Running D&D in a boardgame style

rounser said:

A DM aided by a billion tables (or equivalent to that but less cumbersome - an elegant "d20 system of generation") to flesh out his maps, on the other hand, that's a different story, and tops my wishlist for 5E. Not sure if it's feasible, though. How do you roll up a magic fountain which turns people's hair green? How do you table-format a riddle or a puzzle? How do you codify on three tables the ability to roll up a greengrocer who sells dragon eggs?

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You'll probably need to do some searching for them, but there have been books of nothing but tables (Gamescience actually had a product called 'Book of Tables') like you're describing except for the riddle thing. Central Casting had tables for all areas of NPC generation; you could easily roll up a greengrocer who sold dragon eggs with it (occupation, roll one of the odd ones, then be directed to the creature type table to see what kind of creature eggs he specialized in). AEG's Toolbox is mainly tables, if I remember correctly. The Mother of All Encounter Tables by Troll Lord might be useful.

boardgames

Legend of Xagor was a board game with players and monsters: not sure about rules.

the old Dungeon boardgame did not really need a DM, and was rather fun.

But making a board game that will appeal to players of wide age range might be harder: 4th ed is still dependant of DMs, from my point of view. Most board games don't use parties, but competing adventurers.

Some of these posts (adopting Descent or Hero Quest; getting rid of the DM) seem like re-inventing the wheel. For context, you should try to find the downloads of the original white box set of DND (the 1974 rules) and the original Chainmail. The game was built out of wargaming, and originally the method for playing was the deep dungeon crawl near a town. Characters could only use the armor and weapons their miniatures were cast with.

Gary Gygax's original campaign was just the dungeon under Castle Greyhawk, where the levels got kind of zany and were admittedly designed by a "mad wizard" anagram of his name (Xagyg, or Zagyg). Arneson's original campaign was the same thing around Castle Blackmoor. Don't let published re-prints of these games fool you -- they were just deep dungeon crawls.

I personally think anything Arneson's ever written about D&D sound a lot more like what you're talking about than Gygax. He kind of got marginalized early from publication of the game, probably because there aren't a lot of lucrative possibilities in the deep, kind of random dungeon-type game for everyone, and it really only appeals to part of the potential fan base. But I went through a whole year where I read up on everything I could about stuff like that, and did some "deep dungeon" work.

I think if you just did a megadungeon, where the players went deeper and deeper and found more and more treasure, you would have D&D as a boardgame, or a wargame where the players had one piece. Town can just be an abstraction where you buy equipment and train.

jgerman said:

All of those games can certainly provide inspiration, but offering them as replacements is off topic as none of them provide that mid-level experience.

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Wow. Could you be any more assuming of what I was saying? I listed those games as inspiration based on what the OP was asking. I wasn't saying your an idiot, play these instead. I said D&D Minis was basically a board game.

My further comment on a deeper experience was my personal preference after he asked me why I would choose any of those over D&D sans roleplaying.

Frankly, I just don't understand why you are getting up in my grill. Off topic? This is a forum for discussion. It wasn't like I was threadjacking or anything. Lighten up!

Charwoman Gene said:

Of course the fact that it doesn't tactically feel at all like any board game might be a problem.

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That's great if it doesn't feel that way to you, as its a very subjective perception. Pretty much everyone (even the 4E-fans) that I've spoken to at my FLGS seem to easily see the similarities, but that is hardly real evidence.

JVisgaitis said:

Wow. Could you be any more assuming of what I was saying? I listed those games as inspiration based on what the OP was asking. I wasn't saying your an idiot, play these instead. I said D&D Minis was basically a board game.

My further comment on a deeper experience was my personal preference after he asked me why I would choose any of those over D&D sans roleplaying.

Frankly, I just don't understand why you are getting up in my grill. Off topic? This is a forum for discussion. It wasn't like I was threadjacking or anything. Lighten up!

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Defensive much? Pick a fight elsewhere, I'm not interested.

Charwoman Gene said:

Of course the fact that it doesn't tactically feel at all like any board game might be a problem.

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To me, both rules-wise and tactically, it feels A LOT like a board game. Just MORE open (because of a thicker book of powers/rules).