In addition to mechanics-oriented tests, I make at least one full narrative test per setting. This is not a full example of play, but a record of some details of my playtest.

Cherry, my level 1 hedge witch mouse was looking for her owl master, trapped in one of the crates by a human wizard. For the moment, she was able to avoid combat while amassing a treasure for herself, but no sign of her master yet. She felt that the next box might be it (the sum of the revealed cards was almost 50) but she encountered herself in an empty box with no sign of the owl. But it wasn’t exactly empty: she looked down and found herself surrounded by arcane symbols on the floor. She tried to leave the box without stepping on them but she missed (failed DEX save) and the symbols glowed menacingly, summoning something.

Soon, she felt a huge beast stepping down into the water and sniffing the entrance of the box: a cat. She rapidly put out the torch and began thinking a way out. Unfortunately, the box only had one entrance (the oracle answered a plain “No” to “Is there any other exit?”) The cat was patient and didn’t leave, so the only way out was… to build another way out. Cherry took her axe and made another exit hole, placing the torch in one of them to distract the cat, who was waiting for her to appear from one of the exits.

It worked! (The oracle said “Yes”: the cat was looking at the wrong hole). Unfortunately, Cherry made some noise and alerted the cat, who chased her. She ran to another box but not fast enough (Cherry failed a DEX save with Advantage against the cat) and the cat cut her way.

Terrified, she tried to talk the cat into leaving her be. The cat may want something in return (”Yes, but”, said the oracle) but the Doomed Ring she had didn’t interest them… What was the cat’s intention after all? (I asked the oracle’s Spark Tables and got “Vanquish” and “Adventure”…) The cat laughed, knowing that I was looking for my owl master, and saying it was too late. He spat some feathers, matching the owl’s. Cherry wasn’t sure that he was telling the truth (neither was I as the player) and invited her to another box to see it for herself.

The cat guided Cherry to the entrance hole of a box and threw her inside a trap: the box was the lair of swimming centipedes. She didn’t pay attention to the treasures in between the centipedes’ eggs as something else was inside the flooded box (the card’s value made the total sum greater than 50: the objective, the owl, was there. Asking the oracle with disadvantage, the answer was that “No”, the owl wasn’t alive). The corpse of the owl was there, being eaten by the centipedes… Cherry collected herself, looked for another exit (”Yes”), and, as both the cat and the centipedes were distracted, she flew.

From the porthole she entered, she saw the cat realizing too late that she escaped the trap. She hid in the deck, watching the stars and remembering her master. Whatever she would face in the ship’s destination port, she would face it alone.