Arcadia (1996)

No starter packs.
Each booster has the rules.
You only need to buy two boosters to play with.

From a marketing standpoint this game should have sold well. You do not have to purchase boxes of cards to play. You buy a character pack and a story pack then find someone else who has done the same and play.

In the character pack you will get a character who stands up and all the cards you need to make him unique. Each character has stats for might, resolve, savvy and combat. You can add 5 points to spend upgrading your character. You upgrade with 5 types of cards called merits with varying costs. Abilities generally boost one of your 4 attributes. Advantages are special skills available to the character. Allies are friends that travel with you and add their skills to help you. Arts are magic abilities that help you in various ways. Treasures are items that you can carry to help you or you can find them in your journeys. If you want to add more then 5 points to your character you can add flaws which are worth negative points. If you add 2 points of flaws then you would have seven points of merits you could add. These come in three flavors. Curses represent special liabilities of your character. Enemies represent individuals or races with great hatred for you which if met fight with an advantage. Weakness usually affect your stats. Once you have created your character you can go on an adventure.

In your story pack you will find leagues which are put together to create a map. Each league has a terrain type or types, cost to enter or leave, special affects and what attribute you may recover if resting there. In your story pack you will also find quest cards. The quest card tells you what you are trying to achieve. Each quest has four attributes. These are Experience points received when the quest is achieved, Total points of waylays allowed against the quest, total points in treasures that can be seeded and the victory conditions required to complete the quest. You will also find waylay cards in your story pack. These will have indicators on them to tell you in what terrain you are allowed to play them in. There is a point rating that is applied against the quests waylay rating. Each waylay also has a test that must be passed. Failing a waylay can have dire consequences or it may just delay you by one turn.

It is a very simple game that never plays the same way twice as long as you have a few boosters around to mix things up.