasts throughout the year with a single event happening each day. Chose how you want to take on the daily challenge. Roll classic rpg dice (7 polyhedral dice) and add your hero’s abilities to fight the monster, open the chest, get past guards, etc.
—description from the designer
In Maladoria’s capital city of West Haven, the court wizard and his apprentice have gone missing. A new adventurer seeks them out and discovers a mysterious slime that has spread across the city. It corrupts everything it touches and mutated rats in the city’s sewers. The church has shut down due to missing clergymen. Is this slime connected to the church? Is it somehow connected to the missing wizard?
Become the hero. Choose your character and go on quests, find treasure, and battle monsters across Maladoria. Can you find the missing wizard, uncover the plot behind this mysterious slime, and find ancient objects to help stop an evil plot to conquer Maladoria? Enjoy as the story unfolds in this adventure-a-day desktop calendar.
Review:
It was a dark and stormy night in the city of Karanot when I encountered the shifty-eyed White Wizard Shaman/Bugbear, Jorgul, in a sparsely lit alley behind the Kobold’s Buttocks tavern. Needless to say, the smells from this narrow, walled corridor lived up to the namesake of the establishment (as did Jorgul).
Normally, I never would have consorted with such filth, but a dearth of contracts for adventurers in the city had left me bereft of opportunities for fame, fortune and bounty hunting lately, so at this juncture, I had little choice but to accept the limited options that presented themself.
“Do you have them?” I asked.
The White Wizard/Shaman drew back his cowl and cackled, “Of course, they are right here. Your keys to adventure, as promised…”
He drew a pair of ruby embossed gauntlets and a rolled set of parchment. “Quick, take these papers”. He handed me what appeared to be a calendar, as expressed by the title “2021: The Dragon Staff of Maladoria, an Adventure-a-day calendar”, and he further instructed me to don the gauntlets. “Now, click your gauntlets together and repeat after me : ‘There’s no place like Gnome”’
“What kind of foolery is this?” I cried.
I nevertheless did as he asked, and no sooner had I done so than I was enveloped by a green light and saw the world around me swirl into a cacophony of blurred realities. I felt my skin tingle and I recoiled in horror as I felt my strength and dexterity horrifyingly transformed into wisdom and intelligence, and the smooth , metallic touch of the armor that I had come to accept as my second skin was replaced with the disgustingly warm and tingly sensation of wool stretched across my skin as I was draped into dank, itchy robes.
…and then came the pointy hat….
“Noooooooooo!!!!”
And I was whisked away to a time and place 3 months in the past, at the start of the year 2021, and alas, the great and noble Jazz Paladin was forced to self-identify as a lowly and weak wizard by the name of Godwin the Great.
“By the gods, what has happened to me?!”, I exclaimed. I felt weak, and frail, and yet at the same time felt something I had never felt in all of my years of adventuring. My head was swimming with greater cosmic knowledge of the universe and, what was this? Arcane magic?
The next week threw me into a series of unfortunate events which only got worse, but nevertheless, each day presented me with choices to make. As Godwin the wizard, some sort of urgent message lured me away from my studies and into several confrontations until roughly a week later, when another out-of-body experience gave me the option to choose from several other adventuring classes, from rogue to fighter to bard. I, of course, longed to reunite with my holy smite ability, and was able to resume new adventures as a Paladin once again, though still with a face that was not my own.
So it continued for another 3-4 months until I arrived back at present day again, coming across another pair of ruby gauntlets, tapping them together, and enchanting “There’s no place like Gnome” again.
I felt betrayed ; on the one hand, Jorgul the Bugbear Wizard/Shaman had promised an adventure a day, and in this he did not deceive. But he had not informed me that I would be stripped of my identity!
For a while I pondered hunting the cursed being down to the ends of the earth, but after doing some preliminary reconnaissance, it seemed my task of finding him would prove fruitless, for in my absence, Jorgul had adopted a plethora of other of identities (now Morgul the Wise wizard lizard or some other silly such moniker), and I thought it best to abandon my search given the absurdity of hunting down a being who was constantly under a new guise, seemingly every day.
But the 2021 Adventure Calendar remained in my possession.
Now what did I think of it?
It is a very fun diversion that truly takes one away from oneself. Although the version in my narrative was a set of “papers”, in reality I received a digital edition , and while I must say that it conveys a sense of time quite well, this type of product is much better suited towards a physical media, as in digital form I do have a tendency to forget what is not directly in front of me when going about my days’ business.
So for those backing the 2022 Quest Calendar 📅 An Adventure-a-Day RPG
that is currently on Kickstarter, I do highly encourage you to get a hard copy of this!
And by saying “encourage”, I do mean to say that if you like DnD and RPG’s, you should get this calendar. It presents a fun role playing activity and continuing story for every day, presenting choices to explore, do combat, level up and more.
And it can be challenging to survive! You WILL take damage and *gasp* occasionally die, though perishing still enables you to continue your adventure with penalty, some of which are quite debilitating…Permanent stat loss and forfeiture of acquired items can be the price you pay for failure!
It’s important to keep in mind that an adventure a day is meant to be a quick fun jaunt. If you’re looking for a full RPG experience I would turn to the meatier RPG games.
And the sense of continuity, progression and thematic immersion is enough that it can be very tempting to attempt to “time travel” and read future days and stories from the calendar. I am finding that I have to exercise great restraint in not looking ahead to tomorrow when completing my daily Adventure Calendar activity!
While I myself underwent great peril to deliver news of the 2021 adventure calendar, it pleases me to inform you that a new and improved 2022 version is available at significantly less risk of death, for those interested, via a Kickstarter campaign. This new edition promises to give new options, treasures, risks and rewards, and perhaps best of all, the ability to play as a Paladin once again (among other classes, but who would dare chose one of those, anyways?)
Highly original and commendable product!
Jazz Paladin- Reviewer
Jazz Paladin is an eccentric at heart — When he is not learning to make exotic new foods at home, such as Queso Fresco cheese and Oaxacan molé, he is busy collecting vintage saxophones, harps, and other music-related paraphernalia. An avid music enthusiast, when he is not pining over the latest board games that are yet-to-be-released, his is probably hard at work making jazzy renditions of classic/retro video game music tunes as Jazz Paladin on Spotify and other digital music services.
See Jazz Paladin’s reviews HERE.
