I've been speaking to accomplished illustrator and game designer Owen Davey this week about his upcoming board game Fame & Fable. Kickstarting right now, the game was fully funded in less than 10 minutes, and has already reached more than 20 times its goal. This is a man whose clients include National Geographic, WWF, and Disney to name a few, but Fame & Fable has been his first dive into the world of the best board games.
Fame & Fable was actually inspired by Davey's post-lockdown foray into one of the best tabletop RPGs around, D&D. In the video on the Fame & Fable Kickstarter page, he notes how amazing it felt after lockdown just "being in a room with people and playing board games." After a long stretch of Covid-19 keeping everyone isolated from one another, it's clear taking on the role of Dungeon Master for an in-person session was a significant moment for Davey.
Here be dragons!
"I created a plethora of homebrew characters, monsters, and artefacts to help immerse them in the story and the world," he says. "When a friend took his turn leading the campaign, I wanted to find a new home for the artwork, and I thought it would be fun to marry my love of fantasy and nerd culture with my love of board games - Fame and Fable is the result."
As any avid Dungeons & Dragons player will know, getting people together for a session can be all but impossible, especially as you get older and your responsibilities multiply. As Davey puts it, "I love playing D&D, but it's a big commitment to play regularly - sometimes it's fun to get into the thick of that playing experience with a quick one-shot and worry less about character progression and shopping for parchment."
It's this need for a quick dive into fantasy combat that fed much of the design principles around his own game. "I wanted Fame and Fable to focus on the combat aspect as that's where I have the most fun - seeing what I'm able to do and figuring out the best way to bring down a monster."
A host of magical inspirations
This is something serious Magic: The Gathering players will enjoy about Fame & Fable: that ability to get stuck in quickly. Davey says the same crowd in playtesting often had heaps of fun "figuring out the best card combos and how to plan their moves efficiently." The game actually contains moves inspired by MTG, too. "Exhausting and discarding cards is common in games like Magic: The Gathering and [Disney] Lorcana." says Davey. But of course, D&D and MTG weren't his only references throughout the design process.
"There are inspirations from all sorts of board games in Fame and Fable," he says. The "market of cards can be found [in] games like Wingspan, the catch-up mechanic is inspired by the rat-tails of Quacks of Quedlinburg, card costs are reminiscent of Dominion (except you use actions instead of coins) - all these board games I play filter a little into the games I'm designing."
And of course, there's always more to any board game than other board game inspirations, as Davey tells me. "Fantasy stories have always been important to me. I loved the Redwall series by Brain Jacques and have recently delved back into them. I still think Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of the best games ever made. And I have watched Lord of the Rings countless times. These are just some of the inspirations for Fame and Fable, but I've drawn on mythology and folktales, wider fantasy ideas and a lot of ideas I had just milling around in my brain. Fame and Fable should feel vaguely familiar yet unique."
Rounding the hill
When asked more about the process of creating his first board game, Davey notes that "designing a board game is a strange experience [...] Something that makes sense in my brain doesn't necessarily translate in the real world. And I think one of the key realizations I had was that just because a mechanic works, doesn't mean it's fun. The learning curve has been huge, but I've loved it and it has improved Fame & Fable immeasurably."
You can still back Fame & Fable right now on Kickstarter, if all these lovely fantasy inspirations are the kind of thing that speak to you in a combat board game with, frankly, incredible illustrations.
Now that's done with, I'm off to get a tatto of one of the Fame & Fable Legends on my ankle.
For more recommendations, why not check out the best D&D books, or perhaps some lesser known solo RPGs.
