Adventure Zone: Bureau of Balance board game expansion “in the works”
Printing halted due to shipping costs.
The Adventure Zone: Bureau of Balance, a board game based on the Dungeons & Dragons actual play series, is getting its first expansion.
Dicebreaker can reveal that co-designer of The Adventure Zone: Bureau of Balance, Jenn Ellis, confirmed that an expansion is currently “in the works” for the co-op board game. In an interview with Ellis, Keith Baker - the other co-designer of the game - and Dungeon Master for the first season of The Adventure Zone, Griffin McElroy, it was unveiled that an expansion had been created for the Bureau of Balance board game.
However, printing of the expansion has been halted due to the high shipping costs currently faced by the publisher. “We have an expansion in the works that we’ve put on hold printing for the moment due to the exorbitant price of sea freight that would likely cause the price to double for consumers,” Ellis explained.
The price of shipping containers has seen a substantial increase throughout 2021, with many publishers struggling to keep up with the costs of getting completed games to customers. Creative Director of Leder Games - the publisher responsible for some of the best board games of recent years, including Root and Oath - Patrick Leder spoke to Dicebreaker reporter Chase about the shipping issues faced by their company: “In a typical year we would pay US$5,000 (£3,600) per container in the weeks surrounding late January. We bid US$19,000 (£13,750) for a container and did not get one. That was the moment I knew we were going to have a problem.”
The Adventure Zone: Bureau of Balance is a board game inspired by the first season of a podcast in which Griffin McElroy runs a campaign of Dungeons & Dragons for his two brothers, Justin and Travis McElroy, as well as his father Clint McElroy. A storytelling board game in which players collaborate to create their own stories set in the world of The Adventure Zone, Bureau of Balance provides several different missions for players to embark on.
In the game, players are able to use various cards - including companion cards and item cards from the Fantasy Kostco, which features heavily in the podcast - in order to explain how their characters overcome the obstacles they face during their journey. Players will be able to pick from a collection of character cards and can expect to encounter beloved figures from the first season of The Adventure Zone.
Besides The Adventure Zone: Bureau of Balance, Ellis and Baker - who is otherwise best known for creating the storytelling game Gloom - have previously worked together on a card game called Illimat, which was released by the same publisher behind Bureau of Balance - Twogether Studios.
According to Ellis, the expansion for The Adventure Zone: Bureau of Balance is “hopefully” set to be released at the beginning of 2022.