http://critical-hits.com/2010/08/07/gen-con-2010-castle-ravenloft-board-game-unboxing-video/#comment-73877

Wow, looks like WOTC totally ripped off Descent. If I was Fantasy Flight I'd have a little talk with them.

HeroQuest started it all! I'm a huge fan of fantasy flight, DnD and many other fantasy/sci-fi RPG and boardgames. I just don't see that much similarity other than they both are dungeon based board games. Is there anything in particular you feel they "ripped" off from FFG?

Nonetheless, I'm glad you linked it. I've been anticipating adding this game to my collection.

Are you saying that Descent was the first dungeon exploration game with miniatures where you build up a dungeon to fight monsters and take their stuff? I beg to differ.

Note: which is not to say that Descent ripped off D&D either. Though FFG was founded in 1995 and Descent's rulebook says it was copyrighted in 2005 (though not sure if that's a reprint or not). In any case there have been exploratory board games and pre-printed tile sets for RPGs since the early 80s.

Ken on Cape said:

-game actually scales based on # of players. (we all know Descent does not)

-solo

-co-op

-random dungeons

-no stupid overlord

-literally playable in 1 hour not 7

*day 1 woohoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

p.s. have you never played Hero Quest, Warhammer Quest, or any of the old D&D boardgames? rofl

I'm curious what people think of Castle Ravenloft and how it will stack up against Descent. Obviously they are pretty different games, but since they are already planning an expansion and I imagine many more will follow if sales are high, I wonder if people would leave Descent for this.

The fact that it's playable in less than an hour is a big plus, and the lack of an Overlord and ability to play solo are a HUGE advantage I think. But on the other hand, I also think that could be the games biggest weakpoint as well. Without a human opponent there playing against you I think the game will lose a definite edge, and I'd be worried it might get too easy. I'd be interested to hear other peoples thoughts on this.

Kartigan said:

That depends on the game. Arkham Horror doesn't have a human playing the role of the bad guys and it's a lot of fun, and can be incredibly challenging.

I actually thought one of the most common complaints about Arkham Horror was that it was significantly too easy (at least, without expansions). Maybe that's wrong, though I vaguely recall having a near-perfect win rate when I played it (I now play a similar game of my own design instead).

Fully cooperative games can be a lot of fun, but they're also very different from playing against a real opponent; in particular, you can generally focus on the average thing the game might do to you instead of the worst possible thing your opponent could think up to do to you. In my experience, that leads to more playing with probabilities and less emergent tactics. (That's not necessarily bad, just different.) I don't think the experience I get from playing Descent is going to be replaced by a fully cooperative game.

Castle Ravenloft might be good, but then again, it might not. I'm not a D&D afficionado, but my previous impression (across multiple editions) has been that they're no better than FFG at writing clear and precise rules (perhaps even worse) and rely heavily on the referee to spot-fix rules that are hand-waved, easily abusable, or otherwise disruptive to the game. Maybe they'll take a completely different approach here because it's a board game...or maybe they'll decide that because it's cooperative, players "obviously" won't try to "exploit" the rules, so they don't need to sweat the details. Personally, I'd really prefer to read the rules (and, ideally, see the game in action) before paying any money for it.

AH is indeed very easy with no expansions, but some of the expansions increase the difficulty a great deal (Innsmouth, certainly: Dunwich is also a big step up. I haven't played any of the others.)

Antistone said:

I'm not going to argue that D&D rules are perfect, but in my personal opinion they are a heck of a lot more solid than Descent. At least that's my impression of 3.5. I've twiddled a bit in 4th edition but I haven't really gotten into the nitty gritty of it as yet. 2nd edition and older I was too young to really understand everything anyway. I never really DMed those editions and mostly just rolled dice when people told me to.

I had been expecting Ravenloft to be essentially a stripped down version of D&D's rules, along the lines of the recent "D&D Boardgame" releases that accompanied 3.5 - in fact I had been assuming this was "4th edition's board game." If there are co-op and solo rules though, that might not be the case. (At least, I have a hard time imagining the basic D&D engine without a GM at the helm.) In any event I have no immediate plans to buy CR. Maybe in a few years if I hear good things I'll take another look, or I might end up getting it as a gift.

And no, to answer the original question, I don't think this game is in any way infringing on FFG's copyrights for Descent. FFG suing WotC over this would be like White Wolf suing Anne Rice over who invented vampires. It's safe to say neither of them was first with the idea, at least not at the generic level you'd have to go to in order to compare them. If CR features hairy beastmen with voodoo dolls hanging from their belts or large bat-like monsters called "bladewings" then there might be an issue, but high fantasy as a genre and dungeon crawling as a mechanic are hardly FFG's sovereign territory.

One of the more common complaints about 4th edition D&D is that its rules feel too much like a board game. Another is that the game is too balanced, as they went with a very mathematical model for how players and monsters advance. Though there are combos that can get overpowered, and this increases as you add more books to your campaign, the core rule set of 4E is very solid. I have no doubt that it will be much easier to learn and nowhere near as frought with constant FAQing as Descent. That doesn't necessarily mean it'll be a better game, but I expect it to be pretty fun.

As for how close it matches 4E, it looks like an almost direct port. The characters and powers shown are the same, though it looks like they pulled way back on how many hit points (i.e. wounds) a character has and how much damage they deal. For instance, the wraith that's posted on BGG has 2 hit points and deals 3 damage (1 even if it misses). The monster in the game has 37 hit points and deals 1d6+4 damage when it hits.

There are no rules for completely coop D&D as far as I know. Typically it's more like Descent with several players running heroes while the Dungeon Master controls the monsters (and the rest of the good guys in the world as well. It's definitely a new addition to make the board game fully co-op. The tactics listed on the wrait look pretty straightforward though. It remains to be seen how exploitable those tactics are, and whether that makes the game too easy.

Well after looking into it more Castle Ravenloft is not a rip off of Descent. But there seems to be many things both games share.