Rank the DDAS Titles

I've played the first three, but not TOEE.

How does it rate with the other three?

ToEE got the most playtime in our house, solely due to the campaign. The kids think it's fun to watch your character develop and become more powerful over time, which is precisely why Pathfinder ACG became such a huge hit for us.

My BGG comments:

Worse than the previous installments in a couple of ways - e.g., vanilla monsters that are overly similar, a repetitive trap system - but the campaign model is fresh and well-implemented.

Update:

We finally finished a leisurely two-player campaign (one character each) that - off and on - lasted five months. Overall it was solid family fare, though some of the village scenarios were only 10-15 minutes long with the two characters that we selected. It was good for ~16 plays total, since a few scenarios needed to be repeated due to healing surge losses. Warning: There's a player decision in the final scenario that is ridiculously unbalanced in a 2-player game. Probably best to ignore it altogether.

Examining the coop line as a whole, the non-campaign D&D games (Ravenloft, Ashardalon, Drizzt) are more suitable for random play, in which gaming partners change from week to week and no one cares which scenario is being played. ToEE is for families or game group regulars who are willing to commit for the long-term. The earlier releases have more interesting monsters and effects, admittedly, but you miss out on the character build-up and sense of progression that you find in Temple.

Anyway, I consider ToEE "completed" and don't need to play again - except perhaps with grandkids in 20 years. But it was an entertaining barrage of loot, monsters, encounters, and advancements while it lasted.

1 - Wrath of Ashardalon
Has the best extended campaign rules and a really nice old-school feel that just suits the system really well.

2 - Temple of Elemental Evil
Strings a good narrative together and has perhaps the most interesting and varied scenarios. Monsters are a bit identikit.

3 - Castle Ravenloft
Fantastic variety of monsters and a good setting but successive iterations have improved greatly on the formula.

4 - Legend of Drizzt
Doesn't integrate well with the other games. Focus on "legendary" heroes are overpowered and takes away much of the personal feel.

I've only played the first two, and of them Ashardalon is much better. The loot system is worlds beyond Ravenloft.

MattDP wrote: 1 - Wrath of Ashardalon
Has the best extended campaign rules and a really nice old-school feel that just suits the system really well.

2 - Temple of Elemental Evil
Strings a good narrative together and has perhaps the most interesting and varied scenarios. Monsters are a bit identikit.

3 - Castle Ravenloft
Fantastic variety of monsters and a good setting but successive iterations have improved greatly on the formula.

4 - Legend of Drizzt
Doesn't integrate well with the other games. Focus on "legendary" heroes are overpowered and takes away much of the personal feel.

This is how I'd rank them, except that I haven't yet played Elemental Evil. I need to rectify that. I do agree that the Drizzt heroes feel very strong, though if someone were making their own scenarios it might allow them to make something a little more murderous. I wouldn't normally give a game credit for something like that, but a lot of things in this system seem to be made with an eye toward homebrew content, so that's a consideration.

Sure the heroes are stronger in Drizzt, but included enemies and traps are deadlier also (regenerating trolls with 4 HP for example). Might not integrate as well with the other boxes, but so far we haven't mixed and matched them. Soloing Drizzt with the First Blood skill is a joke though.

Wrath - not so great for casuals and younger players as you end up with so much geat. Also a relatively repetitive end game. I still like it for its attempt at a campaign, and cool enemies such as Otyughs and Eye Tyrants.

Ravenloft - great all around and the most focused of the three (I'd say on par with Temple), especially if you integrate latter rules changes.

Temple - we're currently playing through it (3 players - rogue, ranger and fighter). Town missions are really short, practically longer to set up and read the special rules than playing it through. So far after 5 missions we have yet to lose a single surge token, so we get greater rewards and increased difficulty through seeded cards in the treasure and event decks, as well as buffed up enemies a bit earlier (sometimes we luck out and don't meet them in the following adventure though). After 5 adventures, we're all level 2 and have 1 other boost token. So far so good, traps are interesting (if repetitive on the start tile) - good thing we have the rogue - and so the story unfolds. Enemies might be the weak point with mostly humanoids (4 types of cultists plus gnoll archers and bugbears). Campaign play means you might want to game the system and delay to slay more enemies and grab more loot if health permits (our priority is to try and avoid using surges).

That's tough.

Ravenloft is #1, Drizzt is last, and the other two are tied for second.

This is pretty easy to do. The games get progressively better/more interesting in terms of design as each new release came out. I think The Temple of Elemental Evil is by far the best one. BUT, it also needs to be played as a campaign which for me hurts part of the appeal of the series. I've always liked that you could the games off the shelf and just pick an adventure. ToEE was designed to be played in order as a campaign.

The big problem with the series is that as they got progressively better mechanically, they actually got progressively WORSE from a thematic standpoint. I think Ravenloft is the coolest, with the best enemies and setting. It has some standard fantasy stuff, but the Gothic horror fluff really set it apart. After that they each got worse and worse, with Temple of Elemental Evil being the blandest and most boring of the four.

So if you like the system and just want the best setting, go with Ravenloft. If you want the best one from a gameplay perspective get Elemental Evil.

If they make another one of these games, and I hope they do, I'd love for them to base it on the Tomb of Horrors. That would be great.

Could you backload the campaign/town rules from ToEE down to Ravenloft?

I agree Ravenloft is the most fun on a game per game basis.

I hope, if they release another one, it is Dragonlance for a couple of reasons.

- I think that TSR, and D&D by extension, owe much of their success to Dragonlance's presence and success in the early to mid 80's

- Most people would want the heroes, which is fine (although, I think they have to bump it up to 6 players because who would you leave out?). For me, it is the monsters are unique in Dragonlance. You can have Draconians (and the different variations, which would be cool), minotaurs, and dragons. Dragonhighlords, and Lord Soth would make good villians for quest bosses. Items such as dragonlances, dragon orbs, and the like would also be nice thematic integrations.

I've always hated Dragonlance. Warm fuzzy larger-than-life heroes, bah. Give me grizzled swords and sorcery murder hobos anyday.

The "town rules" are actually discrete missions. Unless you mean the "between adventures stuff", in which case you'd need to work a little bit with the decks for an equivalent experience.

The ToEE campaign begins with starter decks of monsters, encounters and treasures, and as the campaign progresses you seed the decks with better, harder stuff.

Otherwise I suppose you could always just import the upgrades rules, though I wouldn't recommend putting the Holy Avenger in from the beginning. You'd still need to assign value to the treasures in CR - most of the treasure cards in ToEE are pouches of copper that give out 100 gold pieces. Encounters often has stuff that penalize you (Weight of Greed), or just let you find some random money (Treasure Cache). So yeah, you'd need to work it out a bit more.

WoA and LoD added monetary values to the treasures, so those are easier to integrate with the campaign rules. LoD played a bit with the Beginner cards and Advanced cards, but not to the same extent as ToEE.

RabidWookie wrote: I've always hated Dragonlance. Warm fuzzy larger-than-life heroes, bah. Give me grizzled swords and sorcery murder hobos anyday.

Mr. White wrote:

RabidWookie wrote: I've always hated Dragonlance. Warm fuzzy larger-than-life heroes, bah. Give me grizzled swords and sorcery murder hobos anyday.

Her boobs should be bigger.

Space Ghost wrote: - Most people would want the heroes, which is fine (although, I think they have to bump it up to 6 players because who would you leave out?).

This isn't really a problem, Drizz't has 8 playable characters out of the box including Jarlaxle, Artemis and Athrogate.