"What to play after Dungeon!" Topic

On an impulse over the weekend I bought Dungeon!
My non gaming friends and I played and and had an absolute blast The rules were far from perfect but had as playing quickly and having a fantastic time.

We all agreed a little more depth and customisation along with choice of items as well as a varied map would be fun.

Through google I have found two I like the look of,
Legend of Drizzt and Descent.
If I could get opinions on them and any other suggestions id appreciate it.

Recommend checking out the BoardGameGeek video entries and reviews for both. Drizzt is the third installment in D&D loose trilogy of dungeon exploration games. They're largely tile placement and exploration/fight games.

Descent is more in depth (I've not played it whereas I have played Ravenloft the first D&D exploration boardgame). One player apparently plays as the overlord of the dungeon, actively trying to jam over the players. The D&D games, IIRC, just had somebody else roll for the monsters and take their actions when it was your turn (and you acted for the monster when it was their turn).

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I bought decsent as the material is very good.
Take a look on your tube how it is played.

In decsent is the game master a real player who also get levels. That is very cool.

The only real drawbacks is that a player character can not die and that you can not create your own player characters ( and the pregenerated caracters are made for 10 years old kids).

Descent is dreadful (the components fantastic but the gameplay poor) – it requires one person to be the DM and that is very dull, tedious and antagonistic. And in all our games the DM can't lose. Badly broken game.

Legend od Drizzt(along with Wrath of Asherdalon and Castle Ravenloft) are much better, fully cooperative games with the DM's role cleverly automated into the players' turns. It also has lovely components.

I have both games, but first edition decent. I have played both games and like them both. They each have some issues, but those are not show stoppers.

I too think you should read up on these games on the board game geek website.

I recommend Gears of War: The Board Game. It is Sci-Fi but for our ameritrash boardgaming group it was one of the best games in this genre. Fully cooperative and pretty fast, and not too complex.

Although not availble yet, Mantic's new game looks interesting:

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I have the D&D Wrath of Ashardalon boardgame, and have played (and briefly owned) Descent. Both had nice components, but I'll give Descent the nod on the general quality of the bits, particularly dungeon tiles and card art; in D&D BG, the latter is bland to nonexistent. General game terminology in D&D BG is also horrid, being based on the dreadful 4th edition of the RPG with its video-gamey "powers" garbage. But one can ignore that, because it really doesn't have anything to do with actual game play.

In game play, I found Descent to be overly adversarial, with the Overlord role too much of a direct opponent to the adventurers rather than the "story guide" role of a DM (my opinion of that role, at least). YMMV, but that wasn't to my taste. The rules are also quite complex for what the game is, and I found the rules layout confusing, particularly when needing to look up specific exceptions. But that was 1st ed.,so the updated and altered 2nd ed. might have corrected that issue. It wasn't unplayable, of course,but combined with the adversarial nature, it just wasn't my cup of tea. I sold the set off in just a few months, after only two or three plays.

D&D BG is entirely cooperative, with no DM role at all. Instead, each monster is defined by type, and has a card with specific "if then" instructions on how the creature moves and attacks. It's quite easy to handle, and on that front works well. It does give players some ability to choose disadvantageous tactics for the monsters, though in the end this rarely is significant-- the reason being that the game throws new monsters at you almost every single turn, joining the monsters that are already attacking you, and often calling yet more monsters in as well. On top of this, the game forces "Events" on almost every turn taken by every single player-- events which are usually deadly traps (and often persistent ones that continue in effect for multiple turns). TPKs are more likely than not; it's a very bloody game. As a result, the game becomes more like running a gauntlet than an exploratory dungeon crawl, with the players simply trying to survive rather than finding treasure (or anything else). There's just never a moment to breathe, as it were, and thus precious little strategy. The game tries to force exploration: if a player opts not to explore-- that is, add a tile-- then he has to draw an Event. But exploring typically triggers an Event anyway, and almost always adds a monster. And all of this happens on each player's turn, not the party as a whole. So you're constantly reacting to whatever has just happened, rather than planning a route or really much caring what the generic chamber you just entered is. It might as well be a ride through a killer car wash as a dungeon. Amidst this onslaught of automated death, any sense of story is lost.
Which is a shame, compounded by the shame of the video-game language ("Utility Powers," "Surges," "Sure Strike," etc.). The mechanics, if toned down, might make for an enjoyable dungeon crawl if there were room allowed for simple exploration and strategic cooperative effort. And while the characters are definitely different in powers and abilities, the way these are handled, through "Utility Powers" (use any time), "Daily Powers" (use once, possibly to be renewed), and "One Time Powers" (use once in a game, no renewal), becomes too generic, and just feels wrong for the setting. Dungeon!, with its generic-yet-different character archetypes feels more like a classic dungeon crawl in many ways than does the D&D BG.

But it's not an awful game, and it can be played solo, which is a plus, and the figures are generally excellent (though the female "dwarf" fighter is the *tallest* figure in the WoA set!).

I hope that with the advent of 5th edition D&D, with its return to classic fantasy terminology, that the boardgames will be similarly revamped. But that's a wait-and-see thing, and if the onslaught nature of the mechanics isn't altered, it may not be enough to lift the game back into a "must buy" category for me.

Oh, and as for Dungeon!, I recently attempted an "Advanced " version that allows the characters to gain experience. You can read about it here: link
Try it for yourself!

Consider this Kickstarter from Mantic Games.

Dungeon Saga: The Dwarf King's Quest

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Lots of stuff has already been added to it and the Female Cleric should be unlocked by tomorrow.