Designer Diary 1: Daring Missions

When setting out to design The Mandalorian™: Adventures, we knew that the story had to be front and center. We wanted to be faithful to the show while also providing unique challenges, variety, and exciting surprises.

We started by finding iconic scenes from season 1 of the show, then brainstormed how to translate them to your tabletop. The end result was a gorgeous book full of thematic missions. Each mission begins with a visual intro that shows the events leading up to this moment.

Fans of the show will recognize these scenes, and newcomers will learn a bit about why they are undertaking this mission.

After reading the intro, you flip the page to reveal the mission itself. Each mission has unique rules and an objective, which you and up to 3 of your friends will attempt to accomplish as a team. The first mission is simple: acquire The Asset without any character being defeated. Later missions are more involved and challenging.

Each mission also specifies which characters were present during these events. For example, The Mandalorian and IG-11 participated in the mission to capture the asset from Arvala-7. You can limit yourself to just these canonical characters (sharing characters if you have more than 2 players), or use sandbox mode to use any characters.

After choosing characters, they are placed on the start space of the map. Threat tokens are also placed, either faceup or facedown, as specified by icons on the map. Threats represent features and enemies that can help or hinder your progress.

There are four maps in the game, each with wildly different layouts, enemies, and environments: from derelict desert towns to capital ship corridors. Each mission is infinitely replayable, with random enemies, features, and events keeping you on your toes each game. In addition, after a few games you unlock special missions that can be played on any map. These can be mixed and matched for dozens of unique combinations! 

Although the story missions create a connected narrative, this is not a campaign game. We wanted people to be able to enjoy The Mandalorian: Adventures without making a year-long commitment. New players can join each game, and you can play (and replay) missions in any order using a variety of characters.

We also wanted each game to be relatively quick (30-60 minutes for experienced players). Each game should fly by and be so much fun that you immediately want to play again!

After each game, you gain new cards, rules, and components. This makes the basic game easy to teach without sacrificing depth and variety. We’ll talk more about this in future journals. 

Ok, back to mission 1. Our heroes are at the outskirts of town, ready to undertake their mission, so what next? How did we create tense firefights and cunning strategy worthy of The Mandalorian? We’ll dive into those details in our next journal.

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