Skip to main content
Four Against Darkness box art

Four Against Darkness

Game ID: GID0133142
Game Info
Year
2016
Collection
Rating
Mechanic profile
Not enough video data yet
Vibe profile
Not enough video data yet
Description

Four Against Darkness is a solitaire dungeon-delving game.

No miniatures are needed. All you need is the book, a pencil, two six sided dice, and grid paper.

You choose four character types from the classic classes (warrior, wizard, rogue, halfling, dwarf, barbarian, cleric, elf), equip them, and start adventuring in dungeons created by dice rolls and by your choices. When you enter a room, you generate its content on a series of random tables. You will meet monsters, fight them, hopefully defeat them (or decide that discretion is the better part of valor!), you'll manage your resources (healing, spells, life points, equipment), grab treasure, dodge traps, find clues, and even accept quests from the monsters you meet. Your characters can level up and become better at what they do, but it will not be easy.

What the game is not:

It is NOT a miniature game. You may use miniatures to remember your characters' marching order if you wish, but that's it.

It is NOT a roleplaying game. You may run it as a simple cooperative, GM-less game if you want.

It is not a game-book or a choose-your-own-adventure book. There is no prose to read or numbered sections to go to, even if we could do something like that in a supplement.

Everybody at Ganesha is having great fun with 4AD. A couple of supplements are almost ready and will be available soon.

The PDF is 90 pages with plenty of black and white illustration, plus a color cover and a flowchart.

Description

Four Against Darkness is a solitaire dungeon-delving game.

No miniatures are needed. All you need is the book, a pencil, two six sided dice, and grid paper.

You choose four character types from the classic classes (warrior, wizard, rogue, halfling, dwarf, barbarian, cleric, elf), equip them, and start adventuring in dungeons created by dice rolls and by your choices. When you enter a room, you generate its content on a series of random tables. You will meet monsters, fight them, hopefully defeat them (or decide that discretion is the better part of valor!), you'll manage your resources (healing, spells, life points, equipment), grab treasure, dodge traps, find clues, and even accept quests from the monsters you meet. Your characters can level up and become better at what they do, but it will not be easy.

What the game is not:

It is NOT a miniature game. You may use miniatures to remember your characters' marching order if you wish, but that's it.

It is NOT a roleplaying game. You may run it as a simple cooperative, GM-less game if you want.

It is not a game-book or a choose-your-own-adventure book. There is no prose to read or numbered sections to go to, even if we could do something like that in a supplement.

Everybody at Ganesha is having great fun with 4AD. A couple of supplements are almost ready and will be available soon.

The PDF is 90 pages with plenty of black and white illustration, plus a color cover and a flowchart.

Ask a Rules Question
All mentions
Browse transcript mentions, sentiments, pros/cons, mechanics, topics, quotes, and references.
Total mentions: 2
This page: 2
Sentiment: pos 2 · mix 0 · neu 0 · neg 0
Mentions per page
Showing 1–2 of 2
Video KRDpwxm_ck8 Review at 0:26 sentiment: positive
video_pk 67466 · mention_pk 163587
Four Against Darkness video thumbnail
Click to watch at 0:26 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
  • Expanded edition is worth the 10 bucks.
  • Beautiful art.
  • Plenty of content.
  • Expanded characters.
  • New magic spells.
  • Cleaned up rules.
  • New vermin table with art.
  • Includes a couple of adventures.
  • Great for new players.
  • Adds enough for existing players to get a boost.
Cons
  • If you have the original, you kind of don't need this.
  • It would have been nice if maybe there was a sample pack that you could pay a couple bucks for instead of paying 10 bucks for the full thing.
Thematic elements
  • dungeon crawl
Comparison games
  • D100 Dungeon
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
  • Character progression — You're going to get experience for your characters as well. As you go up in levels, you're going to get stronger.
  • Dice rolling — Everything is done by dice. You're going to rely heavily on D6, D4s.
  • Modular/Expansion — It takes all everything, all the supplements and and some of the things that were put, you know, the expansions basically that the different rules and they put them all in one place.
  • Table-Based Generation — You're going to be rolling on different tables... you're going to take a D100 and you are going to roll and you're going to come up with these different rooms and you're going to connect them all.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
  • You always got to check drive through RPG, which is probably one of the greatest sites ever.
  • This is one of the best solo dungeon crawls ever made.
  • Four Against Darkness is a masterpiece and something that you need to have in your collection.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video Cw8E2u-MCqc Meeple University Discussion at 0:41 sentiment: positive
video_pk 64859 · mention_pk 158439
Meeple University - Four Against Darkness video thumbnail
Click to watch at 0:41 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
none
Cons
none
Thematic elements
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Mechanics unknown.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
  • on the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me an expansion for terraforming Mars its turmoil
  • on the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me boobs in a bowl and an expansion for terraforming Mars colonies
  • on the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me four our construction and an expansion for terraforming Mars Ellison Elysium
  • on the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me four against three dragon ante and an expansion for terraforming Mars Prelude
  • on the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me seven Wonders duel
  • on the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me eight minute Empire seven wonders do
  • on the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me four against three dragon ante and the original four promo cards with Sarah forming bars
  • on the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me eight minute and my seven wonders duel
  • on the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me eight minute and seven wonders do
  • Merry Christmas
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Transcript Navigation
Top
Showing 1–2 of 2
View on BoardGameGeek