Riverside

Far to the north, in a remote winter region, the rivers are frozen for most of the year. When the villages along the rivers are finally accessible, a small river cruise company offers exotic excursions such as polar bear safaris, reindeer tours, ice fishing and so on. Lucky tourists may even have the chance to see the Northern Lights. You work as a tour guide and try to lure tourists onto your guide boats for spectacular excursions. Riverside is another type of role-playing game: The game comes with a modular game board, which makes up the game route. On a river cruise ship, everyone follows the same route, but you can take your tourists on different tours. You can plan ahead, but beware that the dice may force you to change your plans.

You start each round by rolling dice in a common pool. Simultaneously, each player chooses a die of a specific colour (without physically taking it) and fills seats on the corresponding guide boat on their own player sheet. Each time they have completed a row of seats, they have sold a group ticket of the corresponding colour (excursion). The longer the row, the more points they get. In addition, this ticket is valid for the rest of the game: Each time they go on an excursion to a village of that colour, they take that group with them to earn even more points. The player with the most points wins the game. Each colour die represents tourists with a preference for a specific type of excursion. The transparent green die is "wild" and represents the Northern Lights, something everyone wants to see.

Riverside offers tough decision making in a short game time: Some rows are short with low points and bonuses, while other rows are long with higher points and bonuses. Which one do you start to fill? Within each guide boat you have to get higher and higher points, so taking too many tourists on your first trips could be fatal. Players are rewarded for satisfying all five types of tourists, so maybe you need to get a new score instead of a very high score in another colour? The higher dice represent tourists who are frozen and cost fire symbols to obtain. Note that the green "wild" die always costs fire symbols! You have a limited number of fire symbols to use, so when is the right time to use them?

Rule, Educational Sheet ... one File AvailableOne File Available