Wandering Monster in the Windy City

My day job took me to Chicago for the Code4Lib conference. When I heard there was going to be a game night for coders in libraries, I knew what I had to do. I loaded my four friends into the carry-on and signed up for a table.

Chicago in February

After I played two games of Tsuro, there was a break in the nearby Zombie Dice game, and I found a couple of players willing to try Wandering Monster. We made an accommodation to their inexperience and the limited amount of time we had, throttling the game to a single course of six parties of adventurers. I'm calling this, along with the pre-printed map board, the Fast Food edition. I still had a full tutorial of turn actions to do but we got up to speed. The game itself took about 90 minutes and had a few classic encounters.

The game set out in Fast Food mode

There was a fine moment when the Ooze player gained a power from one of the Glowing Orb rooms. Then the "room service" roll cleared it, and he got to just sit there one more turn and soak up the power. It doesn't happen very often -- it's not supposed to -- but it sure feels good when you quickly become, for example, a massive, leaping blob with acid breath.
Right at the end both of my opponents had a chance to gang up on me. You can see my ogre above, on one side of a sealed stone portal. There was a party of adventurers on the other side facing the other way. They were positioned perfectly for me to ambush and eat them. But the ooze played a Dungeonmaster card and turned them to face me. Then the Lepus player brought out a Lockpick card and my party stepped through the portal into my space. They went from savory snack to deadly peril in a moment. Fortunately, I had been saving a Critical Fumble DM card for such a case, and I got them in the end. But it cost me the card, and just possibly, the game, as I was still on the other side of the portal from the last group, and those portals do nothing if not slow you down.
In the end, the Lepus simply positioned himself a safe distance behind the last party, moved in, and took them with his Fearsome Claws while they meticulously searched an unexplored room.

The bunny digests his winnings

To top it off, by ending his move on that Throbbing Orb space, the Lepus gained a third monster power. But since it was the end of the game, he had to settle for total victory. The final score when we showed our adventurer cards was Ogre: 2, Ooze: 4, and Lepus: 8.