Four Against Ragnarok - the first run through

Andrew, Joel and Jim were kind enough to help me give Four Against Ragnarok (4AR) a run through for the first time. 4AR is a sister game (more like a half-sister, or a cousin) of my Four Against the Titans, and will sit as a stand-alone game in Ganesha Games' Four Against Darkness series.  

As can probably be guessed from the title, 4AR is a Norse-themed mythological adventure, where the player/s take on the roll of four characters (at a time) trying to make a name for themselves in a North Atlantic world filled with ill-begotten monsters and legendary creatures. The party moves around a map, exploring regions and completing quests.

However, the ultimate aim is to have your characters become famous and powerful, and then die in glorious battle. The key is to die famous in the hope that the character will be taken to Valhalla. Once you have four dead heroes feasting Valhalla, the end game begins and the party of four heroically dead characters then set off to help the gods during Ragnarok.

The first game ended with a total party kill, quite ingloriously, in the party's second engagement. Game two ran better. Over a couple of hours we managed to get our Dvergr up to level 4, the Skald and the Bastard both up to level 3. Our Aelf was lured away by a Selkie off the coast of Alba, the Wyrd drowned on the sea crossing to Danmark, while the final character to join the party was a Warrior who sat around and didn't really do much at all. So far it seems to work very fluidly with only the odd tweak required for game balance.