League of Dungeoneers

 

Played my first game of League of Dungeoneers yesterday.  This is a cooperative/ Solo RPG game similar to Dungeons and Dragons and focusing on adventures and dungeon crawling.

There was a Kickstarter for it last year and I received the truly enormous box a few months ago.  I have been wanting to try the game out and having mentioned it to a friend he was keen to get it on the table.

I've been playing games over the last few weeks during the day with this friend  as he had the misfortunate before Christmas to come off his bicycle on a patch of diesel and fractured his pelvis.  This has meant being stuck at home with not much to do.

We have played Thunder Road Vendetta,  Marvel Champions and Pandemic:Fall of Rome.  Having rolled up some characters last week we gave this game a run out this week.

The game is a staggering achievement as it is the work of just one person and it is beautifully produced.   The characters generation is similar to D&D and we ended up with a Human Wizard, a Dwarf Warrior, an Elf Thief and a Halfling Warrior Priest.

We played through the first encounter - which is a battle with 4 bandits and really just teaches you the combat system.  You use a bag with initiative tokens and the appropriate colour lets you or the enemy act with one character.  There is a simple but effective list of interactions for the AI driven enemy.

We defeated the bandits and then went into a settlement which are spread across a map of the world.  You can buy and sell items, rest, gamble, etc, etc in the settlements (and they all have different facilities and different quests available).

The starting quest is to clear out the basement of a town hall infested with Giant Rats.  You create a deck of cards from the exploration deck (4 Corridors and 4 rooms, including an objective room) and then the dungeon is built up as you draw cards and lay down the room cards - similar to Advanced Heroquest.  There are encounters in the rooms, traps, wandering mosters and treasure to search for.

We only managed to get a couple of rooms into the quest (though sprung a nasty trap in doing so) before we had to stop and pack away but we will be resuming the game soon.

I have been looking for a good dungeon crawl experience for a number of years and have a fully painted set of Heroquest, bought and sold Descent (too complex and fiddly) and have bought Dungeon Saga: Origins from Mantic Games (not yet tried out).

From the read through and initial play, I think that League of Dungeoneers is going to scratch the Dungeoncrawl itch - it is detailed enough to be satisfying, with a decent difficulty level and gives a good narrative without needing a Dungeon Master.

Other people seem to agree as it scores 8.8 on Boardgame Geek.

It has also got me painting some of the several hundred Reaper Bones figures I own...