The Saltcast Adventure

I was recently reading a review of the DnD 3rd Edition version of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting – sometimes I make questionable choices about what to do with my spare time – and the author teased out a distinction between “generic” fantasy and “vanilla” fantasy: there’s some fantasy that’s too specific, too flavorful, to count as generic, and yet lacks the sort of twist or high concept or especially-novel distinguishing feature that would admit it to a subgenre. Thus: vanilla.

(You might be pooh-poohing this whole idea, but try a spoonful of regular plain yogurt, and then vanilla. They’re different!)

(You might prefer the plain, of course. That’s fine too).

So yes, The Saltcast Adventure is the kind of fantasy where you can’t get two paragraphs in before the narrator informs you that you’re now the farthest you’ve ever been from home (those of you reading these reviews in order will note that I mentioned this scene in Fellowship of the Ring two games ago), and where one paragraph after that we’re told, in solid but Tolkien-invoking prose:

"The trees here look different; they’re taller, with canopies that reach high into the autumn air, grasping at the pale sun. There are huge boulders scattered across the landscape, glittering stone that looks nothing like the occasional flint pebbles that fleck the paths long behind you. The smell in the air is sweet, unflavored by human industry."

The protagonist is of course an unassuming peasant who’ll have to tap into heretofore-unguessed reserves of strength to succeed in their quest, which is to delve deep into a subterranean world of monsters and stop their attacks on humanity and get a reward from the king. She (yes, she’s a she, and a mother, so that’s a nice departure from the norm though hardly that interesting in itself) starts off with some water, some rope, a knife, and a lantern with a small enchantment placed on it. The lore infodump is woven skillfully through the opening, but it’s there, and the setting’s major distinctive element – magic gone awry can create different kinds of the eponymous Saltcasts, mutated or spirit-ridden creatures with supernatural powers whose lives are bound up in tiny mirrors – is a specific, but not exactly revisionist, take on fantasy worldbuilding.

And yet, the game leans into its meat-and-potatoes conceits with admirable consistency. The Saltcast are the only unnatural creatures in the setting, for example, and while the exact mechanics of the magics that create and sustain them are laid out with the detail of an RPG monster manual, they’re all presented as individuals, both as to their powers and their personalities, and not all are hostile. Madelaine, meanwhile, while the very model of the plucky hero’s journey protagonist, is drawn with conviction – her grit and perseverance feel well-earned, her devotion to her struggling family rendered with poignancy:

"You close your eyes, see your children’s faces. Thin, wan, smiling. Mattias’s teeth have started falling out because he does not eat well enough."

She seems like an individual, not an archetype, and the same is true of the central antagonist, who is recognizably a load-bearing Foozle of the type that has clogged CRPGs since time immemorial, but whose uniqueness extends beyond a perhaps-overcomplex backstory and cool special effects – not to mention the plucky supporting cast.

There’s a risk that all I’m doing here is inferring a qualitative difference based just on quality. It is true that Saltcast Adventure is a well-executed example of its form; as noted above, the prose largely avoids Generic Fantasy Bollocks, with descriptions that leverage all the senses, and while the piece is long it’s well-paced, with act breaks coming just as I was feeling like the plot structure could use a change-up. Meanwhile, the choice mechanics are nicely done too – besides a few pick-a-door false choices that shunt you to the same scene regardless and could have been excised, you’re given options to try to build connections or prioritize efficiency, with stakes that feel high even though the mechanics are reasonably forgiving (you can accumulate wounds, but the game doesn’t visibly track them, and if you die you’re able to immediately undo, so I think it’s hard to lock yourself out of good outcomes).

But I’ve played tightly-made stories like this before, and this one does do things a little bit differently. There’s a big twist right at the end of Act 2 that I legitimately failed to predict, for example, and if the final section can’t fully pay it off, that’s probably just because the author would have needed to add an extra hour to this three-hour game to make it land. And while each decision the author made about how to construct the Saltcast, their origins, and their society comes straight out of the fantasy playbook, the gestalt still winds up being memorable. Moreover, the game has the discipline to stick with its intentionally-picked elements rather than watering them down with the exact same stuff you’ve seen a million times before. So yeah, if the only kind of yogurt you like is peach or blueberry or, god help you, chocolate raspberry, you’ll probably want to give Saltcast a miss, but it remains a great example of why vanilla keeps selling too.