Roll For Vibe Check

Fame & Fable - Owen Davey Games

Let’s grip it and rip it! Fame and Fable is a 1-4 player competitive monster slaying game. You recruit allies and buy items to set up success to fight monsters or legends (bigger monsters worth more points) in order to get the most fame points before the end of the game.

Each Hero (your starting character) and Ally has a type of damage/suit that monsters might be immune or vulnerable to, and with so many options, Fame & Fable has a ton of replayability.

There is a touch of player interaction with some abilities or cards letting you affect other players' turns. There were only one or two instances of that in our playthrough, so most of the game felt more like seeing who could set up the best monster-slayin’ team.

Using your deployed allies exhausts them, and they stay exhausted/unusable until someone picks up a moon token, and then everyone ELSE'S allies reactivate. Players with moon tokens can choose to spend an action and token to reactivate theirs. So there’s a bit of a push/pull with how aggressive you want to be.

Fame & Fable has a catchup mechanic, where depending how far you are from the current point leader, and how many moon tokens have been collected, you get extra actions for your turn. It feels great if you’re behind, but feels like you stall out until everyone catches up to you if you’re in the lead.

Real Talk: This is probably the most beautiful game I’ve played this year. Every aspect of the art is AMAZING; the card illustrations, the board, the iconography, chef’s kiss. Absolutely no notes.

Overall Vibes: It takes a good few rounds to understand the gameplay, and the rulebook is a bit vague in some places. About halfway through our first playthrough we did all figure it out, and all agreed this would run way quicker the next time we played. I like a touch more player interaction in competitive games, though that may have never come up due to my substandard shuffling abilities when setting up the game.

If you like beautiful art, beating up monsters, and fighting friends, Fame & Fable scratches all of those itches.

Let’s have fun,

Josh H.