Earthborne Rangers

When I first heard about Earthborne Rangers, I was very intrigued by the cover and art from their crowdfunding campaign. It was on my short list of games to back and somehow it just didn't make the cut. I think it was my own mistake of just not looking more at what they were offering otherwise I would have likely backed that first call to action. Heck, I even remember signing up for the email and newsletter before the campaign even launched as it intrigued me. Needless to say, when the game finally reached people's hands, all the rave reviews for it validated the intense FOMO - I felt so dumb missing out on what would have been a game I knew I would have enjoyed.

There's been many games out there that have tried to capture the essence of an open world game within a board game, each with varying degrees of success:

• Sleeping Gods
• 7th Continent
• Lands of Galzyr
• ISS Vanguard

Just to name a few that I own and have played. I think its probably the holy grail for a designer to pull it off in board game form. It's easy to make video games feel infinite when you can just create procedural worlds, just look at Minecraft and No Man's Sky, but its way harder to do that in board game form while retaining cohesion and semblance of a world. It's clear that Earthborne Rangers was able to pull it off: a world littered with various locations to visit, and its up to you how you want to explore it.

At Dragonflight GameCon 2024, I saw it was in the game library, so I checked it out and gave the prologue a whirl. Even from that little introductory experience, I knew this something I should have in my library. So when the expansion and reprint campaign launched, it was an easy decision to back it day one. Production took quite a while, over a year and a half, but it finally arrived and I immediately unpacked and started playing.

Mini Reactive Ecosystems

One of the most impressive things it manages to do is having an array of themed environments, Woods and Lakeshore areas for example. Each of these have cards that interact with each other, either in specific or generic ways. Some examples of this: Flora that gain damage from any Prey within the vicinity, or two Stika Bucks fighting each other for dominance, Predators that initially come in exhausted if there's already a Predator around, and more. What's important here is that all of these interactions make so much thematic sense. Sure, mechanically its just Card A has a triggered effect that interacts with Card B... but the theme and flavor carry it so well that I think it's disingenuous to distill it so reductively.

And because they're sorted by locales, you as a player start to learn what to expect if you take a certain path to get to your location. Navigating your route brings the history of experience and understanding as you trek around The Valley.

Blind Deckbuilding

One issue with the game actually occurs as part of the prologue, and that's building your ranger deck. The idea and feeling behind choosing cards that fit your Ranger's character is great as a concept and creates attachment to the kind of person you want to play. However, it could cause issues down the line from a play-ability and mechanical means if you don't build your deck well. I only found this out through the review by No Pun Included and thankfully the developers have published prebuilt decks, but I still feel like players can still trip up and struggle depending on the decks they have. For instance, in my first solo campaign I chose to play as the Masterful Engineer based on the description:

This character is an artificer. They specialize in high-tech gear that enhances their abilities. You will be equipping yourself and “building an engine” to enhance your play as this character.

Which sounds up my alley: I like engine and tableau building games, this seems like it'd be the kind of playstyle that I want. And while, yes, overall, it is enjoyable to operate, I am at the complete mercy of luck of the draw for both the path and challenge decks. In some ways I feel like I picked the hardest option for my personal ranger deck. I'll still be going to complete my campaign with this Ranger, but. in subsequent plays I built out my deck with more thought and care.

And that's really the problem with the initial deckbuilding experience, you're going in completely blind not knowing what is or isn't useful, what tools you should bring, what abilities you should ensure you have before embarking on a campaign. And I think its a mistake to not allow players to switch out and experiment mid-campaign, I get why since there's cards that let you do the swapping if you interact with them but they're far out of the way to discover and interact with.

Emergent Storytelling

One of the biggest strongsuit of this game is the way it manages to create memorable moments and stories out of your experiences. You're going to have these moments of racing through The Valley in order to succeed in your goal before, avoiding being forced to end the day. There will be tales of avoiding and dealing with crowds of predators, of the ridiculous feats you had to do to overcome obstacles and adversaries.

All this comes from just interacting with the game and its systems, not due to a perscribed storyline or fixed narrative. This is what I think makes Earthborne Rangers an achievement of an open world game. Contrast to say Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread, sure its an open world but each quest node or location is a specifically curated gameplay and narrative experience. Earthborne Rangers aims for something that breathes as you explore.

I think its very apt that the game's prologue is intended to be telling the story of yourself, discovery of yourself and how you want to see yourself in this world. That the in-game lore reinforces story telling as a means of keeping history and culture for people. Even the expansion, Legacy of the Ancestors, has a background called Talespinner, further cementing how integral storytelling is both to the world and its people. It both exists in game and persist outside for the players that recount their own stories to others.

I am a little over halfway through the Lure of the Valley campaign, and this is one I know I will complete at some point this year. It's been an exciting journey and I also look forward to diving in again for the Legacy of the Ancestors campaign. Earthborne Rangers is a wonder to explore, one I'm happy to wander through.