Kreel Manor: Citadel of Horrors, The Dungeon Crawl Card Game
Created by Tristan Hall
All new epic fantasy adventures in the Kilforth universe, for 1-3 players (up to 4 with expansion)
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Kreel Manor Update 12 – January 2024, Massive Upgrade: 16-page Book of Fables!
11 months ago
– Wed, Jan 17, 2024 at 08:58:37 AM
Hello there,
I just wanted to share some things with you on Kreel Manor's development in January that I'm dead excited about. I've been training myself up on InDesign and this has allowed me to become directly involved in every single element of the graphic design process. Whilst this has been super time-consuming it's also great fun, and it has in turn led to a rich tapestry of quality of life improvements for the game, from the macro to the micro.
It's also inspired me to add theme, narrative, and gamer friendliness to the game at every opportunity. And one of the many huge benefits of all of this is that much of the story flavour text that I've been quietly scribbling away for the past year has blossomed and bloomed into a whole separate book of its own: the Book of Fables!
So now, at key story moments during the game, instead of reading a line of flavour text squeezed onto the bottom of a card you'll read a story paragraph from the Book of Fables, often followed by a choice of reward. For example, when you defeat one of each adventure's five plots you'll have a number of thematic options for how your hero decides to handle it. Let's say you've found the dwarves' storage cache:
Note the quill green pen design to distinguish Plots from Threats, the improved value symbol design differentiating the triangular Sneak from the circular Fight (and the square Influence, not pictured) values - this carries through to the game tokens. Plus the Threat Level (TL, bottom right) displays the card's difficulty.
Do you want to loot it? Destroy it? Or repatriate it back to the dwarves? Simply pop to the Book of Fables to find out what transpires. And if you happen to stumble across the same plot in a future adventure you can reap the benefits of your experiences, learning when is the right time to make use of a particular plot, or maybe try a different option each time. Whilst this all adds a tonne of flavour to the game, it also adds loads of variability and replayability to all of the ten Adventures included in the base set.
Play-testing with this added beauty has provided some very memorable sessions, and has been a real sweet spot of happening infrequently enough to not interfere with the swift pacing of the game, whilst also adding nice little breathers (or tension ramps!) to the action.
Speaking of play-testing, Francesca and I just completed a campaign with the War Mage and Melody Scribe – an interesting pairing – with only two wounds between us (the game ends if you accumulate 5 Wounds), and we're getting ready to set up our next dungeon crawl into Kreel Manor. Like Veilwraith before it, I cannot get enough of playing this game. Kreel Manor feels even more polished, with lots of new interesting decision spaces for each of the unique heroes. Ooh, ooh! Including Location actions! But I'm rambling, and I've got a lot to get on with, so I'll love you and leave you now...
TLDR: I've added a luxury 16 page story book to the game called the Book of Fables. And at over 12,000 words it dwarfs my university dissertation! :D
Cheers, and have a ruddy lovely 2024,
Tristan Hall
PS. If you're interested in play-testing Kreel Manor hit me up: [email protected]
Kreel Manor: Citadel of Horrors Update 11 – Spreadsheets of Doom!
12 months ago
– Tue, Dec 05, 2023 at 09:36:30 AM
Hello there,
Just a quick December update for you today to let you know that I'm still in the thick of development for Kreel Manor here. Visually there's not much that I can share with you right now, but I can share you this super exciting screenshot of one of the many spreadsheets that comprise the 'design bones' of my games:
Sometimes, designing games is even more glamorous than you might imagine... ;)
It's deliberately zoomed out to hopefully avoid spoilers but here are some salient points I'd like to share with you...
The light green cells are standard locations that you will have to explore to progress through the dungeons of Kreel Manor. The red cells are more hazardous locations that will start to appear more often in later adventures, i.e. the further you explore. Locations have keywords like Fortified or Mystic that might interact with the abilities of Threats hiding out in those locations...
Each location also has a cool, narrative ability that you can potentially take advantage of, e.g. in the Grand Keep you could tip over a burning brazier onto your enemies, whilst in the Library Of Aeons you could research some of the dusty old tomes, whereas in the Marmoreal Pool you might like to go for a swim in the cool waters...
The purple cells are Adventure locations, they are actually the ten (TEN!) base game Adventure cards ordered in relative escalating difficulty.
The coloured boxes to the right define which Threat Groups make up the thematic encounters for each of those Adventures (e.g. Wormkin Goblin, or Dark Dungeon).
Grouping Threats by their tribe/theme allows me to deliver a more curated thematic experience and also have some cool interactions between some of the Threat Groups. Laying them out like this in the spreadsheet allows me to quickly dip into the indesign files for the cards themselves and sprinkle in new abilities and weaknesses to enrich the characters you'll meet in the dungeons of Kilforth. For example: the Deep Dwarf Traders Threat Group poses an obstacle to your progress through the Citadel of Horrors, and you will have to tackle them with coercion, stealth, cunning, negotiation, or maybe even violence. But if any Goblins show up whilst the Deep Dwarves are around, they may start fighting with the Goblins too, inadvertently providing you with some much needed military support against these new Threats. But not all Threats have beneficial abilities of course, so don't get complacent!
So that's just a couple of notes on some of the location cards, without even taking into consideration the Plots, Threats, Foes, Stories, Skills, Assets and various other decks and how they all interact with one another! So I'd better get back to it...
And if you haven't already, don't forget to pick up your copy of Call of Kilforth before they all disappear! :D
Have a ruddy brilliant Christmas and New Year and get lots of gaming in, and I'll be in touch again soon!
Tristan xx
Kreel Manor: Citadel of Horrors Update 10 – Stories + Sleeves + Call!
about 1 year ago
– Wed, Nov 01, 2023 at 07:42:42 AM
Hello there,
Progress!
I've been working closely with our graphic designer Darren Marks to refine the card decks and hero board layouts to get them looking exactly right, and laid out the rulebook too. It's all coming together beautifully, but I'm not going to share these things just yet as I want them to look just so when we do make them public. And I will be sharing the rulebook with you guys in advance of printing because we'd love to get your eagle-eyed feedback on typos and clarifications, etc. More of that in a future update though...
Stories!
One of my favourite elements of this game is how each hero's story progresses from dungeon to dungeon, similar to the sagas in Gloom of Kilforth, but more focussed on the results of player's decisions. It's an RPG-inspired game mechanism I've been honing for decades (check out some of my fanmade scenarios for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game), this idea of branching paths of player choices with narrative consequences. In Gloom of Kilforth, the adventures are huge and sprawling, so it's a pleasure to zoom down to a more granular level in The Dungeon Crawl Card Game and have specific recurring characters, themes, and events show up in the dungeons of Kreel Manor.
Recently I've managed to power through an absolute tonne of admin stuff (a necessarily huge chunk of what I do), particularly in light of our latest game Call of Kilforth shipping out to backers. Now that those games are being fulfilled the relief is huge for me, because I'm able to step back and hand over much of the responsibility to our fulfilment teams. This always gifts me the opportunity to become absolutely inspired by game design again, and this time around has been no exception.
Diving deeply into the darkened depths of Kreel Manor to paint wonderful tales for our new expansion heroes is brilliant fun. And even though I know their stories and consequences inside-out, I'm discovering that it eventually becomes part of the higher strategy of the game in quite a delicious way. Essentially, the first few times you play through these adventures you're going to discover (unless you read ahead) a load of cool new stuff and surprises on your way, but even when you're a veteran and you've already seen them a bunch of times, which paths you decide to take are all going to become part of your greater ongoing strategy. And there are so many ways to play!
You can follow the suggested guidelines and stick to each hero's Adventure Path. Or take a single hero and run them through all of the possible Adventure Paths one after the other, or party up with your mates and mix in extra Threat Groups to spice the dungeon up each time, or even play the Endless Dungeons mode and create your own random dungeons, kinda like I used to do with AD&D and the Dungeon Master's Guide back in the day, but with much more beautiful art and, dare I say it, tighter gameplay.
Sleeves!
For the sleevers amongst you, here's the breakdown of the card counts for the Kreel Manorcore game – 196 regular (63 x 88mm) Cards & 208 US sized mini (41 x 63mm) cards & 32 tarot sized (70 x 120mm) Locations:
11 Adventure (horizontal tarot)
11 Standard Location (tarot)
8 Dangerous Location (tarot)
1 Entrance Location (tarot)
1 Endless Location (tarot)
28 Foe (regular)
105 Threat (regular)
21 Plot (regular)
42 Story (regular)
20 Wound (mini)
30 Hero Skill (mini)
30 Class Skill (mini)
30 Class Skill Upgrade (mini)
3 Class Start Asset (mini)
6 Class Asset (mini)
30 Asset (mini)
20 Asset Upgrade (mini)
9 Action (mini)
30 Status (mini)
And each of the Path expansions contains the following (so, twice this amount if you ordered both Path expansions) – 10 regular (63 x 88mm) Cards & 51 US sized mini (41 x 63mm) cards:
10 Story (regular)
10 Hero Skill (mini)
10 Class Skill (mini)
10 Class Skill Upgrade (mini)
1 Class Start Asset (mini)
2 Class Asset (mini)
10 Asset (mini)
5 Asset Upgrade (mini)
3 Action (mini)
Call of Kilforth
Our latest game, Call of Kilforth: A Fantasy Quest Game is shipping now. Set in the beautiful and deadly lands of Kilforth, the same world as Kreel Manor, Call of Kilforth is the third in our landmark series of sumptuously illustrated, epic adventure games. And it's not too late to order your own copy whilst stocks last, here:
'I love the additions... the ships are awesome, the ocean locations are so cool – the art is the best in the series' – the lovely Colin from Meet Me At The Table, alumni of One Stop Coop Shop, has lots of nice things to say about #CallOfKilforth:
Kreel Manor: Citadel of Horrors Update 9, September 2023 – Pledge Manager + Wyvern Moor + BGG + TikTok!
about 1 year ago
– Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 04:28:35 AM
Hello there,
BackerKit Pledge Manager Live!
Yes, the pledge manager is live now! As promised, the Path of Song expansion is available at the discounted rate for those who at least pledged for the base game during the Kickstarter, and we'll keep that available until the next update, so you have at least a month to add it to your cart.
The BackerKit pledge manager is dead easy to use – just click the link and follow the instructions, add any extras you might like, fill in your address details, and finalise your pledge. Please check your spam if you haven't received your invitation. You should be able to resolve most issues by just logging into your survey. If you have any trouble logging in or have lost your survey email, simply click:
We couldn't guarantee other game add-ons this time around as our stock is currently selling through very quickly and so most likely won't be available by the time Kreel Manor ships. If you would like something shipping straight away you can order anything we have in stock directly from our website here:
There's a sequel already? Yep, a stand-alone expansion is already in the works, because the ideas I have for this game system keep exploding and simply cannot be contained in one base game! That said, don't worry, Kreel Manor will continue to be our main focus before we start shouting about Wyvern Moor. But you can follow the game on BGG already if you're so inclined:
Veilwraith on the BoardGameGeek podcast + Kreel Manor gets a mention!
Check out this excellent BGG Podcast #24: Oldies but Goodies, with @beforeyouplay_ and @candidrum and it just so happens to feature #Veilwraith and #KreelManor :D
Rob's Tabletop World on Hall or Nothing
The legendary Rob Oren of Rob's Tabletop World is soldiering through rough times right now, yet he still has the strength and willpower to post this humbling and thoroughly lovely video about us and our games, particularly #1565StElmosPay 👊
Any fans of HeroQuest out there? I developed the solo/coop random dungeons rules for #HeroQuest many years ago, so it's a real delight to see them still being enjoyed by so many – and even getting a shout out on The Dungeon Dive. Past Tristan would be super excited, just like me! :D
And if you're interested, you can download these solo/coop Heroquest rules here:
Kreel Manor: Citadel of Horrors Update 8 – Path of Song expansion discount in the pledge manager!
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Sep 01, 2023 at 06:51:22 AM
Hello there,
For a variety of reasons (Australia being asleep was a good one) some backers missed the epic finish and/or didn't read our Kickstarter updates and failed to secure the discounted Path of Song expansion. So, as a one-off gesture of goodwill, we'll offer the discounted Path of Song expansion to Kickstarter backers only, and for a limited time only, in the pledge manager. Advanced notice of this and more details will follow in a future update. Please be sure to stay tuned to our future updates and read them in time so that you don't miss out again next time.
