MindGamesToronto

Hello Fellow Game Enthusiasts!

MindGames is a Board Games Cafe & Toy Store. The shop for creative minds at play. We are located in the heart of Toronto.

http://www.mindgames.ca/
https://twitter.com/MindGamesTO
https://www.facebook.com/MindGamesCafe

For those of you who remember old-school, pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons, think of the board games as Dungeons & Dragons in bite-sized form. The advantage is, you don’t need a Dungeon Master (the story-teller who controls the world and the characters/monsters the players encounter throughout their adventures). And, most importantly, you don’t need to invest the TIME Dungeons & Dragons requires, in which players meet each week for months on end in order to finish a campaign. Instead, the D&D board game take 60-90 minutes to complete. Like I said, this is bite-sized D&D.

Like regular Dungeons & Dragons, the board games are fully cooperative, and can be played by 1-5 players. Players choose a pre-made character, and have some skills to choose from, which allows for a very limited customization. For example, in Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft, players can choose to be either a Dragonborn Fighter, Human Rogue, Dwarf Cleric, Eladrin Wizard or a Human Ranger, and have various skills/abilities to choose from for each character to aid them during their adventure. Players also choose a scenario to play, which (keeping with the Castle Ravenloft example) can range from recovering a holy relic to defeating the vampire lord himself.

The game’s difficulty scales with the number of players, so games will always feel adequately challenging.

In addition to controlling their character, players will also control any monsters they encounter, moving them according to their corresponding monster card. In this way, no Dungeon Master is required.

Every game is different, with the castle (or caves, or dungeon) being built as the players explore. The game comes with numerous plastic miniatures, with the majority of these being for enemies. The miniatures are gorgeous, and quickly populate the halls and rooms – and if you’re not careful, you may suddenly find yourself outnumbered. Components from other games can also be intermixed, so if players want to insert Drizzt into the world of Ravenloft, they’re more than welcome – or if they wish to fight vampires in the lava caves from “Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Board Game”, go right on ahead.

Unfortunately one of the downfalls to the Dungeons & Dragons board games is that experience earned, or equipment found, does not stay with players from game to game. Instead, each game starts anew, with players back to square one.

Overall, the Dungeons & Dragons board games are a great way to introduce new players to the world of D&D, or to get a quick D&D fix if you don’t have the time to invest in the traditional pen-and-paper version. Even if you don’t have any interest in D&D, they’re still decent fantasy-themed cooperative board games. However, if you’re looking for something with the depth and customization of the original pen-and-paper version of D&D, you may be left feeling underwhelmed.

Stay tuned for what is next to come!