Claudio Games Lab | Solo RPGs, PnP Board Games & Game Design

Sword & Sorcery isn’t just another dungeon crawler packed with dice and miniatures. It’s an experience. The kind of game that leaves a mark. After nearly a hundred plays, through every frustrating rule check and jaw-dropping moment of glory, I can say this without hesitation: I still love it. Not despite the flaws — but because of them. From the first time I cracked open the box, I was pulled into a world where fallen heroes rise from the dead, souls aflame with a second chance, facing nightmarish enemies, unforgiving traps, and pulse-pounding choices. The campaign is rich and layered — not just in narrative, but in mechanics. Each scenario feels like a chapter in an epic you’re living through, not just playing. But let’s be real: this game has issues. And after almost 100 plays, I’ve seen them all. The rulebook is a mess. Let’s call it what it is — a beautiful mess, yes, but still a mess. You’ll find yourself flipping through it far too often, hunting down that one obscure line...

I remember it like it was yesterday—the first time I opened the HeroQuest box. I was just a kid in the '90s, and yet that moment is burned into my memory with almost magical clarity. As I lifted the lid, the scent of the quest book pages and the gleam of the miniatures overwhelmed me. My eyes could hardly believe it: an entire classic dungeon crawler laid out before me, ready to come alive on my living room table. I didn’t know it at the time, but that nostalgic tabletop RPG would go on to deeply influence my life—to the point where I now design games for a living, inspired in large part by those epic HeroQuest memories. My journey into the world of tabletop games began with HeroQuest, and it was love at first quest. The premise was simple: a group of heroes—Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf, and Wizard—venturing through dungeons filled with monsters, treasures, and traps, guided by a narrator (in my case, my older brother, who played the fearsome Zargon, the evil Game Master). But that simpl...