Castle Ravenloft/Wrath of Ashardalon Catch All

Picked up a while ago, used the minis in a new D&D 4e campaign with Swampy and ShotgunPhil. Still have yet to give Ravenloft on its own a proper go. Quality is top notch though!

Ok, as promised yesterday, here's my impression from last night's game with my wife.

As expected, the game was explained like in 10 minutes. It is of course a bit much to choke on at first, but once she did her first few turns, it all went smoothly.
The game itself went from easy to "OMG i don't think we're gonna make it". First we made the error, of splitting up, which pretty much nullified our characters' abilities to help each other. Given the fact that you more often than I expected draw a black triangle tile which gives you a monster AND an encounter it became very clear, that you have to stick together.
We managed to take the Icon of Ravenloft and win the adventure, but it was a close call. We got a somewhat unlucky draw of monsters for the final room, as we both drew a Gargoyle - so both monsters moved at each of our heroes turns. The monsters took me out, but my wife managed to bash the gargoyles away. So with the last healing surge I was revived and we got the icon. YAY!
In mid game we got lucky when drawing a "teleport yourself to the other end of the dungeon" treasure card. We had a very nasty elemental bashing us around, and we could outrun it with the help of that treasure. Given the fact, that we barely made it in the end, I think it is a safe bet, that we would have lost the game without this. So in a way, the randomness of the game mechanics decided between winning or loosing for us.

All in all, a very fun experience, we both liked it. I think the randomness with the cards that have to drawn all the time works very well. We only got one dull moment, where we actually managed to clear the board of monsters and cancel the due encounter. But then again this allowed as to heal.... bla bla... I could probably go on for another two paragraphs, but I will leave it at that.

RPG fans might not like the fact, that you can only chose out of the five pregenerated characters, and that you can only level up in a fixed way as well (i.e. you cannot individually chose which attribute of your character you want to enhance). Also, any experience you gain does not transfer to the next game.
I think this is in fact the point where it does not feel like an RPG at all, because you do not feel attached to "your" character, as it simply - well - it's not "yours". It's just one of the five chars that are lying in the box. But there's still enough room for variety, because you get to chose (if you want) the attacks and abilities your character has available from a set. I would imagine, that drawing these randomly (like the manual suggests for experienced players) will mix up the parties randomly.

Speaking of all the randomness: Although the game includes a lot of randomness (drawing cards, rolling the die) it never feels cheap or out of control.

Verdict: if you are not looking for a "real" RPG, but just for a fun cooperative board game to play with your friends, then buy it!

I don't think anyone should be expecting Castle Ravenloft Board Game to actually provide an RPG experience. It's good that things are different.

Dreaded Gazebo wrote:

Unless you are really looking for a hack-and-slash experience without the prep required for D&D I'd just stick with the D&D sessions. Not that these games aren't fun, they just offer up a very different experience. Even with its issues Descent is my favorite of the bunch, it's just really hard to table up due to the time investment and getting a group of guys that want to play it on a regular basis. Castle Ravenloft is the best pick if you want a dungeon crawler without the time requirement.

Thanks. As an aside, have you had a chance to try Battlestations? If so, how'd you like it? Seems like it's another pseudo-RPG that I keep considering.

And as an aside to the aside, my internet stalking (reading your blog) shows that you've played Idealogy. What did you think? Seemed like it could be neat.

Poppinfresh wrote:

Thanks. As an aside, have you had a chance to try Battlestations? If so, how'd you like it? Seems like it's another pseudo-RPG that I keep considering.

I've owned it for awhile now and haven't had a chance to table it up yet. There's a lot of rules to parse through and while the system seems pretty simple at its core there's certainly a learning curve. My main problem is that you have a DM/overlord like player but the role falls much more on the DM side of things (leading through a story, not playing to win). Unfortunately it goes into very little detail on how to really DM and the scenarios give you almost nothing to run with. So my main hesitation has been not really having a solid understanding of how to make the game interesting for the players. It looks neat, though, and would certainly be much more in the RPG vein. Maybe I'll just try to get it on the table soon and see what happens.

Poppinfresh wrote:

And as an aside to the aside, my internet stalking (reading your blog) shows that you've played Idealogy. What did you think? Seemed like it could be neat.

We played it once just the other night and it was once of the least enjoyable games I've played in awhile The concept is awesome - nations fighting for territory with wars over culture, economy and military. Unfortunately it just wasn't all that fun. Part of the problem was the components. There's no map (in the 2nd edition), just tiles representing territories that shift in front of whoever owns them (even though tiles are geographically adjacent to others). Control is represented by cards, which is annoying because you have to keep passing them around from player to player as territories shift hands. Simply having a map you played chits on would've been far more enjoyable.

Even then it wasn't a very good area control game. The mechanics were pretty luck driven and it felt like the weak got weaker, meaning they had to team up to keep the leader in check. I suppose some people might like that but it just meant the game was going to take even longer and nobody was having fun. We technically called it early, something we've rarely done.

I've actually been thinking of doing some weekly recaps of the games I've played because there are games like Ideology that I'll likely never take time to do a full writeup on but would be happy to share a few quick thoughts.

Dreaded Gazebo wrote:

I've actually been thinking of doing some weekly recaps of the games I've played because there are games like Ideology that I'll likely never take time to do a full writeup on but would be happy to share a few quick thoughts.

Sounds good to me.

Poppinfresh wrote:
Dreaded Gazebo wrote:

I've actually been thinking of doing some weekly recaps of the games I've played because there are games like Ideology that I'll likely never take time to do a full writeup on but would be happy to share a few quick thoughts.

Sounds good to me.

I'll second that notion.

I'm still on the fence a bit after looking around some, but I might get this as well as some other co-op games. What other co-op board/card games would you recommend. I'm looking for something for my old gamer buddies (who've not gamed in some time-like 15 years) and potentially my wife and 12-year-old daughter (these can be two mutually exclusive recommendations). I'm considering Pandemic as one option.

Thanks as always,

D-

Zombies!
Munchkin: The Boardgame

Those are two that i have played that are a fair amount of fun.

I do have a soft spot for Pandemic. It's fairly easy to understand, but interesting. It's really a question of what people are into, though. Pandemic is very much a co-op experience, and some would probably find it a little dry. Something like Space Alert is total chaos, which some people love, but some find too crazy. Arkham Horror is a giant complicated beast, but it's surprising how many people like it. A number of my friends enjoy "co-op" games with a traitor aspect, like Saboteur or Shadows Over Camelot. There's a lot of options out there.

I started a two-player with my wife last night. The initial setup was pretty intense, but the rules are surprisingly simple. It's easy to see how it will be very possible to expand the game, and apply a lot of the elements to proper D&D.

D-Man777 wrote:

I'm still on the fence a bit after looking around some, but I might get this as well as some other co-op games. What other co-op board/card games would you recommend. I'm looking for something for my old gamer buddies (who've not gamed in some time-like 15 years) and potentially my wife and 12-year-old daughter (these can be two mutually exclusive recommendations). I'm considering Pandemic as one option.

Thanks as always,

D-

For the wife and daughter, check out Forbidden Island. It's basically a simplified, fast playing version of Pandemic. Pandemic would certainly work as well. I'd also take a look at Castle Panic; I haven't had a chance to play it myself but it's a simple cooperative game where the players are defending the castle from raiding monsters.

For the older crowd I'd maybe look into some games with a traitor element like Shadows Over Camelot and Battlestar Galactica, assuming you have 5-6 people to play with (otherwise the traitor mechanic just isn't as fun). For a straight up co-op, take a look at Defenders of the Realm if they like fantasy. Of course any of the games for your family would certainly work as well depending on how involved a gaming experience your buddies want.

LiquidMantis wrote:

Thanks guys. I've actually picked up some 4e D&D stuff with the plan to run him through and I need/want to check out the red box stuff to see what it's about too but I was worried about just running him through stuff solo that I'd be mostly being an NPC puppetmaster. I'll check out Mouseguard too.

I went the Red Box route with my two daughters (9 and 10). We had a blast, but it was a bit hard on the 9 year old. She's fine with the math/etc., but she feels too much empathy for the monsters and wants to play a "rogue" who does things like ties monster's shoes together or pulls their capes over their heads. Once we threw in about 45 dice, she was lost...

I blogged some of the experience (part 1, part 2, part 3), though I confess that the greatest issue we encountered with the Red Box was my poor DMing skills.

We plan on trying CR next. I figure I can probably get my wife to join in, giving us 4 adventurers.

Thanks, off to read your play reports now. I started through the Red Box last night. I rough DM'ed my 8 (well practically 9) year-old and to some degree my 5 year old through the wagon solo adventure. I even got them to do a little character acting between themselves to decide how they wanted to help the dwarf. They both are really excited about playing more and have been talking about different classes. It's been a looong time since I DM'ed/Refereed anything so it'll be interesting to see how well I deal with having to keep up with all the abilities and options to help them.

UPS has my copy of Castle Ravenloft on the truck now. Hopefully I can get the wife in for that. She sat in and watched the RB session but said she doesn't like "play acting".

[Edit] Great write-up, thanks for sharing. Isn't the lack of fighter cards basically because the fighter is just a sword-swing meatshield again? No crazy powers and all. I'm going nuts right now as I can't find my bag o' dice. Some of them I've had for over 20 years. I had bought my older son a basic set and gave him a bag a while back and can't find them either.

LiquidMantis wrote:

[Edit] Great write-up, thanks for sharing. Isn't the lack of fighter cards basically because the fighter is just a sword-swing meatshield again? No crazy powers and all. I'm going nuts right now as I can't find my bag o' dice. Some of them I've had for over 20 years. I had bought my older son a basic set and gave him a bag a while back and can't find them either.

Oh no! I hope you find them! (my Red Box 20-sided is *still* missing) I know this is a poor substitute...

Yes, the fighter is a bit different in the Red Box (I should update my write-up, I suppose). But Daily powers are usually so much fun... And that's what I get for trying to mix 4th Ed. with Essentials/Red Box.

Oh, and the other thing that's missing is equipment. But I can understand why they didn't allow for much in the way of more items in the boiled down set.

Now I can't wait to hear about how the rest of the adventure goes with your kids.

And CR. I wanted to try to pick that up at the game shop this weekend, but if I don't I might end up ordering on line.

I love running games for first-timers. Lots of smiles. Great writeup and perspectives, badgerpendous.

There's a Mouse Guard RPG? And it beat the D&D 4e PHB for Origins' best RPG of 2009? Wow.

Something which plays very similar to Ravenloft and just got a re release: Betrayal at house on the hill.

I personally enjoy Ravenloft quite a bit. The easy rule set and shorter time frame make for a good warmup game if you are doing a game night. As mentioned earlier, it scales quite well all the way from 1 to 5 players, and the random board setup/multiple encounter sets allow for lots of flexibility in difficulty and game feel. The encounter cards and monsters are just a relentless assault on your HP, it usually takes an intro game to get the feel of how you really need to protect your characters.
you wont get a lot of Role Playing out of the experience, but the deck is set up in such a way as to provide some very memorable close calls

Thanks, drdoak!

Can't wait to finish the rest of the module.

Cool write up. Gave me hope for trying to introduce my girl to it. She's only 2 months old right now but it's never to early to start thinking about it.

We had another CR session with 4 people last friday. Close call, again - but this time we got killed close to the end. The game has same nasty tricks up its sleeve/encounter deck. But no matter we lost - we still had a great time. One of my friends was kinda unnerved by the fact that we "lost to a cardboard box!", hehe. But that's the point of a coop game, isn't it?

BTW - The game indeed "scaled" good. I would not say very good, as the encounter deck caused some serious damage. But it never felt cheap, so it's still working out.

My verdict stands: Buy!

In case someone would like to know anymore details, just ask.

I played this for about 6 hours on Sunday with two friends, and we had a great time. We got 4 games in, we won one easily, lost one badly, won a close one, and lost one that was right down to the wire. That level of balance impressed the hell out of me.

The way they balanced the number of players was very clever, and the game always felt like it was moving right along without the frequent stalls that often plague more complicated games.

The only complaint I have is that the rules are frequently ambiguous. The manual would really benefit from several sample turns that show exactly what to do in the unusual situations that are bound to come up eventually. We wound up with quite a few house rules by the end of the night.

It's definitely an easy game to recommend. Well paced, a relatively shallow learning curve, a good selection of scenarios to mix up the play, and there are several simple ways of adjusting the difficulty up or down to suit the players.

Might help with the ambiguity in the rules: http://gawainish.info/CRDB/f/faq.php

BadMojo wrote:

Might help with the ambiguity in the rules: http://gawainish.info/CRDB/f/faq.php

Great Link! Thank you for that!

My copy should be here today. Gonna play tonight with the girlfriend. I've played a fair amount of 4th edition, played 1 game with her but it didn't really stick. I hope this does the trick :p

Just got those three glorious words from FedEx.com--"Out for delivery".

Thanks again everyone for all the input.

Impressions :

The box is huge! And heavy! The quality of the game pieces is very good. I felt like everything was well worth the money. Rules are simple and we learned the game pretty quick. Girlfriend and I ran the second scenario, I used cleric and she ranger. We barely won, but after the game I noticed we did a couple things wrong (such as the burning skeletons doing 1 damage to you if they miss) so I feel we would have likely lost. Still was a really fun time. It really did feel like we were playing D&D, not rules or game play wise, but just the overall feeling of the game was very D&Dish.

I can't wait to play again. I can see this game getting it's money's worth of playtime. I'm going to try to invite some non-gaming friends over to try it out and maybe they'll get bit by the D&D bug.

The kid and I finally got to play a couple of nights ago. Its got a few quirks, but overall I like it. My kid, much to my wife's chagrin, LOVES it. She's convinced I'm determined to turn her into as big a geek as I am. I expect to spend a large portion of the day tomorrow dedicated to this game--the first day we will have had adequate time to play. I'm going to try to get the wife involved too.

I have to say, WotC needed to spend more time clarifying many of the rules and situations of this game. This isn't D&D proper where you have a DM who makes judgment calls and interprets the situation as needed. This is a self-contained co-op that needs to have the ambiguity removed. Simple things like monster movement--when a monster moves into your tile, which square does it land on? If it's available, we've been using the bonepile. But what do you do if it's already got a monster on it. It makes a difference if it's a spider--adjacent vs. not is a significant difference.

Anyway, there are other examples but overall I think it's a nice package. Setup and cleanup are a bit much which makes it less the "play on a whim" game I'd hoped, but that's trivial.

Thanks again to the group for the input.

D-

D-Man777 wrote:

The kid and I finally got to play a couple of nights ago. Its got a few quirks, but overall I like it. My kid, much to my wife's chagrin, LOVES it. She's convinced I'm determined to turn her into as big a geek as I am. I expect to spend a large portion of the day tomorrow dedicated to this game--the first day we will have had adequate time to play. I'm going to try to get the wife involved too.

I have to say, WotC needed to spend more time clarifying many of the rules and situations of this game. This isn't D&D proper where you have a DM who makes judgment calls and interprets the situation as needed. This is a self-contained co-op that needs to have the ambiguity removed. Simple things like monster movement--when a monster moves into your tile, which square does it land on? If it's available, we've been using the bonepile. But what do you do if it's already got a monster on it. It makes a difference if it's a spider--adjacent vs. not is a significant difference.

Anyway, there are other examples but overall I think it's a nice package. Setup and cleanup are a bit much which makes it less the "play on a whim" game I'd hoped, but that's trivial.

Thanks again to the group for the input.

D-

How old is your kid? My 8 and 5 year-olds love it. The prep/clean-up time are a bit of a damper for me but they're always want to play.

On tile movement, there are no line-of-sight considerations so it really doesn't matter, just pick a square on the tile and move the monster there. They really simplified the rules there, the tiles determine range and blast radius so at range specific placement offers no tactical advantage. When the monsters close to melee the card addresses that, I think it's always attack nearest player.

D-Man777 wrote:

Simple things like monster movement--when a monster moves into your tile, which square does it land on? If it's available, we've been using the bonepile. But what do you do if it's already got a monster on it. It makes a difference if it's a spider--adjacent vs. not is a significant difference.

Any square you want. And, trust me, this is one of the few "graces" that you'll get when you try the harder adventures. You quickly learn that moving around, running away, and allowing monsters to come at you and into your control on placing on a tile can be a huge help. The monsters are there to be taken advantage of as opposed to the guarantee of an encounter card.