Musings on Reviewing and Session Reports

[MerricB]

My fourth session report on Dungeon Command should be going up soon. Alas, I was hit by illness last week and played nowhere as many games as I wanted to of Dungeon Command.

I intensely dislike writing reviews of board games that I haven't played sufficiently. What's sufficiently? At least 10 times is the normal number I use, but it depends on length of game, the number of variants involved, and so on and forth. Morrus might promote my original report as a "review", but for me it's a "first impressions session report with rules explanation". Of course, my initial report is probably as detailed as many reviews!

I was lucky with Lords of Waterdeep - I managed to play that game ten times before I wrote the review. It's going to be a lot trickier getting in the plays before Dungeon Command gets properly released. Can I even properly review it without experiencing warband-building? Well, I can, but it's going to be 'incomplete', and I hate that.

What I really, really want to do now is get a good boardgamer and play 3-4 games back-to-back with them to see how the game goes when I have an experienced opponent. Sarah might find herself in that role come Thursday night (when I'd probably prefer to be hitting her with Paths of Glory), but when I write a review, I want to do it right.

Of course, the "play ten times" goes out the window when I start reviewing role-playing games. "Play once" is hard enough. And how the heck do you evaluate a book like Martial Power? 4E has, in my opinion, the most rule elements of any version of D&D, and they can have very subtle interactions. Each class, despite its superficial similarities to other classes, is its own beast and even if the same power were to be given to two classes, it'd be used in different ways and have different implications to the power level of the class.

I never felt that way with 3E - I could happily write reviews of the Complete books. Ruleswise from the player's side, 4E is a lot more opaque to me. (This doesn't mean it isn't a game I really enjoy, because it is). Mind you, 4E adventures and DM supplements tend to be a lot clearer to me as to how they work!

Reviewing board games and reviewing RPGs are definitely two different things.

Cheers!

 

[TerraDave]

um, Merric, when are you planning on doing 5E playtest reports?

 

[MerricB]

um, Merric, when are you planning on doing 5E playtest reports?

Here's one:
My first session playtesting D&D Next | Public Playtest Package | RPGGeek

Cheers!

 

[TerraDave]

Thanks...you have been pretty quite on these boards regarding it, but that may just reflect your (superior) judgement and discretion.

 

[MerricB]

Thanks...you have been pretty quite on these boards regarding it, but that may just reflect your (superior) judgement and discretion.

It has a lot to do with it being a very unfinished product. Quite simply, I don't know how 5E is going to go, and a lot of the chatter about it is purely uninformed speculation - and often the fears of the people involved.

To quote Wizard's First Rule: "People ... will believe something because they want it to be true; or because they're afraid it might be true."

The trouble with the playtest material for us manifested in underpowered healing (it isn't scaled to the hit points) and the horribleness of the sleep spell (which only really works against 1st level creatures - it couldn't even help the players against gnolls!).

I've run three playtest sessions. The first session (which I've reported on) was fun, although with a few odd points. The second and third sessions (which I've meant to report on, but haven't) both featured TPKs, and a lot more frustration with aspects of the system.

But those frustrating bits came with the specific implementation of elements rather than the system as a whole. So, it's really hard to talk about what's going on with the system when I know it'll be changing.

In the meantime, I'll keep running my AD&D, 4E and Pathfinder games (and shortly will be playing in a Marvel game).

Cheers!

 

[TerraDave]

So then we can look forward to the in depth comparative review.

 

[MerricB]

I played two games of Dungeon Command on Wednesday evening, taking the Cormyr force both times. The first game was against Sarah, and we played a fast game of about 30 minutes. Most of my other games have been more in the range of 50-60 minutes, but Sarah and I have played a wide range of games together and she's very good at picking up new rules.

Our Dungeon Command games have generally followed a particular pattern: one player gets an early advantage, and then the other player - who is able to play fresh creatures - is able to come back into the game. There have been exceptions to this, mainly when I've gained a position that my opponent hasn't been able to breach, but it actually makes the game very enjoyable: you rarely feel like you're out of the game.

The big move this game was that I was able to play my Human Ranger "Behind Enemy Lines", bring it back to my starting area, and thus gain 3 morale (while killing a couple of Shaun's creatures on the way). This gave me the boost I needed to win.

The second game was against Shaun (who has now bought the game based on this play). I, again, had the early advantage, and all was looking pretty good when I sent my Copper Dragon off in search of easy kills.

It didn't find any - instead it found three of Shaun's creatures ganging up to (first) tap it, then hit it with a Sneak Attack for 100 damage, and finally doing 20 damage with a final attack to eliminate it. I hadn't seen that coming, and it was great! I'd been cocky in leaving the dragon unsupported, and Shaun had taken advantage of that.

I had to play more conservatively for the rest of the game. Shaun gained a lot of morale from keeping some of his creatures looking for treasure, and used the extra morale to save his Umber Hulk from dying: he'd cower it and lose morale rather than take the hit. This was at its best when I used an attack that did 30 damage and untapped my creature... if I dealt damage with the attack. Cowering negated the untapping, and the Umber Hulk dealt a lot of damage to my forces in return.

Eventually, I was down to one morale whilst Shaun remained on five - the game was very much in his favour, but I was able to play a "Shove Aside" card to slide my War Wizard three squares in the right direction (normally, the card is used on the opponent's creatures). This allowed me to reach Shaun's very damaged Drider and slay it. With one other smaller creature in range, that was enough to win the game. Just. With one morale point left!

I don't subscribe to the theory that this game doesn't have tension: the more I play it, the more I am liking it. Not knowing what cards are in your opponent's hand requires thinking play, as does the entire business of manoeuvring about the map. Initial games might have played as "charge into battle and attack", but the game rewards more subtle play than that. I still haven't been able to test the warband-building aspect of the game, that should occur this weekend.

My full review of the game will appear early next week.