Board Gaming Fun - Fortune and Glory

Let me see. You want me to play a game where our heroes trot across the globe searching for treasures while all the while dodging Nazis, the Mob, and other perils on a mission to stop global domination?

Hell Yeah!

Fortune and Glory is a new game from local (Seattle area) guys Flying Frog. Themed in the age of pulp adventure, this game strays from the usual formula of heroes going through a single adventure and instead approaches the genre from a much more global (literally) perspective.

Each player controls a single hero and works with other players to bounce back and forth across the globe to take on various adventures at different locations. Each adventure is a short form arranged as a series of tests made to determine success or failure. There are some cool mechanics in the game that add an element of gambling as you are allowed to push your luck and skills to complete an adventure before it gets snatched out from under your by the game's NPC nemesis. The consequences of pushing your limits can result in you losing out on the potential glory that a completed adventure can win you.The mechanics are pretty simple utilizing stats, equipment, character traits and followers to score successes.

All the time the heroes are chasing treasures, so too are the Nazis and mobsters and these villains turn up at all the wrong places all of the time. As if that weren't bad enough, they are gallivanting around in their Zepplin base deploying willy nilly and continuously cluttering the board with more and more of their villainy, making it increasingly difficult to partake in the simple joy of dodging ancient evil, traps and denizens for the sake of...you guessed it...Fortune and Glory!

I very much enjoyed this game. It is no secret that I am a fan of the Pulp genre and this board game did not leave me hanging unless it was off the proverbial cliff. The cooperative play aspect is appealing though I understand it can be played with the added complication of a traitor. With plenty of characters to play and a never-ending variety of combinations of epithet and location (how adventures are generated) it promises to never get boring.