In addition to playing tabletop D&D with my friends, I participate in the pale shadow that Wizards of the Coast licensed to Facebook. I have described encountering and rediscovering the ‘app,’ but not playing it. Basically, this resembles a card-based game wherein my character of the moment submits to drawing the cards of a particular adventure’s deck that (via simulated die results) determine whether he receives loot or blows to the face. I repeat this – distributing and buying equipment to maximize success – until he has graduated past the tenth level. The program retires the character and lets me pass on the particular benefits of that generation. Obviously, the GUI only barely resembles this analogy and incorporates a few other nuances.

One is the buff and healing of fellow player’s characters, which I can neither use nor rely on any longer. I am the last of my social circle still putting time into it. The majority that did, quit some months ago and haven’t pushed past the fourth generation. Only Chase pushed beyond me, likely from beginning earlier and in sympathy with his brother Brent. Brent no longer uses it because he beat the game, as much as one can. He reached the twentieth level and either tired of the long summited plateau of perks or received his virtual cookie and was told to buy the real thing. The difference in between us all has been attitude or interactive strategy.

With the limited interaction, boredom or ennui (confrontation with meaninglessness) easily sets in. My path has been perfect to keep my interest despite evolving needs. Besides reviews off site, the first thing I read about playing D&D Tiny Adventures resides in its forum. Like most boards, it had a nostalgia thread on top, but more useful than any other. The originator asked people about whether they named their characters based on a theme (eg: successively using all the characters in the Wheel of Time series). While the replies escape me, I absorbed the idea that I should prepare a set rather than take the intuitive route – use the names of characters I actually roleplayed. That became the first warning to be stoic and bemused about any particular iteration.

I settled on a pleasing solution affording me uniqueness, propriety with irony, and a large set to draw from. I chose to modify the names of various font types into fantasy-esque names for each.

Tines Ne-Roma	male human cleric
Lucita Sans	female dwarf fighter
Trey-Buche Emis	male eladrin wizard
Gnomic SansEmis	female Elf Ranger
Coryr Neu	male dwarf Warlord
Wendyngs	female Tiefling Warlock
Miss Trall	female Half-Elf Paladin
Uumpect	male Swordmage Genasi
Sam Bole	male human cleric

I made a grave mistake soon thereafter. Despite distancing myself from the character’s progress, I took too great in interest in the adventures themselves. Occasionally, I toy with the prospect of DMing an rp campaign. Chase’s example showed that store-bought material could furnish a complexity that a novice might omit. Cory somewhat made this mistake in his vampire chronicle when he sent us across Canada or something like that. Appearantly, he hadn’t planned out challenges for the trip and collapsed under Rob’s badgering of “and then what happened?”

Foolishly, I copied and pasted each encounter’s flavortext into a file for later study. While seemingly simple, mid-level adventures have thirteen encounters and high levels feature eighteen. The whole became unwieldy and unreadable, not in the least because the system reused encounters no matter the level. The game chafed under the class “work” rather than amusement. I quit the task midway into the second generation.

In retrospect, I needn’t have bothered copying the encounters at all. Others had done so already. The second character gets to inherit one item from its previous incarnation. Like many new players, I stressed about this and another aspect: potions. The program lets a character carry two potions during an adventure. Two types exist those that increase a particular statistic, whether strength or resistence to undead, or those that heal the character. The first time I played, I checked in every ten minutes to witness the encounter update. Then I’d copy the flavortext and sweat about whether to use a potion or not. My stoicism had crumbled under pointless obsession.

Finding the Tiny Adventures Wiki dispelled all that. Its contributors have uploaded every encounter (story and random), piece of equipment, and character class ability. They even revealed the different generation perks. For some reason WotC kept these a mystery, which works against them. Knowing that I could eventually inherit some of my ending money encouraged sticking with the game. Keeping it a big unknown fostered disappointment and ennui, especially after the third generation unveiled “ironman” mode. That gifts the user a character that retires when its character fails an adventure through death. Ordinarily, death (x<0 hitpoints) sends the character home to heal. Instead, you can have your character retired with midlevel equipment via underconservative choices. The wiki page dispelled the disappointment of similar features by fostering hope.

My relationship evolved in other ways with the app. I debated whether stat potions and then even healing potions are worth the price paid. I tried every class and resisted revisiting some when their best and otherwise unequipable items turned up. These struggles informed my current strategy.

The strongest character is one who has the highest mean ability modifiers with a given set of equipment. This informs most decisions. Which item do I pass on to my next generation? The wiki reveals the base ability scores and, depending upon gender, this could be two or three 10s or 11s. The best item plugs these gaps, preferably via a crown. Encounters reward crowns least frequently, so later items of greater frequency(amulets and bracers) will tempt less juggling. Shouldn’t I use items that beef up my hitpoints? No, I thought so too, though and kept wasting gold on troll skin armor (+10). The character loses hitpoints when he fails; using equipment that increases ability modifiers might have ensured success instead.

There is one exception to the above principle, story encounters. The wiki documents the scores each tests, so a dedicated player can check in just before the encounter updates and redistribute items to maximize the modifier. As I don’t care to time out this reappearance, I just leave them. As I am finishing up my ninth iteration, I sell all my useless equipment to bump up my gold inheritance. In fact, I will test a new technique. Normally, I end wearing my best equipment since these are tenth level encounters. I get to pass on a quarter of my gold. So, I saved the loot from the first levels to replace all the elite armor. Likely, Sam Bole will fail a lot more encounters. But, he is too close to retirement to chance wasting the opportunity.

My next and final character will be a rogue, so I will have played with every class. The male’s dump stats are Intelligence and Constitution. I will inherit a ring to plug int and use the five thousand inherited gold pieces to buy whatever will fix my con. While I would like to have used a woman for variety, the female rogue has three dump stats instead of two. His name will derive from Haettenshweiller. It isn’t as popular a font as Calibri or Tahoma, but the name I chose is cooler than “Cal Ebree” or “Ted Oma.”

But for the opportunity to throw lots of gold to the last character via a naked, final adventure and writing this review, I have no interest in playing Tiny Adventures any more. The stoicism necessary to play a game with almost no interaction nulls my interest. The real benefit comes from justifying visits to Facebook, which I would otherwise visit less frequently. Besides checking on Sam Bole, I check our D&D group’s page for updates and comment on other’s status updates or renew my own with whatever book I am reading.

Still there is one final word on maximizing the encounter survival: potions. They are not worth the gold paid at any level. I didn’t intuit this because I had stopped checking what stat the encounters tested. The wiki has noted the two most likely for each terrain type. Since these seldom last more than a quarter of the adventure, I didn’t bother studying. But, I wanted to know when it was worthwhile to buy healing potions. Seeing the answer pushed me toward the realization that succeeding individual encounters benefits more than lasting to the final one.

To test, I noted the total gold awarded for each adventure, grouped by level, for two generations. I averaged the three or four adventures per level to hide the idiosyncracies resulting from completion or early death. In writing this review, I noticed my first character’s encounter notes could have been used to further dilute outliers. But, it isn’t altogether important since the success rate (and rewards) reflects the strength of the presiding strategy rather than a general reflection of the adventures themselves.

Level 1	58 gold
Level 2	93 gold
Level 3	171 gold
Level 4	203 gold
Level 5	245 gold
Level 6	357 gold
Level 7	489 gold
Level 8	636 gold
Level 9	589 gold
Level 10	1120 gold

So while you could buy healing potions as soon as the fourth level (on average), it isn’t really conscionable until the sixth level because the hero would spend all his income on the potion itself. The stat potions are even worse value because – during the four encounters each lasts – the adventure will test it once or never. Money buys potions or equipment, so equipment’s permanent benefit justifies the expense.

Wizards of the Coast likely hopes we will use potions or test our luck with potions or iron man mode because of the scoring system. Encounter success under these conditions or higher challenge ratings net a higher score. What they ignore is the very point of a scoring system in the mind of the player. The app fails to maintain scores into the new generation. Somehow I suspect others parallel me in not writing down my scores so I can measure how lucky I am now compared to two weeks ago. They show our friends’ scores, but these are incomparable when we are different levels. I wouldn’t even mention the “feature” if it didn’t reflect the generally foolish design of the whole game.

And yet, Tiny Adventures figured largely into my visits to Facebook. I would log in every three hours or so (90 minutes for the adventure, 90 minutes to heal) to send himer back out. Now, I am only returning to check and comment on my friends’ status updates. I did it before incidently; but, without other justification, the whole feels like an exercise in stalking. This realization came before its time because I failed to make the right character. I inattentively pressed a Fighter character rather than a rogue. In protest, I decided to stop early.

I have some options at this point. I can visit Facebook less frequently, just daily. Tiny adventures holds no value, but it gives some structure to my schedule. Or, I could try some other game app. Mafia, which I tried months ago in sympathy with the forum version of the game, blows chunks. Scrabble is nice but demanding, in time and effort. I guess I will check out Mafia wars. My cousin does not shelter his friends from occasional, obscure updates (Mark is looking for a tie and a rubber ducky). Chase also mentioned he plays it, so now is the best time to try it. Facebook runs counter to a solitary experience.

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