IronWolf
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This is a playtest review.
Beware! This review contains spoilers.
The Dungeons & Dragons board game is designed for 2 to 5 players aged 10 years and upwards - 1 person must play the Dungeon Master (DM), the others play Heroes who battle against the DM. It costs £24.99 in the UK - about US$40, but I couldn't actually find anyone selling it in the US. The front of the box shows the iconic D&D characters (Mialee, Lidda, Jozan, and Regdar) battling various monsters featured in the game, whilst the back shows a photo of (roughly) 10-year old kids playing the game surrounded by images of more monsters and a brief introduction and overview of the game. It's a shame they chose to depict only the youngest age group, instead of perhaps a mix of ages, as this could be a good family game too.
Whets Inside The Box
Inside, one finds a series of cards with push-out tokens that take a while (about 10 minutes for one person) to push out - unfortunately, some of the connections are rather tough to break apart and I ended up ripping the paper across a couple of them. Once this is all done, you find you have the following in the box:
* Five double-sided game boards depicting a mix of gridded dungeon and wilderness environments that are 11 x 11 square, and numbered 1 to 10. These are laid together in various combinations to form different adventure locations.
* 40 plastic miniatures with square bases, in green (trolls, goblins, carrion crawlers), brown (gnolls, ogres, bugbears), cream (liches, skeletons, wraiths and wights), and purple (the four heroes). These are well detailed and could be used for miniatures in standard D&D.
* 104 double-sided counters - covering doors, chests, traps, trees, pillars, oozes, a key, and a dead hero marker. There are also small circular counters to measure hit points and spell points. Some of the counters double sides are the same (chests); some are different (doors, showing open or closed, and traps, showing found and disabled), whilst others are designed to slot together to create 3D effects (pillars and trees).
* 10 Dice - 6 combat dice (2 yellow dice allowing 4 chances of 1 and 2 chances of 0, 2 orange dice allowing 4 chances of 1 and 2 chances of 2, a red die allowing 1 chance of 0, 1 chance of 1, 3 chances of 2, and 1 chance of 3, and a purple die allowing 4 chances of 2 and 2 chances of 3), 2 dice used for searching for and disabling traps, 1 die used for turning undead, and 1 die used for special effects related to weapons, spells and items.
* 4 Hero Boards - these 17cm x 11 cm pieces of thick card help the player keep track of hit points and spell points, movement, AC, number of items able to be carried, and special abilities, as well as showing an image of the character and a brief description of the hero.
* 5 Hero Reminder Cards - playing card size overview of the character's abilities and responsibilities within the team along with one for the Dungeon Master.
* 5 Initiative Cards (1 to 5), dealt out on entering each room randomly. These define in which order the players and DM take their turn.
* 39 Monster Cards showing the monster's AC, hit points, movement, and combat abilities as well as an image of the monster and a short description. Each monster has a number appended to its name such as Goblin 1, Goblin 2, etc. to make it easy to keep track of which monster is being referred to.
* 95 item cards including weapons, potions, spells, artifacts, and booby traps. These are mixed together for the appropriate level of the adventure and are drawn upon when chests are opened. Some are given out to the characters before they start an adventure as basic equipment, and a few are designated as special items for particular placement in an adventure.
* Player's Guide (PG) - gives an overview of the characters available, the layout of the hero boards (and the meaning of the various icons) and a run-through of the various actions that can be taken once initiative is decided.
* Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG) - runs through setting up the boards and gives an understanding the dice and the monster cards, whilst the majority of the book provides 11 adventure board layouts running from Level 1 adventures to Level 3. There is also a double page in the middle providing blank design sheets and icons for designing your own adventures, which can be photocopied.
Game Play
Each of the four players chooses a character and receives their basic items (for example, Regdar the Fighter starts with a single-handed broadsword whilst Mialee the Wizard begins with a magic missile spell and a magical shortbow). After the Dungeon Master (DM) sets out the boards as shown in the first adventure in the DMG along with the first door token (shown closed), the players place their miniatures wherever they want in the first room. One of the heroes moves next to the door and says 'Open' and the token is turned over to show the door is open. Initiative cards are then dealt randomly but kept face down until the DM places the monsters and chests in the next room. Initiative cards are turned face up and each person takes their turn in order of initiative.
Each hero can take 2 actions and each of the following use up 1 action each:
* Movement - the miniature can move a number of squares equal to their movement rate as noted on their hero board or monster card. The miniature cannot be moved diagonally. Various basic rules define where the miniature can and cannot be moved or end up.
* Open a door - a hero must be standing next to a door and the player says, "open" - the initiative immediately changes. Some doors require a key.
* Open a chest - the hero stands on the chest and the player says "open" - the player takes a card from the item deck (adding the item to their collection, or else the GM resolves the results of a booby trap card.
* Change an item - swap an item from the hero's knapsack to the player's hand to make it available to use. The knapsack holds any items not able to be used by the hero (this is stated on the hero board). Heroes can also swap items.
* Combat with weapon or spell - roll the dice shown on the weapon or spell card (yellow, orange, red, purple, in various mixtures dependent on the power of the spell or weapon). Subtract the AC of the victim from the damage of these die and then take away that amount of hit point tokens from the victim's total. Some weapons or spells have optional attacks (such as power attacks that do more damage but risk losing/breaking the weapon) or additional effects (such as rolling the special effects die to see if spell points are regained after use, or allowing the re-rolling of 1 die). Potions can be consumed as a free action but must then be discarded. The GM is advised to 'tap' (i.e. turn sideways) the monster cards (like in Magic The Gathering CCG) when they have made their attack to help keep track when running multiple monsters. Weapons and spells are designated as melee or ranged (or both) - melee items can only be used when in an adjoining square to the opponent, whilst ranged items can be used anywhere except in squares adjoining the opponent, but there must be a direct line of sight (an example of this is given taking account of walls, trees, pillars, and other heroes and monsters).
* Special actions - certain characters have special abilities. Lidda can search for and disable traps - the search die allows several results (finding no, 1, or 2 traps, or forcing the player to stop searching for more traps - if there are no traps in the room the GM must inform the player; if there are traps, he reveals the nearest by placing tokens in the appropriate squares) whilst the disable traps die has a 1 in 6 chance of failure causing the trap to go off anyway. Disabled trap tokens can be collected by Lidda to increase her hit points. Lidda can also sneak, allowing her to be the only hero to be able to move through the same square as a monster occupies - when she does this and attacks in the same round, she does extra damage. Jozan can heal by spending spell points to heal hit points, and can also turn undead using the turn undead die - this allows results of 0, 1, 2, or 3 and the result is only effective if the power level of the undead creature (marked on its card) is sufficiently low to equal or be less than the die result.
The heroes move from room to room, killing monsters, finding traps and opening chests until their goal is achieved or they can no longer achieve it, at which point the adventure ends immediately (even if there are unopened chests in the final room for example) and a new adventure board is set up. Heroes get to keep the loot they have found unless they were killed in the adventure and were not raised from the dead, in which case they re-start the new adventure with only their basic equipment.
Playtesting Notes
I ran this game for the recommended four players as the GM - the players were Pete (8 years old with no previous experience of D&D), Shona (14 years old with no previous experience of D&D), Peter (35 years old, until recently part of my regular gaming group), and Bill (also 35 and part of my gaming group). We managed to play the first two adventures from the DM's Guide.
The first thing that is noticeable on the front of the box is the phrase "easy to set up and play" - well, it might be easy, but it took nearly an hour to push out all the tokens, set up the boards and explain all the rules. At the end of the rules explanation, Shona said, "I thought this was supposed to be the short version!" For first time players the ruleset can still be a bit intimidating, though once explained it is pretty intuitive from then on.
The most difficult aspect for the players was remembering they had two actions per turn - either forgetting to take their second action when the situation called for movement only, or wanting to take an extra turn when faced with multiple trap/chest/monster options. The GM needs to keep a sharp eye on this aspect. Another aspect that is tough for a beginning GM is to keep an eye on the players movement when traps are around - the GM always needs to force the players to move slowly square by square, or else the players quickly realise there are traps around when the GM cries "Slow down!" during movement actions. On the other hand, its very funny to see players jump out of their seats when the DM shouts "Trap!" when they step on a seemingly inoffensive square because they couldn't be bothered to wait for Lidda to check for traps first.
The rules are pretty good at covering all eventualities. One or two situations did crop up that I had to make a call on, such as a player wanting to finish his second action (movement) on top of a trap so he could disable it on the first action of his next turn. And I did find that I occasionally had to rifle through both booklets to find a rule to cover a situation (for example, the rules on traps are split between the players guide and the DM's Guide).
Here are the comments from each of the players after finishing the second adventure:
Pete (8): Great, I liked all the murders you could do. I didn't like that brown scary fellow (the Bugbear in Adventure 2 who killed two of the party).
Shona (14): Brilliant. I liked collecting all the cards with weapons and spells from the chests, to kill the monsters with.
Peter (35): Good game. It's not D&D, but it's still entertaining.
Bill (35): Enjoyable to a point. It got a bit repetitive after a while - an hour's play (about one adventure) at a time would probably be enough for me.
High Points:
This works well as an introduction to D&D for those new to the game - it provides a relatively entertaining and familiar board game environment whilst introducing the player to D&D concepts such as sneak attacks, turning undead, spontaneous healing, skills, level progression, initiative, and actions per turn. Those who played HeroQuest will also find themselves in a relatively familiar environment. The game allows for development of group and individual tactics as the players become more familiar with the hazards and rules of the game, and the DM is given carte blanche to start designing her own adventures after the eleven adventure boards have been played, making for a potentially endless series of games. Its also pretty tough - I killed two of the players off in the second adventure and the group is encouraged to act co-operatively pretty quickly to avoid such a fate again. However, I liked the way that there was a chance to start the next adventure despite being killed, but with the penalty of losing all your collected items.
Low Points:
As Bill pointed out in his comment, the game can resemble the worst of dungeon crawls for those familiar with the freedom of design available with D&D. Trap searches, chest looting, and monster slugfests could be repeated ad nauseam. The later adventures in the DMs Guide (which we didn't play) promised more complexity and harder opponents but did not significantly increase the number of gameplay options - mainly availability of special items, magical reappearance of monsters, and multiple doors triggered to open at the same time. The layout of the booklets could have been simpler for beginning players, perhaps in a step-by-step read-as-you-play style.
Conclusion:
I think the board game achieves what it sets out to do - bring new players, particularly younger players, into the game. I especially liked the fact that the underlying concepts of D&D (though not the exact ruleset) were used. The fact that the designers went for the immediate impact of combat and treasure is a double-edged sword - it has great appeal for younger players but ignores some of the roleplaying aspects that can hook players for life rather than just for Christmas. Nothing's stopping the DM from introducing these aspects to the game, but they are not even mentioned as an option, despite the 'adventure seed'-style introductions to each adventure board. However, overall this is a board game with a good few hours of enjoyment and most importantly an opportunity for all gamers to introduce others to D&D.
Note: Many thanks to Anne-Marie Cox of Hasbro Ireland, for her aid in this review.
Beware! This review contains spoilers.
The Dungeons & Dragons board game is designed for 2 to 5 players aged 10 years and upwards - 1 person must play the Dungeon Master (DM), the others play Heroes who battle against the DM. It costs £24.99 in the UK - about US$40, but I couldn't actually find anyone selling it in the US. The front of the box shows the iconic D&D characters (Mialee, Lidda, Jozan, and Regdar) battling various monsters featured in the game, whilst the back shows a photo of (roughly) 10-year old kids playing the game surrounded by images of more monsters and a brief introduction and overview of the game. It's a shame they chose to depict only the youngest age group, instead of perhaps a mix of ages, as this could be a good family game too.
Whets Inside The Box
Inside, one finds a series of cards with push-out tokens that take a while (about 10 minutes for one person) to push out - unfortunately, some of the connections are rather tough to break apart and I ended up ripping the paper across a couple of them. Once this is all done, you find you have the following in the box:
* Five double-sided game boards depicting a mix of gridded dungeon and wilderness environments that are 11 x 11 square, and numbered 1 to 10. These are laid together in various combinations to form different adventure locations.
* 40 plastic miniatures with square bases, in green (trolls, goblins, carrion crawlers), brown (gnolls, ogres, bugbears), cream (liches, skeletons, wraiths and wights), and purple (the four heroes). These are well detailed and could be used for miniatures in standard D&D.
* 104 double-sided counters - covering doors, chests, traps, trees, pillars, oozes, a key, and a dead hero marker. There are also small circular counters to measure hit points and spell points. Some of the counters double sides are the same (chests); some are different (doors, showing open or closed, and traps, showing found and disabled), whilst others are designed to slot together to create 3D effects (pillars and trees).
* 10 Dice - 6 combat dice (2 yellow dice allowing 4 chances of 1 and 2 chances of 0, 2 orange dice allowing 4 chances of 1 and 2 chances of 2, a red die allowing 1 chance of 0, 1 chance of 1, 3 chances of 2, and 1 chance of 3, and a purple die allowing 4 chances of 2 and 2 chances of 3), 2 dice used for searching for and disabling traps, 1 die used for turning undead, and 1 die used for special effects related to weapons, spells and items.
* 4 Hero Boards - these 17cm x 11 cm pieces of thick card help the player keep track of hit points and spell points, movement, AC, number of items able to be carried, and special abilities, as well as showing an image of the character and a brief description of the hero.
* 5 Hero Reminder Cards - playing card size overview of the character's abilities and responsibilities within the team along with one for the Dungeon Master.
* 5 Initiative Cards (1 to 5), dealt out on entering each room randomly. These define in which order the players and DM take their turn.
* 39 Monster Cards showing the monster's AC, hit points, movement, and combat abilities as well as an image of the monster and a short description. Each monster has a number appended to its name such as Goblin 1, Goblin 2, etc. to make it easy to keep track of which monster is being referred to.
* 95 item cards including weapons, potions, spells, artifacts, and booby traps. These are mixed together for the appropriate level of the adventure and are drawn upon when chests are opened. Some are given out to the characters before they start an adventure as basic equipment, and a few are designated as special items for particular placement in an adventure.
* Player's Guide (PG) - gives an overview of the characters available, the layout of the hero boards (and the meaning of the various icons) and a run-through of the various actions that can be taken once initiative is decided.
* Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG) - runs through setting up the boards and gives an understanding the dice and the monster cards, whilst the majority of the book provides 11 adventure board layouts running from Level 1 adventures to Level 3. There is also a double page in the middle providing blank design sheets and icons for designing your own adventures, which can be photocopied.
Game Play
Each of the four players chooses a character and receives their basic items (for example, Regdar the Fighter starts with a single-handed broadsword whilst Mialee the Wizard begins with a magic missile spell and a magical shortbow). After the Dungeon Master (DM) sets out the boards as shown in the first adventure in the DMG along with the first door token (shown closed), the players place their miniatures wherever they want in the first room. One of the heroes moves next to the door and says 'Open' and the token is turned over to show the door is open. Initiative cards are then dealt randomly but kept face down until the DM places the monsters and chests in the next room. Initiative cards are turned face up and each person takes their turn in order of initiative.
Each hero can take 2 actions and each of the following use up 1 action each:
* Movement - the miniature can move a number of squares equal to their movement rate as noted on their hero board or monster card. The miniature cannot be moved diagonally. Various basic rules define where the miniature can and cannot be moved or end up.
* Open a door - a hero must be standing next to a door and the player says, "open" - the initiative immediately changes. Some doors require a key.
* Open a chest - the hero stands on the chest and the player says "open" - the player takes a card from the item deck (adding the item to their collection, or else the GM resolves the results of a booby trap card.
* Change an item - swap an item from the hero's knapsack to the player's hand to make it available to use. The knapsack holds any items not able to be used by the hero (this is stated on the hero board). Heroes can also swap items.
* Combat with weapon or spell - roll the dice shown on the weapon or spell card (yellow, orange, red, purple, in various mixtures dependent on the power of the spell or weapon). Subtract the AC of the victim from the damage of these die and then take away that amount of hit point tokens from the victim's total. Some weapons or spells have optional attacks (such as power attacks that do more damage but risk losing/breaking the weapon) or additional effects (such as rolling the special effects die to see if spell points are regained after use, or allowing the re-rolling of 1 die). Potions can be consumed as a free action but must then be discarded. The GM is advised to 'tap' (i.e. turn sideways) the monster cards (like in Magic The Gathering CCG) when they have made their attack to help keep track when running multiple monsters. Weapons and spells are designated as melee or ranged (or both) - melee items can only be used when in an adjoining square to the opponent, whilst ranged items can be used anywhere except in squares adjoining the opponent, but there must be a direct line of sight (an example of this is given taking account of walls, trees, pillars, and other heroes and monsters).
* Special actions - certain characters have special abilities. Lidda can search for and disable traps - the search die allows several results (finding no, 1, or 2 traps, or forcing the player to stop searching for more traps - if there are no traps in the room the GM must inform the player; if there are traps, he reveals the nearest by placing tokens in the appropriate squares) whilst the disable traps die has a 1 in 6 chance of failure causing the trap to go off anyway. Disabled trap tokens can be collected by Lidda to increase her hit points. Lidda can also sneak, allowing her to be the only hero to be able to move through the same square as a monster occupies - when she does this and attacks in the same round, she does extra damage. Jozan can heal by spending spell points to heal hit points, and can also turn undead using the turn undead die - this allows results of 0, 1, 2, or 3 and the result is only effective if the power level of the undead creature (marked on its card) is sufficiently low to equal or be less than the die result.
The heroes move from room to room, killing monsters, finding traps and opening chests until their goal is achieved or they can no longer achieve it, at which point the adventure ends immediately (even if there are unopened chests in the final room for example) and a new adventure board is set up. Heroes get to keep the loot they have found unless they were killed in the adventure and were not raised from the dead, in which case they re-start the new adventure with only their basic equipment.
Playtesting Notes
I ran this game for the recommended four players as the GM - the players were Pete (8 years old with no previous experience of D&D), Shona (14 years old with no previous experience of D&D), Peter (35 years old, until recently part of my regular gaming group), and Bill (also 35 and part of my gaming group). We managed to play the first two adventures from the DM's Guide.
The first thing that is noticeable on the front of the box is the phrase "easy to set up and play" - well, it might be easy, but it took nearly an hour to push out all the tokens, set up the boards and explain all the rules. At the end of the rules explanation, Shona said, "I thought this was supposed to be the short version!" For first time players the ruleset can still be a bit intimidating, though once explained it is pretty intuitive from then on.
The most difficult aspect for the players was remembering they had two actions per turn - either forgetting to take their second action when the situation called for movement only, or wanting to take an extra turn when faced with multiple trap/chest/monster options. The GM needs to keep a sharp eye on this aspect. Another aspect that is tough for a beginning GM is to keep an eye on the players movement when traps are around - the GM always needs to force the players to move slowly square by square, or else the players quickly realise there are traps around when the GM cries "Slow down!" during movement actions. On the other hand, its very funny to see players jump out of their seats when the DM shouts "Trap!" when they step on a seemingly inoffensive square because they couldn't be bothered to wait for Lidda to check for traps first.
The rules are pretty good at covering all eventualities. One or two situations did crop up that I had to make a call on, such as a player wanting to finish his second action (movement) on top of a trap so he could disable it on the first action of his next turn. And I did find that I occasionally had to rifle through both booklets to find a rule to cover a situation (for example, the rules on traps are split between the players guide and the DM's Guide).
Here are the comments from each of the players after finishing the second adventure:
Pete (8): Great, I liked all the murders you could do. I didn't like that brown scary fellow (the Bugbear in Adventure 2 who killed two of the party).
Shona (14): Brilliant. I liked collecting all the cards with weapons and spells from the chests, to kill the monsters with.
Peter (35): Good game. It's not D&D, but it's still entertaining.
Bill (35): Enjoyable to a point. It got a bit repetitive after a while - an hour's play (about one adventure) at a time would probably be enough for me.
High Points:
This works well as an introduction to D&D for those new to the game - it provides a relatively entertaining and familiar board game environment whilst introducing the player to D&D concepts such as sneak attacks, turning undead, spontaneous healing, skills, level progression, initiative, and actions per turn. Those who played HeroQuest will also find themselves in a relatively familiar environment. The game allows for development of group and individual tactics as the players become more familiar with the hazards and rules of the game, and the DM is given carte blanche to start designing her own adventures after the eleven adventure boards have been played, making for a potentially endless series of games. Its also pretty tough - I killed two of the players off in the second adventure and the group is encouraged to act co-operatively pretty quickly to avoid such a fate again. However, I liked the way that there was a chance to start the next adventure despite being killed, but with the penalty of losing all your collected items.
Low Points:
As Bill pointed out in his comment, the game can resemble the worst of dungeon crawls for those familiar with the freedom of design available with D&D. Trap searches, chest looting, and monster slugfests could be repeated ad nauseam. The later adventures in the DMs Guide (which we didn't play) promised more complexity and harder opponents but did not significantly increase the number of gameplay options - mainly availability of special items, magical reappearance of monsters, and multiple doors triggered to open at the same time. The layout of the booklets could have been simpler for beginning players, perhaps in a step-by-step read-as-you-play style.
Conclusion:
I think the board game achieves what it sets out to do - bring new players, particularly younger players, into the game. I especially liked the fact that the underlying concepts of D&D (though not the exact ruleset) were used. The fact that the designers went for the immediate impact of combat and treasure is a double-edged sword - it has great appeal for younger players but ignores some of the roleplaying aspects that can hook players for life rather than just for Christmas. Nothing's stopping the DM from introducing these aspects to the game, but they are not even mentioned as an option, despite the 'adventure seed'-style introductions to each adventure board. However, overall this is a board game with a good few hours of enjoyment and most importantly an opportunity for all gamers to introduce others to D&D.
Note: Many thanks to Anne-Marie Cox of Hasbro Ireland, for her aid in this review.
