Cracked LCD 1975- Dungeon! in Review, Halo 4, Punk Rock Jesus Hot

I'm a big fan of Mike Carey, mostly because of Lucifer. I slightly prefer it to Gaiman's Sandman and would put it just a shade below Moore's Swamp Thing.

I decided to quit collecting comics a few years ago and my biggest (only?) regret is that I quit about 10 issues into The Unwritten. If I ever get back into comics enough to pay for them again, that'll be a title I'd definitely pick up in TPBs (no iPad for this guy). Your thoughts on The Unwritten and/or Lucifer?

New Dungeon..."It’s a relic from a time when a game being just plain fun was good enough." If my grandma has "just plain fun" playing LCR (she does, actually), does that make the game "good enough"? Obviously it is good enough for her, and no one should begrudge her enjoying the game, but I think if you're claiming as a game reviewer that LCR is good enough just because a lot of people have fun with it, the statement is contentless. A lot of the statements like that in the review just come off as contentless macho bullshit designed to not only prevent anyone from mounting a disagreement, but to belittle them if they even think about doing so. Kind of like regressing to the AT movement in 2006.

Also: "My son is only two now, but as soon as I think he can handle it, I’m playing Dungeon! with him." ...and what about your daughter? She's older, right?

Punk Rock Jesus is B&W? Pretty ballsy for a mainstream comic! I've heard over and over again that it is so much better than the title indicates.

Too bad you didn't dig the Punisher, I TOLD you to skip Kitchen Irish! I would suggest trying the next storyline, which is pretty nuts, but eh, you'd probably just feel the same. I remember feeling pretty "this is a dumb Garth Ennis tic" about the woman who "likes big dicks" slobbering over the Punisher and talking about his dick all the time, but she develops over the course of the series. I can't agree with you about the violence being for the bros and gorehounds...it's definitely supposed to make you feel sick, and a key theme of the series is that the violence isn't ever solved by more violence, so there are definitely mixed feelings about even the violent deaths of the villains.

I just put a bunch of mainstream comics on hold at the library, so happy to be able to find out what's overrated without having to spend money on it.

Dungeon! is so cheap! I think I'll have to put it on my birthday/xmas list, just because of the price. Haven't read your review yet cus I wanted to talk comics first.

I'm going to put Punk Rock Jesus on my "to read" list. I shared the same prejudices that you did about the title, but now it sounds pretty interesting. I read the first volume of American Vampire and liked it as well, I should read further. Being unemployed limits me to what the library has though, or if I get some iTunes cards for said bday/xmas.

I liked The Unwritten quite a bit, I think I have the first 3 volumes? Maybe 4? I like Mike Carey. I also read a couple of his series paranormal investigator novels. Kind of like the Harry Dresden series, but a lot less silly. I've avoided Lucifer, which I've heard is fantastic, because I've never read Hellblazer so I didn't want to be lost. Is it more of a spinoff of Hellblazer or Sandman? I know the character appears in both, right?

Sandman spinoff, for sure.

Yeah, gonna want Dungeon. I was concerned that at $20 bucks the components would be super cheap, but if they're up to scratch this is a must buy.

I played that '81 edition of Dungeon way back in the day, and have never played since. I have a fond memory of that game being a fun, simple dungeon crawl, and have never found any of the subsequent games of that type to be better, just more complex. It probably doesn't hold up well compared to many modern boardgames, but $20 is a helluva good price. I will probably pick this new edition up.

Punk Rock Jesus sounds cool, so I googled up some artwork to look at. I will definitely give this a shot. The Ennis run on Punisher sounds horrible, much worse than I expected. Preacher was probably his finest work, and I lost interest in that by the third trade. Ennis can definitely write, but he has a head full of crude, stupid ideas, so the results will tend to disappoint. Maybe I gave up on American Vampire too soon. The first trade was decent and had some flashes of brilliance, especially in the artwork. But then the action scenes are ludicrously over the top with gigantic fangs and claws and everything in site is painted in gallons of blood. So by the end of the second trade, I was done. Might give it another look now.

I'll save you the trouble on the Mage Wars review and give you the Tow Jockey One Second Review version:

Game Rocks! A combination of Summoner Wars and Magic. More engaging and rewarding than Summoner Wars. Lighter and easier than Magic. Go buy it now.

Actually, my review copy showed up today. "Lighter and easier than Magic"? Really? Big rulebook...

Yeah, I was totally shutting down arguments against Dungeon in the review because frankly, the modern critical idioms (especially from amateur critics raised with Puerto Rico as a gold standard) just don't really apply to it. It was never intended to exist in a world where nerds would pick everything apart on a Web site. It is what it is, and it comes from a time when people didn't rate a game a 4.5 because of "concerns". The objections to the game are obvious...but they're also irrelevant. ANd yes, the game being fun to play is absolutely enough.

Of course Scarlett will be playing Dungeon too...if she wants to. I have a feeling she won't. I have a feeling she's going to be SUPER girly,and that tends to exclude games. She's actually a year behind River.

Yeah, I saw "Punk Rock Jesus" and thought "nope!" The covers also put me more in mind of Rancid than The Clash. But it was one of those 3am, want to buy something new wingers...and I wound up reading every issue published. It's _suprisingly_ good. Some of the politics are immature, but I _like_ that. It's about youth rebellion, and the politics there are immature. It really does capture a certain sense of what it's like to be dissatisfied with things...and then you hear a Black Flag record.

I got the point of the violence in PuniMax, but it's sort of like the Cannibal Holocaust Conundrum. At one point is the statement lost in exploitation? And I'm not sure that SEEING that stuff versus encountering it through suggestion makes it any stronger...it just comes across badly to me. It could be that I expect Ennis to strike low and often.

I _did_ like the first story to an extent, mostly because it was about Frank Castle and his sort of moral dead end. I'll try the post-Kitchen Irish story, I have them all so I may as well.

I forget sometimes that Ennis' Hellblazer books were really good...probably his best writing.

American Vampire gets better as it goes a long, I had the exact same reaction to it as you did Steve...but as it develops, the particular handling of the vampire myth gets really compelling- and the historical settings are awesome. So far, I think I liked the Ghost War story the best, followed by the Lord of Nightmares spin-off miniseries. The vampires in Ghost War are even MORE monster-ish...some very Aliens-like stuff in that one.

Dungeon components are fine, especially at the price. THe board is drawn by Franz Vohwinkel, oddly enough.

Magic is theoretically incredibly complicated, in practice very light. You'd never know from playing even hundreds of games of Magic that the "rulebook" is hundreds of pages long, and it doesn't matter 99% of the time.

It's funny, I had Cannibal Holocaust in my mind as I was writing that last comment, but I don't think they're *remotely* the same. What makes CH so reprehensible and conflicted is really the actual animal violence. And sure, Punisher Max is *definitely* exploitation...but I'd be hard-pressed to find an anti-violence film or comic that *doesn't* straddle that line. I think Straw Dogs is the greatest anti-violence (okay, it's a LOT more complicated than that) movie of all time, but I know people who think it's pure revenge exploitation, and they have a point. Certainly especially in the Slavers storyline of Punisher Max, you are looking forward to Punisher killing the shit out of those people.

Shiiiiiiiiiit, did you buy them all at once based on my recommendation? Sorry dude.

Funny, I'm a reasonably big Ennis fan, but while I liked Hellblazer better than the Boys or any of his many many throwaway crap comics, I wasn't crazy about it (and am selling my paperbacks for a pittance, $9 for the first three combined). I know that it tends to be held up as the definitive Hellblazer run.

Punisher Max isn't for everyone but I wouldn't dismiss it as garbage either.

Over the course of the series Ennis lays a lot of very complicated questions about Castle and how he relates to the world he lives in.

By the end of the series I would argue he has created a pretty dense psychological picture of a man who makes killing his lifestyle without being driven by politics, revenge or psychosis.

It is also a massive reaction to the culture and politics of the Bush II-era in the same the Dark Knight Returns was a response to Reagan era politics.

It does suffer because "In the Beginning" hints at a lot of things that will be important later (such as "why does Castle continue killing after all this years?") that form the backbone of the series but are immediately dropped in the sadly mediocre "Kitchen Irish."

However, there are a lot of other interesting ideas that explored over the course of the series, not the least of which is Ennis' own desire to understand how as a progressive he can find himself if not endorsing Castle than it at least sympathizing with him and also how does the military/industrial complex fit into Castle's understanding of "organized crime?"

By the time you get to "Valley Forge, Valley Forge" I really feel like Ennis has laid out a pretty powerful character study and social commentary.

I've got backup!

Where the fuck did you come from, John?

In any case, we're on the same page about both the character study and the social commentary. Your second-to-last paragraph also addresses the "exploitation or anti-violence?" question, in that Ennis himself feels conflicted about whether or not we should be rooting for or reviling the Punisher. And yeah, "Valley Forge, Valley Forge", "Long Cold Dark", "Man of Stone", "Widowmaker"...the last half of the run is crazy powerful and heavy.

Well, what I meant by "lighter" is that it is probably not going to be as deep and varied as I suppose Magic is. There are a great many choices when creating a spell book but still only 200 odd unique spells at this point. Magic has what 7 bajillion? There are still many key words and effects in Mage Wars which accounts for much of the rule book but the basics of play are very simple.

Love Dungeon. Just like you, it was my first hobby game.

I love this because I NEVER get to comment on comix when dragonstout is being all knowledgeable about stuff I never heard of. Hellblazer is a spin off from Swamp Thing (if anything) and started earlier than Gaiman's Sandman. Constantine features in the early story arc in Sandman. I wouldn't really say spin off is correct either.

Its about a fucked up jaded ex occultist who now kicks around doing favours for friends until his occult dabbling past catches up with him. Steeped in early 80s British references, it is evocative of Thatcher's Britain dealing with racism, thugs, greed etc. Definitely worth a look. Hellblazer makes a brief appearance in Books of Magic which was itself a precursor to the Harry Potter craze. Lucifer is a spin off from Sandman primarily and a bit of Hellblazer (and a lot of John Milton) and also very good. You don't need to have read either, to enjoy Lucifer, as the backstory is covered in the first issue.

Try to forget that fuckwit, Keanu Reeves, ruining the entire John Constantine character with his pisspoor acting. Constantine, if not a cockney, is certainly a Londoner through and through.

Your shill is my command:

Toca Tailor review

When I submitted that, it had proper paragraph breaks in it, I swear. Toca Tailor is great fun, but I can see it wearing thin pretty fast for a lot of kids. But for a dollar, who cares? It's superb value at that price.

I think you're over-thinking this. The reason it bypasses modern critical idioms is because it's a kids game, pure and simple, and you can't apply adult standards criticism to a children's game. There are similar games for children pushed out of the mass-market publishers year on year. It just so happens that Dungeon has a wonderfully geeky theme that we all dig. It's Gulo Gulo for Ameritrash gamers.

Anyway I have a review copy, so will be re-iterating all this in a review which is (as ever) a couple of weeks behind Micheal's. I think Castle Ravenloft is the one and only time I've ever scooped him on a review. I need to find his secret of getting away with five hours' sleep a night.

Never say never. My eldest, Jasmine, is a very girly girl at age six but she loves to play Pitchcar, Castle Ravenloft and King of Tokyo and is really excited to play Dungeon. Kids just don't have those adult filters that say you should conform to stereotypes and only like certain things. It's lovely. I delight in the way she'll listen to alt-rock with her mum at home, then folk music with me in the car, then go off with her friends and chat about the latest teen pop acts, totally unaware that most adults would think liking those three styles of music was weird.

As usual your review of Fury of Dracula (even if from a collector's perspective) is worth the read, especially since I've been in hangfire on this game for about two years. I think this year it will go on the Christmas List in the "buy for myself" category to make sure it arrives.

F:At has been more focused on new titles recently so it's good to see these deeper analyses of games that have withstood a few years of scrutiny.

S.

If you're only reading Lucifer on Comixology, then consider yourself very lucky. I had picked up a few issues of the comic here and there over the last few years. Early this year I decided to purchase the first Lucifer trade. I would buy one once a month. Carey does a wonderful job portraying Lucifer.

Be warned. If you're collecting Lucifer via TPBs, Volume 4 is OOP and runs for about 40 to 50 dollars.

ugh, Lorax was so awful. I fell asleep

I thought Lorax was OK...kids were OK with it. All around, it was middling at best. My main interest in it was the environmental aspect, which people jumped all over it for, but really, how else are kids learning about that sort of thing unless their dad is...I dunno...into recycling or another environmental field?

Turner Classic Movies was teh awesome on Halloween (if you're like me: had to teach at the dojo that night and had nowhere interesting to go.) I watched Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and The Mummy right in a row. They're all only about an hour or so and still hold up well. I had actually forgotten that Bela Lugosi is Bela, the fortunetelling gypsy in The Wolf Man.

Ennis' Hellblazsr run is, by far, his best work. I enjoyed Delano's stuff but his material is always a bit heavy on the introspection and often to no good end. I really wanted to like Ghostdancing and it just didn't take. I think Ennis took the cue from Gaiman's presentation of Constantine in Books of Magic, where he's less imposing in a practical sense than the Zatannas and Zataras of the world, but more imposing simply because of what he knows and how he's willing to use that knowledge.

Speaking of the Punisher: Now that Valiant is re-launching all of their non-Gold Key stuff, I'm kind of feeling the urge to see Marvel's old 2099 stuff again. I really enjoyed a lot of that (with the exception of Ravage; Stan, you just didn't have it.) I also have all of Dark Horse's Comics Greatest World stuff stashed away in my pile of 30K comics. That's the last superhero stuff I really remember being intrigued by, outside of Astro City when Busiek finishes one, every other decade or so.

Sure, but he was asking about Lucifer, not Constantine/Hellblazer. Lucifer is a spinoff of Sandman; hell, the first storyline is from a comic titled "Sandman Presents: Lucifer", and the entire setup of the series and characterization of Lucifer all comes from Sandman.

But it's good info about Constantine nonetheless :-)

I think you managed to name almost everything that once made me want to stop reading comics over the course of two sentences. That, plus actually all of the contemporaneous mainline DC and Marvel stuff. No really: ALL of it. Mainstream comics' most completely awful era.

Okay, now I'm really intrigued: you're implying that people jumped all over the fucking LORAX for being about the environment? What the fuck? The only things I heard about the Lorax movie were for the reverse, for being a crass commercialization of Dr. Seuss's environmental message and using it to sell shit. I'm surprised there weren't Thneeds available for sale.

Games- San, once again I forgot to link my Worthpoint stuff, thanks for mentioning it. There's also an overview of Arkham Horror up there, I did two Halloween titles this year for them. The next one is going to be about Crude/McMulti.

Matt, I think you are right about it being a kid's game, but it's hard to say whether that was actually the original intent of the design. Either way, I do agree with you that the kid's game mantle does protect it from a lot of criticism.

Mage Wars looks crazy good...I messed around with the walkthrough last night, it's pretty complex but I like what I see in it so far. One thing I really like about it is that it feels like buying a complete CCG collection in one box. It seems like there's LOTS to explore. The spellbook idea is genius, but not original. There was a kid's CCG called Zatchbell that did that. Either way, it's brilliant!

Comics- Thanks for your thoughtful comments on PuniMax, John Ryan. What you said definitely interests me in carrying on with the series, it sounds like there is some definite long form work going on in it, and now I want to see what happens. You've saved Andy's bacon.

Yeah, what the hell was that Constatine movie? Did someone just not get that he's an Englishman? I just read the one where he squares off with four skinheads stitched together. On one side are supporters of Chelsea, the other side supporters of Arsenal. Constantine laughs at the ridiculousness of it, pointing out their tattoos. The creature tears itself apart. Fucking brilliant.

TOTAL score at the Book Nook this morning. The entire Grant Morrison Batman run, including Batman & Robin but excluding Batman Incorporated, all in hardcover. Had trade credit, grabbed the set for fifty bucks and a grin.

Movies- Yeah, I'm all for the environmental message in The Lorax...but the film itself is more or less a Thneed itself. The book had a much stronger, more authentic message with a simpler story and less clutter. At the end of the movie, the message almost seemed about as authentic as calling those German porno movies from the 1920s "hygiene education" films.

YES, Turner Classic Movies does Halloween right, they showed a ton of great pictures this year. Over the month, I think they ran all of the Hammer, Universal, and RKO stuff they have.

I just keep watching Night of the Demon. My god, that movie is just amazing. I think I'm going to have to say that it's tied with The Haunting...I'm also watching Island of Lost Souls quite a bit, another undersung Bela Lugosi role.

The Wolf Man is a movie that I've come to really love over the years, after initially thinking it was far weaker than Dracula or Frankenstein. There's a lot of subtlety in it, and some really good character work. I still think Hammer's Curse of the Werewolf is the best treatment of the monster (come on, it opens with a CU on a crying werewolf!). I also LOVE LOVE LOVE it in movies from that time where they'd show the cast at the beginning in the credits, in character. Standing there and acting.

FYI, Black Sunday is BACK on Netflix. I saw it with my own two eyes last night. There must have been a problem with it. Anyway, watch it because it's one of the best.

God, classic horror is so great.

Let me know if you get a chance and want to nip out to The Manse to play it. With Baden living around the corner, and Launius under 10 minutes away, it is pretty easy to put together a group now. We'll have Nick King living about 5 minutes away in a few weeks as well.

I *ALMOST* want a copy, but have a passionate dislike for the color orange. There is a big change to the system that determines when economic conditions change to make it a little less volatile, and doesn't look like the old Tom Lehmann variant. I'm pretty curious to see what that does to the game, as McMulti has always been a top 10 game for me.

Which I also adore, although seeing the actual demon is just a bit of a letdown---by modern standards. Would have been freaky as hell back then.

Have you seen The Seventh Victim? I think it might be my favorite of the Lewton RKO movies. It also seems like it is a good twenty years out of time...like something from the early 60's.

I found the Constantine movie reasonably enjoyable by convincing myself that it had absolutely nothing to do with the comic book. That was easy due to the miscasting of Keanu Reeves. However, the casting of Tilda Swinton was an excellent choice that almost saved the movie.

I can probably resume a semi-normal schedule soon...I think I actually live closer to that gamer nest than I thought.

Rest easy, there's no orange in Crude. It's all red and black. It looks very serious and business-like. I don't really remember how the market used to change, now it's kind of on a timer. Still random, but you've got some forecasting.

The demon in Night of the Demon was insisted upon by the producers, who demanded that there be an actual physical monster in the film. I think it's actually pretty effective, even if it is sort of out-of-place in a film where the unseen and suggested are what is truly frightening. Fun fact- the samples from Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love" ("it's in the trees!" are from this picture.

Seventh Victim is the third best Val Lewton picture, after Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie...it deserves at least the stature of those two better-known films. It is absolutely ahead of its time, completely prefiguring Rosemary's Baby and that particular kind of horror. Plus, it's odd because it's a very urban, very modern _satanic_ story which wasn't common at all in the 1940s, when horror was very remote and taking place in 19th century European villages. It's also really dark, what with the suicides.

I loved Constantine and it actually made its way into my rather selective DVD collection. It's precisely because I've never so much as looked at the cover of a comic or TPB, I suspect, and I've avoided the comics primarily to not spoil the fact I like the movie so much!

Doesn't the movie use some of Garth Ennis's "Constantine tricks the devil into curing his lung cancer" story? And then he *quits smoking* because of it? Now, I hate cigarettes as much as the next Californian, but Constantine lighting one up immediately after curing his lung cancer is practically the epitome of the character to me.

Constantine, at least as Ennis wrote him, is a *very* Ennis-ian type: a smug, above-everyone-else asshole whose close friends are horrifically punished by the enemies he's made with his arrogance. Preacher, Hitman, Punisher: it's a favorite story of his, and in ALL of his long runs the main character thinks they are superior to everyone else: intellectually superior in the case of Constantine, but typically morally superior.

Black and white horror? Carnival of Souls.

And as far as Dungeon goes, I don't think it matters if it was originally intended as a kids' game. This edition is marketed as one. That's the important thing.

Ok, I skipped ahead a little and started reading "The Slavers" story in PuniMax...now we're talking! Hardcore stuff, very chilling...but more focused and less concerned with extremity....there's actually some _restraint_.

I think the only material of Ennis' that I really like is his work on Hellblazer, which is also one of my all time fave comics.

Constantine was just awful. It could have been an amazing franchise, but they completely blew it. What a shit sandwich. I don't understand how Reeves keeps getting work.

Watched In the Mouth of Madness the other night. Wasn't nearly as good as I remembered, but still pretty creepy. Lots of eye rolling from the missus. The folks who keep letting Keanu act must be the same ones who keep letting John Carpenter score his own pictures. Just dreadful. I do like the Big Trouble in Little China video though where he's rocking a keytar.

Looks like I'm gonna have to pick up both Dungeon and Mage Wars now. 13 bucks. I had a sandwich last week that cost more than that.

WTF the dude wrote one of the best horror scores of all time, how can you say that?

Whoa, OK, but if you're going to continue, you've gotta go back and read "Mother Russia" and "Up is Down and Black is White" at some point, as they both are very important for the future stories (and they're also good). The Slavers is DEFINITELY NOT the storyline I'd have suggested given your criticisms...it gets to be probably *the most* extreme story, and is probably the story that most sets up REALLY bad guys and then unambiguously encourages the reader to enjoy the Punisher being set loose on them. Maybe John Myers would disagree, I dunno. If you skipped to that one because it's one of the more acclaimed ones by fans, the reason I think it is maybe the most acclaimed story by comics fans is exactly because it's one of the more simple ones. It does have my pick for most pitch-darkly funny page in the whole series, though: I won't spoil it beyond "Punisher reading a book", and that it managed to make me both laugh out loud and feel ill.

I'm convinced Halloween's theme was a fluke like Boyz N the Hood being a decent Singleton picture, or Nick Cage being good in Raising Arizona. The synth poppy garbage that Carpenter smothers most of his movies in is just godawful.

In the Mouth of Madness is a crappy movie. Instead of a story, it's a series of wafer-thin excuses for various intense visuals. I prefer movies that tell actual stories instead of letting the FX guys run the show.

If it sounds like I didn't like The Slavers, btw, I absolutely did: I remember reading it shortly after seeing and being disappointed by Eastern Promises, and finding that its exploitation-movie visceral approach, diving deep straight into the awfulness of the subject matter and addressing how much people like e.g. that social worker just WANT the most awful things to happen, was SO much better than the Oscarbait-y "prestige" "this is an important problem of today" feel of that movie. The way that the movie felt the need for that "everyman" character in Naomi Watts, whereas the Punisher story had no one normal to identify with, was also refreshing.

But it is way extreme. Flipping through, there are pages I have a hard time looking at, and I'm not even talking about the goriest ones.

I disagree, I think a LOT of the best horror movies are just excuses for intense visuals. See: every Italian horror movie ever. But also, say, Cronenberg: my favorite movies of his are the ones that have the least cohesive narrative, like Videodrome, Crash, and Naked Lunch. Horror very much lends itself to incoherence, thanks to how much that replicates a nightmare and also to how much more scary illogic is.

That said, I'm not going to defend In the Mouth of Madness in particular, other than that scene with the guy on the bicycle that scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid. But even that scene didn't really hold up as an adult.

You guys are nuts. Carpenter scores are some of the best. I really dig the score for EfNY, Thing, BTiLC, Halloween, etc with EfNY being a top 3 favorite. Both Neil Marshall and Robert Rodriguez (among others I'm sure) have aped Carpenter's approach.

Graphic violence in comics can be tricky. In a movie, violence is a temporary thing, quickly replaced by new images. In a comic, that moment is frozen forever right there in a panel, and it doesn't go away until you actively make it go away. The reader is even more of a voyeur than someone viewing a movie, and that can be uncomfortable. I used to love horror comics, but picked up Ennis' Crossed the other day and thought, "Nah, it's too much."

Crossed is from Avatar. Never, ever, ever buy anything from Avatar, whose stock in trade, regardless of writer, is "maximum repulsive violence". ESPECIALLY Crossed, which has passed through multiple writers.

The original rules called for a market fluctuation on every roll of doubles. On average every six player turns, but I've had games where you would go for 30-45 minutes without rolling them.

That does create some pretty interesting effects within the game. The stockpiles that are built up are enough to practically destroy profits for the rest of the game. It also makes selling crude and gas back to the markets suddenly become interesting.

The Tom Lehmann variant is perhaps a little too predictable. That can be a problem in a 3 player game, as the player who rolls the market jump makes more profit from gas sales.

Classic business games are a pretty dead genre now. The only thing I've seen in the past decade is Karnaxis, which was a weird phenomenon. Crude is a better game, and I hope it does well.

Because of your review, I bought Dungeon two days ago, and already got in a two-player game today, right after my bi-weekly D&D game. As we set it up and I quickly reviewed the rules, I had mixed feelings. The components looked really nice for a $20 game, especially the board. But the rules looked very light, and there was less difference between the character classes than I remembered.

Despite my misgivings, it was fun. Yes, combat is very random, but there are still meaningful decisions to make in the game, starting with choice of character. My friend picked the fighter, just because it seemed like a safe in-between option, while I picked the cleric, because I was assuming that he would be better in combat than the rogue, but come out better because he had the same low victory condition of 10,000 gold pieces, especially compared to the fighter needing 20,000.

Games with luck can be interesting, because they can defy expectations. In my first encounter, I scored a card that let me automatically detect all secret doors. There are lots of secret doors on that map, so that was a big score from a level 2 room. But I lost that card in my second fight, against a level 4 hill giant. And then I threw away a half dozen turns or more trying to beat him and take it back. I knew this was stupid, because I needed to roll at least an 11 on 2d6, but it was all about the payback.

Meanwhile, my friend rapidly cleared lots of level 2 and 3 rooms, quickly amassing 15,000 gold while I had zero. But then he ran up against a level 3 werewolf and a mean streak of bad luck. Despite only needing at least a 7 on 2d6, he lost again and again, until the werewolf owned half of his loot. He eventually gave up on that damn werewolf and went away in search of easier prey.

While he was getting chewed up by the werewolf, I clawed my way back into the game, clearing the remaining level 2 and 3 rooms. I continued my winning streak by killing two werewolves, even though I needed 9 or better.

The endgame was a disappointment. My friend hit 20,000 gold right before I hit 10,000 gold, giving both of us the minimum to win. But movement isn't random, and he was literally one space closer to the exit than I was. A few turns later, and he won.

My friend wanted to play another game immediately, but it was getting a little late so we called it a night. Definitely a fun-first design. It would be really easy to clutter the game up with additional chrome rules, but the existing design nicely covers the extreme basics of D&D.