Games from the Crypt #5: Legend of Heroes – the game Tomb should have been.

In many fields, it is often found that “newcomers” reinvent the work of their predecessors – either from ignorance or willful neglect to precedent; board game design appears to be no different.  At the very least, earlier designs can serve as the template to build modern games upon.  Much can be gained from stripping a design to its core and leveraging its strengths; conversely, if one has knowledge of earlier work, recent offerings can leave us underwhelmed.  This is precisely how I felt when I played Tomb for the first time.  I knew there was something both thematic and, dare I say, more elegant from my childhood in the 1980s – that game is Legend of Heroes (from the cover, you can immediately see why a 9 year old would be attracted to this).

Legend of Heroes was published by TSR in 1987 and shares several similarities to their in-house game Dungeon.  The main similarity is you want to be the player with the most treasure when the entire dungeon has been explored.  The primary difference is that Legend of Heroes introduces both the adventuring party, a narration system that, while random, is still more coherent than many modern narrative games (such as Arkham Horror), and a very streamlined encounter resolution system.  The easiest way to describe it is to just walk-through the exploration of one room. 

First, your party of five (fighter, dwarf, cleric, rogue, and magic user) embarks into the dungeon in a pre-specified order (here is the map of the dungeon -- nothing spectacular).

I choose, somewhat unconventionally, to have my magic user lead us into the dungeon.  I draw a room card (which directs me to draw a feature card, then a hazard, then a trap) - I find a chest that is trapped with a lightning bolt in the Room of Echoes.

To resolve the trap, my magic user (since he was the leader) has to test his skill by rolling a D20.  To determine success or failure, you just line the hero card up with the trap card and have to roll better than the number by the red dot (if you are unsuccessful, then you just flip your hero over to the wounded side - two wounds and the hero is dead).

After disarming the trap, I get to draw a treasure card.  Unfortunately, the treasure is haunted by a vampire, so to take the gold medallion the vampire must be defeated.  I switch leaders to the rogue (switches can be made prior to any card draw).

To hit the vampire, the Rogue needs to roll a 14.  If he misses, the Vampire attacks back, needing only an 11.  After defeat, it was found that the Vampire was carrying a brooch

The game goes on like this, until all rooms are empty (or everybody's heroes are dead).  There is a small amount of strategy involved in party order and function.  There are some spells at the magic users' disposal, the cleric can heal party members, and the rogue is best at traps - dwarves and fighters are good at killing things (standard D&D fare).  There is a nice amount of variety with 15 different monsters and several types of treasures.  In my opinion, a very good family game for dungeon exploring.  Worth tracking down -- although it is very difficult to find -- if you have kids that are in to story building and dungeon-y stuff.