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A tale of three dungeons.
Sep. 7th, 2010 12:25 pmDungeon number one: Dungeon Quest (new edition)
This game was known for everyone always dying. Ostensibly, the goal is to get to the center of the dungeon, steal a little bit of treasure from the sleeping dragon, and then get back out. Whoever manages to steal the most treasure wins!
I have never seen any adventurer make it to the center and escape. Sunday's playthrough was no exception. Tom and I died drinking healing potions that randomly turned out to be poison instead, Shawn and Ed were killed by instant death traps. You can also be killed by drawing the 'bottomless pit' rune, by having to fight too many monsters, by having the dragon wake up while you're looting its treasure and breathe fire on you, by being stung by scorpions when you search the body of a dead adventurer for treasure, and by taking too long and having the sun set on you. It's essentially solitaire, with the usual solitaire success rate, only four people can play at once if you want.
Dungeon number two: That new D+D-inspired game where you invade Strahd's castle. We started with the recommended beginner quest, where you have to find the chapel and recover a holy icon. Things were going fairly well until a series of unfortunate events (a powerful wraith showing up, several traps that affected everyone on the tile, and the motherfucing GARGOYLES who refused to die and did massive AOEs) drained the entire party of hit points and enough people died that we ran out of healing surges and lost the game. Several of the players expressed the opinion that the game was depressing and unwinnable; I think that that's not really true. We made some mistakes, and still got *reasonably* close -- we found the chapel and if a few fewer people had died...
Dungeon number three: Order of the Stick, the game. The goal is to collect loot (that you drool over) and level up, while invading xykon's randomly generated castle. You can get help from people by giving them loot, but it's probably not a good idea to actually ever do that, since you're giving them points and points are scarce. Losing the fight is usually less painful.
I played Vaarsuvius and it sucked. My default attack was really weak, and the upgraded attack could only be used once between rests and was AoE. Meaning it attacked multiple monsters at a time. However, the AoE rules are hideously punitive -- you go against the *hardest* defense of all the monsters you target -- and it has to be used as a ranged attack, which (a) is difficult to pull off because you can't move before doing it and (b) means you don't get any of the loot the monster drop since it drops in the room they're in. Compare this to Roy with a +7 attack and defense on a regular basis (fireball was only +5!), or Belkar's +6 ranged attack that also put him in the room with the monsters and therefore let him loot.
Also, it seemed like none of the loot had my face on it, which meant no one ever asked me for help and gave me loot and none of the loot I did get was worth anything to me.
We also missed some of the rules... I think people were supposed to be equipping more of their loot for other people to steal. In particular we were supposed to have 7 points worth of loot equipped to even enter Xykon's lair, and no one did.
Anyway, that's what I did Sunday. It took a long time. x.x I think I'd probably play any of those games again, 'cause they were all fun even if they had their problems.
This game was known for everyone always dying. Ostensibly, the goal is to get to the center of the dungeon, steal a little bit of treasure from the sleeping dragon, and then get back out. Whoever manages to steal the most treasure wins!
I have never seen any adventurer make it to the center and escape. Sunday's playthrough was no exception. Tom and I died drinking healing potions that randomly turned out to be poison instead, Shawn and Ed were killed by instant death traps. You can also be killed by drawing the 'bottomless pit' rune, by having to fight too many monsters, by having the dragon wake up while you're looting its treasure and breathe fire on you, by being stung by scorpions when you search the body of a dead adventurer for treasure, and by taking too long and having the sun set on you. It's essentially solitaire, with the usual solitaire success rate, only four people can play at once if you want.
Dungeon number two: That new D+D-inspired game where you invade Strahd's castle. We started with the recommended beginner quest, where you have to find the chapel and recover a holy icon. Things were going fairly well until a series of unfortunate events (a powerful wraith showing up, several traps that affected everyone on the tile, and the motherfucing GARGOYLES who refused to die and did massive AOEs) drained the entire party of hit points and enough people died that we ran out of healing surges and lost the game. Several of the players expressed the opinion that the game was depressing and unwinnable; I think that that's not really true. We made some mistakes, and still got *reasonably* close -- we found the chapel and if a few fewer people had died...
Dungeon number three: Order of the Stick, the game. The goal is to collect loot (that you drool over) and level up, while invading xykon's randomly generated castle. You can get help from people by giving them loot, but it's probably not a good idea to actually ever do that, since you're giving them points and points are scarce. Losing the fight is usually less painful.
I played Vaarsuvius and it sucked. My default attack was really weak, and the upgraded attack could only be used once between rests and was AoE. Meaning it attacked multiple monsters at a time. However, the AoE rules are hideously punitive -- you go against the *hardest* defense of all the monsters you target -- and it has to be used as a ranged attack, which (a) is difficult to pull off because you can't move before doing it and (b) means you don't get any of the loot the monster drop since it drops in the room they're in. Compare this to Roy with a +7 attack and defense on a regular basis (fireball was only +5!), or Belkar's +6 ranged attack that also put him in the room with the monsters and therefore let him loot.
Also, it seemed like none of the loot had my face on it, which meant no one ever asked me for help and gave me loot and none of the loot I did get was worth anything to me.
We also missed some of the rules... I think people were supposed to be equipping more of their loot for other people to steal. In particular we were supposed to have 7 points worth of loot equipped to even enter Xykon's lair, and no one did.
Anyway, that's what I did Sunday. It took a long time. x.x I think I'd probably play any of those games again, 'cause they were all fun even if they had their problems.
