Lords of Waterdeep - NinjaDorg gets his arse kicked

Her irony loaded words filled me with a heady mixture of expectation management but also pride:

“Okay then, let’s get this boring board game over with so we can watch another episode of The Walking Dead.”

My wife is not a gamer. Not by any stretch. And I wouldn't have it any other way. She kind of benignly sees my board game addiction as a much more preferable alternative to me getting sloshed down the pub every Saturday watching footie with the lads. So once every blue moon she’ll indulge me when a new title lands and I can’t wait until Thursday game night to break it out.

After struggling to resist a nebulous magnetism in Merric’s early preview reports on Lords of Waterdeep - and failing miserably it has to be said - I pulled the trigger on an Amazon pre-order. When Lords of Waterdeep arrived at my FLGS and sat there taunting me after Amazon had said it would be two more weeks before delivery, I paid the extra few quid and picked up a copy of LoW there and then, and cancelled my Amazon pre-order.

As an ardent Brit-trasher I’d been looking for a decent Euro for a long time and the theme of this one was irresistible. Especially considering the many hours of my youth I’d given over to travelling this imaginary city or indeed hosting adventures in it. Or reading books about it. Yeah Waterdeep figures pretty heavily in that respect. So when I laid out the map board for this new game I got a weird nostalgia rush for the old City System Waterdeep boxed set, and an old AD&D campaign I ran where the players invaded the city’s keep. Great days.

Well here we were now fighting to save the city and exercise control over it. My wife was blissfully oblivious to all of this back story of course, it was just coloured cube gathering and card playing. I ran through the simple rules quickly and dealt out the Lord cards, then had an ‘oops’ moment. I’d drawn Larissa Neathal – the one ‘different’ Lord who gives bonus points for Buildings at the end of the game.

“So you’ll see you’ve got two types of quest there that you need to aim for without telling me what they are. Oh, and by the way there’s also a Lord who gives bonuses for building buildings too, just so’s you knows...”

I briefly mulled over the consequences of beating her mercilessly by just buying buildings the whole game whilst she struggled for quests. Well if off the back of that she decided never to play again we’d always have Forbidden Island (which went over quite well that one time we played it all those months ago) or, um, Walking Dead season 2. In any case it was her first game of LoW but I decided not to hold back as it was my first game too.

As first player I* decided to try and grab gold to get some buildings going, so I popped a little wooden dude down at Aurora’s and added four gold to my supply.

With her first move she bought a building.

D’oh!

Okay, not a problem, there are seven more rounds to go yet, and other ways to get buildings too.

As the game moved swiftly on we took turns to place our little guys and grab coloured cubes and the ‘theme’ of the game slipped away pretty quickly – I still don’t know which coloured guys are which. Although the fighters all inexplicably wear orange iirc. Basically, it may as well have been a bunch of farmers and sheep, though I probably would not have bought the game if it were...

My wife was completing an alarming number of quests, and especially plot quests, and seemed to somehow be getting cubes faster than I could. Her VP token was ahead of mine for the whole game and I realised I still needed to complete regular quests to win. As I focussed on questing she handily yoinked the first player token from me and kept it for the rest of the game.

So I hit her back with a few intrigue cards as and when I could to keep her in check.

“Bam - give me your purple cube!”

Then she started to hit me back with her own intrigue cards, nicking my guys and plopping annoying mandatory quests on top of me.

“Bam yourself – stop being a dick!”

Suddenly it was round 5 and our fifth agents came into the game – time was really flying. I only had a couple of buildings and gold was hard to come by, so I focussed almost exclusively on dominating the Builder’s Hall. As I got increasingly desperate for effective moves she seemed to be breezing through and completing quests which had really big requirements and gave really big rewards. Soon she had her 100 VP token whilst I straggled behind. I took solace as I put the finishing touches to my fifth building, completed another quest and passed the 100VP mark myself. I decided my game would come together in the final scoring stages.

Soon enough the game did come to an end in under an hour and we totted up the final scores. I made a sort of ‘sorry’ face as I revealed my Lord, explained her bonus and bounced along the VP track, over-taking her marker and landing on 139 total Victory Points for the game. Un-phased she revealed her own Lord: Durnan the Wanderer, whose principal interests were Commerce and Warfare. For dramatic effect she revealed her quests one by one. Every single one of her completed quests had been Commerce or Warfare. She hopped along the VP track and landed on 141 Victory Points!

I checked and re-checked the final scores about four times and realised with growing trepidation that I had just been soundly and thoroughly arse-whupped.

“That wasn’t bad - it was a bit like Forbidden Island, not one of those long boring ones you always play. Shall we go and watch the season finale then?” she smiled.

I need to step up my skills before game night on Thursday!



Some notes on Lords of Waterdeep...

Pros:

The box is great, the insert is fantastic – probably the first insert that I will not throw away. You can turn the box upside down and shake it about and everything stays in place (except for the 100VP tokens, no big deal though).

Cards seem great, the linen texture is fine, another game that I don’t think I’ll need to sleeve any time soon, which is nice. Plus they have artwork on the cards! After the disappointingly bland D&D Adventure System games’ cards this was a lovely step up in quality.

The layout of the game feels very organic, it’s easy to see what goes where on the map and the map itself is good. Although fairly colourless it serves its purpose beautifully and speeds the game up too.

The gameplay is easy to pick up, we didn’t have any rules questions in this first play, and it goes by very quickly.

The art for the locations is really nice, and the players’ Tavern cards look sweet.



Cons:

Generally, the art itself is not really great however. I’d have loved to see some of the old 1st and 2nd edition D&D art recycled for this, or just good art generally in that style. But it’s all very cartoony and Magic: The Gathering-y. In fact my wife was crying laughing at Durnan’s ugly mug but couldn’t tell me why she was laughing until after the game finished. In fact pretty much all of the characters are quite ugly. Even the pretty ones. FFG has spoilt us in this respect.

Wooden cubes! I don’t see the attraction, or the need, or the why, or the how. They’re supposed to be people? I don’t get it!!! Surely potential Euro gamers attracted to the wooden cubes will be put off by ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ written on the cover! Even the agent meeples look a bit dumb. But they stand up well and are durable as hell.

The theme is nice and everything - it's what drew me in after all - but it's a struggle to keep it in your head as you play. For example, you'll be much more concerned about how many oranges and whites you have and how many blacks and purples you need.



Finally:

I really enjoyed Lords of Waterdeep and it sped by at a great pace. I can’t wait to break this out with my group and see how they take to it. Might even be able to get my wife to play again some time...






* what? it’s not an etiquette thing, I’d just got back from a shoot in London, it’s in the rules dammit, whoever went to another city most recently goes first!! 

Dungeons & Dragons Official Home Page - Design Article (Lords of Waterdeep)

Lords of Waterdeep

Design & Development

Rodney Thompson and Peter Lee

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Lords of Waterdeep):


'via Blog this'

ords of Waterdeep is a new strategy board game set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons, debuting this month. In this Euro-style game, players send off their Agents to recruit Adventurers and recruit Quests. In this article, designers Rodney Thompson and Peter Lee describe the prototyping process and how the early, simple prototypes evolved into the high-end board game you can find in stores now.

Prototype Design

Rodney: Today we want to talk a little bit about the prototyping process for Lords of Waterdeep, and give you an idea of just how far the game has come from those early days.

One of the most important things I've learned from the process of working on Lords of Waterdeep is that, until it's time for the game to go to press, you should focus most of your efforts on perfecting the game's design. Function beats form during design and development, and our early prototypes really reflected that.

Our very first prototype consisted of an 8" x 10" dungeon tile covered in stickers, several 4" x 4" dungeon tiles with stickers on them for the Buildings, a bunch of Star Wars and D&D miniatures for the Agents, and the scoring track from Carcassonne to monitor our scores during play. Our card decks made by layering stickers over foreign language Magic and Duel Masterscards. To say it looked "cobbled-together" would be putting it nicely. However, I think this lack of polish early on actually helped a lot in that we never got too attached to the design's physical form.

Pete: When we started work on Lords of Waterdeep, I was playing weekly board games with my Dungeon Command co-designer Kevin Tatroe and his family. Earlier in the year, they gave me a gift from a local teacher supply store, a box of one thousand plastic cubes in ten different colors—a prototyper's dream! These became the Adventurers we needed for the game. I also had a supply of yellow tokens that we used for Gold.

Rodney: In this first prototype, we used red cubes for Rogues (because Rogues create blood splatters), black cubes for Fighters, green cubes for Clerics, and blue cubes for Wizards. Now when we play the finished game, Peter and I both still sometimes mix up Rogues and Fighters, because Fighters were represented by black cubes for so long that it became ingrained in our minds.

Rodney: That first game was playable to completion and, despite the speed with which the eclectic collection of prototyping materials had been put together, we were able to jump right into the iterative design process. As I mentioned earlier, not getting too attached to the game's components was very, very important to iteration. When Peter or I would make a suggestion for how to fix something, we'd take a pen and write on the sticker immediately, and then play with the change. In my mind, that kind of rapid iteration is critical to the design of a board game, and one of the reasons the Waterdeep design and development process went so well.

So, if there's some advice I'd give to any budding board game designers out there, it's to save the fancy prototype design for after your game is done. You need to be able to write on everything, change rules on the fly, and be ready to throw out entire groups of components if need be, so don't spend too much time making things pretty.

Pete: We knew we had a kernel of a good game, but we had a long way to go. For the next version of the game board, I was interested in usability. In a perfect world, the game board has enough visual cues that you can look at it and understand how to play. While such an ideal is nearly impossible for a game with any complexity, I still wanted to get as close as possible.

Rodney: In fact, one test I ended up putting the board through near the end of the process was to take the board, show it to a friend who was a board gamer but had not yet played (or even seen) the game, and asking him to tell me how he thought the game played. Based on his reactions, I was able to make some slight tweaks to the board to make sure the game board communicated to the player more intuitively. Thanks to the work Peter put in at this stage of the process, my friend was able to guess about 80% of the game play just by looking at the board, which was a great start.

Pete: Rodney and I also discussed how we imagined the board. We both wanted an isometric view of the city. I found a map of Waterdeep from the 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, photocopied it, and taped it to the back of half anAxis & Allies board.

I quickly constructed board elements on the computer and printed them out. Using the highly technical skills I learned back in kindergarten, I created the second board.

This is the board we played on the most. The elements were all attached by tape, making it easy to update and modify after each game. Working on this board taught us a lot about how the components needed to be laid out for the best play experience.

• Quests for drafting needed to be at the top to make it easier for the players whose spot at the table might force them to read cards upside down.
• Basic and Advanced Buildings needed be close together to make it easy to see all the available actions.
• The Quest-drafting Building needed to be close to the Quests.
• Likewise, the Building-drafting Building needed to be close to the Buildings that could be purchased.
• The turn tracker needed to be near the Buildings availabl to be purchased.
• For story reasons, the basic Buildings needed to be located in approximately their canonically correct places in the city.

Rodney: Around this time we were also starting to consider color issues. Color blindness is something we wanted to be aware of in the design of the game, so we needed to get rid of the green color for Clerics (a color that many color-blind people have difficulty distinguishing from shades of red). Likewise, we knew at this point that having our Agents (and, thus, Faction colors) the same color as some of our Adventurer resources was problematic; sometimes people would lose track of their Agents when Adventurers of a similar color were nearby. That's why, in the final game, only one Faction shares its color with an Adventurer color.

Pete: We were getting ready to start discussions with our graphic production team, so it was time to take all the things we learned from this version and update the board. So far, both Intrigue cards and Quest cards were handled in a landscape form. This worked great for the Quests, but it didn't make as much sense for the Intrigue cards since you hold them in your hand. We decided to change the orientation of the card.

At 14.5 inches by 19.5 inches, this board was too small. We were still using the separate Carcassonne board to keep score. Purchased Advanced Buildings sat on the side of the board, putting them a short distance from the central Building squares. Quest cards sat above the board.

A lot of space was taken up by having the resources on the board. It made round preparation easier as all the players could help move resources to the proper Building spaces. Each yellow arrow showed how many cubes needed to move. When we decided to remove the resource accrual mechanic, it was time to design the next major board iteration.

The new board increased to about 20 inches by 24 inches. Everything that we wanted on the board now fit. We brought in art director Keven Smith to work on the final version.

Rodney: I can't say enough good things about the work Keven did taking out primitive prototypes and transforming them into something visually impressive. One of the first things Keven did for us was to create a "wire frame" version of the board, which had the action spaces, blank spots for Buildings, and so forth, but contained no art and only some very limited graphic design. This was a critical step in the prototyping process, despite actually being a step in the game's graphic design process; because we were able to take the wire frame and play on it, we were able to quickly identify any areas that would produce an unsatisfying or unclear experience. We could move different action spaces around, and it was at this time that we started matching up action space names with city locations, which further helped us figure out where to place things. For example, Aurora's Realms Shop was placed where it was to continue the circular arc of basic resource spaces that starts with Blackstaff Tower and moves clockwise around the outer areas of the city, creating a better information flow for where to find basic resources.

As we reached the end of the design process, we had to make some decisions about what our final components would be. Peter and I discussed it and decided that we wanted wooden pieces for the game, specifically cubes for the Adventurers, because we were trying to create a specific type of experience. Fans of strategy board games (aka Euro games) are accustomed to high quality games having wooden pieces, and we wanted to deliver components that met their expectations. For our Agents, Keven's team managed to create a shape that evoked the human form (that of your Agent moving out into the city) that also was exceptionally stable and had some heft to it, so that it was unlikely to tip over during play or be lost while setting up or putting away the game. From there, all that remained was to convert our primitive cards into their final form, and then let Keven and his team construct the gorgeous game you see today.

Dungeons & Dragons Lords of Waterdeep Design Article

Interesting design article on Lords of Waterdeep, looking forward to this one...

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Lords of Waterdeep):


'via Blog this'

ords of Waterdeep is a new Dungeons & Dragons strategy board game, debuting this month. In this game, players send off their agents to recruit adventurers and recruit quests. In this article, designers Rodney Thompson and Peter Lee describe how this new D&D board game was designed.

Two Halves Make a Whole

Peter: Immediately after Gen Con 2008, I was travelling back to Wisconsin for the first time since joining Wizards. On the car ride between Indianapolis and Madison, I was discussing a few board game ideas with my old gaming group. The only game that stuck in my subconscious was a music producing game. In this hypothetical game, a player took on the role of a music producer tasked to create music hits. A hit song would be made by recruiting musicians. For example, a rock song might require a drummer, a singer, and three guitarists.

Fast forward to early August 2010. Castle Ravenloft proved we were able to create compelling board games set in the D&D universe. I was finishing up development on Conquest of Nerath and starting to lay the plans for the design of Legend of Drizzt. I was chatting with Rodney about board games we'd like to do, and I mentioned the music game and how we'd be able to easily put a D&D spin on it by changing it to a game where you were hiring adventurers to send off on quests. Unfortunately, it was only half a game. Every system has inputs and outputs. I had the resource output but I didn't have the input. How does a player get adventurers and quests?

Rodney: During that same conversation, I'd been talking with Peter about the kinds of games I'd like to see. At the time, I really was into action drafting games, with Agricola sitting at the top of my list. However, nothing I was playing at the time was fully satisfying me, and I wanted something that used the core action drafting mechanic I liked, but had less set-up time and a shorter play time.
Unfortunately, Peter and I didn't have a lot of time to talk about our ideas before I got on the Game Train to GenCon. This was the first year that some of us traveled by train from Seattle to Chicago (and then on to Indy for GenCon), so we were just playing games and enjoying the scenery going by. Still, the ideas that Pete and I had been chatting about stuck in my brain, and one morning after breakfast I found myself sitting in a train car speeding through somewhere in Montana, typing furiously on my laptop as I designed the basics of an action drafting game using the quests idea that Peter had. Once I started typing, the design quickly fell into place.
One thing I don't love about some action drafting games is their lack of interaction; many can feel like you're playing four-player solitaire, and I wanted a game that felt like you were really interacting with other people. Another thing I really wanted was for the players, not the game, to introduce more actions into the game. Yet another goal was simple set-up and break-down; I wanted people to get into the game quickly and start playing, rather than spending a lot of time figuring out which component goes where on the game board.
I'd also recently been working on the Dark Sun campaign setting for the D&D roleplaying game, and so naturally I was thinking all about that world. The initial design that I cooked up on the train was called Ambition of the Sorcerer-Kings and was set on Athas, the world of Dark Sun. The adventurers were fighters, rogues, psions and druids, not clerics since Dark Sun doesn't have divine magic. The psion also replaced the wizard, as they are more common in Dark Sun. Your agents in the city would be your templars, and you took on the role of a sorcerer-king.
By the time I got off of the train, I had a design document and sample cards, buildings and quests that would form the foundation of the first prototype. There was only one thing missing: I needed to build the math behind the game.
Pete: Any game like this is deals with a lot of resource transmutation. To facilitate design, we need a base resource; if you figure out the math of the game first, the design process is so much easier. For this game, we chose victory points (VP). Every action that you took was worth some number of VP. I felt rogues and fighters needed to be more common, so you'd get two of them for one action. You'd only get one cleric or psion per action, so they'd be worth more VP each. Finally, gold was assigned a value less than any of the adventurers. Surprisingly, this formula remained the same for the entire lifetime of the design process.

The First Prototype

Rodney: Once we'd figured out the math behind the game, I had a real urge to get a prototype made. Over the course of a single weekend, I took the math that Pete had helped work out, along with my initial design document, and created a full prototype for the game. The first prototype was primitive, to say the least; stickers on dungeon tiles made up our base board and buildings, and the cards were leftovers from another game I'd been working on earlier in the year.
That weekend, all of the components really started falling into place and had a strong purpose. Quests are how you score victory points; they are the driving factor in winning the game. Intrigue cards are how you interact with other players directly. Buildings bring new actions into the game, but they also provide their owner with some benefit so that choosing to take a building's action is a calculated risk.
Another piece of the puzzle that fell quickly into place was the issue of play time. I wanted a target play time of about an hour, and Pete and I had noodled around in our heads that the game should take about 8 rounds to play to hit that hour mark.
That Monday I grabbed Pete and made him sit down and try out the prototype. A couple of rounds into the game, Pete was scowling at the board, and for about five rounds neither of us said a single word other than those necessary to communicate with each other as players of the game. We played through the full game, and then both of us sat back and looked at each other. There was a long silence during which I was convinced that Pete hated the game, and that I'd wasted a weekend putting it together.
Pete: It turns out my "I'm thinking" face looks pretty much the same as my "I hate it" face. Normally, the first time I play a design of any new board game, it falls apart pretty quickly. I was amazed that we were able to play through a whole game and that it was fun!
While I like Dark Sun, it didn't thrill me as a location for the game. I really felt this game would be more exciting as a core D&D experience. I felt it should focus on the core D&D classes: fighters, rogues, clerics, and wizards. I also felt it needed to be in the Forgotten Realms, and we quickly determined Waterdeep would be the best location.
Re-theming the components were pretty easy. Instead of assigning Templars, you assign Agents. Instead of taking on the role of a sorcerer-king, you were one of the Lords of Waterdeep.

Preliminary Design

Rodney: Luckily, Pete didn't hate it, and I was amiable to the idea of making it a Forgotten Realms game. We were both a little shocked that we had a fully functional, playable game. In fact, that first prototype was so solid that we probably could have published it unchanged and had a decent, if not memorable game.
Pete: Our wheels immediately started to turn. Since this didn't start as an assigned project, we found time during lunches to play and talk. Many meals were spent at the "secret cafeteria" (a cafeteria in a building across the street from the office) discussing this game. There were quite a few fundamental differences at the start of the design from what you see in the final game.

Quests and the Tavern

Pete: Lots of things changed throughout the design process. One of the biggest changes was how you gained resources. At first, the tavern didn't exist. Instead, when you gained an adventurer, you placed that adventurer directly on one of your quest. Whenever you had enough adventurers on a quest, you immediately completed it—even if it wasn't your turn!
Rodney: In the very first design, Quests were both the objective and the "holding pen" for adventurers that you had recruited with your agents. They were like buckets that, as soon as they filled up, emptied out. This created a couple of problems; first, there was no real sense of progression, since you were just obtaining, and then spending, resources with no real potential for building up any kind of engine for yourself. Additionally, other people we recruited into playing the game wanted to move adventurers from one quest to another. We realized that trying to assign adventurers to quests as you take them was creating a layer of distraction that pulled you out of the main action drafting strategy of the game. People were spending too much time figuring out which quest to put adventurers on, which created a lot of static when added to the choice of what space to draft.
To address the first issue (the lack of progression), we created some quests that provided ongoing benefits once you completed them. The problem we kept running into was that, since you completed so many quests (and not always on your turn), you would end up with these cascading benefits every time you completed a quest. This slowed down the game as everyone had to stop while you resolved the quest completion, sometimes in the middle of another player's turn.
At this point, we removed all quests with lingering benefits from the game and instead created a new mechanic, the tavern, based on an idea we had from an early quest—Summon Aid from Luskan (see below). The way the tavern worked at first was that every time you completed a quest, you got to pick one adventurer from that quest to "save" and put into your tavern. Depending on the type of adventurer you saved, you got some small benefit. If you saved a fighter, you also got to save a second adventurer. If you saved a rogue, you got two gold. If you saved a cleric, you got to draw a quest. If you saved a wizard, you got to draw an Intrigue card. The adventurers in your tavern could be moved out and onto a quest at any time, but not vice versa; once an adventurer was on a quest, it stayed on that quest until completed.
With the tavern mechanic in place, we also created a number of new quest rewards that played off your tavern; for example, one quest gave you 1 VP for every cleric in your tavern at the time when you completed the quest. Unfortunately, this was having another side effect: people were hoarding adventurers, and then completing quests all in a rush at the end of the game. We tried to compensate for this by creating Intrigue cards that removed adventurers from the opponent's tavern, but too many of these ended up creating a lot of "feel-bad" in the game, where the game clearly encouraged you to do one thing (hoard adventurers) while punishing you for doing that via Intrigue cards. Plus, too much direct conflict was pulling us away from the strategy board game roots we wanted to adhere to.

Pete: After the original three-month design, we had to wait a couple of months to start development. During the design period, I often functioned as a development sounding board for Rodney's design, so I also joined the team of the developers led by Joe Huber, one of the guys on the Magic side of R&D.
Allowing the game to sit for a couple of months let me clear my mind of the design. We realized that placing Adventurers directly on quests actually lessened the draft tension. For example, if you were the only player that had a quest requiring Wizards, you knew that no other player would take the Blackstaff Tower location. About the same time, Joe realized that there was one major mechanic too many in the game, and something had to be removed.
When iterating on a game design, whenever I am faced with a list of issues, the solution that solves the most issues is usually the correct change. At this point, here are the problems we were facing:

• Too many quests were being completed at once, slowing down the game with long action resolution steps.
• Placing Adventurers directly on quests lessened draft tension.
• Saving an Adventurer after each quest also lessened draft tension.
• Gaining a boon after saving an Adventurer caused the game to slow down with nearly inconsequential analysis. Games were starting to go longer than an hour.

We made three changes to solve most of these problems:

• We cut out the mechanic that allowed you to save an Adventurer after each completed quest.
• When you drafted adventurers, they now went straight to your tavern.
• At the end of each action, you could complete one and only one quest.

Unfortunately, this meant that all the quests that gave you bonuses for things in your tavern had to be removed—it was too easy to get things in your tavern, after all!
Fortunately, I remembered the lingering-effect quests that we had done in an early design. The game had evolved a lot since then, so we thought it would be worth trying them again. We designed three for each quest type, renamed them "Plot Quests", and the game finally gelled into what you see today.

That's it. . . for this week!

We have a lot we can talk about it—and trust me, if you get us talking about this game, we can't stop—so there will be more next time!

Legend of Drizzt: Hero Levelling cards for campaign play

Legend of Drizzt: Hero Levelling cards for campaign play

The following are the Levelling Hero cards for the Heroes of Legend of Drizzt.  They are for use with the Dungeons and Dragons Adventures System campaign rules which can be found here:

http://ratdorg.blogspot.com/p/index.html

Thanks to Malone76 and GeckoTH for the templates!

Legend of Drizzt: Hero Levelling cards for campaign play

For use with the D&D Adventures System campaign rules:

Thanks to Malone76 and GeckoTH for the templates!

Legend of Drizzt – 2 player session report

Unable to wait for friends to play with I broke open Legend of Drizzt and played about ten solo games after picking it up from my FLGS a couple of days ago.  Winning every game led me to believe that the heroes are a tad stronger in this title than in Castle Ravenloft or Wrath of Ashardalon (and they are).

So when Mmzomba dropped round last night for a gaming session with his brand new copy of Game of Thrones: LCG (boy, are our fingers on the pulse or what?) we contemplated for about 3 seconds which title to play.  Our third player didn’t turn up because he had some kind of ‘date’ with his ‘girlfriend’ - poor lad needs to sort his priorities out.  So we opted for a night of intensive 2-player dungeoneering over political wrangling, intriguing and power token challenging.  Or whatever.  (Still want to try GOT: LCG btw, TV show rocked, made me buy the book, read the prologue, remembered how I never have the time to read books anymore...)

Since Mmzomba plumped for Artemis Entreri we skipped the adventure where Artemis is the baddie and started with the Shimmergloom adventure, i.e.  ‘Find the shadow dragon Shimmergloom, rip his heart out and then show it to him as he dies’ or something along those lines.  If he was going to play the coolest character from the books then I’d obviously have to play the second coolest...

Mmzomba began to grow dubious early on when in my first turn as Drizzt I summoned his pet panther Gwuenwhueevhuarrrarrrer, went into Last Blood Stance drew a monster, jumped forward and chopped said monster into bits and grabbed the treasure spilling from its guts, then had Guen come over and eat the leftovers.

Artemis wandered the caverns, revealing monsters and using his batshit crazy ability to place them on any tile, whilst Drizzt jumped around going “hi-YAH!” and murdering the poor things.  When I finally missed two attack rolls in a row against a measly goblin Mmzomba’s eyes lit up at the prospect of being able to finally attack something.  But Guen jumped over and swallowed the cowering little archer in one gulp.

By the time we reached the Dark Chasm goal tile we’d stocked up on treasures, healed the few injuries we’d taken, Artemis had killed a couple of beasties too (by deliberately placing them away from Drizzt so he could get there first), and we’d both commented on how the new tiles and encounters had great little evocative effects on them.  Volcanic vents igniting lava, narrow tunnels suffocating movement, a hidden tunnel providing short cuts, a secret cave giving reprieve from encounters, a campsite offering temporary safety.  We also learnt to get rid of Lolth’s Curses as soon as possible.  Said Curses only affect you once each time in solo play, but with more than one player they can rapidly start to dish out the damage if you don’t manage them effectively.

Even so, as Drizzt and Mr Entreri sauntered into Shimmergloom’s lair there was only one creature in the Underdark quaking with fear.  The poor dragon put up a meagre defence as we leapt in and tore him a new one.  With two untouched healing surges and maybe 4 HP damage between us it was a relatively unchallenged victory.

After discussing possibly house-ruling Drizzt to one attack per turn we quickly decided to put Mr D’O and Mr E to one side for the time being.  Instead we took Bruenor and Catti-Brie on the quest to save Wulfgar from Errtu the big nasty Balrog who isn’t really a Balrog because his sword is made of lightning not fire, see?

This was a much closer game.  After laughing confidently about our incredible hero powers we ventured forth into the dungeon only to have a Feral Troll appear and start wind-milling its gigantic arms at us.  Catti-Brie ran off and continued exploring whilst Bruenor was beaten to the floor by a rather exciting NINE HP of damage from 3 consecutive Troll attacks.  Spitting a tooth and wiping his mouth, Bruenor got back to his feet and snarled at the troll, “That all you got?”

Then, in a flurry of blows and curses Bruenor brought the troll to its knees before sending its head whirling into the Underdark.  There’s basically no point attacking a troll unless you’re going to take it down fast.  Troll regeneration in LoD is nasty.  And in a two player game they activate every turn, like a villain, so you really have to take it down if one appears.  If two appear together, well, time to go home really.

We ploughed on and when the “Secret Cave: Spa and Hotel Retreat TM” appeared (which stops you from having encounters whilst you’re on it) we made good use of it, Catti-Brie even discovering a Hidden Tunnel that would lead us there and back when we needed it.  As Bruenor finally found the Crystal Shard objective tile Catti was well behind and still discovering tiles but our HP was running low.  Bruenor’s healing Dwarven Ale had long ago been consumed, but a lucky encounter with some moaning spirits had provided him with a Blinding pair of Bracers which allowed him an extra attack each turn.

Errtu the bigass demon appeared, snarled and stalked towards Bruenor swinging its sword and whip.  Catti meanwhile opened up a narrow corridor from which Dinin the Drider emerged.  Quickly realising she was not remotely equipped to tackle the 3HP Drider, Catti ran away and hid in the Secret Cave which meant that the Drider scuttled over at a pace towards the already beleaguered Bruenor.

Realising I was going to be attacked multiple times by two of the toughest enemies I had to decide who to take down first.  Errtu was blocking the path towards Wulfgar, who was trapped in the crystal prison, so I couldn’t free him as an ally and get his help.  But the Drider would keep chipping away at me until I took him and Errtu down.  So I turned my attention to Dinin the Drider.  With a mighty axe swing, a nifty application of one of Bruenor’s Power Strike tokens (+1 damage) and a desperate Headbutt, Dinin the Drider collapsed into a heap of wiggling spider legs.  His treasure was the Girdle/Belt of Storm Giant Strength (+2 damage on adjacent hits).  This is LoD’s ‘Holy Avenger’ or ‘Captain America Shield’.  Awesome.

Sprinting away and strapping on his new belt Bruenor turned to face the demon.  Catti considered exploring because she didn’t want to feel left out, but was also too far away to help battle the demon.  So she revealed a new tile along with a Goblin Archer, took a shot at him with her bow, missed, and got taken down in a hail of goblin arrows.

Errtu stalked after Bruenor and bellowed some curses about Drizzt, who incidentally wasn’t there anyway.  Psyching himself up Bruenor charged the demon and attacked repeatedly.  With a natural 20 level up, using up his remaining power tokens, and by applying the power of the Giant’s Belt and Blinding Bracers, Bruenor started hacking big chunks out of the demon.  The demon struck back repeatedly but Brunoer held.  Catti spent a healing surge to get back up after the goblin’s attacks and shot the little critter through the eyes.

Then Bruenor took his axe in both hands and leapt at Errtu.  With a mighty swing the dwarf’s axe put paid to Errtu’s retirement plans and the demon fell to his knees, looking the dwarf in the eyes.  As a final insult Bruenor stepped forward and head-butted Errtu in the face.  The demon squealed and clutched its broken nose, before falling back over and expiring.

Blowing through all our collected XP to keep encounters at bay we legged it to the crystal shard and smashed it apart setting Wulfgar free and winning the game.

No healing surges left and about 4HP between us this was indeed a much closer session.

And for our final game we played Athrogate and Jarlaxle defending Mithril Hall against the invasion of Matron Baenre and her relentless armies.  This adventure uses the fixed cavern setup and is pretty cool, although you’ll have to fudge some of the encounter events.  For example, I drew a “draw a tile and place it, then put your hero on it” event which would have effectively taken me out of the game straight away.

Basically, running around smashing up fissures to collapse them, and then defending against the monsters coming through the open fissures is the order of the day here.  Whilst I as Jarlaxle was intent that we get the fissures closed as a priority, Athrogate wanted to fight stuff instead.  Which meant monsters kept emerging and keeping us back from our ultimate objective.  And when Lolth’s servant, that nasty Matron Mother arrived we were immediately put under enormous pressure having to deal with her, the encounters she potentially reveals, the monsters pouring through the fissures, and having to destroy the final two open fissures.

Athrogate’s morning star ‘Cracker’ led to an interesting rules situation as it inflicts a -4 AC on baddies.  So can you just keep doing this until you bring a Villain’s AC to zero?  We house-ruled, “no, that would be silly.”  But then I had the Dark Fire ability too, which also brings an enemy’s AC down by 4.  So could I use this in addition to Athrogate’s Cracker and bring the villain’s AC down by 8?  We house-ruled, “no, that would also be silly”.  So I used it on a water elemental instead.  The poor thing died soon after.

After much fighting, running and swearing, eventually Athrogate manged to close the final fissure and Jarlaxle nuked a bunch of underlings with a careful blast of the Lightning Wand.  Then it was just us and the Matron.  She chopped us down a couple of times and poisoned us both, so we spent a healing surge or two before bringing her to her knees and then bashing her skull in.  At that point it was game over, midnight, 3 victories under out belts, and an end to the evening.

Loads of fun and lots to enjoy in this game: cool tile effects, really thematic implementation of hero abilities and monster/villain skills and card and tile effects.  We both felt like there was more to do as the heroes, more options and decisions to make about how to use stances and powers.  Even some strategy about which tiles to move to, and some negating of kiting tactics by monsters who don’t care for kiting heroes (hello teleporting Drow Wizard).  But a huge leap in favour of the heroes in general I feel.  Clearly the designers wanted the Companions of the Hall to be kickarse, and it shows.  I really want to send Drizzt up against Strahd next and see how he fares.  But that adventure belongs to another day...

Legend of Drizzt – Early Solo Impressions

Prelude:

The D&D Adventure System (Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, Legend of Drizzt) provides a brilliant and fast dungeoneering ‘hit’ for those of us with no time or inclination to read and write and learn and play D&D anymore.  That it’s coop is just the icing on the cake because no one has to play the Morcar/Zargon/Overlord role and everyone gets to kick monster arse.  Though we’ve modded the hell out of this system and introduced campaign rules, events, new scenarios, heroes and monsters, etc I’m going back to basics for the purpose of this review so it’s just the game as it is.

What is it?

In case you tripped over and landed here without having read another thread before, Legend of Drizzt is a cooperative board game where you and your mates play fantasy heroes who go around bullying monsters, breaking into their homes, and killing all their friends and children before stealing all their stuff.  Ethically dubious, ridiculously fun.

How does it play?

Flip a tile, place a monster, have an encounter, take a hit, move your hero, roll a die, kill the monster, claim its XP, take a treasure, repeat, and either a) complain vociferously and then break out some meeples instead, or b) marvel in the beautiful simplicity of the unfolding story and delight in your hero’s progression through the adventure as the tension escalates into an epic showdown.

What are the bits like?

Ace.  Awesome minis, beautiful tiles (better than CR/WOA), the traps now have art on them too.  Tons of cards and tokens and a massive box to fit it all in.  Plus a massive demon that barely fits in the box too.  Make sure you use the hot/cold water treatment on any bent minis to get them back into shape in a jiffy.

What’s new to the D&D Adventure System?

Not much to be fair.  This is pretty much exactly the same game as Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon.  If you didn’t like either of those games for whatever reason, this is not going to correct any issues you had with them.  It’s more of the same but with different packaging.  If you liked the previous games then you’re in for a treat, because every card, power, mini, tile and token is brimming with fresh new goodness, new encounters, monsters, heroes, treasures, villains, basically everything.

Heroes.  In Legend of Drizzt the focus is on the Heroes and their powers, which make up most of the cards you get with the game.  Because the villains from RA Salvatore’s books are so popular you get to play a couple of them as heroes too.  So having Artemis fight alongside Drizzt is pretty sweet.  But the various adventures will also give you the opportunity to fight against Artemis (and Jarlaxle) as villains, which is also cool.

It’s fair to say that the Heroes in this set are considerably more powerful than the previous two games.  After playing the introductory solo adventure “Exile” with every new Hero once each I haven’t lost a game.  It only came close once with Wulfgar, when I accidentally shuffled the objective tile (the Surface tile) into the rest of the stack and only noticed when there were 13 new tiles in play (there should have been a max of 8), hordes of monsters and encounters going off, and no sign of the exit.  Even then when I corrected the error and placed the Surface exit, I still managed to fight my way out and win.

Drizzt, of course, is a total power house.  Attacking twice per turn instead of the usual one attack is tough enough, but he also has a Stance ability which allows him to move and attack in the villain phase.  Meaning any new 1HP monsters which appear are also likely to disappear in the same instance.  And having his pet panther Guen turn up to eat the bad guys helps too.  I finished the Exile adventure with him having lost only 3HP by the end.

Off the back of this I decided to take Drizzt solo into the first “2-5 Heroes” Adventure.  The goal is to find an item (the Crown) and then kill Artemis Entreri.  Drizzt was able to do this without having to spend one healing surge.  This could be an expected run of luck for the first couple of easier scenarios so we’ll see how it pans out when we’re going up against bosses like Errtu further down the line.

Like the previous games, where adventures say “2-5 Heroes” you can easily take in just 1 Hero for a greater challenge in solo play.  Add in an extra surge or two if you’re really struggling.

How is it better than CR/WOA?

Mini villains.  Trolls, Driders and a truly nasty teleporting Drow Wizard can turn up just from the monster deck.  So just when you’re enjoying a nice run of goblins and spiders, some big bastard will unexpectedly turn up and start pounding you into the floor.

Monster AI.  The monsters have a nice mix of tactics once again, drawing more from WOA than CR, so you have goblin archers who cower when adjacent, and trolls who regenerate, or spirits who lure your heroes in from afar.

Monster deck events.  These aren’t major, but there are a couple of sorely needed cards in the monster deck which mix things up and either give you a break altogether, or double the monster presence in the new tile.

Treasure deck balancing.  Fortunes are back, and they’re welcome!  Whilst mostly items, the LoD treasure deck gives you a number of fortunes too, which will heal heroes, restore powers, remove nasty encounters and similar.  Mix the three games’ treasure decks together now and you have a nice balance of items and fortunes.  So, not necessarily an improvement on the previous games, but I nice balanced mix.

Turbo Heroes!  This again?  Yes.  The Companions of the Hall are bringing mad skills with them.  Criticisms about the game are being answered in unusual ways it seems.  So people who complained about monsters always getting the jump on them can now play Catti-Brie or Drizzt, and start moving and/or acting during the villain phase with their new powers.  Whilst it’s not really changing the rules of the game (which I think some would prefer) the designers are still going out of their way to meet these player demands.  The new heroes play very differently from the previous games, and are more powerful.  Poor Kat the Rogue from CR will be suspicious by her absence, and not because she’s hiding in shadows.  You have loads of options with the cool new Stance powers to go offensive, defensive, healing, moving and generally mucking about with the usual turn order.  They’re pretty thematically integrated from the books’ characters too, considering it’s an otherwise fairly light game.

Tile effects.  This is one of my favourite touches, and something that came up a lot in previous discussions about the game.  Some tiles are narrow passages which reduce the AC of monsters and heroes on that tile, some have volcanic vents on them which can potentially damage heroes with a bad encounter card draw, some tiles have 1 square-wide areas to move through like the chasm and bridge.  Also the tile art is vastly improved too.  I never had a real problem with the previous games’ tile art but LoD has the best by far, the jigsaw sections now fit together ‘properly’ too because of the new design leaving no ‘black jutting into art’ bits.  The special tiles look great, and you get 3 extra big showdown tiles like the start tile.  These function kind of like the Chambers from WOA.

Competitive Adventures.  For those that want them.  It’s an extra dimension to the gameplay, but not the most successful for this ostensibly cooperative game (see below).

How is it worse than CR/WOA?

Easier?  Bear in mind that these are first impressions, but these new Heroes are hard as nails and leave the CR/WOA Heroes wanting.  Looking through the LoD villains and new scenarios there don’t appear to be any highly dangerous challenges for them either.  Even the Balrog - sorry Balor – is only a 5XP villain and doesn’t seem like he’ll put up too much of a fight.

Lack of Campaign play.  Whilst Wrath of Ashardalon offered progression from CR towards campaign play with the excellent Treasure Tokens rules and the linked adventures in the scenario book, LoD has disappointingly done away with this again.  Prices for Treasures are still included on the cards to provide backwards compatibility with WOA but that’s your lot.

Competitive Adventures.  These are a nice touch and I’ve seen variants leaning towards this kind of game play, so it’s a personal preference but these games shine in the cooperative scenarios and I don’t see the competitive adventures receiving as much replay value.  For competitive play you could easily break out plenty of other games in this genre and get the DM role going again instead.

Adventure Design Innovation.  Most of the new coop adventures are ‘find the boss and kill it’, which is fun enough, but it would have been nice to mix things up a bit more. 

If I only get one of the three games, which should it be?

Well, none of them are mutually exclusive and really you should be getting all three, preferably in the order that they were released.  But for me this is mainly a question of theme:

Are you a fan of crypts, undead, vampires and/or Ravenloft?  Castle Ravenloft.

Do you prefer the ‘classic’ D&D adventure archetypes of Heroes fighting orcs and dragons?  Wrath of Ashardalon.

Or are you mental for Drizzt and co and have all of RA Salvatore’s books?  Legend of Drizzt.

In terms of the game itself:

Castle Ravenloft gives you monster tokens, the most interesting quests and is potentially the most difficult of the three games.

Wrath of Ashardalon gives you campaign rules, big chambers for boss battles, doors, allies, more interesting monsters, and is marginally easier than CR.
Legend of Drizzt gives you super heroes, super villain/heroes, treasure chests, competitive adventures and big bloody trolls that can just show up from the monster deck, also seems the easiest of the three at first impression.

What has the Gears Of War board game got to do with anything?

It’s a space man game with space aliens and space guns set in space*.  Another cooperative minis game often compared to the D&D AS.  It allegedly has more devious AI because instead of drawing a card and getting a random monster from a choice of around 10 types you draw a card and get a random monster from a choice of 3 types.  But that monster will randomly attack you in different ways so you’ll need to spend the whole game hiding like a coward under every table or couch that your space man will see.

* Kind of.

Warhammer Quest?

Beautiful, aging game which is very fiddly, and plays much longer than the D&D Adventure System, and takes longer to set up and take down.  Also needs lots of pen and paper management.  WHQ has superb campaign rules which the D&D AS could learn from and simplify though.

Descent/HeroQuest/Advanced HeroQuest/D&D Adventure Game/Supero Dungeono Exploreo/Etc.

These games all require one of you to sit alone as a baddie and watch telly or read a book whilst you get shafted by the rest of your mates for the whole game.  Win and they’ll resent you, lose and they’ll respect you less.  Kidding of course (a bit), but they’re not fully cooperative games so don’t really do what the D&D AS does.

Is it any good?

Hell yeah - quit reading and get buying!  It’s so quick to set up and play through you find yourself hooked into more and more adventures and time just flies.  And the various community content on BGG is incredible, not to mention the support and new adventures from WOTC.

This is one of the best solo games in my collection and rivals LOTR:LCG in that respect.

The Legend of Drizzt Design & Development by Peter Lee

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (The Legend of Drizzt): "The Legend of Drizzt
Design & Development"


'via Blog this'

he Legend of Drizzt™ Board Game is the newest addition to the Adventure System. In this Design & Development article, you'll see what's new in this follow-up to Castle Ravenloft™ and Wrath of Ashardalon™.

Heroes and Villains

One of the first requirements of an Adventure System game is a cast of characters. I wanted The Legend of Drizzt Board Game to be a celebration of the entire line of novels written by R. A. Salvatore, so the Champions of the Hall were obvious choices for the players' Heroes.
Each Hero must be exciting to play, because players interact with the Heroes more than any other aspect of the game. Having Heroes based off characters from the novels requires that the characters feel right. Drizzt is a whirlwind of flashing blades, while Regis skulks around and explores nooks and crannies.
To illustrate the best fighters, three of the heroes have a new mechanic: stances. A stance is a choice you make that allows your abilities to shift throughout the game. Bruenor can hide behind his shield, or forgo defense to hustle into battle. Cattie-Brie can be extremely accurate or extremely deadly.
The villains of the novels are nearly as important as the heroes, so characters such as Artemis Entreri and Jarlaxle Baenre needed to appear. Choosing the secondary villains was much harder. I first needed to figure out what monsters the heroes would battle in the game.

Multitude of Monsters

Drizzt has fought a ton of monsters, so I had a lot of choice in selecting the creatures to include in the game. Although drow were an easy addition, it was much tougher to figure out the rest of the foes to include. My first instinct was to add King Obould and his horde of orcs, but we just introduced orcs in Ashardalon. Instead, we went with goblins, which provide a nice counterpoint to the drow and serve the entire Adventure Series well.
After selecting the Monsters, I made changes to the Monster deck. One comment about Castle Ravenloft was that the Monster deck is too predictable: explore a tile, place a monster. In The Legend of Drizzt, we included a few Monsters that don't appear exactly three times in the deck. This change allowed me to include a few large miniatures that aren't villains. It felt right for Drizzt to turn the corner to discover a lumbering troll or drider. Also, for the first time, the Monster deck includes events. Instead of always discovering one monster, you can find a hunting party of monsters or no monsters at all.

The Underdark

Many of the iconic locations in R. A. Salvatore's novels are in the Underdark, so I felt the majority of the game's Adventures should be set there. This setting required a new style of art for the tiles.
In Wrath of Ashardalon, we introduced a few tiles that had game mechanics, such as the Long Hallway. Since one of the core elements of this game is exploration, in The Legend of Drizzt, I added even more mechanics to tiles. The simplest tiles, such as the Long Hallway or Secret Cave, introduce small benefits or disadvantages. Other tiles, such as the Volcanic Vent, don't have explicit rules on the tile, but they have links to the Encounter deck that triggers an effect.

First Time Play

It can be daunting to sit down to play an Adventure System game for the first time. One way we helped the first-time player was to divide the card decks into a starting version and an advanced version. Most of the people reading this article can dive straight into the advanced version, but if you're teaching new players, the starting deck helps.
Alternate Ways to Play
For this third release of the Adventure System, I wanted to provide alternate ways to play the game. The villains in R.A. Salvatore's novels are compelling characters, so I introduced competitive play through Artemis, Jarlaxle, and Athrogate to support the stories and offer new mechanics.
The competitive Adventures feature some exciting events that occur in the novel line. One such adventure features Artemis, Drizzt, and Cattie-brie escaping from the Underdark. Artemis has no obligation to keep the renegade drow alive, but Drizzt offers some protection. In other words, Artemis doesn't have to outrun the Monsters, just Drizzt and Cattie-brie.
In addition, a few adventures don't include an exploration mechanic. Instead, you build a set of caves and try to stop waves of Monsters. In the Adventure featuring the drow's attack on Mithral Hall, the heroes must close off the tunnels that the Monsters are using. In another adventure, the Heroes are simply trying to defeat the most Monsters in a competitive way.

A Final Anecdote

At GenCon this year, I was lucky enough to show this game to R. A. Salvatore. We didn't have a lot of time, so I chose the Heros' powers so we could start playing immediately. Bob played Regis, and he spent much of the second half of the game darting in and out of the Secret Cave, a tile where you draw no Encounter cards. At one point, another Hero was hit with the Fall through the Cracks event, a card that removes your Hero from play until the start of your next turn, at which point you emerge on the start tile. Bob remarked that it was the perfect card for Regis! I then happily pointed out Regis's Hide utility power card, which does something very similar. It was a long road to get the Heroes to feel like the characters from the novels, but I think the effort was well spent.