At the start of this year, Steamforged Games announced they would be making board games based on Jagex's fantasy MMORPG, Runescape. This would include both a TTRPG running on a 5e OGL that would be coming to retail stores, and an official board game that would be coming to the crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter. Now, the developer has released additional details about the latter project, now titled Runescape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg.
In an official press release, Steamforged Games went into further detail. Runescape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg is a cooperative board game for one to five players. Set in Runescape's fantasy world of Gielinor, the game's board will encompass the kingdoms of Misthalin and Asgarnia, packed with activities and quests for players to complete. These will include iconic boss fights from these locations, with the final challenge being the titular green dragon, Elvarg.
In keeping with the video game source material, no one player is locked into any sort of class in Runescape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg. You choose what skills to invest in, what gear you wish to craft, and even how you spend your time. Do you go for side activities or do you go straight to critical path? The choice is yours. Given the world of Gielinor is a fantasy world packed with irreverent elements like penguins bent of world domination, teleporting sandwich ladies, and food-based evil wizards, it can be tempting to see what's around every corner.
When it came to how accessible Runescape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg would be to new players, Steamforged Games' Creative Director Mat Hart stated the following:
It’s incredibly important to us for the board game to appeal to RuneScape fans of all kinds. For that reason, the board game is heavily inspired by content and references from both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, that’ll be familiar to all players past and present.
We also created the board game as a way for brand new fans to enjoy the rich world of Gielinor, even if they’ve never experienced the video games. Board gamers should expect a classic and fun fantasy game that features rich narrative quests, light-hearted distractions, sandbox exploration at the macro level, face-to-face boss encounters, and classless character progression.
The press release for Runescape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg even included a sneak peek at the miniatures being made for the game. These miniatures are being made internally by the Steamforged team, the same ones behind the Dark Souls board game, they stated that they wanted to blend the aesthetics of both modern Runescape and Old School Runescape while putting their own spin on it. They showed off three of them: a knight in full armor wielding a kite shield and scimitar, a wizard wielding a staff of air, and the big bad dragon himself Elvarg.
The Kickstarter campaign for Runescape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg has not gone live yet. However, you may sign up for a newsletter with updates right here.
