52 Realms Adventures: The Ayahuasca Method

A Note from the Editor: I turned former Donnybrook Writing Academy colleague Fritz Godard loose on a solo dungeoncrawler to see how a guy with a well-developed sense of fun, but no experience in playing this type of game, would respond. This is his story.

Solitaire, sudoku, a dice-based version of Catan my ex-wife stuffed in my stocking, and pocket pool are the only non-virtual games I have ever played by myself.

Before taking a look at Postmark Games’ 52 Realms: Adventures — Map 1, “Tomb of the Ever-Wandering Soul” — I assumed a “dungeon crawler” was what they called the Roomba at an S&M club. I never would have assumed it could be a solo game where all I needed was a standard deck of cards, two markers, a map, and a character sheet.

I was out of my element from the beginning of the assignment. The photo on the page to download the map and directions had cards spread across the table as if someone was trying to cheat at solitaire.

I am to negotiate a dungeon by stocking an inventory of Equipment, Items and Loot from drawn cards, and then drawing more cards to determine who I’m doing battle with and what they are doing in the battle. So many gaming questions would have been answered once I printed the instructions; instead the printed instructions sat menacingly on my desk for weeks.

I even asked myself if reading is really all that it’s cracked up to be. Maybe I should settle into the new world and let the YouTube algorithm create my personality and control my destiny. This was the size of my apprehension. Then I got the courage up to finally peek at the game, saw the five pages of horizontally printed instructions and set it down for another two weeks. The hardest part of the game was starting it.

Or maybe it was after my first few plays, when I fled to Columbia.

My First Wight

It was nearly the end of January before the guilt of disappointing Breakup Gaming Society’s 3.5 average listeners got me back to the table. The first thing I had to do was choose a character: Seer or Barbarian. I decided to go with a Seer because it was blue and the face on the card looked like something straight from Jim Henson’s nightmare-inducing ‘80s workshop. 

My first battle I fought something called a Wight. Is a Wight something known in the gaming world? It sounds vaguely intimidating, but also slightly sexy.

My first battle I fought something called a Wight. Is a Wight something known in the gaming world? It sounds vaguely intimidating, but also slightly sexy. Will I get seduced by the Wight unless I pack my ears with wax? While trying to decipher the enemy’s essence and actions, I realized that it was best not to risk trying a new endeavor on an empty stomach. So I quit to go get myself a chicken sandwich for a couple of weeks.

[Ref’s Whistle] Illegal Potion, 10 Yards, Loss of Down

Weeks later, while on some down time from my brewery shift during the Viking Bluegrass Festival in Golden, CO, I decide to play again. In honor of all the braided hair, Grateful Dead tattoos and refillable leather-crafted beer steins at the event, I decided to be a Barbarian. 

I struggled to grasp the numbers and baddies before the rooms, but once I did, I was good to go. I defeated my first Goblin, then merked a Ghoul. I drew my first curse of the game, but luckily I illegally used a health potion item to get rid of it. REMINDER: A health potion doesn’t work on curses.

I got to face my first B-level baddie: With the miracle of more inadvertent cheating, I defeated the B-level Lizard. On to the Lizard’s Lair: I drew three cards to keep two, but gain another curse.

ACES ARE BAD IN THIS GAME: So bad, that I now hate aces and if I encounter you in public and tell you “You’re aces!” it is an insult and I hope your life gets as fucked up as my game did when I drew this ace. I drew the ace of spades (Motorhead now sucks, too) and had to take a fatal wound.

Trying a Different Kind of Cheating

I try again, this time aiming to collect maximal Equipment, Items and Loot to assure my victory. Eventually I get all the way to the Boss, loaded to the teeth with all the necessary cards to defeat it. I last one round because I exhausted the deck, and therefore myself, and die. 

Even my subconscious mastery of accidental cheating cannot overcome No Cards. I’m smoked, and this is without following the clearly labeled instructions: “At the start of each round, exhaust 1 EQUIP,” a rule I would forget to follow for my next handful of plays. 

Intermission: Flee to Colombia for an Ayahuasca Refresher

I give the instructions another thorough reread and discover that my equipment stockpiling was illegal. REMINDER: You can’t go back through a door once you’ve passed through it.

Realizing I neglected to play by the rules made me doubt myself. Instead of starting another game, I let it sit for two weeks. By week three I figured I better start looking for burnt-out buildings where I could leave my dental records. The Colonel surely wouldn’t expect a review if I am burned to death in a fire, right? 

Instead of faking my own death, I pawned enough of my uncle’s coin collection to get a one-way ticket to Medellín. Why use the Get Out of Jail Free card on a fake death when I could just as easily flee the country? 

On my fourth night in Colombia a nebbishy guy with Birkenstocks and a Guinness harp tattoo sat in a VIP booth next to mine. When I heard him order a bottle in English, I invited myself to his table for a nip and to chop it up in a familiar tongue.

Please do not ask the guides anymore questions about Wights, every asshole from the U.S. wants to know about Wights.

Turns out the guy had just come from an ayahuasca retreat in the valley between the Andes and the Amazon. He told tales of visiting infinity and being shown the secret to the universe. If this ayahuasca can show the secrets of the universe, it will surely know what a Wight is and how I can win the prize at the end of Tomb of the Ever-Wandering Soul. Instead of paying my tab, I snuck out to find the retreat before any of the BJJ-trained security guards found me. 

The retreat with the most positive Google reviews was only a 40-minute bus ride from my Colombian den of sin. I sat through word circles where everyone from backpackers on a gap year to grizzled boat captains went on about the intentions and exceptions for their encounter with “the medicine,” as we were asked to call it. 

None of their trauma or insights compared to my noble pursuit to master this indie dungeoncrawler. By the time I took my second cup at the ayahuasca ceremony, I was well on my way to answers.

I saw a room full of stacks of paper, each sheet with a thousand lines on it. When I asked my spirit guide what it was, they replied, “All the ways you have played the game wrong and the countless number of outcomes if you play the game right.” 

“Ok, cool. But do I have to read all of these? I was hoping to just get some quick answers here.”

Then I saw a guitar with a plastic tube that collected all of the tears produced by the songs played on the guitar. Doesn’t much help me beat the game, though. 

Then I saw God. A giant H.R. Giger machine, a trillion years old, broadcasting consciousness to create the vastness of the universe. 

I asked God who made them. And they replied, “I made myself.” Pretty tight. 

“What is a Wight?” The question caught it off guard. If God doesn’t know what a Wight is, then that motherfucker ain’t God. I grew 10,000 feet tall and began stomping on the machine that claimed to create the universe. 

The next morning I was on a bus to the Medellín Airport before anyone could drag me to another word circle. Back stateside, I needed a few weeks to fully integrate back to a realm that hasn’t touched the infinity of pure bliss only produced by locally-sourced fake tits chased with ayahuasca. When I felt properly balanced, I returned to the game. 

The Acolyte Returns to the Dudgeon

My sixth playthrough clicked. The instructions sounded like poetry. The cards and the markers danced across the map with ease. I won the first battle in two moves, taking the baddie’s character card per the Barbarian’s skills. 

Second battle: Equally as swift, doubling a Spade attack from a ten to a twenty. I only encountered one curse before I got to the boss. I won. I beat the boss, in shock that it fell with such ease. Mother Ayah must have guided me. I look back and realize that a) my doubling attack doesn’t work on the boss and b) I forgot to exhaust an equipment card prior to each turn. Still, I sensed an honest victory in my future. 

I entered the dungeon again the next day, determined to remember all the rules and give it my best shot. I get extremely lucky with my equipment cards. In the initial draw I received a King of Hearts and Jack of Spades. As a Barbarian, the Jack of Spades let me defeat nearly all of the early baddies in two turns and — another Barbarian perk — allowed me to take the character card as a reward. I had a stacked hand of equipment and items by the time I got to the Boss. 

I was sure that I would win, even without the doubled attacks. But when I drew a Wight, my confidence in my victory wavered. Using the Deadly Riposte ability, I slightly damaged the Boss Wight on the first turn with a block, moving two down on the health bar and landing on a two-card refresh spot. After three more turns my collection of equipment was diminished and it looked like Boss Wight would be my demise again. But I used a strength potion and refreshed all of my equipment. Two more rounds and I was victorious, for real. I had won the game and defeated my self-doubt. Suck it, Boss Wight!

52 Realms: Adventures - Map 1 “Tomb of the Ever-Wandering Soul” proved I can learn a new skill and even have a little bit of success with it in time. Now that I know the world of tabletop gaming isn’t as impenetrable as I once thought, I’m looking forward to learning my next game, and maybe even getting the second map for 52 Realms: Adventures.

52 Realms Adventures: It’s Indie Dungeoncrawl Time Again

I’ve watched the fellas at Postmark Games pivot over the last few years to affordable, visually irresistible print-and-play titles and knew I was overdue to try one, especially as I seem unable to keep myself from snapping up a dungeoncrawler at least once a year. (I am actively hostile toward D&D, but love the proposition of a light scramble through a puzzle with some combat, goodies, and a distinct mechanical twist on the setting.)

52 Realms Adventures: Just gimme the loot, I don’t care what your character’s backstory is. Look at this map. Tell me you don’t want to play around on this map. This is candy.

I spent quite a bit of time with A Couple of Drakes’ Dead Belt, even more time with Grey Gnome Game’s Tin Helm, and really liked Grumpy Spider’s Pocket Book Adventures.

Now I’m ready to see how Postmark’s application of standard playing cards tastes in 52 Realms Adventures, where drawn suits and values provide the beats of a story, the stats, and inform how you manage the fortunes of the Barbarian or Seer that came with the Kickstarted files I bought a few weeks ago. The game has more dungeons and characters and is for sale now on Postmark’s website. Add to cart.

This kind of game ends up on my table a lot when I’m hypnotized by good breakbeats, have a few in me, am too faded to set up Star Wars: Outer Rim or Thunderbolt Apache Leader, but I need something more rousing and vivid than my abstract solo quick-players and tile-layers. I want to kill stuff, feel the contained danger of being killed by stuff, and the titillation of seeing what’s around in a corner, what’s in a room, what baubles are to be had.

Right now I’m hip-deep in a bunch of chewy empire- and war-themed titles from major publishers, but stay tuned here, because this thing is getting printed, played and reviewed in 2025. Stay tuned for a report and a review.