Note from Video: Brian has never played Dungeons and Dragons before, and this is his first experience with a game based on the core rules. Here he posts what his experience was like. Keep checking back for the rest of the reviews from the group, including my own on Saturday!
My name is Brian and I have never played Dungeons and Dragons in my life. Or have I? If you are a modern day gamer you have probably been touched by Dungeons and Dragons, even if you don’t realize it. I’ve played plenty of PC and Console games with leveling, talents, feats, spells, dungeons, and all manner of gameplay ideas that were inspired by (ripped off from) D&D. I’ve just never played a pen and paper RPG. I’m not against the idea of it, I just had friends more interested in LAN parties and building Lego. Ravenloft sounded like a cool idea, a random dungeon to explore with treasure and monsters, a board game accessible to everyone. Diet D&D if you will.
Our group played two games and although we won on both attempts, it was very challenging and I wonder if there’s not some room for improvement here. I have some likes and dislikes about the experience:
- Teamplay aspect. While I doubt this is much different than true D&D, if one party member dies the game is over and you all lose. Instead of a crazy GM trying to kill you and a rogue off looking for treasure you really all need to work together or perish.
- Talents (Feats?). Each Class has a deck of cards for powers to choose. This allows some amount of customization while maintaining an ease of use. I know character planning is very involved in true D&D so to see it so simplified was pleasing for me.
- Daily Powers. Each class has a couple of one time bomb spells that are very cool and really make that ‘moment’ fun. In one game we spawned the final room full of monsters and our wizard was able to take them all out in one shot. Very cool.
- Construction. As indicated in the unboxing post, this is a well made game! The pieces are interesting and the board is very sturdy. The variety of shapes and sizes, while making the game more difficult to pack, certainly make it more interesting.
- Little if any downtime. Sometimes in a large, 5 player game, the time you spend when it is NOT your turn can be brutally boring. Not so here. Since you are intending to help your team, you can be planning your next turn or suggesting alternate choices to the current player. It really feels collaborative.
Disliked:
- Healing. Oh man, I know healing is tough in real D&D but it seems there is no way to keep up in this game. Every turn, if you explore, you will get hit by a monster. If you stay put, you will get hit by an encounter. Sometimes you get hit by both. Generally, these do damage. One healer simply cannot keep up the entire party when he can only heal 1 hp per hero per turn. Add to the fact that some healing is chance based (die rolls) and you are really in for a treat! Additionally, the healer follows these same rules, meaning you can walk up to a hero, heal him for one, and then trigger an encounter which applies three damage to everyone in the room.
- Treasure. What the hell? Most of our treasure was ‘use this now and discard. Even when you do get a helpful treasure, it is a healing potion or thieves’ tools! I guess when I think of treasure I think of items and stuff to help my character. Why do I want to kill monsters when my reward is going to be to teleport two rooms in the wrong direction?
- Environment effects have no expiration. I totally understand having environment effects and I think they add to the game, I just with there was either a way to remove them (cleanse or something similar) or a turn timer.
From what I saw the only way to get rid of them was to cancel them at the time of draw with 5xp, or to draw into a new, potentially worse effect.
- The ranger’s primary attack is a melee strike and the rogue’s primary attack is a ranged throw. An annoying pet peeve.
Despite my list of dislikes here, overall I thought this was a fun experience. Even the grievances I have can be solved with house rules. The games were short and sweet, and always left you thinking about planning your next turn or helping your comrade leaving little downtime. We haven’t tried all the different bosses but I think this is a game we will go back to in the future, and I look forward to it.
