1770: Drizzt’s Grand Adventure

Went over to my friend Tim’s today, and we played a bunch of Wii U games (he’s now finding it very difficult to resist the allure of Nintendo’s underrated little console, particularly with a new Super Smash Bros. on the horizon) as well as some tabletop stuff, too.

One of the games we gave a shot was something that’s been on my shelf for a while, but which I’ve only had the opportunity to play once: The Legend of Drizzt. Our regular group as a whole has a bit of a mixed opinion on cooperative games and dungeon crawlers, and The Legend of Drizzt is most certainly both of those things, although it does have a few scenarios that are competitive or team-based in nature as well as pure co-op action.

I own quite a few dungeon-crawlers, ranging from Milton Bradley’s original Hero Quest through Games Workshop’s follow-ups Advanced Heroquest [sic] and Warhammer Quest to more modern fare such as Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition and, of course The Legend of Drizzt. Of all of these, Descent appears to have fared the best with the group as a whole, but it’s also one of the most complex affairs thanks to its campaign rules and myriad tokens and pieces. Consequently, it doesn’t hit the table as often as I’d perhaps like, and we’re yet to run a whole campaign through to completion.

The nice thing about The Legend of Drizzt is that its adventures are all standalone affairs that can be run pretty quickly, and which form a coherent narrative if you choose to play through them in order. It does lack campaign rules, sadly, which means each time you start a new quest you’re effectively starting from scratch with your chosen character, but this does mean you potentially have the opportunity to try out all the different characters and combinations of skills rather than being railroaded down a single development path. I’m unsure as to which route is better; while the ongoing increase in power of a lengthy campaign is fun, it’s also essential to have a group with full commitment to seeing it through to completion and, much as I don’t like to admit it, I’m not sure I have that right now. One day, perhaps.

But anyway. The Legend of Drizzt.

Drizzt, as it shall be known for the rest of this post, is one of the Dungeons & Dragons Adventures series of board games. All three of these games are very similar, and, in fact, are fully compatible with one another, so it’s perfectly possible to mix and match elements from all of them to create custom character builds, adventures and scenarios. I only have Drizzt for now, but I’m tempted to pick up at least one of the others at some point, too.

The essence of the Dungeons & Dragons Adventures series is to provide a lightweight dungeon-crawling experience inspired by the 4th Edition rules of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. For those who aren’t well-up on their pen-and-paper role-playing games, D&D 4th Edition was interesting in that it placed a much stronger focus on tactical, board game-style combat than previous incarnations, in which it was perfectly possible to perform abstract combat sequences. (You can do this in D&D 4th Edition, too, but it’s not really designed for it.) It also gave each character a very clear set of things that they could do, known as Powers. These fell into a few different categories: At-Will Powers could be performed every turn without penalty, and tended to be the character’s main attack skills, each of which with its own benefits and drawbacks; Utility and Encounter Powers, meanwhile, could be performed once per “encounter” (essentially a self-contained sequence in the game, often — but not always — a battle) and were a bit more powerful and situational; while Daily Powers represented the character’s most devastating (or helpful) abilities, but which could only be performed once per in-game day (or, more accurately, once per period between “extended rests”).

Drizzt isn’t anywhere near as complex as the main D&D 4th Edition rules, but it pulls some of its main features — most notably the use of Powers. When you start a scenario, you pick a character, and from there you’re given access to at least one deck of cards from which you can pick a certain number of At-Will, Utility and Daily Powers. These will then be the abilities that you will have to use to progress through the scenario — though if you’re lucky enough to level your character up in the middle of a scenario (a situation which isn’t guaranteed) you tend to get access to at least one extra one as a reward.

Since the concept of “encounters” and “days” doesn’t really exist in Drizzt, the Utility and Daily powers are effectively one-shot abilities that you need to think very carefully about when you use. There are a couple of Treasure cards you can score by defeating monsters that allow you to “recharge” these powers, but they are few and far between; you’re best off saving your most powerful Powers for when you really need them.

Interestingly, unlike many other dungeon crawler games, Drizzt doesn’t require an adversary (or “Dungeon Master”) player. Instead, the game makes use of a clever system whereby when you explore a new area, you draw a monster card and then activate any monsters of that type on the board (including the one you just drew and placed) according to specific conditional rules on the card. In essence, the game itself runs the monsters automatically, and the players have to deal with them accordingly. This is somewhat similar to how Warhammer Quest works, though in Drizzt each monster has its own unique rules and special attacks that you’ll come to recognise — and, hopefully, learn how to deal with over time.

I really enjoyed our game of it today, and I hope I get the chance to play it again sometime soon. It’s an enjoyable, lightweight and, perhaps most importantly for our group, quick dungeon-crawler with a lot of flexibility, and I’m looking forward to having the chance to play it a bit more.

1702: Scoundrels

Gave my copy of Lords of Waterdeep and its expansion Scoundrels of Skullport another outing tonight, and it was pleasingly different from the first time we played. Less pleasing in that I lost by a considerable margin — I struggled to get a good means of income going at any point throughout the game, and the board as a whole ended up pretty “dry” — but interesting to see quite how much a difference there can be between two different playthroughs.

We’ve been playing the game in its most advanced form — that is, incorporating the two “modules” that form the complete Scoundrels of Skullport expansion. One of these, centring around iconic Dungeons & Dragons locale Undermountain, focuses on high-value quests — the most valuable quests in the base game were 25 points, while the Undermountain module beefs this up to an impressive 40 — while the other, centring around Skullport, allows you to perform numerous powerful actions in exchange for “corruption”, a resource that is worth a variable amount of negative points at the end of the game according to how much is in play at any given time.

Aside from the new mechanics — all of which blend beautifully into Lords of Waterdeep’s base game without forcing players to learn hundreds of new rules — Scoundrels of Skullport also incorporates numerous new quest and intrigue cards (the latter of which are used to either give yourself an advantage or mess with other players) as well as a substantial selection of new buildings (which can be purchased to add to the number of possible actions players can take on each turn, with the building’s “owner” receiving a benefit every time another player uses it). And the fact that there are so many of each of these components — far more than you need for a single game — means that, judging by our recent playthroughs, there’s a significant amount of variety and replayability going on. Some games will be very heavy on the monetary income; others will be strong on the corruption; others still will see players playing a lot more intrigue cards than usual.

It’s good to see a game have such flexibility and variety while still maintaining relatively simple base mechanics. All you essentially do in Lords of Waterdeep is collect various coloured cubes and tokens, then use them to complete quests and score points. At the end of the game, you score bonus points according to the conditions on your secret “Lord” card, which usually reward you for each quest of a specific type you successfully complete. That’s essentially all there is to the game, but the variety of different possible actions offered by the action spaces and cards — particularly once you start throwing in the press-your-luck aspect of the corruption tokens — means that one game has the potential to play out very differently from another. And it doesn’t feel like you’re relying on luck; rather, it’s a type of randomness that keeps things fresh and interesting without putting certain players at an arbitrary disadvantage.

We’ve still only played it a few times to date, but Lords of Waterdeep remains one of my favourite titles in my collection. I’m sure it’ll be hitting the table fairly frequently.

1629: Are Pee

I’ve long been an enthusiast of role-playing games — the pen-and-paper kind in this case, not just in the world of video games, though as regular readers will know they are also my favourite form of video game — but I’ve had one consistent problem over the years: I’ve barely had the chance to actually play any.

I’ve bought the Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks from Second Edition onwards and read them cover to cover; I used to have an extensive collection of Vampire: The Masquerade sourcebooks (which I kind of wish I still had); and, this week, toilet reading has been provided by the freely-downloadable Basic Rules for Dungeons and Dragons’ Fifth Edition.

And yet, I’ve not played any of them, outside of a brief 2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons campaign back in my school days, another brief campaign early in my university career, and a memorably “freeform” campaign run by a friend using his own simplified, custom system that had an enormous amount of flexibility.

This is a real shame, since as a creative type who greatly enjoys the act of creating a story, role-playing games are an ideal fit for me, combining, as they do, collective group improvisation and storytelling with a set of structured rules for satisfying, gradual progression over time. The exact form of those rules varies from game to game — Vampire: The Masquerade is very different from Dungeons and Dragons, for example — but the core is the same: it’s a group of people getting together, led by a chief storyteller, Dungeon Master, Game Master, whatever you want to call them, and having journeys through their imaginations together. What could be more fun than that?

I would really like the opportunity to get involved with a game of Dungeons and Dragons (or indeed any other role-playing game) at some point, but times I’ve attempted to raise the subject in the past with a friend whom I know plays a regular game seem to have fallen on deaf ears. (I’m not entirely surprised; campaigns that have been running for a while can be difficult to slot in new additions partway through, and certain groups prefer to limit their numbers to specific sizes to keep things manageable.) This leaves me with a somewhat more daunting prospect: planning and running my own game, and as someone who only has fairly limited experience of actually playing the game as a player character, the idea of putting together an epic, sprawling fantasy adventure for a group of players to potentially break with their own creativity is something that I’m not sure I’m up to just yet!

Or perhaps I am. The new 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons promises a “Starter Set” with an introductory adventure included, so when that becomes available I might just check it out. And even if I don’t play it, it can join the Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition and GURPS rulebooks on my shelf, providing occasional entertaining reading material when I fancy perusing it — I like reading rulebooks, don’t judge me — and hoping that one day they might actually get played.

Will they? I have no idea. I can dream, though. And if I can just roll a 20, perhaps I can make it reality.

#oneaday Day 906: Drizzle Bizzle

I recently acquired a copy of one of the Dungeons & Dragons boardgames: The Legend of Drizzt, a game based on everyone’s favourite Dark Elf and the one character from D&D lore that most people can remember.

I’ve given the game a couple of goes so far — twice solo and once with Andie. I’ll be playing it with a larger group next week, all being well, too.

If you’ve not seen the game before, here’s the deal. It’s not really a conventional dungeon crawler in the mould of Hero Quest and its various expansions and sequels. It is, however, a challenging cooperative game that I anticipate will require at least a small degree of working together to survive.

Basically the flow of play goes like this. Each hero may move and attack, attack and move or move twice on their turn. If they end their turn on the edge of a dungeon tile, a new one is drawn and a monster appears on the tile more often than not. Some tiles also cause an “encounter” to occur, which more often than not is detrimental to the players. After that, any monsters that the current player “controls” (i.e. revealed on their turn) make their moves and attacks according to the logic on their cards, then play passes to the next player and continues until either the players have completed the objective for their chosen quest or a single hero is defeated without any remaining “healing surges” to restore them.

Combat uses a loose interpretation of D&D 4th Edition’s “Powers”-based system. Each character has a hand of “Powers” to use when they attack — some are “At Will”, meaning they may always be used, some are “Daily” meaning they may only be used once, and some are “Utility”, some of which may only be used once and others of which provide supporting abilities. Combat results are determined by dice rolls with bonuses according to the Power chosen — some have a greater chance to hit, some hit more monsters simultaneously and some do more damage.

It’s a simple, elegant system that keeps the game flowing well at a good pace. It captures the feel of D&D 4e’s excellent combat system without getting bogged down in scenario design — or the requirement to have a human “dungeon master”. And it’s considerably more accessible to non roleplayers than even a basic D&D module. At the same time, it doesn’t have the complexity of a lot of dungeon crawlers, doesn’t take nearly as long to play and encourages cooperation between players.

I’ll be very interested to see what the dynamic is like with more people as I feel it has a lot of potential. As a cooperative game, it looks set to have plenty of the usual brutal difficulty factor without the Byzantine rules of a title like Arkham Horror — much as I love the ol’ Lovecraft-em-up, I think pretty much every time we’ve played we’ve forgotten at least one rule.

It also comes in an absolutely humongous box and is packed with cool figures and lots and lots of cardboard tokens of various kinds. It’s a veritable nerdgasm to open up that box, and closing it makes the best “box fart” I’ve heard for a long time. So kudos for that.

I’ll offer a full report on the game following our play session next Tuesday; for now rest assured that if you’re the slightest but interested in low-maintenance dungeon crawling and monster bashing, you could certainly do far worse than check out any of the three D&D Adventures games.

#oneaday Day 763: A Question That No-One Seems To Have Asked Regarding RPGs

Here’s a stumper for all you RPG fans: exactly how much does taking one hit point of damage hurt?

It’s not a particularly straightforward thing to work out, given that hit points are a representative abstraction of physical condition rather than a measurable, uh, measurement. But let’s assume for a moment that it is indeed possible to measure one’s own hit points. How much, then, would taking one hit point of damage hurt?

The answer to that question would largely depend on what model of hit points you are using. If you’re talking Dungeons and Dragons hit points, taking one damage would fucking hurt if you’re not in tip-top physical condition. The average “man in the street” sort of person (i.e. not a warrior, rogue, wizard, cleric or what have you) is regarded as a “level 0 human” and generally has something in the region of 2 or 3 hit points, if that. Level 1 wizards often only have in the region of 4 or so. As such, taking one hit point of damage as an average person following the Dungeons and Dragons model would hurt a great deal, putting you potentially up to halfway towards death (or rather, being knocked out, since people don’t officially die until bleeding out to -10 hit points in D&D).

Compare and contrast with the JRPG approach to hit points, however, where totals frequently extend into the thousands and, in some cases, the tens of thousands. As a beginning character in a JRPG, you’ll often have a low three-figure hit point total to start with, which will progress towards that elusive 9999 (or 99999) as you level up. Assuming that your average person hasn’t really levelled up a great deal thanks to a notable lack of monsters (big spiders battled with Hoovers notwithstanding) we can work on the assumption that a single hit point’s worth of damage doesn’t really hurt a great deal. ‘Tis but a scratch and all that.

So, since it’s late and my brain is starting to shut down a little bit, let’s take this to the next logical extension and consider a variety of horrific injuries to determine exactly how many HP damage they’d do following the two approaches outlined above. We’re assuming that the person being injured here is not a Destiny-chosen hero who has been infused by the power of the Goddess/branded by the fal’Cie/chosen by Fate/revealed to be the wielder of the legendary blade Monado but rather, say, that man who works behind the fish counter in Sainsbury’s. As such, we’ll say he has 4HP in D&D and 150HP in a JRPG.

Getting an electric shock off an escalator handrail — D&D: 0HP, interrupt current action in surprise; JRPG: 1HP electric damage.
Falling out of bed while asleep — D&D: 0HP, lose “Sleep” condition; JRPG: 1HP physical damage, lose “Sleep” condition, afflict with “Embarrassment” (special moves charge slower)
Walking into a coffee table — D&D: 0 HP, maybe stun for a turn, staggering randomly around the room going “OUCH”; JRPG: 1HP physical damage.
Paper cut — D&D: 0 HP, afflict with “very mild bleeding” status, lose 1HP every 500 turns unless the cut heals (use a bandage or roll a D20 every turn, on a number between 3 and 20, it heals naturally); JRPG: 2HP physical damage.
Accidentally grating your fingers while attempting to grate cheese — D&D: 0HP, afflict with “very mild bleeding status” as with “paper cut” above; JRPG: 1HP physical damage.
Stubbing your toe — D&D: 0HP, incapacitate for a turn, remove ability to use vocal components of spells and stealth due to yelling “FAAAAAAAHHHHK!”; JRPG: 3HP physical damage.
Having a cat that is standing on you decide that it needs to hold on tightly with its claws — D&D: 0HP, 50% possibility of affliction with “very mild bleeding” status as with “paper cut” above, movement forbidden (you’ve got a cat on you); JRPG: 3HP physical damage, afflict with Rooted (you’ve got a cat on you).
Inadvertently ripping off a toenail by catching it on something — D&D: 0HP, afflict with “bleeding” status, lose 1HP every 50 turns unless the cut heals (use a bandage or roll a D20 every turn, on a number between 8 and 20, it heals naturally); JRPG: 10HP physical damage, afflict with Slow.
Burning your hand on the handle of a poorly-insulated saucepan — D&D: 0HP, interrupt current action, forced shouting of obscenity breaks any Stealth-related effects; JRPG: 10HP Fire damage.
Standing on an upturned three-prong plug — D&D: 0HP, movement forbidden for 5 turns, remove ability to use vocal components of spells and stealth due to yelling “FUCK. Cunt! ARSE! SHIT that fucking hurts. AAAAARGH.”; JRPG: 15HP physical damage, afflict with Rooted.
Banging your head on a low ceiling even after seeing a “mind your head” sign — D&D: 0HP, dazed for one turn. temporary reduction to Wisdom and Intelligence; JRPG:10HP physical damage, 10MP magic damage for a blow to the head.
Getting punched in the face by some drunk dude at a bar who thought you were eyeing up his missus but in fact you were trying to read the scrawled sign on the front of that fridge that said that the cheap drinks might actually be a bit out of date — D&D: 1HP; JRPG: 25HP physical damage.
Suffering any sort of trauma to the testicular area — D&D: 2HP (probably won’t kill you unless you’ve just been punched twice by a drunk dude at a bar who thought you were eyeing up his missus, but it bloody hurts), stunned for 5 turns, temporary reduction to Constitution; JRPG: 50HP physical damage, afflicted with “Stop” status as you wheeze and cough in an attempt to recover your dignity.
Getting stabbed in the leg, whether accidentally or deliberately — D&D: 2HP, movement rate halved; JRPG: 50HP physical damage, afflicted with “Slow”.
Failing to escape the unwanted affections of an amorous gorilla — D&D: Your adventure is over. You have been adopted by an amorous gorilla as its mate. Any attempt to escape will result in death. JRPG: Perform a badly-executed stealth/platforming sequence to escape.
Getting stabbed in the face — D&D: 5HP (you will likely bleed to an unhappy -10HP death), permanent reduction to Charisma; JRPG: 100-150HP physical damage.
Suffering an apparently successful attempt to behead you — D&D: 14HP; JRPG: 150HP
Getting the smackdown from an angry God/being hit with a planet by the final boss — D&D: 50HP; JRPG: 5000HP
Standing quite close to the epicentre of a nuclear explosion, you know, enough to get a good view and think “ooh, that’s a bit hot, I wish I’d stood back a bit more” — D&D: 998HP; JRPG: 9998HP.
Standing in the epicentre of a nuclear explosion — D&D: 999HP; JRPG: 9999HP.

Should you find yourself suffering any of these injuries, though, fear not; for a good night’s sleep cures all ills, as everyone knows. Unless you’re already dead, in which case you’d better get on good terms with your local Cleric or purchase some Phoenix Down.