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Message: <blockquote data-quote="coffeeswiller" data-source="post: 5442027" data-attributes="member: 18371">I just had the opportunity to play the Dungeons and Dragons Castle Ravenloft game, and I have to say that I am disappointed. Reviews I have read implied that the game was somewhat of a cross between D&D 4th edition and Betrayal at House on the Hill (an excellent cooperative game with multiple scenarios). I really wanted to like this game. Though not a fan of D&D 4th edition, I did consider that ruleset would make a great boardgame. Sadly, I found this game to be severely lacking. The way the game is structured, you have a scenario with a win condition known at the start of the game (the sessions I played were an escort mission, and a quest to kill a dracolich). Players then take turns moving and exploring, with player turns working much like D&D turns. The exploration system is my primary problem with the game. You go to the edge of the board, and lay down a random tile. Every tile has a monster, and every monster immediately attacks the character. There is no opportunity for reaction, tactics, etc. There are several reasons why this is problematic. D&D characters have strengths and weaknesses. Take, for example, the wizard. A wizard's strength is being able to attacks enemies from afar, often multiple ones. Their weakness is typically lack of ability to take damage, represented by a low hit point total. Castle Ravenloft's Exploration/Encounter system heavily penalizes the wizard character for having fewer hit points than the other characters. We came to realize that this character was just not viable for playing. Another weakness is the Exploration/Encounter system, as I mentioned before. Every exploration reveals an enemy. And while it is nice that all players cooperate, the tactics they use largely make them feel the same. Another game that occupies this same conceptual space is Descent. Also a dungeon crawl game, Descent has one player operate as the Overlord, controlling the monsters. Its gameplay is smoother and more satisfying, but it does not play so quickly. A better horror exploration game that plays in a similar amount of time is Betrayal at House on the Hill (mentioned earlier). Primarily cooperative, it uses a traitor mechanic that causes one player to unexpectedly betray the party, which sets into motion a story-driven scenario, where both the traitor and the rest of the players have distinct win conditions. To sum up, this is not a good game. There are planty of other good cooperative games to measure this against. The poorly-conceived systems diminish its playability, and its small number of scenarios limit its replayability. I would seriously consider either of the games previously mentioned above this. Randy<a href="http://growingupgamers.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Growing Up Gamers</a></blockquote>

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