This month’s Moon Challenge was to play 3 games where you had to roll dice. My plan was to play Against the Wind, Ironsworn, and Legend of the Five Rings, 5e. But I ended up spending almost all of the month playing Against the Wind which does use dice so I wrote up a review of the game for my Moon Challenge reflection.

Introduction

The Shiverpeak Pass isn’t anything to balk at and crossing it takes some time to recover, even when are prepared for the trek. The Elder Council had ordered him to cross it to show his resilience. Solanor suspected they were also testing his loyalty. It wasn’t until he had gotten their notice at the Festival of Masks that they even paid attention to him. He had practiced his performance for weeks and it had paid off when he had won the acclaim and admiration of nearly everyone.

Something, while he was there, changed him. He felt the mountains inside of himself. Old and slow, he felt their cold embrace and their slowly changing nature. Now that he was successful they had given him Morthel’s Bane, a sword which was crafted from the shards of the Meteorite Crater. They also promised him much more wealth and power if only he would retrieve The Ebon Concordance.

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Early in playing Against the Wind you develop the “Starting Situation” of your character. This situation is based on your stats and provides you a nice pile of random sentences. You then put them together in your “Starting Situation.” Above is the starting situation for my character, Solanor.

Against the Wind by Cezar Capacle published at the beginning of 2024 allows you to play solo or with friends, no GM is needed. You start by procedurally creating your world and then your character who will explore that world. The game is table heavy with over 60 tables through out to create and play with. I will talk about this more later, but the tables are great.

The default setting is a land of wind and cold, with a sprinkle of fairy tale. Your character is a nomad exploring the lands in this narrative-driven game. There is a single resolution mechanic for any “action with potential for interesting outcomes.” It relies on your rolling a 2d6 and getting over a 10. There are a couple things you can do to increase your chances but they cost resources in the form of your stats.

I picked this game up as part of the solo RPG “book club.” I was super excited to play the game and played through four sessions (about 4-8 hours total), at which point I switched my character and the world over to the Ironsworn system. Essentially, I really enjoyed the way creation of the world and character working in Against the Wind. I loved the cold theme and the fairy tale splash. As I’ve already mentioned, the tables are amazing, but the single action just never really clicked for me. I’m not sure why but I ended up feeling like I was just writing a story and not really playing a game. Of course, a narrative over mechanic game is what some people are looking for.   

Gameplay Summary

World and Character Creation

The game starts with a nifty little procedure for creating your world. By using a 6×6 grid and a some 2d6 dice rolls you end with a quick to create new land for your character to explore. This is a simple system which I’ll probably take and use in other games. There is a table to help you name it and then a ton of tables to help you determine the themes and features of the land. You can use all or none of them, as you see fit.

Character creation is also fairly simple. Your character is made of Resources and Traits. You roll for your starting resources which are things like Vigor, Resolve, Essence, and more. These Resources change as the game goes on, so don’t worry if they are low to begin. They also help determine your starting situation. Again, there are a number of tables to help with character creation from name to background and role. Your traits can be generated from a few pages of tables and range from Voice and Eyes to Animal Feature and Magical Feature. Like Resources these Traits can be lost or gained as the game moves forward, but while Resources have a more mechanical side Traits are more narrative facing.

Mechanics

There are two basic mechanics to the game, Action and Exploration. There is more to each then what I’m going to cover here but I’ll give you a rough view of them. Action is who you determine failure or success. You roll a 2d6 and on a roll of a 10 or higher you Hit. Less than that is either a Miss or you can make an Effort, which allows you to use Resources to increase your roll.

Exploration is the procedure you follow to determine what Event your character will face while on the road. It will either be an Encounter, Feature, or Hazard. As always there are a number of tables to help you determine the situation and the context around it.

Tables

Have I mentioned the tables? There are almost 200 in the book and there is a very handy Table Index in the back of the book. Some are small with only three options on them but most work on a 2d6 system. The tables alone are enough to pick this book up.

Pros and Cons

Pros.

In addition, the clever world building procedure, the quick character creation, and the amount of tables to be found throughout, I would add the artwork as a pro. It is all from Kay Nielsen and is in the public domain. It fits very well with themes of the game and just looks very cool for public domain art.

I know I’ve mentioned it a number of times but I can’t stress enough the great tables throughout this book. I’ve already started to cannibalize them into my Onenote Notebook for Oracles, Emulators, Tables, and Tools. I’m sure that I will be going back to them often.

Cons.

As mentioned already, the Action was a little too simple for me. I would have liked something that clicked a little better for me. Maybe I never really gave it a chance and that would be a fair critique of my review. The other issue was the Exploration. It really felt (again in my limited playing) that the game was taking you through one Event to the next and that you had to create the connections as you went. I’m more of a have a quest or mission type of person.

Who It’s For

People who like games driven by tables. People who like moving from one random event to the next and determining the connections after the fact. I would also add that if you are someone who likes games which highlight narrative over the mechanics, this game is very much that.

Closing Thoughts

Ultimately, I liked Against the Wind. There is a lot of great things about the game and for the right person I think it would be a ton of fun. And as I’ve mentioned, I will be using various elements for a long while moving forward. I also really like the character that I created, the world he is in, and the generally feeling for the setting, so I will continue to play with in but using Ironsworn moving forward.

Have you played Against the Wind? If so, let me know what you think.