D&D: The Boardgame

[Lago PARANOIA]

So, with the D&D Essentials line, I do believe that there is some traction for a D&D boardgame. As the Nintendo Wii has shown us, people are still willing to go other to other peoples' places to game if given the opportunity.

So, I'm going to take the lessons of Dragonstrike and use it for a new design criteria. A lot of this is anecdotal, so feel free to strike down my assertions if you have better (or any) evidence.

1) The game should be able to effortlessly switch between 'advanced' and 'beginner' play. There should be character creation rules but there should ALSO be a bunch of pre-printed cards for character archetypes. Broad stuff like dwarven fighter and elven archer. Seriously, you should get someone totally new to the game ready to play within 10 minutes. But the game shouldn't stop there, either. Once they get into the swing of things they should be able to create their character from scratch and join the big boys.

2) People like feelies. I thought this was just a beginner thing, but seriously, given how people fetishize the 4E power cards I'm strongly starting to think that the board game should go in this direction. Every set should come with some monster and player miniatures. D&D could've gone a lot further with their miniatures line if they included miniatures with the damn game to begin with. Power cards for the beginner levels should be printed out immediately. You don't have to print them out for advanced stuff, but they should definitely be there for the first third of the game.

3) Make detailed boards. Then recycle the adventures frequently onto the board. Now I'm not saying that the game shouldn't stop people from making their own sets from scratch or releasing new boards, but I am totally serious in the idea that most people would rather play 6 adventures on the 'city' board than try to visualize all of them. Make these things look beautiful. I also recommend making the boards so that they segue from one set to the other. For example, you can connect the 'Forest' board to the 'Dungeon' board.

4) Make skills open-ended. Seriously, we don't need a 20-page chapter detailing skills. We just need a list of possible skills to invest in and suggested uses. While I'm normally VERY in favor of having objective DCs throughout the game, the sad fact of the matter is that new players don't like it to be explained to them that they can't use their skills in a creative way because of blah blah blah DCs.

5) Make one-shot items a lot more useful than they used to be. Monopoly gets boring in the late game not just because of death spiral, but also because people have too much shit to care about. Have permanent items, sure, but people should be encouraged to churn through most of their items as frequently as possible. People should be discouraged from hording; this keeps up the excitement when a lot of magical items get put into circulation. The 4E thing where your magical item selection is basically fixed is dull. The Dragonstrike thing where you burn through items because they have a finite use is more fun.

6) But keep inter-game continuity. Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't run one-shots, but the success of grinding MMORPGs shows us that you can get people hooked onto the most ridiculous of things as long as you promise progress.

7) Dice inflation needs to go. I prefer bell-curve rolling. But one intractable disadvantage of this is that... you need a lot of dice. I mean, seriously. Everything should be taken care of with four dice at the most. The DM rolling four d8s for damage should be an event viewed with awe, not apathy.

8) Bonus inflation needs to go. Whenever possible a power or spell or magical item should introduce a new tactic or power rather than a cynical bonus. It's lazy and it's hard to keep track of if you have too little of them. A Flame Axe should be able to let you cast fireballs and throw up a fire shield; it should not do +1d6 damage. Bonus inflation should ONLY happen from levels, if that.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So, combine Munchkin, Descent, and Arkham Horror?

[Username17]

Your wish is my command.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

I know I don't actually know a lot about the game, but honestly, that's a pretty damn good start.

I'd have to know more about the creation creation and combat system before I pass judgment, considering that these things are the backbone of a dungeon crawl game, but if I was trying to advertise a board game it'd look a fuckton like that. And if I didn't hate Bill and Mike with a passion, I'd definitely drop the 70 dollars in order to buy it.

[Username17]

I know I don't actually know a lot about the game, but honestly, that's a pretty damn good start.

I'd have to know more about the creation creation and combat system before I pass judgment, considering that these things are the backbone of a dungeon crawl game, but if I was trying to advertise a board game it'd look a fuckton like that. And if I didn't hate Bill and Mike with a passion, I'd definitely drop the 70 dollars in order to buy it.

Totally with you there. If I was going to make a D&D Board Game, the readout would look exactly like that. The problem is that we have evidence that Bill and Mike wouldn't know simple and elegant if it punched them in the nuts, so it seems like a path to disappointment. I figure it will be about as dumb as the WoW boardgame.

-Username17

[NineInchNall]

D&D could've gone a lot further with their miniatures line if they included miniatures with the damn game to begin with.

Also if the minis weren't fucking randomized. I know I would have loved the ability to go to the store and pick up exactly the type and number of minis that I'd need for an upcoming adventure. What we got was a novelty gag. Fuck that shit. There's no way I'm going to spend money when I don't know what I'm going to get or whether I'll ever find use for it.

[Zinegata]

... Why not just play FFG's Descent?

It's a fiddly game, but it's a decent boardgame RPG with lots of nice pieces. And it fulfills all the points in the wishlist except open-ended skills (which, I think, is kinda bad for boardgames anyway).

[cthulhu]

Descent gives me group the angry vibes, particularly the wizard who keeps dying and nearly burst a blood vessel over being able to jump over pits, but not pools of water.

When I mentioned the FAQ answer of 'roving packs of blood squid' he nearly punched me. Otherwise a good game.

[Zinegata]

Descent gives me group the angry vibes, particularly the wizard who keeps dying and nearly burst a blood vessel over being able to jump over pits, but not pools of water.

When I mentioned the FAQ answer of 'roving packs of blood squid' he nearly punched me. Otherwise a good game.

You're supposed to die in Descent. A *lot*. Especially in the campaign.

But the OP didn't say he didn't want a game where you kept respawning from the dead .

[Lago PARANOIA]

Since I have a lot of boring-ass classes tomorrow, a couple of which are blatant victory laps (since I turned in my projects early) I suppose that I will work on an outline of character creation for my boardgame.

Goals:
Players can expect to hold onto their characters for the lifespan of a campaign, but they don't experience any penalty for switching out or completely remaking a character. Character creation should be fast at low levels, only slightly less fast at higher levels.

Even though it's a boardgame and some things should be simplified, schtick protection is an absolute must. This means that classes should have a lot of flavoring to them and that players should have plenty of opportunity to add on cheap and fun character development (like backgrounds). I think that the pre-printed character cards for absolute newbies need to be detailed, but not necessarily customizable. When they become more familiar with the game they are 'rewarded' with being able to bring their vision to life.

If characters gain abilities at all they should be completely tactics-changing. Shit like 'gain a +1 bonus to attack' should not exist except as situational positioning (higher ground, attacking someone from cover). Except for universal tactical positioning, bonuses should be calculated ahead of time whenever possible.

To keep inflation bonuses low, we set PC levels as the baseline for attack and defense scores. The DM is the one who adjusts monster attack and defense rolls and does it by level. This means that while a PC only ever rolls a d20, at level 4 it hits a troll on a 12 or higher but at level 8 it hits on a 16 or higher.

To compensate for this, combat should be really fast. The maximum amount of time you should be fighting any level-appropriate enemy is 5 rounds unless something goes really wrong. 3 rounds is typical. To speed up combat, surrenders and routs are the typical outcome of battles. This means that 'fight-to-the-death' monsters like ghouls and owlbears need to become glass cannons. This also means that the combat engine should favor not leaving enemies unengaged and discourage 'gangbang' tactics because that ends up slowing things down.

Attacks of opportunity should stay in the game, though. The problem people have with them is that while they greatly encourage tactical thinking this mechanic can slow the game down if they happen too often. This means that attacks of opportunity need to be very painful. 3E and 4E's AoO aren't pushing enough.

So. Combat roles. Yay or nay? I'm neutral towards this in general. While I find that they can be a very limiting paradigm for development of both characters and mechanics and if implemented poorly sticks players into roles they don't like, the upside to them is that they allow players to quickly integrate themselves into a team mechanic and allow newbies to figure out how they should be doing.

I'm strongly in favor of having something like drama or background cards that can turn around the plot. Stuff like 'The Duke owes you a favor' or 'Bad Guy is surprisingly willing to listen to your diplomatic terms' or 'Guards are goofing off'. People should get them as a reward for completing the adventure/character advancement and should also randomly get more drama/background cards for each adventure. For example, a Warlord will always have the 'squad comes to your aid' background card and for successfully saving the Archwizard Nimue gets the 'sages will do some research for you' drama card, but a particular adventure might yield a 'helpful weather' card such as a thick fog suddenly draping the countryside while you're trying to sneak into the enemy camp.

[Windjammer]

I strongly recommend you to take a look at Parker's D&D boardgame (2003) marketed by Hasbro to give you further food for thought. Among many other things - I love the random loot mechanic, and the fancy dice you get to roll (as a rogue) to disable traps - it uses the interlocking tiles for forest and dungeon adventures you talk about in your OP... at least when you factor in the first expansion (which I have).

More info on the boardgame here, and on the first expansion here.

[Zinegata]

Goals:
Players can expect to hold onto their characters for the lifespan of a campaign, but they don't experience any penalty for switching out or completely remaking a character. Character creation should be fast at low levels, only slightly less fast at higher levels.

Even though it's a boardgame and some things should be simplified, schtick protection is an absolute must. This means that classes should have a lot of flavoring to them and that players should have plenty of opportunity to add on cheap and fun character development (like backgrounds). I think that the pre-printed character cards for absolute newbies need to be detailed, but not necessarily customizable. When they become more familiar with the game they are 'rewarded' with being able to bring their vision to life.

What most RPG boardgames do is it to provide a very large pool of pre-generated characters which have some level of customization. Boardgames are generally designed to be "pick up and play", so they tend to discourage downtime needed to make a character from the get-go.

It's a little bit different with campaigns. Descent, for instance, actually provides some character creation rules, but they are for use in the campaign game only.

If characters gain abilities at all they should be completely tactics-changing. Shit like 'gain a +1 bonus to attack' should not exist except as situational positioning (higher ground, attacking someone from cover). Except for universal tactical positioning, bonuses should be calculated ahead of time whenever possible.

Most boardgames RPGs I know use dicepools that try to hit a target number. Making a bigger dice pool or changing the TN is often done rarely, but when it is the probabilities often change dramatically. You might want to employ a dicepool due to the relatively low level of granularity when it comes to giving bonuses.

To compensate for this, combat should be really fast. The maximum amount of time you should be fighting any level-appropriate enemy is 5 rounds unless something goes really wrong. 3 rounds is typical. To speed up combat, surrenders and routs are the typical outcome of battles. This means that 'fight-to-the-death' monsters like ghouls and owlbears need to become glass cannons. This also means that the combat engine should favor not leaving enemies unengaged and discourage 'gangbang' tactics because that ends up slowing things down.

Ergh... not sure if 3 rounds is all that ideal. What will be the scale of the combats?

Attacks of opportunity should stay in the game, though. The problem people have with them is that while they greatly encourage tactical thinking this mechanic can slow the game down if they happen too often. This means that attacks of opportunity need to be very painful. 3E and 4E's AoO aren't pushing enough.

AoOs will slow down the game, and as I said that's... not ideal for boardgames.

So. Combat roles. Yay or nay? I'm neutral towards this in general. While I find that they can be a very limiting paradigm for development of both characters and mechanics and if implemented poorly sticks players into roles they don't like, the upside to them is that they allow players to quickly integrate themselves into a team mechanic and allow newbies to figure out how they should be doing.

Most RPG boardgames do have roles for their pregens. Arkham Horror characters for instance, are often divided between "Investigators" and "Fighters".

I'm strongly in favor of having something like drama or background cards that can turn around the plot. Stuff like 'The Duke owes you a favor' or 'Bad Guy is surprisingly willing to listen to your diplomatic terms' or 'Guards are goofing off'. People should get them as a reward for completing the adventure/character advancement and should also randomly get more drama/background cards for each adventure. For example, a Warlord will always have the 'squad comes to your aid' background card and for successfully saving the Archwizard Nimue gets the 'sages will do some research for you' drama card, but a particular adventure might yield a 'helpful weather' card such as a thick fog suddenly draping the countryside while you're trying to sneak into the enemy camp.

Arkham Horror and a couple of other RPGs come with very, very, very, very large decks of encounter cards that contain unique challenges and rewards.

However, they can be very fiddly and send some players into fits of rage.

One mechanic I like though are secret objective cards - which are given to the players and kept hidden from the DM, and vice versa. Adds variety and helps spring surprises.

[RobbyPants]

Attacks of opportunity should stay in the game, though. The problem people have with them is that while they greatly encourage tactical thinking this mechanic can slow the game down if they happen too often. This means that attacks of opportunity need to be very painful. 3E and 4E's AoO aren't pushing enough.

So, what are you thinking? Extra damage? Stopped movement? Some easy to resolve penalty (become flat footed or something)? Something else?

So. Combat roles. Yay or nay? I'm neutral towards this in general. While I find that they can be a very limiting paradigm for development of both characters and mechanics and if implemented poorly sticks players into roles they don't like, the upside to them is that they allow players to quickly integrate themselves into a team mechanic and allow newbies to figure out how they should be doing.

You could always go the color route people have been talking about lately for your roles. The pregen characters could be made with one or two per "color" and a bit of a description so newbs understand the risks of having two "green" PCs in the party at once. Character creation would build upon these concepts.

This lets you avoid roles like "defender" and "striker", and allows you to define them more by theme.

[Username17]

The games you are going to want to study are:

• Arkham Horror
• Runebound
• Dungeon!
• Space Hulk
• Warhammer Quest

Anyway, the first thing you need to come to grips with is that an action will generally involve you rolling a d20 with a modifier against a TN. Exactly like Runebound - or skills in D&D. You will not in fact roll for damage. Some large attacks will allow you to roll to take half damage (no damage with an ability).

You'll also want to decide whether the game needs a DM or not. If monsters have enough instructions then you can play without a DM. Either cooperatively like Arkham or competitively like Runebound. If the monsters have non-random choices to make, you need a DM. That would by default make it PCs vs DM, which I personally find to be a frustrating scenario because "everyone wins by Todd" is kind of built for cruelty.

Anyhow, the actual board itself would have a bunch of squares. Think Warhammer Quest. And you'd have locations that generate encounter cards (think Dungeon! or Arkham Horror), and you'd also have wandering monster tokens that would generate monsters when encountered (think Space Hulk). These wandering monster tokens would come out of the cup randomly and move randomly and get placed on the board on a regular basis - think Monsters in Arkham Horror.

But fights themselves should probably involve monsters moving up and autoattacking most of the time, with characters rolling a d20 to do things.

-Username17

[hogarth]

• Dungeon!

Aha! I've been wracking my brains trying to remember what was the name of the dungeon-crawling game we had when I was a kid.

[RobbyPants]

I played the remake of it in the mid 90s. I loved that game.

I know Warhammer Quest has rules for both with and without a GM. If playing without, you assume that when an encounter starts, the monsters literally appear next to the heroes, evenly distributed. Any remainders are spread randomly (decided by drawing tokens). This is nice from a simplicity stand point, but you have to figure out what you really want from this game. How complicated should it be?

If you want to be able to do creative things with skills, I guess that means you need a DM. Basically, if anything isn't explicitly covered in the rules, you need a DM.

[Manxome]

It's a little bit different with campaigns. Descent, for instance, actually provides some character creation rules, but they are for use in the campaign game only.

No, Descent provides downloadable character creation rules that are explicitly for either normal or campaign play, but they're horribly unbalanced, and very few people use them. You'd be better off clicking the button in my Descent random hero generator until you get one that you like, or even adapting the generation algorithm into creation rules if you're very math-tolerant.

Most RPG boardgames do have roles for their pregens. Arkham Horror characters for instance, are often divided between "Investigators" and "Fighters".

No, "Investigator" is the Arkham Horror term for "player character". Different investigators are good at different things, but they do not have explicit roles.

[Cynic]

man, Dungeon! brought hours of gameplay for us after an old-friend got it out in college.

Ahh sophomore year of college and rediscovering old loves.

[K]

Talisman also deserves a look, but I don't think there is a game more fun than Arkham Horror from a mechanics standpoint.

[Zinegata]

It's a little bit different with campaigns. Descent, for instance, actually provides some character creation rules, but they are for use in the campaign game only.

No, Descent provides downloadable character creation rules that are explicitly for either normal or campaign play, but they're horribly unbalanced, and very few people use them. You'd be better off clicking the button in my Descent random hero generator until you get one that you like, or even adapting the generation algorithm into creation rules if you're very math-tolerant.

Then my GM for Descent needs a thwack on the head. Excuse me. ^_^

Most RPG boardgames do have roles for their pregens. Arkham Horror characters for instance, are often divided between "Investigators" and "Fighters".

No, "Investigator" is the Arkham Horror term for "player character". Different investigators are good at different things, but they do not have explicit roles.

Sorry, yes, the roles "Investigators" and "Fighters" do not officially exist in the game's list of terms, but most character are either geared for killing monsters or going around places to pick up clues and encounters. My group tends to use the name "Fighters" for the former group, "Investigators" for the latter.

K->

Arkham is definitely very good... but it doesn't have tactical combat and Lago seems to want tactical combat (i.e. Want of AoOs).

Talisman is fun... but it's the lovechild of Monopoly and Arkham.

Also... doesn't anyone have a love for Tomb?

[Starmaker]

Talisman also deserves a look, but I don't think there is a game more fun than Arkham Horror from a mechanics standpoint.

Incidentally, did FFG fix the auto-win character and item that allow the player to draw two cards and choose one?

Also, Zinegata, you have two closing quote tags after "they do not have explicit roles".

[Manxome]

Then my GM for Descent needs a thwack on the head. Excuse me. ^_^

Descent also doesn't have a GM, at least in the traditional sense. The overlord is an opponent. He's not a referee, he does not have preferential status over the other players, he has explicit powers and limitations spelled out in the rules, and he is supposed to play to win.

That's a mechanic that I really enjoy, but some people not so much. Like Frank, apparently. And I actually only enjoy it in a one-off game, not an 80-hour campaign, which is (one reason) why I have no plans ever to play the Descent extended campaign.

[Zinegata]

Talisman also deserves a look, but I don't think there is a game more fun than Arkham Horror from a mechanics standpoint.

Incidentally, did FFG fix the auto-win character and item that allow the player to draw two cards and choose one?

Also, Zinegata, you have two closing quote tags after "they do not have explicit roles".

Whoops. Fixed.

I don't recall any errata, but yeah that was an extremely good character to have.

Then my GM for Descent needs a thwack on the head. Excuse me. ^_^

Descent also doesn't have a GM, at least in the traditional sense. The overlord is an opponent. He's not a referee, he does not have preferential status over the other players, he has explicit powers and limitations spelled out in the rules, and he is supposed to play to win.

Correct. I need to thwack my Overlord.

That's a mechanic that I really enjoy, but some people not so much. Like Frank, apparently. And I actually only enjoy it in a one-off game, not an 80-hour campaign, which is (one reason) why I have no plans ever to play the Descent extended campaign.

It's probably because the Overlord is explicitly the adversary of the players as opposed to being one of the players. Which leads to situations such as bringing the Overlord to the brink of tears after we, ergh... smashed through his first dungeon in the campaign with hardly any losses and getting a ton more VPs (or whatever it's called) than we should be getting for that level.

[Murtak]

Descent is worth a look, if only to steal some of the nice ideas they had. But, for the sake of all that is good, don't even think about copying any of their rules. Seriously, that game is a shining example of how not to write rules. Right down to using neither a useful table of contents nor an index. Not properly defining defining terms, using "when" instead of "before" or "after", refusing to clarify rules on their forums - this game has it all.

If you are willing to rewrite the rules from scratch it should do fine as a blueprint for a DnD boardgame I think. You can easily incorporate some staples like fighter, rogue and caster types, different weapons, spells, feats and limited use abilities.

[Username17]

Incidentally, did FFG fix the auto-win character and item that allow the player to draw two cards and choose one?

I don't really know what you are talking about here. Darrel the Photographer is one of the best characters, but he does not always make you win. But I'm not sure if that's even who you mean, because actually "draw an extra card of some specific type and discard one you don't want" is an incredibly common ability. Off the top of my head:

• Darrel (Town Encounter Cards - Awesome)
• Gloria (Gate Encounter Cards - Very Good)
• Bob (Common Items - Awesome)
• Monterey (Unique Items - should be awesome, but his character is not well suited to taking advantage of it, and ends up mediocre)
• Dexter (Spells - kind of shitty)
• Amanda Sharpe (Skills - probably the worst character)
• Rita (Injuries - Mediocre)

But then there are some related abilities, mostly from expansions:

• Lola (discard ad redraw skills - mediocre)
• Daisy (starts with the book that lets you dumpster dive the entire spell deck - awesome)
• Ursula (has encounters in addition to using board text, and can spend a clue to negate an encounter - awesome)
• Jacqueline (once per game, can spend clues to redraw the Mythos card - awesome)

-Username17