Powering on through The Adventure is Real “Upon approaching the dark caves….”

Adventure into another world and escape yourself and become a different character for the night be it a powerful wizard, a fighter or even perhaps a strong Barbarian you will gain within yourself confidence and your fanatical character strength and power. Question is will you be a wand-wielding wizard, or perhaps a righteous cleric? or even become the daring hero you always imagined within The Adventure is Real?

I and a few other members of Love Pop Ups London we took our minds on an adventure through a dangerous cave meeting mystical characters and dangerous obstacles before being confronted by a very evil character.

The Adventure is Real

The Adventure Is Real it’s a combination of role play, a board game and immersive theatre rolled into one.

You’ll be given costumes and props as you take on the role of a hero and fully immerse yourself in the adventure. There are six different characters to choose from:

• The Wizard – wielding magic born of years of study and questing for power and knowledge.
• The Fighter – a veteran soldier skilled with blade and shield, selling their sword to make ends meet.
• The Cleric – a dwarf in devoted service to their goddess, wielding her miracles in one hand and a mace in the other.
• The Thief – an elf from the poor streets of the Capital, skilled with cutting purses and slitting throats.
• The Bard – a travelling minstrel who weaves spells through song, speech or ukulele.
• The Barbarian – a fierce orc who descends into furious berserker rages in battle.

Can you solve the mysteries, overcome the obstacles, and return with glory and treasure in hand? Or will you fall by the wayside, defeated, dead, or worse, like so many who strive for greatness?

Gather your intrepid band of 3 – 6 adventurers, and take on our immersive board game experience!

Each adventure lasts for around 3 hours, and is shaped by the decisions you make, and the actions you take.

Taking on the adventure

Are you brave enough to take The Adventure is Real on a quest through a cavern of danger? I and other members of Love Pop Ups London took on the challenge.

Heading on down to Hackney Grow Studio walking through the corridors and adventuring into the room for the adventure of our lives we immediately felt like we had entered a dungeon with it’s mood lighting, shelf full of props, spooky music and a playing table set up in the middle of the room with character sheets, dice, money pouches, large tankards, and more we knew we was in for a night like no other.

Receiving a short introduction and overview from Jason before beginning our journey explaining the rules and play it made me more and more excited and yet curious what will lie ahead within this role playing game.

First things first time for us to choose our character for the night.

Question is do I want to be a brave dwarf warrior? a powerful wizard? a cleric? a skilled fighter? a veteran solider? or even a barbarian?

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As there was only five of us on the night we decided to ditch the fighter character. I took on becoming the barbarian.

Each of ours characters have certain powers and weaknesses, represented by statistics that you keep track of on a sheet of paper. For example, you might have a strength of 16 (out of 18), which is good, or a charisma of 3 (out of 18), which is not so good.

Upon reading further about my character it soon came apparent to me that my character was the less clever one, and that he relies on his muscles rather than his brain. However at least I had muscles and knew I would be good at fighting myself out of danger.

As this was our first adventure with The Adventure is Real we started off with Episode 1 – The Hunter of Sleep.

It was now time for us to take on the dangerous dark caves. The Dungeon Master of the night Jason began the story “Upon approaching the dark caves……..” we just knew this was going to be 3 hours of terror but fun at the same time.

Jason in effect is the one player, who dreams up the adventures that the players will go on and creates the world, the backstory of its peoples, creatures, legends, and magical land.

We learned before adventuring on that nightmares plague the borderlands, peasants vanish in the night, and a great evil stirs in the Iron Hills within the caves. It was up to me and my companions to enter within the goblin infested cavern, avoid traps and overcome the dangers within before defeating the Hunter of Sleep.

With a role of the dice our adventure started.

Over the course of three hours we encountered brutish monsters? Do we trust them? We become trapped in a trap but how do we escape? We find treasure but how do we get to it? We are met by a powerful Hunter of Sleep but what do we do? Do we try to bargain with it? Or something fight?

This was certainly like a board game I have never played as I am used to playing games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, Risk, Cluedo, or Battleships so this role play was certainly different but yet fun and certainly got improved my confidence for the night.

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Throughout the game we each spoke out what we wanted to do as a team or individually. The roll of various dice and the DM’s judgement determine the success or failure of any action. So say I threw a 1 out of 12 then my move will not be as effective or if I rolled a 12 I would succeed in the most mightiness of ways. The beauty about a role play game is that no one knows what will happen next and the outcome and story will always be different as we are free to make any decisions along the way, taking whatever route we wanted, interacting with the non-player characters in any way we see fit.

Through our personal choices throughout the game we managed to not have a single fight though until the end as we chose not to but to use our charm and wit instead.

Upon meeting the Hunter of Sleep though the fight was on we needed to stop it! It messed with our minds and made us think of our worst nightmares and fears but we soon defeated it with our team effects using our own individual character strengths.

We beat the Hunter of Sleep and will certainly be looking at booking Episode 2 – The Cradle of Dreams to carry on the adventure into the Wildlands in search of Hawk’s Hill, the mysterious Kleptis, and something called the Dreamweaver.

Discovered

Role playing is certainly is a great way to escape your own monsters and allows you to escape your fears as you take on a journey within your mind navigating through this fantasy world as someone else, someone with power and agency.

How can an adventure role playing game like The Adventure is Real or Dungeons and Dragons help you combat the perils and challenges of your reality and make you a better person in real life.

• You’ll get to be part of a team and work together communicating in what the best strategy would be to move forward.
• You’ll learn how to solve your way out of situations making you think of logical tactics.
• You’ll grow yourself and your character in confidence throughout.
• You’ll learn about your empathy towards others.
• You’ll use your imagination and give you the power to story tell.

Verdict

This was my first ever role playing adventure and it was so exciting and certainly interesting. I think what made this game so good was the immersiveness of it all.

I loved how we dressed as our chosen characters, were given props, maps and had a sheet with our stats on our characters each. But what really made the game epic was the changing ambience within the room from the lighting to the music which altered depending on our surroundings or encounters. Plus Jason the DM made the adventure from the beginning to the very end very interesting and a whole lot of fun giving us confronting challenges making us work all as a team.

So if you have never done a role playing game before then I highly recommend booking your adventure with The Adventure is Real as you’ll get to learn how to easily and have plenty of fun.

The most powerful magic of all though from playing The Adventure is Real or any other role playing game though is the powerful magic from it which will connect you all.

Adventure waits will you answer the call?

Grow Studios
Unit 28
86B Wallis Road
Hackney Wick
London
E9 5LN

Ever wished you were in a fantasy story? Would you be the daring warrior, the book smart wizard, or the thrifty thief? Leave behind the mundane as you adopt the role of a daring hero in an epic adventure! Can you solve the mysteries, overcome the obstacles, and return with glory and treasure in hand? Or will you fall by the wayside, defeated, dead, or worse, like so many who strive for greatness? Bring your intrepid band of 3 – 6 adventurers and take on their immersive board game experience! 

Discover more about The Adventure is Real click here.

Click here to book.

Thank you to The Adventure is Real for inviting me and a group of members from Love Pop Ups London to take on adventure like no other.

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The Adventure is Real