Tayaya
09-27-2010, 08:52 AM
Finally got a chance to crack this bad boy open with some co-workers last night, utilizing the massive table in the conference room for some evening dungeon crawlin'.
I have to say that while limited in rules and very heavily dependant on luck, Castle Ravenloft is a fantastic, somewhat addictive "players vs the board" game that still feels like D&D, but provides an ease-of-learning and short play time that allows even your non tabletop RPG playing friends to feel like a hero for the night. And it won't hesitate to beat your party into submission, as we learned all too well.
First - the bits! This is one of the higher quality dungeon crawlers out there, featuring a whopping 13 sheets of punchable cardboard tiles and tokens that'll take you about an hour to punch out and organize, 40 or so miniatures (which while unpainted, are the same molds as the normal D&D minis, so we're in the process of replacing my minis with the actual painted D&D minis), a lone d20, and a whole lotta cards. I think Descent has higher production value, but I like this new game a bit more because it never feels like they gave you "too much" to manager, instead they gave you "just enough" bits, and a great box to manage it all with for easy transport. After our 3 quests last night, tear down and pack-up took maybe 5 minutes. I highly recommend saving the empty frames from the tiles you punch, and slipping those under the plastic insert - this keeps the top of the insert flush with the box lid, AND since all the tile-holes line up, provides 4 extra pockets under the insert for storing the many cardboard tokens that the game comes with.
Rules and complexity: Like I said in my summary, the game is simple enough to let anyone sit down and play, regardless of tabletop experience. Every player gets a chance to "build" a character, choosing from a stack of 5 characters (Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue, or Ranger), and chooses 4-5 powers from a deck of 9-10 available powers for that class (usually 2 at-wills, 1 utility, and 1 daily power, all named after and modeled to behave like our D&D favorites). Expected stats like AC, speed, HP, and surge value are all displayed on the hero tile for the selected hero.
Monster cards work the same way - they have the monster's AC, hit points (most monsters only have 1 or 2...bosses have more), attacks, and a "tactics" section that defines how that monster moves and behaves, and when it uses which attacks. A gargoyle, for example, will not do anything at all if there's no hero within 1 tile of it, but will move to and attack all heros on a a tile if there ARE heroes within one tile of it. A skeleton will always move 1 tile closer to the heroes, no matter how far away it is, will charge with a powerful attack when it's within one tile of a hero, and will use a weaker attack if it has no room to charge anymore. This is a cool system, because the monsters move and behave automatically, allowing all players to work together, and means no one player has to be a DM. It also allows for solo play, if you just want to practice.
Other than that, there's not much to know about the basics - if a player is at the edge of a tile with open floor at his feet, he can place a new tile (which will always pop a new monster, but may also pop an encounter card if it's a black tile). Players that don't play new dungeon tiles must play an Encounter card. Encounter cards are almost always bad, triggering traps or changing the environment of the dungeon, or doing other things like teleporting players to other parts of the map. It's a good way to keep the party moving forward, because some of the encounters are truly nasty. Luckily, encounters can be canceled out by spending experience points earned from killing monsters. Exp can also be cashed in to level up, but only if the player rolls a natural 20 and has 5 exp to spend. The dungeon tiles themselves are randomized, but each quest so far has had a designated goal tile, like a chapel tile for example, that gets shuffled into a group of 4 tiles, and then that group is placed under the 8th tile in the stack - resulting in a fixed game length of 9-12 dungeon tile draws.
Combat is a lot like D&D, but very stripped down. Each player gets a move and an attack (or 2 moves). To attack, they choose one of their powers (at-wills can be used, well, at-will, Utility and Daily powers get flipped over after use and stay that way until some other event allows that player to get their powers back). Every attack has a set damage (usually just 1 HP, 2HP for dailys), special conditions, and an attack modifier that gets added to a d20 roll. Compare that to the target's AC, and you know if you hit or not. Same goes for the enemies. It's very, very basic, with no other stats, no saving throws (slowed an immobilized conditions only last 1 turn, always), no attacks of opportunity or flanking, no ongoing damage, etc. That said, the character powers are still varied (the fighter had attacks that could draw in enemies from the next tile over, or he could jump in and swap places with a character to absorb the hit for them... the ranger has a daily that does 2 damage (or 1 on a miss) to 2 targets at range, etc).
Finally, nearing the end... the actual impressions of gameplay. TLDR people - read here!
Overall, I love what WotC has done here. They've taken the dungeon crawler, made it into a miniature version of the D&D system, and supplied players with a box of goodies to use with the new system. And it truly is a system... user created content is already popping up en masse, and D&D Insider will have more quests to add to the pile soon. There's another game coming out at the end of the year, taking the same system out of Castle Ravenloft and introducing new classes and creatures, and because it's a true system, the products will be compatible with one another.
While the gameplay itself is simple, fun, and streamlined, there are some potentially dealbreaking issues to be found if you're the kind of player that absolutely hates the devastation that good ol' bad luck can bring. In one of the 3 games we played last night, we were unfortunate enough to pull nothing but "black" tiles from the tile stack (meaning every new tile brought both a monster AND an encounter card into play), and of the monster cards we pulled, all of them were strong, 2HP monsters capable of doing both damage on a miss and either 3HP on a hit or a 2HP attack on ALL heroes on the same tile as the creature. When the wizard has 6 HP max, a monster that does 3HP on a hit and also 1HP to tall nearby characters when defeated can end things very quickly. This was made worse by an encounter card that caused all natural rolls of 17 or more to do +1HP damage, for both us and the Monsters. Even giving the group an extra healing surge (think of them as "lives") to lower the difficulty, things ended rather quickly, though we were just one tile pull away from the "goal" tile. I don't think we would have beaten the boss in the state were in, even if we did survive against 2 gargoyles and a wraith.... but man did shit get ugly that game!
So far after 3 quests, we've still not attained victory. I think a lot of it had to do with our cleric wanting to rack up kills rather than focus on healing, but I haven't looked at the cleric powers in depth yet, so maybe he was just never in a place where he could pull off a heal. We played a bit sloppy... I'm not afraid to admit that, and I think it cost us the game 2 of the 3 times. Game 3 we had our act together, and were doing really well until we got to the above mentioned string of the worst possible luck all hitting us at once, right up at the end. It was a little frustrating, but we all took it well and no one was really upset when we lost again... if anything it just made everyone want to return to the table next week and do it some more.
All in all, I'd recommend this over Descent to anyone looking for a good crawler, or even for someone that plays a lot of "standard" D&D. It's fun, it's easy to pick up, every game runs almost exactly 1 hour, and there's more content coming from both WotC and the fan community. The mechanics are solid, the monster AI is very cool, the game scales well with any number of players, and other than the problems caused by extremely bad luck, the game always seems tough but fair.
I have to say that while limited in rules and very heavily dependant on luck, Castle Ravenloft is a fantastic, somewhat addictive "players vs the board" game that still feels like D&D, but provides an ease-of-learning and short play time that allows even your non tabletop RPG playing friends to feel like a hero for the night. And it won't hesitate to beat your party into submission, as we learned all too well.
First - the bits! This is one of the higher quality dungeon crawlers out there, featuring a whopping 13 sheets of punchable cardboard tiles and tokens that'll take you about an hour to punch out and organize, 40 or so miniatures (which while unpainted, are the same molds as the normal D&D minis, so we're in the process of replacing my minis with the actual painted D&D minis), a lone d20, and a whole lotta cards. I think Descent has higher production value, but I like this new game a bit more because it never feels like they gave you "too much" to manager, instead they gave you "just enough" bits, and a great box to manage it all with for easy transport. After our 3 quests last night, tear down and pack-up took maybe 5 minutes. I highly recommend saving the empty frames from the tiles you punch, and slipping those under the plastic insert - this keeps the top of the insert flush with the box lid, AND since all the tile-holes line up, provides 4 extra pockets under the insert for storing the many cardboard tokens that the game comes with.
Rules and complexity: Like I said in my summary, the game is simple enough to let anyone sit down and play, regardless of tabletop experience. Every player gets a chance to "build" a character, choosing from a stack of 5 characters (Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue, or Ranger), and chooses 4-5 powers from a deck of 9-10 available powers for that class (usually 2 at-wills, 1 utility, and 1 daily power, all named after and modeled to behave like our D&D favorites). Expected stats like AC, speed, HP, and surge value are all displayed on the hero tile for the selected hero.
Monster cards work the same way - they have the monster's AC, hit points (most monsters only have 1 or 2...bosses have more), attacks, and a "tactics" section that defines how that monster moves and behaves, and when it uses which attacks. A gargoyle, for example, will not do anything at all if there's no hero within 1 tile of it, but will move to and attack all heros on a a tile if there ARE heroes within one tile of it. A skeleton will always move 1 tile closer to the heroes, no matter how far away it is, will charge with a powerful attack when it's within one tile of a hero, and will use a weaker attack if it has no room to charge anymore. This is a cool system, because the monsters move and behave automatically, allowing all players to work together, and means no one player has to be a DM. It also allows for solo play, if you just want to practice.
Other than that, there's not much to know about the basics - if a player is at the edge of a tile with open floor at his feet, he can place a new tile (which will always pop a new monster, but may also pop an encounter card if it's a black tile). Players that don't play new dungeon tiles must play an Encounter card. Encounter cards are almost always bad, triggering traps or changing the environment of the dungeon, or doing other things like teleporting players to other parts of the map. It's a good way to keep the party moving forward, because some of the encounters are truly nasty. Luckily, encounters can be canceled out by spending experience points earned from killing monsters. Exp can also be cashed in to level up, but only if the player rolls a natural 20 and has 5 exp to spend. The dungeon tiles themselves are randomized, but each quest so far has had a designated goal tile, like a chapel tile for example, that gets shuffled into a group of 4 tiles, and then that group is placed under the 8th tile in the stack - resulting in a fixed game length of 9-12 dungeon tile draws.
Combat is a lot like D&D, but very stripped down. Each player gets a move and an attack (or 2 moves). To attack, they choose one of their powers (at-wills can be used, well, at-will, Utility and Daily powers get flipped over after use and stay that way until some other event allows that player to get their powers back). Every attack has a set damage (usually just 1 HP, 2HP for dailys), special conditions, and an attack modifier that gets added to a d20 roll. Compare that to the target's AC, and you know if you hit or not. Same goes for the enemies. It's very, very basic, with no other stats, no saving throws (slowed an immobilized conditions only last 1 turn, always), no attacks of opportunity or flanking, no ongoing damage, etc. That said, the character powers are still varied (the fighter had attacks that could draw in enemies from the next tile over, or he could jump in and swap places with a character to absorb the hit for them... the ranger has a daily that does 2 damage (or 1 on a miss) to 2 targets at range, etc).
Finally, nearing the end... the actual impressions of gameplay. TLDR people - read here!
Overall, I love what WotC has done here. They've taken the dungeon crawler, made it into a miniature version of the D&D system, and supplied players with a box of goodies to use with the new system. And it truly is a system... user created content is already popping up en masse, and D&D Insider will have more quests to add to the pile soon. There's another game coming out at the end of the year, taking the same system out of Castle Ravenloft and introducing new classes and creatures, and because it's a true system, the products will be compatible with one another.
While the gameplay itself is simple, fun, and streamlined, there are some potentially dealbreaking issues to be found if you're the kind of player that absolutely hates the devastation that good ol' bad luck can bring. In one of the 3 games we played last night, we were unfortunate enough to pull nothing but "black" tiles from the tile stack (meaning every new tile brought both a monster AND an encounter card into play), and of the monster cards we pulled, all of them were strong, 2HP monsters capable of doing both damage on a miss and either 3HP on a hit or a 2HP attack on ALL heroes on the same tile as the creature. When the wizard has 6 HP max, a monster that does 3HP on a hit and also 1HP to tall nearby characters when defeated can end things very quickly. This was made worse by an encounter card that caused all natural rolls of 17 or more to do +1HP damage, for both us and the Monsters. Even giving the group an extra healing surge (think of them as "lives") to lower the difficulty, things ended rather quickly, though we were just one tile pull away from the "goal" tile. I don't think we would have beaten the boss in the state were in, even if we did survive against 2 gargoyles and a wraith.... but man did shit get ugly that game!
So far after 3 quests, we've still not attained victory. I think a lot of it had to do with our cleric wanting to rack up kills rather than focus on healing, but I haven't looked at the cleric powers in depth yet, so maybe he was just never in a place where he could pull off a heal. We played a bit sloppy... I'm not afraid to admit that, and I think it cost us the game 2 of the 3 times. Game 3 we had our act together, and were doing really well until we got to the above mentioned string of the worst possible luck all hitting us at once, right up at the end. It was a little frustrating, but we all took it well and no one was really upset when we lost again... if anything it just made everyone want to return to the table next week and do it some more.
All in all, I'd recommend this over Descent to anyone looking for a good crawler, or even for someone that plays a lot of "standard" D&D. It's fun, it's easy to pick up, every game runs almost exactly 1 hour, and there's more content coming from both WotC and the fan community. The mechanics are solid, the monster AI is very cool, the game scales well with any number of players, and other than the problems caused by extremely bad luck, the game always seems tough but fair.