D&D Adventure Board Game: Temple of Elemental Evil

Anyone else read the design notes by Peter Lee posted today on "the other site" concerning the upcoming D&D Adventure Board Game: Temple of Elemental Evil? I'm fascinated with the picture of the tile layout which shows an outdoor/village tile layout. I own the other three games in this system so this will be high on my list to purchase when it's released.

I'm pretty much on board to buy this once it hits shelves. I like the incremental enhancements they've made over the course of the games. It's a shame that Ravenloft is often considered the weakest because the theming of that one is my favorite.

Have they said what the release date is for this one?

Whatever they date is a Egg, expect me at your door to mooch a play off your purchase.

This bad boy is set to drop TOMORROW, motherfuckers.

repoman wrote: Whatever they date is a Egg, expect me at your door to mooch a play off your purchase.

Sounds like a plan to me!

Should be getting a review copy of this in a few days...can't wait.

Michael Barnes wrote: Should be getting a review copy of this in a few days...can't wait.

I think they cut me off the "list", so I'm going to have to buy it off of you after your inevitable great review and subsequent sale.

Ah, but I've yet to sell ANY Dungeons & Dragons board game...that is the same copy of Ravenloft sitting over there that I got back in, what, 2010?

I had to kind of do a loop-de-loop to get to the right place to make a request...PR firms, publishers, etc...

I was so bored with Ravenloft's repetitive, and predictable game mechanics I traded it (after trying out and inventing a bunch of variants to improve it - I mean I really worked at making it playable) and haven't looked at the other board games in the D&D series since. But now that some time has passed maybe they've made enough changes to the system to warrant a second look so I'm looking forward to reading the reviews and taking another look at the system. I hear this one has a campaign mode too which would definitely add value. I played and enjoyed the Descent Road to Legend campaign system.

Come to think of it, I haven't played an old style dungeon crawl I've really liked since Descent 1st Ed.

I think the thing with the D&D Adventure games is that they're actually not dungeon crawls. The very first time I played Ravenloft I didn't like it. I was expecting there to be loot to gather, cool weapons to find, a campaign with characters increasing their stats. It doesn't really do any of that. It never was meant to.

Once I realized that the games didn't share the same design space as something like Descent and was just a straight co-op game set in the D&D universe I began to appreciate them much more. Alot of the stuff you do in the game is abstracted and it's almost more of what you bring to the table. For example, you might get a treasure of a lucky charm. All it lets you do is re-roll the die once. It's up to you to figure out what your character's charm is. For me part of the fun is trying to fill in the blanks and just go with it.

The games also got better once you could start adding bits/components from later games. If you own all of them plus the Dungeon Command games...well then you've got lots of customization options!

Egg Shen wrote: I think the thing with the D&D Adventure games is that they're actually not dungeon crawls. The very first time I played Ravenloft I didn't like it. I was expecting there to be loot to gather, cool weapons to find, a campaign with characters increasing their stats. It doesn't really do any of that. It never was meant to.

Once I realized that the games didn't share the same design space as something like Descent and was just a straight co-op game set in the D&D universe I began to appreciate them much more. Alot of the stuff you do in the game is abstracted and it's almost more of what you bring to the table. For example, you might get a treasure of a lucky charm. All it lets you do is re-roll the die once. It's up to you to figure out what your character's charm is. For me part of the fun is trying to fill in the blanks and just go with it.

The games also got better once you could start adding bits/components from later games. If you own all of them plus the Dungeon Command games...well then you've got lots of customization options!

I guess that (not a dungeon crawl) is part of it and something I hadn't really thought about. I'm hoping the entire series has evolved since I played Ravenloft. I just looked at a viideo review of the game and the components look pretty good. I like the elemental evil theme. Most of the game play and card structure is the same, but there seems to have been a few important tweaks around the Event tiles and deck that might elevate it a little. It looks like the frequency of a monster bopping up out of the blue and pasting you has been reduced. Campaign mode is a good addition too.

They're not TACTICAL dungeoncrawls, which is usually what people expect. They exist somewhere between Dungeon! and Descent, which pitches them about exactly where I like this kind of game to be. They're lighter games, skewing more to the family end of the spectrum. I like that too, especially because this kind of thing usually goes more toward the hardcore/hobbyist end of things. For some reason, there was (and is) almost this kind of resentment toward these games for not being a competitor to Descent.

Dungeon Command...*sigh*...probably the most underrated game of these modern times. That game is SO good, and it exists in an unusual space- totally PVP dungeon fighting with squad building and a CCG-style cardplay element. It's definitely descended from the old D&D miniatures game but with a bunch of improvements. I wish so much that the Star Wars dungeon game on the market today was based on Dungeon Command.

Michael Barnes wrote:
Dungeon Command...*sigh*...probably the most underrated game of these modern times. That game is SO good, and it exists in an unusual space- totally PVP dungeon fighting with squad building and a CCG-style cardplay element. It's definitely descended from the old D&D miniatures game but with a bunch of improvements. I wish so much that the Star Wars dungeon game on the market today was based on Dungeon Command.

Yeah I agree....it's a really cool little system. The fact that they added more variety to the Adventure Systems was just gravy. Such a shame they never released any more sets. It looks like those sets are finally starting to dry up. I expect most of them to be OOP and hard to find by the end of the year.

i guess I kinda dismissed it as gimmicky when it first came out. (Didn't it get mixed reviews here?) Maybe I'll give it another look. Wouldn't be the first time I passed on a good thing without realizing it.

At the time, it felt sort of weird that they were selling it in faction boxes...but now, after Imperial Assault selling you individual figures that replace cardboard tokens to complete your purchase of the base game...