Sounds like Game of Thrones….. Is not sounds like a Tolkien for me…

We have so many Tolkiens things why they do this kind of ****!!!!??????

Not my cup of tea!

Ahahah! if you wrote that it sounded like Sherlock Holmes or Poirot (love both) i would agree but Game of Thrones!?!?!

It's easy to see why people would see this as a "non-tolkien" themed quest.

And that's quite true really.

But I like it.

It's something different.

Variey is the spice of life, and so the life of this game too.

I'm me & my buddies will be attending. Want playmat. Want alt art card.

I noticed that the encounter deck we'll be up to is quite small.

50 cards, 3 quest cards.

50- 5 suspects and 5 plots

That leaves 40 cards. Would those cards form the investigation deck? Otherwise you would have to substract those cards from the pool too.

And you will.

Leaves an encounter deck with maximum of about 30 cards.

Could it use some of the existing encounter sets?.. Oh, it probably wouldn't, sorry for even bringing that up.

Well, no need to be sorry, but it is indeed a standalone quest.

I personally like the idea of the designers experimenting with quest mechanics somewhat (accepting quoted similarities to stewards fear).

This game has scope for very VERY big variety unlike most card games. Using quest descriptions and affects to mix up unusual scenarios is great, gives longer life to the game and more scope.

Yay

Spoiler Alert: the killer is Lord Alcaron, who starts the scenario as one of the investigators. The heroes unwittingly help him cover his tracks the whole time.

Pretty sure Lord Alcaron is secretly Lord Daechannar as well.

Is there a list of stores participating in this event? My local store is not participating but want to be involved if I can.

I really don't see a problem with the villain names. The adventure takes place in and around Bree (home of people with names like Bill), so less high fantasy-ish names work perfectly. Even outside of Bree-land there are a number of characters in the novels with fairly plain English sounding first names, most obviously Samwise who eventually ends up marrying a woman named Rose and having a number of children with names like Robin and Daisy.