Check out these 2 compatible boardgames by Wizards. Looks like they are going to be competing head-to-head with FFG's Descent!

Castle Ravenloft
D&D Boardgame
Bill Slavicsek and Mike Mearls

The master of Ravenloft is having guests for dinner—and you are invited!

Evil lurks in the towers and dungeons of Castle Ravenloft, and only heroes of exceptional bravery can survive the horrors within. Designed for 1–5 players, this boardgame features multiple scenarios, challenging quests, and cooperative game play.

Castle Ravenloft includes the following components:

* 40 plastic heroes and monsters
* 13 sheets of interlocking cardstock dungeon tiles
* 200 encounter and treasure cards
* Rulebook
* Scenario book
* 20-sided die.

Item Details
Item Code: 207790000
Release Date: August 17, 2010
Format: Non-traditional
Price: $64.95 C$74.99
ISBN: 978-0-7869-5557-2

Dungeons of Dragonfire Mountain
D&D Boardgame
Bill Slavicsek, Mike Mearls, and Peter Lee

A cooperative game of adventure for 1–5 players set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons.

A heavy shadow falls across the land, cast by a dark spire that belches smoke and oozes fiery lava. A cave mouth leads to a maze of tunnels and chambers, and deep within this monster-infested labyrinth lurks the most terrifying creature of all: a red dragon!

Designed for 1–5 players, this boardgame features multiple scenarios, challenging quests, and cooperative game play.

This game includes the following components:

* 42 plastic heroes and monsters
* 13 sheets of interlocking cardstock dungeon tiles
* 200 encounter cards and treasure cards
* Rulebook
* Scenario book
* 20-sided die

Item Details
Item Code: 214420000
Release Date: November 16, 2010
Format: Non-traditional
Price: $64.99 C$74.99
ISBN: 978-0-7869-5570-1

Thank god, maybe this will spur FFG into making a Second Edition for Descent.

I did some research over at the Geek and they say it will have un-painted figs that are the same molds as their current minis.

I wonder if the tiles are the same as their RPG tiles?

Those look suspiciously like the same game with different quests. Seems like questionable marketing. If I bought and enjoyed one of them, I'd certainly be pissed at needing to re-purchase all of the rules and basic components in order to get the other half of the quests, even if there are aesthetic differences between the sets.

My onetime reading of D&D fourth edition's combat rules suggested that their editors are no better than FFG's; contradictions in their LOS rules, tiny creatures can't make melee attacks at all due to the stacking and reach rules (unless their target is at least 3 sizes larger), and you count as your own enemy, to name a few. I doubt they're going to make Descent look bad or anything.

So WotC are trying to take a game ideally suited for campaign play and turn it into a board game involving tactical miniatures while FFG have been trying to take a board game involving tactical minatures and turn it into a campaign game.

I'll probably wait for the reviews - Ravenloft never did much for me, but maybe I'll give the other version a spin.

Honestly, I doubt it will be any good based on the track record of previous D&D boardgames. This looks like something where it's a game tacked onto D&D minis. I doubt it will dethrone Descent for me. But as a dungeon-crawl fanatic, I'll of course have to check out.

I thought the Forgotten Realms Heroscape set looked really lame (paint/figures) compared to normal Heroscape(pretty nice paint jobs). But then I don't play Heroscape anyway. I just looked at because I love the Drizzt novels!

I gave up on D&D back when they came out with 4th edition. Literally grew up with the game (my parents were big fans, which meant I was playing before I could talk). But 4th edition took the story and freedom right out of the game (not to mention the money right out of our pockets). Cutting half the game out and repackaging some of the most basic content in about four times the ammount of books is NOT a new edition.

Whereas previous editions enhanced the game, I felt 4th edition dumbed it down to a point that I asked myself "Why Bother?" Just look at the source books. While the old ones have magnificent drawings and enough text to fill a small dictionary, the new editions look like a panicked high schooler came around triple spacing and shrinking the margins the night before his essay was due. But I digress.

I, for one, see this as further simplification of a game that stood for years at the forefront of RPGs, only to topple fantastically. Descent has taken an entirely different approach, and though not always successful, has balanced intricate gameplay into (relatively) simple dungeon crawls; even expanding and linking these excursions into a growth-focused campaign.

The fact D&D is now creating such a game just disappoints. The Heroscape units were embarrassing enough. I always loved Ravenloft, but fear this hackneyed rendition will simply cement the fact that 3.5 was the last I’ll ever see of D&D…

Sorry for the rant-ish nature of the post, but just had to get all that off my chest. In summation- Descent has proven to me it can at least learn from its errors and improve the game with innovative ideas (Sea of Blood, for example) and generally wonderful gameplay. As for D&D…

Ah, well… We’ll always have Neverwinter Nights to remember you by…

The Sorcerer King said:

I hear you. From what I've seen of 4th ed role-playing seems to take a back seat. Pen and Paper RPG seems to be dying a death sadly. Still, thanks to the wonders of the Internet there's a lot of material out there if you want to make the most of it. I recommend trying out 7th Sea (if you can find it) and (shameless plus) googling "Flint, Lock and Two Smoking Barrels"

Frog said:

Unpainted? That's weird. You'd think if they're cranking out so many DDM minis every few months it would be just as easy to pull them off the line after they're painted.

I'm sure the tiles will be 1 inch square like everything else, though the D&D tiles I'm familiar with are not interlocking, so there will be some differences here.

As far as whether or not I'd buy these, well, I'll have to see them on the shelf to know. I might be interested in getting one or both for the figs, but that depends entirely on what figs are included, exactly.

Jake yet again said:

Role-playing has always been something that takes place outside the rules, in my personal experience. The newer editions of D&D have certainly focused more on miniature tactics in their mechanics, and I won't deny that 4th ed is using some pretty blatant strategies to milk money out of the consumer, but as far as role-playing goes I haven't seen anything in the 4th ed rules that prevents you from carrying on exactly as you did with previous editions. Seriously, how does Will changing from a rolled save to a static defense prevent you from chatting up the barmaid? How do defined Powers and the absence of Gnomes from the PHB keep the evil villain from launching into a megalomaniacal diatribe before the epic final battle commences? Role playing is about how you act out your character, and this has little if anything to do with the mechanics of the engine. If your DM is making you roll dice for every social encounter, then that's something he's doing wrong, not the engine. Diplomacy and such skills aren't meant to be used all the time, only when you're making an important social plea. As such that should account for 10% of anything remotely connected to role playing. I can remember a time when D&D had virtually no social mechanics at all. Charisma wasn't even a stat! Did that make it impossible for us to role play? Hells no!

I'm not saying you should play 4th ed or anything, it's a free country and you can play whatever edition of D&D you like (or even a completely different game *gasp.*) All I'm saying is 4th ed isn't that bad. Truth be told it's about 90% the same as 3rd ed from what I can tell, so if 3rd ed didn't kill your interest in the game I don't see how 4th ed is that much worse.

Speaking of WotC going up against FFG, you could run an RPG in Descent if you wanted. You'd probably want to change a few rules to make things make sense, but if you're shifting from Board Game mode to RPG mode then game balance is less of an issue - the DM is probably going to let the heroes win in the end anyway. So you can use as much of the Descent rules as you like for combat and sub in your own imagination for the non-combat (ie: role-playing) part, and then you never have to look at another evil WotC product again.

You're welcome.

The Sorcerer King said:

Look up Pathfinder by Paizo. Thier web site is Paizo.com, they are an open source version of D&D 3.5 and they are doing a nice job of supporting it.

bneumann said:

But there is no Drizzy or Gweny running around those realms! And no beholders to behold!

Steve-O said:

Saves and gnomes? That's what you think people don't like about 4e?

It's certainly possible to roleplay without any rules; you may have previously called it "Magical Tea Party". But if that's what you want to do, why buy a system at all?

The system is there to divide up narrative power, so that different people have the ability to influence the story in different ways and can have reasonable expectations about how their actions will change things. If I'm negotiating with you, do I have the option to simply draw my gun and kill you if I don't like how things are going? What are my chances of succeeding, and of getting away afterwards? Is it plausible that I can convince you it's in your best interests to help me? Can I expect to find someone else who will deal with me if you refuse? The answers to these questions are going to profoundly affect the way the negotiations proceed.

More generally: What resources do I have? What resources exist in the world? How can I affect the world? How can I expect the world to react?

Third edition has a lot of spells and abilities that affect the world in some persistent and vaguely predictable fashion, rather than just winning combats. Illusion, divination, stealth, traps, fortresses, object creation, communication, travel, compulsion, etc. If those don't affect your roleplaying, you're not playing D&D. A lot of those rules kind of sucked, but I'm told that 4e largely removed them or made them suck even more, and that sounds like a perfectly good reason for players to be dissatisfied with 4e.

And to get this back on the topic at hand instead of degrating into a D&D pissing match (remember the boards we are discussing on). I don't really see this as a REAL "competition" as it doesn't seem to be even on the same level. If anything this just looks like a way to integrate their D&D line of minis into the already existing RPG line. If anything a promotional tool in which to sell more minis to RPG'ers and RPGing to the BoardGame/Mini goers.

CanadianPittbull said:

It's hard to tell yet, it just depends on what the tiles, minis, and game mechanics are like. I have a feeling it will be really lacking in the gameplay area and just be a crippled box used to sell more minis, dungeon tiles, and D&D books. (what all the D&D boardgames have been that I have personally played over the years).

I took a good look at 4E from a boardgamer/solo perspective and found that the money I would spend...and still have to make up my own rules, dungeon-generation etc. would be far more than Descent and all its expansions. The Descent Quest mod was the only thing I found missing from the game...random dungeons for when I am not doing the main missions or a campaign. And like Steve-O said, if you want to roleplay with Descent you can very easily. Any GM can do that without difficulty via houserules. I'd love to see a Terrinoth RPG using FFG's new dice system from WFRP that could be bridged with Descent dungeon crawls. That would be really fun! Of we could already do that buy purchasing those dice and having someone show us how they work.

I'd probably take more interest in Wizards material if they quit with all the randomized rarity garbage. I have not, nor will I ever subscribe to that type of gaming. I want a core game that works expanded by definted sets of figures/cards etc. Sure you could take images of all those minis from their web-site and print them...but is that not silly to spend $100s of dollars on tiles etc. and just push a cardboard chit around? You might as well go oldschool and use graph-paper and your imagination. And then you are not talking about something like Descent.

One 4E product I do think looks cool from a retro standpoint, is their new "Starter Set" that looks like the oldschool "Basic Set" coming out later this year.

Heh, one of the very first RPGs I ever bought. Had all those colored box sets, Red, Blue, Green, Black, etc...

-shnar

CanadianPittbull said:

I generally agree.

In my previous post, I made sure to point out how each of the complaints I had impacted why descent seems to be doing a better job, and stay away from any mindless ranting. Like Antistone eloquently put it, the problem with D&D is that it used to allow you to deeply affect and interact with the worlds you helped create, much like taking part in a well-written book. The problem I had was that they removed all this to focus on creating a simpler battle system instead of adding on and improving previous work. In the past they added things like Charisma, but again, that was adding instead of subtracting parts of gameplay (things like THAC0 were just incorporated into a nearly identical system).

The point I was trying to make is that there was a time when D&D would have been nothing like Descent in terms of gameplay and system (descent is a board game, while D&D was more an RPG that used miniatures for battles- dispite similarities in flavour or fantasy settings). Nowadays, however, D&D's system is almost solely geared to such dungeon-crawls, with little in terms of world-building or customization in between.

Yeah, this system appears to just be an appeal to a wider variety of gamers- and yeah, it's likely not on the same level as Descent- but that's kinda the point. Notoriety is a big part of what drives sales, and fantastic as Fantasy Flights Games may be (produces some of the best games I've ever seen), Wizards of the Coast (ie. Hasbro) is undoubtedly more famous, and this is bound to influence sales.

Will it be up to the level of descent? Probably not. Will it even be remotely similar in game style? Probably a litte. But will its sales impact the sale of Descent? Quite possibly. Not many people (save the, shall we say, gourmands of gaming) have the need for multiple dungeon-crawl style board games, and- regardless of actual gameplay similarity and quality- there could be a corresponding backlash to the sales of similar games. The question pretty much comes down to how well the games sell.

Whew, that was much longer than expected... I'll stop now. Nice to hear from others that feel D&D has lost quite a bit of luster as well, though.

PS> Frog - fully agree with the Terrinoth RPG idea that would incorporate Descent. Though the practical application of such a system is kinda sketchy- the best you could work with is likely going to be houserules...

Have they released any photos of the game yet?

Big Remy said:

Nooo! I just finished acquiring all the Descent expansions!

RhunDraco said:

Ok, I just got a glimpse at the new FFG rpg for Fantasy Warhammer. If there will be a Descent 2nd Edition and it's built using that system, I may not be all that upset about it. It looks sweet!