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Summer 2026 Dungeon Adventurers Camps Dates Are Set

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 16:56:51 GMT

A Table Full of Fun and Adventure Awaits

We are excited to announce our 5th year of Dungeons and Dragons camp dates for the summer of 2026. Once again we are teaming up with the amazing folks at Cape Fear Games here in Wilmington, NC. We have 5 Dungeon Adventurers Camps set for this year. The dates are as follows: Camp #1: June 8th - June 12th, Camp #2: June 15th - June 19th, Camp #3: July 6th - July 10th, Camp #4: July 20th - July 24th, and Camp #5: August 10th - August 14th. Please check out the availability (seats remaining) at our website ( www.acrosstheboardgamenights.com ) and contact us to reserve a seat at the table. Camps are limited to 5 campers per week, and we are already over half filled for the summer! We hope to see you for some Dungeons and Dragons adventuring!

Falcon's Promise 4-week Adventure: The Shadow Gang of Varis

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 16:15:47 GMT

An adventure where players create their own characters using the new 2024 Player's Handbook

The city of Varis, a bustling trade hub with winding alleys and shadowy underbelly, has become plagued by a dangerous gang operating from its extensive sewer system. Known as the "Shadow Gang," the ruffians have been extorting local businesses for protection money and kidnapping citizens for ransom. Falconmeer Academy has dispatched a group of Falcons to investigate and neutralize this threat.

Click on this link for more information and to register through Cape Fear Games:

(https://www.capefeargamesilm.com/falcons-promise-one-shot-adventures.html)

Falcon's Promise One-Shots

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 19:18:19 GMT

Two new One-Shot Adventures

One-Shot #1: A Falcon’s Promise Adventure: The Wrath of Stormgale (November 24th, 2024, from 6pm-9pm)

The town of Ironridge, a mining settlement nestled near the base of the Forge Mountains, has been terrorized by a young blue dragon named Stormclaw. The dragon has ravaged supply lines, stolen valuable ore, and killed miners, throwing the town into a state of panic. Falconmeer Academy has sent veteran falcons into the dangerous mountain peaks to rid the region of this menace. After the players triumph over the young dragon, they return to town to celebrate, only to face an unexpected threat—the dragon’s vengeful mother!

One-Shot #2: A Falcon’s Promise Adventure: The Terror of Icefall Vale (December 8th, 2024, from 6pm-9pm)

The village of Icefall Vale, isolated in a snowy valley, suffers from a mysteriously prolonged winter. Villagers report terrifying encounters with a powerful, cunning Yeti, known as the Icefall Terror. Rumor has it that this creature haunts a network of ice tunnels in the nearby Windswept Hills. The village council calls for help and Falconmeer Academy responds by sending a group of seasoned adventurers to aid their cause.

Follow this link to get more information and to sign up. Seating is limited to 6 adventurers per session)

https://www.capefeargamesilm.com/falcons-promise-one-shot-adventures.html

NEW Falcon's Promise Dungeons & Dragons Youth Adventure

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 17:04:55 GMT

A four-session D&D Youth Adventure at Cape Fear Games!

We are pleased to announce that we are partnering again with Cape Fear Games to offer our second Falcon's Promise Adventure. This 4-week Dungeons and Dragons adventure is for players 12-15 years old. This adventure will take up to 6 adventurers into a small village that is faced with residents vanishing without a trace as they seek to solve the Mystery of Onyx Hollow.

The campaign will be four 3-hour sessions to run on Sunday nights (10/13, 10/20, 10/27, and 11/3) from 6pm-9pm at Cape Fear Games. The cost of the entire campaign is $120. All gaming materials (including dice) will be provided so you don't need to bring anything. We will be using miniatures, dungeon tiles, pre-made characters and character sheets, etc. This adventure will feature the new 2024 Player's Handbook material so players will get a chance to learn about that material and ask questions. If you are interested in this adventure, you can find all of the information that you need (including how to pre-register for one of the six available seats) at the following link: https://www.capefeargamesilm.com/youth-dnd-league.html

Falcon's Promise Dungeons & Dragons Youth Adventure

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 21:31:41 GMT

A six-session D&D Youth Adventure at Cape Fear Games!

We are pleased to announce that we are partnering again with the amazing folks at Cape Fear Games in order to offer our first 6-week Dungeons and Dragons campaign for players aged 12-15 years old. This 6-week adventure will take six players on an adventure in the Forgotten Realms where they are recently graduated heroes from Falconmeer Academy - the premier adventurers' school that trains the new heroes of the realm.

The campaign will be six 3-hour sessions to run on Sunday nights (9/1, 9/8, 9/15, 9/22, 9/29, and 10/6) from 6pm-9pm at Cape Fear Games. The cost of the entire campaign is $240. All gaming materials (including dice) will be provided so you don't need to bring anything. We will be using miniatures, dungeon tiles, pre-made characters and character sheets, etc. If you are interested in this adventure, you can find all of the information that you need (including how to pre-register for one of the six available seats) at the following link: https://www.capefeargamesilm.com/youth-dnd-league.html

Summer 2024 Dungeon Adventurer's Camps!

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 16:06:46 GMT

Dungeon Adventurers Camps for 2024!

Dungeon Adventurers Camps are back for June and July of 2024. This year we are excited to offer a total of 5 camps. We are again being graciously hosted by our friends at Cape Fear Games in Wilmington, North Carolina. Each camp has 5 seats available so please reach out and get a seat at the table before they are full. You can check out the Availability tab to see the dates and you can check out the camp details under the Play Options tab. We are in the process of writing another adventure so even if you've been with us before, the adventure will be brand new to your camper!

Welcome Summer Indoors

Tue, 17 May 2022 22:57:25 GMT

Seven New Games that Celebrate Summer

Ahhh, summer– beach days and barbecues, pool time and picnics. The opportunity to enjoy the great outdoors is something most of us eagerly anticipate for about six months of the year. Then the inevitable happens- sunburn and thunderstorms; the long hot and humid days lead to ennui and the mad desire for something to do in the life-saving AC. Worry not, we’ve got your answer to summer doldrums right here! Celebrate summer in the great indoors with your favorite people playing together across the board. We’ll take care of bringing the game, setting it up, teaching it to you, and cleaning up afterwards. We’ll even leave you with a discount voucher to purchase the game at Wilmington’s premier game store, Cape Fear Games. When you Make It a Thing, we’ll add the perfect decorations to set the mood and snacks to keep your guests from getting hungry. All you need to provide is the air conditioning! And, just in time for summer, we’re adding seven new games to our game library with themes like amusement parks, pirates, gardens, dinosaurs, vineyards, and sharks. Soon you'll be able to check out the complete story in our write-ups on the index page, but here’s a quick peek at our latest additions:

Viticulture: Decidedly the least summery of our new games, but for those of you like me any time is the right time for wine! This game produced by one of our favorite game makers, Stonemaier Games, is all about wine– you’ll plant and harvest your vineyard, manage your crush pad, fill orders, and host visitors to your vineyard. Perfect for a summer evening shared with friends over a couple bottles of wine and a charcuterie board.

Ten Penny Parks: This game oozes the fun of a boardwalk amusement park. Clear your land to create your own park filled with rides, attractions, and concessions. Just like the real thing, this game is perfect for all ages and screams for a fun menu including nachos, popcorn, and cotton candy.

Dinosaur Island: Rawr and Write and Dinosaur World: These two games feature different game mechanics, but a similar theme of creating the best Jurassic Park-style theme park. Build dino paddocks and fill them with your favorites from Tyrannosaurus Rex and Pteranodons to Velociraptors and Triceratops. Compound the excitement by building attractions and giving tours, but be careful to minimize threat and prevent park deaths.

Azul- Queen’s Garden: Using beautiful summer colored floral tiles, you’ll design a summer garden fit for a queen. Dress up in your garden party best, and let us provide a menu featuring a fruit and cheese plate, chilled soup, tea sandwiches or sliders and macarons to bring the sunshine in after a stormy week.

Libertalia- Winds of Galecrest: Arrrgh! Ahoy, Mateys! As the captain of your skyship, you’ll have to manage your crew better than your opponents manage theirs in order to gather the most loot. The best pirate is the one with the most booty at the end of the game. Pirate themes are more fun than finding buried treasure or making your bestie walk the plank, and we’ll work with you to make it as chill or elaborate as you like.

Jaws The Game: Some years back, puzzle giant Ravensburger expanded their product line, and they’ve been creating blockbuster-inspired board games ever since. In this two-part game, you’ll spend the first phase in Amity and the second in the epic battle on the ocean, making it feel like you get to play two games in one. Oh, and did we mention that one player gets to be the shark? Cue the music…

Gateway Games, Or How to Hook a Non-Gamer

robert.turk86@gmail.com — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 14:33:18 GMT

Much of the world is friends with, or at least acquainted with, the Bros. Parker, but many people wouldn’t have the slightest idea where to go once the Boardwalk and Park Place have lost their luster. Don’t be Sorry if you haven’t got a Clue about where to start with modern board games– you’ve come to the right place! The best way to introduce yourself, and your novice friends to fresh new games is through gateway games. What is a “gateway game”, you ask?

Well, definitions abound. For us though, a gateway game is a fun, easy to learn, relatively simple game featuring a newer game mechanic. A gateway game will build interest in newer games while building confidence in new players that they can quickly learn and enjoy what today’s world of tabletop games has to offer. For our top 5, we’ve chosen games that also feature an accessible price point. In no particular order, here are five favorite gateway games.

King of Tokyo: This game is usually the first we pull out with game-shy friends, especially ones with younger kids. It’s a dice-rolling game with a Yahtzee mechanic of rolling a pool of dice, choosing what to keep, then re-rolling up to two more times to assemble what you’ll actually use. It’s a highly themed game, with players choosing whimsically drawn monsters like Cyber Kitty, The King, and Alienoid, then vying to be the first monster to achieve 20 stars or to be the last monster standing, thus earning the King of Tokyo moniker. It’s easy to learn and a really fun way to spend an hour to an hour and a half.

Carccassone: This one is a fun intro to tile placement games. There are numerous iterations to Carcassonne, but they all incorporate placing tiles to build a setting. The original theme of a French medieval city gives the game its name, and in it you will build roads and cities, the occasional cloister, and fields. Players choose whether and where on their placed tile to add a meeple. Meeples are robbers when placed on roads, knights when placed in cities, farmers when placed on the fields, and monks when placed in cloisters. There is enough decision-making involved to make it enjoyable, but not so much as to overtax the thinky-bits. The short playing time, easy game play, and fun art make it another great choice for families with kids.

Catan: We know a number of folks that claim Catan as the board game drug that got them hooked on the hobby. Catan features set collection and worker placement mechanics, but in a very simple way. In Catan (originally dubbed Settlers of Catan), you will settle the island, collecting and trading resources (wood, ore, wheat, brick, and sheep) in order to build roads, settlements, and ultimately cities. We love a game that lets us roll dice AND collect cards, and this game does. As a bonus, the trading with other players creates lots of excitement and sometimes even hilarity. Catan is suitable for kids, though the theme, artwork, and slightly longer playing time of 1 to 2 hours might not appeal as much to younger ones. We’d recommend it for anyone 8 and up, but think it’d be more appreciated by teens and older players.

Dominion: The third in our list with a medieval theme is Dominion, a deckbuilding game. Deckbuilders in general are a great gateway mechanic, because of their simplicity and the fact that they are a change from games that move you around a board. In tabletop games, choice = fun, and deckbuilders allow lots of choice. Dominion claims the fame of being the original deckbuilding game, and has been popular since its arrival in 2008, holding literally scores of awards and honors. In Dominion, a player turn is as easy as ABC - Action, Buy, Clean-up. Check your hand for any Action cards, choose one to play, then use any treasure cards in your hand to buy a card, and then clean up by discarding your purchases and hand of cards. As you purchase more cards you’ll start building your deck so that you’ll have better Action cards that will allow you to take more actions and more money to make better purchases, including the Estate cards that ultimately grant you the win. Its immense replayability, short playing time of 30 minutes to an hour, and easy gameplay make Dominion a great game to introduce to new players.

Ticket to Ride: Ticket to Ride is a hugely popular gateway game, thanks largely due to its theme of trains (I mean, who doesn't love a train?), tactile and colorful board, and its “elegantly simple gameplay” (BoardGameGeek). Players choose tickets which denote train routes across North America, then collect brightly colored train car cards in order to connect the routes by turning in the train cards for train tokens and placing them on the board. Points are scored according to the length of the route completed, and the turn is passed. Once a player has placed all but two or fewer of their trains on the board, play quickly ends and bonuses are awarded for completed tickets and longest route. This game is also relatively short (30 minutes to an hour) and simple and colorful enough for kids 8 and up to enjoy.

Some final notes about the games listed here: All of the above descriptions are based on the original versions, but one of our favorite things about each of them is their expansions. As Gateway Games, the originals are excellent choices, but all of the above have clever and interesting expansions that keep seasoned players coming back to the table again and again. And lastly, these affordable games are widely available, but we highly recommend you buy local from Cape Fear Games if you're near Wilmington. The staff there are as passionate as we are and can provide you with even more suggestions.

Dungeons and Dragons for Summer Camp? Really?

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 17:11:01 GMT

YES! Really! Not every kid lives for bike rides and soccer games, and that’s okay! As my nephew proclaimed regularly between the ages of 10 and 17, some kids are “just indoor kid(s)”. Still, no child needs to spend every waking hour alone in front of a computer screen or game console. Dungeon Adventurers Camp is the perfect way to get your indoor kid out from under the headset and in front of other like-minded kids: communicating, cooperating, and problem-solving. With all the fun they’ll be having they won’t even notice all the math, reading, vocabulary, critical-thinking and creative-thinking skills they’ll be sharpening.

At Dungeon Adventurers Camp, we’ll use our 40 years of experience as players and Dungeon Masters in conjunction with our combined 45 years experience as educators to immerse your child in a world of wonder and adventure using the classic tools of the game: miniatures, polyhedral dice, books and most importantly, their imaginations. They’ll collaborate with 3 to 4 (camps are capped at 5 players) of their peers, solving puzzles and performing heroic deeds to ensure that good triumphs over evil.

Each morning of camp will feature focused learning of the game: being a good party member (social skills and working in a team), creating a character and writing a backstory (reading and writing skills), DM’ing a game (leadership and communication skills), accessing resources (research and critical thinking skills), even building encounters (math skills, creative-thinking).

Lunch will be ordered in from a variety of local restaurants, and then their weeklong campaign will continue.

D&D is one of those things that can be perfectly summed up by the cliche “if you know, you know”. For those who have played it, especially with a creative and generous DM at the helm, the game conjures up warm feelings of camaraderie and memories of triumph, disaster, and comedy that few other experiences do. Thanks to hugely popular fantasy trilogies, a runaway hit TV series a few years back, and the spotlight its been given by more and more celebrities, D&D is experiencing a resurgence in popularity to rival that of high-waisted jeans. In other words, even if you don’t know, you probably still know... at least a little bit. Give your indoor kid a summer camp experience they’ll truly enjoy–Dungeon Adventurers Camp with Across the Board Game Nights.

*** Outdoor kids will love it, too!