Hey all, Sam and David here today.
We are back for another Tabletop Tuesday, and this week we are talking about a game that takes elements from the classic TTRPG Dungeons & Dragons and turns it into a dungeon crawling board game.
If you’re new around her, hello and welcome! We are Sam and David, a married geeky couple who like to talk about books, video games, all sorts of tabletop games, manga, comic books and graphic novels, 3D printing, cosplay, Renaissance Festivals, Comic Cons, and so much more.
Every Tuesday we have this Tabletop Tuesday blog series, where we either talk about a board game, card game, dice game, TTRPG (Tabletop Role Playing Game), or some sort of book/accessory that is useful for tabletop gaming. We have a pretty decent game collection in our home, and we also attend Gen Con each year, which lets us play and purchase even more for our colletion.
All right, now that we’re all caught up, let’s go ahead and venture into today’s board game review.
First released in 1975 and revised throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the Dungeon! boardgame lets you explore a multi-level dungeon in search of treasure guarded by terrible monsters. The deeper into the dungeon you go, the deadlier the monsters and the greater the treasure. The player who returns to the beginning chamber with the most treasure wins!
This re-release of the classic Dungeon! boardgame stays true to the original but incorporates several revisions made to the game in later editions, giving players the most fun experience possible.Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon! Is an exciting fantasy board game that provides hours of fun. Play a Fighter, a Rogue, a Cleric, or a Wizard searching for lost treasure in a dungeon filled with monsters. Only your magic, your weapons, and your wits can protect you! Plays like the classic board game with an updated look and feel. Easy-to-learn rules make this game accessible to all members of the family.
We have the 2014 edition of this game…and it definitely gets a mixed review from us. Overall it’s not a bad game, and most of the classes have a distinct feel to them that aligns with their D&D core abilities and features.
With one major exception, and it’s the reason that frustrates Sam above all others……..Clerics just plain ol’ suck in this game.
Wizards have access to spells, and those allow them to venture into the deeper levels of the dungeon and take on bigger monsters, which also yields loot worth more. This also makes sense because the Wizard needs to earn the most gold in order to win.
Rogues have an easier time spotting the secret doors, which can help them move through the dungeon faster, but they are also considered to be weaker and therefore are safest on the first levels of the dungeon and along with Clerics have the lowest gold needed to win.
Fighters are somewhere in the middle, and that is echoed in the middle amount of gold needed to win, along with the fact that fighters can handle the middle ranges of the dungeon levels. But fighters are also good at fighting, so they often have a lower number needed to defeat the monsters they find in the dungeon.
Clerics are okay. The rulebook has this to say about this class: “They’re good at regular combat, but not as good as Fighters. They’re safest on Levels 2 to 4. A Cleric must return to the Great Hall with 10,000gp in Treasure to win.” There’s actually a number of monsters that the clerics have the worst time beating (aside from maybe a wizard who decided using their fists was better than casting a spell). But there is literally nothing that makes the cleric stand out and reflect actual TTRPG class abilities. The rulebook says that Clerics are holy warriors, but there is no mechanic to show that off. Why not have the Cleric have an easier time defeating undead monsters? I have no idea whatsoever, but….here I’ll show off some examples.
These photos showcase monsters from Levels 1 to 4 of the Dungeon: Column 1 is Level 1, Column 2 is Level 2, Column 3 is Level 3, and Column 4 is Level 4. For each monster there are different symbols with numbers attached. These represent the different methods for fighting them: Green for Rogues, Blue for Clerics, Purple for Fighters, Red for Wizards, Orange for the Fireball Spell, and Yellow for the Lightning Bolt Spell.
Do you notice how the number for the fighter is lower than the other non-spellcasting classes, so the rogue and the cleric? Obviously showcasing that they are better at fighting. Sure, yeah, I get that.
But why does the Cleric have a 6 against the Ghoul in Column 2 when the Rogue only has a 5? When you look at the Skeleton, the Ghoul, the Zombie, and the Mummy…why isn’t the Cleric getting some kind of bonus there? One of the cool abilities for the Cleric in game is Turn Undead, and in many editions, the radiant damage dealt by classes such as Clerics was particularly effective against undead monsters. So why is that not reflected here?
The Rogue has a bonus to spotting the secret doors. The Fighter gets bonuses in literally every combat. The Wizard can sling spells from the doorway and not have to deal with a retaliation strike if they fail to slay the monster. The Cleric has……nothing.
And it’s crap.
It is this reason that makes Sam play a Wizard whenever we play this game, even though she absolutely loves playing Clerics.
This is a pretty easy game to set up and play overall…although sometimes it takes a while to move anywhere, especially when the tunnels and hallways and such through the dungeon are unevenly sized and spaced. But it isn’t a difficult game to learn, and does sometimes involve some strategy, or even just a little bit of luck.
Plus, each of the character tokens are folks from the overall canon of D&D lore, particularly Drizzt lore, which is nice, but expected because this is an official D&D board game from Wizards of the Coast.
And you can play it by yourself or with up to 6 players, so it makes for a decent game in the rotation for game nights.
Just…choose anything other than the cleric.
Well, that is all from us for today. Thank you so much for stopping by, and we’ll be back soon with more geeky content.
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