So Many Dungeons To Crawl
While visiting Pennsylvania, I drove out to Six Feet Under Games (Amish buggy count: 2), but wasn't able to get in on any games. Before giving up I noticed how many games there are lately with a theme of fantasy heroes on a quest and/or exploring a dungeon. Some of them:
Dungeoneer: A card game where the areas are based on cards laid in a grid. This was kind of neat, also very similar to the old collectible card game "Arcadia".
Super Dungeon Explore: Explicitly based on 8-bit Japanese console RPG style. The initials "SD" also refer to the "Super Deformed" or "chibi" art style.
Anima: Shadow of Omega: Card game with a more modern Japanese style, ie. more serious tone plus more boobs. I'm told this is more interesting with multiple players interfering with each other.
Quest: Hard to judge from the box. Looks like the map is not even divided into regions, and the GM places cards and figures as points of interest.
Dungeon Quest: Characters enter a blank map from the edges and place hallway tiles to build the dungeon. Looks like an archaeology-themed game I once saw.
Munchkin Quest: Somehow this game manages to be painfully slow, and players can't always interact much despite backstabbing being the main fun of the original Munchkin.
Runebound: Overworld map-focused, with many expansions.
Thunderstone: Card game focused on the deck-building that's a meta-game thing in "Magic: the Gathering". Ie. the cards let you "buy" better cards to improve your deck and ultimately slay monsters. (This one's fun.)
World of Warcraft: Based on the MMORPG. There's "The Board Game" with overworld map, and "The Adventure Game" with a more schematic map.
Exalted: Legacy of the Unconquered Sun: Based on the "Exalted" RPG ("If you're not playing a Mary Sue you're not doing it right") and trying to shoehorn the many books' worth of lore into board game format. I want to play this, or anything Exalted really. There's also a war game focused on a different part of that world.
Middle-Earth Quest: Set before LotR, with a GM controlling Sauron and the heroes traveling the map to get "favor" and "wisdom" and fight orcs.
Various D&D board games based on the 4th Edition RPG: They seem to have used the board tiles into the rules, for defining monster spawns and spell effects.
Descent: Journeys In the Dark: basically the old "HeroQuest" with the GM actively trying to kill the heroes, and with enemies only appearing where the heroes can't see them. Upgraded to two multi-session campaign versions with overworld maps.
Talisman: I used to enjoy this, I think.
And that list omits wargame-focused titles and the dungeon-owner perspective of "Dungeon Lords". A few themes:
-Fighting vs. Story: Console/PC games are notorious for "gameplay and story segregation". On one hand, a board/card game format has the possibility for a much more complex story thanks to the presence of live players and sometimes a GM, but on the other, the fact that you're not doing a regular pen-and-paper RPG suggests you don't want that much of a plot.
-Too Many Pieces: The use of cards and a board tends to limit what you can do. Eg., "Nein! You can't have an axe because the deck only has swords and spears!" or "No you can't fight skeletons; I haven't bought the expansion set." In contrast, some games embrace the limitations of the format; "Super Dungeon Explore" seems to. The game "Android" is an example of having a crazy number of specialized doodad pieces. "Descent" has fewer mechanics to manage, but still takes multiple boxes to store all the special tokens that would be abstracted or drawn in marker in D&D.
-GM or No GM: Devoting one player to the Game Master role allows for more surprises for the players, and otherwise you need a random threat generator like the shuffled deck in "Thunderstone". I've heard of systems that have a rotating GM (like my own nearly-over freeform game).
-Map Detail: Some games have a map with specific rooms/terrain hexes, while others abstract that to the point of only having general regions like "City X" or "the dungeon".
-Overworld: If there's only a dungeon map, the game's usually focused on combat. If there's only an overworld map, it usually abstracts adventures into reading a card and rolling to see if you win. If there are both, the game's huge.
-Price: $40-80 for most of these games, without expansions. That's a major barrier for me, since I think of it as "a huge amount of freeform-compatible content for $20 in a book, or a very specific list of items/monsters for $50". The board/card format gives you the specific mechanics for everything, but also limits your possible actions and costs a bundle for all that cardboard and plastic.
Dungeoneer: A card game where the areas are based on cards laid in a grid. This was kind of neat, also very similar to the old collectible card game "Arcadia".
Super Dungeon Explore: Explicitly based on 8-bit Japanese console RPG style. The initials "SD" also refer to the "Super Deformed" or "chibi" art style.
Anima: Shadow of Omega: Card game with a more modern Japanese style, ie. more serious tone plus more boobs. I'm told this is more interesting with multiple players interfering with each other.
Quest: Hard to judge from the box. Looks like the map is not even divided into regions, and the GM places cards and figures as points of interest.
Dungeon Quest: Characters enter a blank map from the edges and place hallway tiles to build the dungeon. Looks like an archaeology-themed game I once saw.
Munchkin Quest: Somehow this game manages to be painfully slow, and players can't always interact much despite backstabbing being the main fun of the original Munchkin.
Runebound: Overworld map-focused, with many expansions.
Thunderstone: Card game focused on the deck-building that's a meta-game thing in "Magic: the Gathering". Ie. the cards let you "buy" better cards to improve your deck and ultimately slay monsters. (This one's fun.)
World of Warcraft: Based on the MMORPG. There's "The Board Game" with overworld map, and "The Adventure Game" with a more schematic map.
Exalted: Legacy of the Unconquered Sun: Based on the "Exalted" RPG ("If you're not playing a Mary Sue you're not doing it right") and trying to shoehorn the many books' worth of lore into board game format. I want to play this, or anything Exalted really. There's also a war game focused on a different part of that world.
Middle-Earth Quest: Set before LotR, with a GM controlling Sauron and the heroes traveling the map to get "favor" and "wisdom" and fight orcs.
Various D&D board games based on the 4th Edition RPG: They seem to have used the board tiles into the rules, for defining monster spawns and spell effects.
Descent: Journeys In the Dark: basically the old "HeroQuest" with the GM actively trying to kill the heroes, and with enemies only appearing where the heroes can't see them. Upgraded to two multi-session campaign versions with overworld maps.
Talisman: I used to enjoy this, I think.
And that list omits wargame-focused titles and the dungeon-owner perspective of "Dungeon Lords". A few themes:
-Fighting vs. Story: Console/PC games are notorious for "gameplay and story segregation". On one hand, a board/card game format has the possibility for a much more complex story thanks to the presence of live players and sometimes a GM, but on the other, the fact that you're not doing a regular pen-and-paper RPG suggests you don't want that much of a plot.
-Too Many Pieces: The use of cards and a board tends to limit what you can do. Eg., "Nein! You can't have an axe because the deck only has swords and spears!" or "No you can't fight skeletons; I haven't bought the expansion set." In contrast, some games embrace the limitations of the format; "Super Dungeon Explore" seems to. The game "Android" is an example of having a crazy number of specialized doodad pieces. "Descent" has fewer mechanics to manage, but still takes multiple boxes to store all the special tokens that would be abstracted or drawn in marker in D&D.
-GM or No GM: Devoting one player to the Game Master role allows for more surprises for the players, and otherwise you need a random threat generator like the shuffled deck in "Thunderstone". I've heard of systems that have a rotating GM (like my own nearly-over freeform game).
-Map Detail: Some games have a map with specific rooms/terrain hexes, while others abstract that to the point of only having general regions like "City X" or "the dungeon".
-Overworld: If there's only a dungeon map, the game's usually focused on combat. If there's only an overworld map, it usually abstracts adventures into reading a card and rolling to see if you win. If there are both, the game's huge.
-Price: $40-80 for most of these games, without expansions. That's a major barrier for me, since I think of it as "a huge amount of freeform-compatible content for $20 in a book, or a very specific list of items/monsters for $50". The board/card format gives you the specific mechanics for everything, but also limits your possible actions and costs a bundle for all that cardboard and plastic.