Plaid Hat’s “Crossroads” games are finally becoming a regular series.
When Plaid Hat Games premiered Dead of Winter in 2014, its subtitle “A Crossroads Game” implied a continuing line of games with a similar system. The Crossroads cards in Dead of Winter enhanced the story and allowed players to have an increased sense of involvement in other players’ turns.
But for years after Dead of Winter’s release, the “Crossroads” subtitle appeared lost. That feeling strengthened when, four years after Dead of Winter’s original release, Plaid Hat’s second original game in the series, Gen7, received a less-than-enthusiastic reception. As of June 2023, Board Game Geek has Dead of Winter ranked 184th best game overall with a 7.5 average rating, while Gen7 languishes at 5,660th with a 6.3 average rating.
Things started turning around for the brand two years later with the release of Forgotten Waters, which refreshed the formula with a much larger player count, a fully voice-acted companion app, a lighter tone, and simplified gameplay that contrasted with the 4-8 hour required playing time. The game ranked even higher than Dead of Winter, with a 7.9 average rating (albeit with a fraction of the number of ratings).
Freelancers, at a first look, appears to mostly retread the Forgotten Waters playbook. It maintains the voice-acted companion app, map book, and unusually large player count (for a story-based game) of 3-7 people. The components look similar, as you can see in the below comparison.
While Forgotten Waters favored a pirate theme, Freelancers is clearly drawing inspiration from pen-and-paper tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons. Unlike those games, however, which can take several dozens of hours and many play sessions, Freelancers has an estimated playtime of just 90 minutes.
“Freelancers: A Crossroads Game condenses the fantasy RPG campaign experience into a single night of fun and mayhem. Create a character, roll funky dice, and blaze your way through multiple stories set in a world of magic, monsters, and murder.”
Plaid Hat Games announcement blurb
Freelancers also has no need for for a Game/Dungeon Master, since the companion app does that work. So if you want to recapture D&D nostalgia without actually playing D&D, this might be a game to check out.
Freelancers is currently available for pre-order on Plaid Hat’s website. It costs $60 and Plaid Hat says it will be available in August 2023.