I had it all wrong with this one. After learning the game and losing three times with terrible scores, I figured I was ready to set up a story. Made a human warrior, who had worked at the King's court for years but had decided to go adventuring now. Being a free spirit and all.
And I named him after me, because I could already see his future. After a lot of adventuring, Jake would surely end broke, in the gutter, softly crying and singing TLC's Waterfalls.
But you don't make the story. You roll the dice and watch it unfold.
Roll Player is such a brilliant design. It's all about character creation, the most fun part of RPGs. Every turn, you pick a die to put in an attribute row. A die in the right colour will help with scoring your backstory. A die with the right number will help scoring for attributes. When placing the die on your sheet, you will get a bonus. Like a reroll of a die you placed earlier, adjusting the value of a die or a discount during the Market phase.
The dice you can take are placed from low to high values. You probably want the one with the highest value, for scoring, or the middle one, as that one gives some extra money. But an enemy die will be rolled if you take one of these two higher ones, and a Market card may be removed.
During the Market Phase, you can buy one of the remaining cards, and flesh out your character with weapons, armor, skills and traits. Each with their own gameplay effects: dice mitigation or adding to end bonuses. 30 Minutes of dice rolling and making interesting decisions.
Anyway. During the game, our Jake turned into a rather intimidating, but dedicated, compassionate and honorable person. Who eventually made it to Clan Leader (a good end score). I was only right about the ending broke part. Also he was wearing no pants. Weird. Well, I was never a clan leader so what do I know.
I stand corrected. When roll playing sometimes you can go chasing waterfalls. Here's to you, Jake. Well done.