Heed the Call
In Call to Adventure, you create a Fantasy Hero by confronting story cards. These depict Challenges (that you can overcome with a test) and Traits (that you can gain when you meet its prerequisites). If you're succesful, your story grows and your character gets more versatile. Then, if you survive, at the end of the solo game you will face an Adversary - and everything may still end in tears.
At the start of the game, you get to pick an Origin, a Motivation and a Destiny from some randomly dealt cards. I became a Pickpocket, that would go out adventuring because of the thrill, and felt himself drawn towards the Darkness. Check.
Then you set up the Adversary - The Demon in my case - and check how it gets XP tokens that count towards its win condition. And you're off.
This Is Your Life
As I knew my destiny to be a dark one, I decided to try and play "evil" as much as possible. During the first Act, when I was just a kid growing up, I got involved in a street fight. I had to pick which reward I would go for, then test my strength and dexterity.
Tests are done by throwing "runes": Rummikub tiles that have symbols on both sides, giving you a hit, a miss or something special. You always throw some basic runes, then add more if you've got the right symbols on your story cards. For example my "Pickpocket" origin let me throw a Dexterity rune. Then, if you succeed, you gain the adventure card, add it to your story by sliding it under a base card.
Anyways, easy win, and now I was a Brawler - giving me more strength in future tests. In a cruel winter I had to steal to survive and defend my family from an armed robbery. All in all, at the end of my youth I had a healthy Constitution and the Dexterity of a cat.
Once you've added three Challenge or Trait cards to your story, the next act begins. You'll face adventure cards from a deck with harder tests. This wasn't a problem as such, but still things went different then planned. Because I started out with a "market" of cards that felt out of character. But I had to pick one. And now, despite the fact that I had grown up a thug, the people suddenly considered me Honorable. Feeling greatly misunderstood by the townsfolk, I moved out into the world. Fortunately I discovered a Perilous Dungeon next, my little thrill-seeking heart jumped! I even managed to Escape with Treasure. I traveled on, to distant lands, and Discovered the Unknown.
Epiphany
Act 3. My story was coming to an end. In the Crypt of Horrors I Disarmed some Deadly Traps, then even Drove Back a Demon Army. Ugh. These were all considered good deeds. Why do good things always happen to bad people?! While they'd give me victory points, this all just didn't feel like me. I realised that in this game it's better to not plan too far ahead, but just go with the flow. And I was rewarded with this newfound attitude. To my satisfaction the story ended with me Taking Over the Assassin's Guild. Yes! I felt right back in the Elder Scrolls.
Oops. Almost forgot about the Adversary. But by now I had grown enough as a person and could throw enough runes at the Demon to kick it back to Hell in one try. Go play Rummikub, you Loser!
Call to Adventure is a nice light game (both in mechanisms and story), with cool illustrations. I'm glad to have played it. Would I buy it? Probably not, it's expensive. Would I trade for it? Yes. And I did, right after this session, as it turned out the owner did not really want it back. Whereas I want to see more of the world.
Here comes Adventure!
Crime & The City Solution - Adventure (the band also has a song called The Adversary, destiny, I say)
I'm glad you like it. It's a game I never fail to enjoy. I don't feel particularly compelled to play it often, but when I do, I always have a great time.
And I also tend to forget all about the Adversary... Absolutely useless.
To me the best of the game is that you try to make a story and sometimes... you fail. I like to keep my failures around if they don't join my tableau because they flesh out the whole made-up story pretty nicely.