(Kickstarter) - Mantic Dungeon Saga Origins

[zemjw]

Their latest kickstarter is live and funded. Campaign ends 15 April, with delivery in December

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/manticgames/dungeon-saga-origins-your-adventures-start-here

The rulebook is available for download if you want to a preview of how the game plays - link



I'm not sure how compatible it is with the original game. The tiles are certainly different, moving from separate corridors and rooms to more of a board game approach. Loads of figures, although with Mantic, the choice of material can be unpleasant (yup, I'm undecided on this, in case anyone wondered )

[Tactalvanic]

not compatible with old rules, basically a "reboot"

Might be doing new rules for the old to be used with the new etc etc, maybe.

supposedly miniatures also are "better" than before. although to some extent that would not be difficult..

intentional rules look throwback to the old D&D style "red box" etc. Which worked as its exactly what my old brain latched onto when I saw them

I am also undecided. really.

Will think hard over the next 15 days if i can be bothered with it. Not like I am short of games to play 

[Malebolgia]

I'm in for the basic pledge...for now. I am still looking for a nice dungeon crawler that is not too complicated and doesn't take too long. I'm a bit in doubt whether I should back Maladum or Dungeon Saga. Although I like Core Space I also think it's all a bit fiddly with the terrain and isn't very intuitive when it comes down to the skills. I think Saga Origins is more in line with what I am looking for, but I am still doubting.
But Dungeon Saga will come with a big load of excellent models! Walking Dead and Hellboy have fantastic cast (for PVC!) and these should be similar.

[Tactalvanic]

this is the niggles for me to. its clear the casting improved since the did the previous dungeon saga - hellboy I have also and its clear to see.

Core space is nice, but yes, but I don't see similar scratching my fantasy itch etc.

So I feel the same pains, doubts, will see where what the money stretches to, and maybe plump the basic and if I can increase later, do that.

but two weeks to decide/cave 

[Elbows]

Disclaimer: Minor rant incoming

I joke with my friends that Mantic's slogan should be "Mantic: Almost".  While I do believe they have some good wargaming rules, I find almost everything they produce to be "almost" good.  Their sculpts are "almost cool", etc.  Every time I purchase a Mantic product I'm left with a kind of shallow feeling of "man this was almost worthwhile...".  I still want a few of their small trucks though...

However, I backed the original Dungeon Saga Kickstarter.  I've never been more disappointed with a Kickstarter (that arrived...at least).  I put it up for sale on eBay (at the cost I paid) the very next day.  The miniature material was crap.  A bunch of the miniatures were bent.  The dungeon "terrain" was poorly scaled and sculpted.  The card design and material was lazy and cheap.  I design games...by myself, and I can put together better graphics/material/card quality than what I received in that Kickstarter.  It was just an absolute turd of a Kickstarter/product.  The modern joke would be akin to "The Hero Quest we have at home" I suppose.

I even playtested the game (one of my biggest clicked articles on my blog) long before the KS arrived and was incredibly underwhelmed with the gameplay.

In short, I want to like Mantic.  I want more companies succeeding and releasing cool products, etc.  But damn if Mantic isn't just...so freakin' underwhelming almost all of the time.

[eMills]

Disclaimer: Minor rant incoming

I joke with my friends that Mantic's slogan should be "Mantic: Almost". 

You are definitely not alone.  I actually gave my Mantic stuff away for the most part.  I still have some of their hard plastic figures and vehicles but that is nearly all.

They desperately need an Art Director.  One that has some semblance of a style or vision for their settings.  And one that they allow to tell artists: No.   

Take the dark elves shown for this campaign:

It's difficult, IMO, to tell what exactly the outfits are meant to be.  Also, the ones with the double-headed spears and the ones with the bows are the only figures that match each other.  Style is kinda similar but not the same.  And the monsters are completely out of place, stylistically speaking.  I get that they are going for a JRPG aesthetic, but they missed even that easy target.

I was hoping this would be better, but alas: "Almost".  Which is a shame since most of their games are decent.

Sorry for the pile on rant, but I would like to want their offerings...

As an aside: Elbows, I really wish you would let your dungeon crawler into the wild.  It looked much more fun than the snooze-fest that was Dungeon Saga v1...

[Tactalvanic]

Thanks both, your comments really help put things to a better perspective

That and I just looked at my old D&D ruleset on the shelf, and much prefer it..

I could not really find the right words before but yes, the "almost" is really where this is going.

[ced1106]

> Disclaimer: Minor rant incoming

I also agree with what you said. I have the first two Mantic terrain crates, and, while they're certainly useful and cheap, the plastic quality was only okay.

> I'm a bit in doubt whether I should back Maladum or Dungeon Saga.

Check the rules, but Maladum's scenarios will be more like a solo/coop miniature skirmish scenario, where you accomplish an objective, while the game system difficulty escalates (with the monsters). DS should be a conventional dungeoncrawler, where you go room to room, killing stuff in separate battles. If you don't already have a favorite generic fantasy skirmish miniatures game, back Maladum. If you don't have a favorite dungeoncrawler, back DS.

In addition to the Maladum *game* which comes with dungeon terrain, Battle Systems has a separate dungeon terrain pledge, that, like its other fantasy terrain, is rules agnostic. I'm definitely picking up the dungeon terrain, since it has multi-level features, and can be used as ruins and possibly a castle wall. I'm sure you can use the 3D walls *with* the 2D Dungeon Saga game boards.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/battlesystems/maladum-dungeons-of-enveron/posts/3770977

[_Si_]

I'm a bit in doubt whether I should back Maladum or Dungeon Saga.

Same, not sure if they planned it this way or it's just coincidental.

I think I'll end up backing both, I'm only going for the game pledge on Maladum, not the full terrain I'll never use.

[Elbows]

I do hope this game is smoother/more interesting than the first version I received.  I don't imagine any of us are missing the heavy CMON vibe from the cards and boards this go-round --- and indeed some of the art.

As you mention above - art direction is one of the things I think Mantic...simply doesn't have.  You mention JRPG and that's a good point.  I refer to this inoffensive, board-game style design as "World of Warcraft" style.  You see the same in a ton of board games, a ton of apps, video games, etc.  It's just a kind of bland generic style...without pushing an actual aesthetic.

I'm sure this game will make some people happy, and it may end up being a big deal to the folks who pick it up - just been burned (or lightly singed?) by Mantic a few too many times to go in on this one.

[beefcake]

Disclaimer: Minor rant incoming



In short, I want to like Mantic.  I want more companies succeeding and releasing cool products, etc.  But damn if Mantic isn't just...so freakin' underwhelming almost all of the time.

Yeah, I was disappointed with Dungeon Saga and also sold it off rather quickly, not the next day but within 6 months I think. I'll pass on this one as the price is certainly too expensive for my taste.
I also got in on their Kings of War originally too and the plastic was that horrible restic stuff that left everything looking a bit to "army man" plastic

[Psychopomp]

My original Dungeon Saga rant/warning:

During the campaign, back in 2014, Mantic's Ronnie was going on all the YouTube wargaming channels and doing interviews.  His pitch was, to paraphrase, the core Dungeon Saga would be a modern Heroquest 1-vs-many dungeon crawler with set adventures, but there would be an advanced book (his working name was something like "the book of unspeakable darkness" or something similar) that would add character creation, level-up rules, a bestiary for using KoW minis not in the core campaigns, and solo/coop rules including randomly generated dungeons.  So, during his pitches and throughout the KS updates, the game was being sold as, without referencing other game names, a modern Heroquest with an add-on to make it a modern Warhammer Quest 95.  It's the latter that sold me, and I backed big to get the game, all the expansion boxes, the upgrade book, and a few add-on minis packs from KoW.

Manic hired the rules development out to Jake Thornton's game design company, Quirkworthy, as they had with Deadzone 1e and Dreadball 1e.  I followed the development on the Quirkworthy blog...and it started concerning and got worse and worse the further out past the point of no return on the KS pledge we got.  It became very clear from his blog posts that he was writing Jake Thornton's Heroquest-Inspired Boardgame, by Jake Thornton for Jake Thornton.  He expressed disdain for Warhammer Quest 95 in his blog posts, feeling that it tried to hard to be a roleplaying game and actual roleplaying games did that better.  He admitted to only having played a game or two of WHQ95, didn't seem to understand what it was, and seemed fixated on the book in WHQ95 that contained all the leveling, bestiary, and GM-led adventure play was called the "Roleplay Book", seemingly assuming that meant it was an attempt at a full fledged TTRPG as opposed to the versatile, fun co-op boardgame experience it really was.

And so, eventually, I got what was customary from Mantic at the time - a first edition Mantic game that felt like a Quirkworthy beta-test draft being published as a final edition.  The "book of unspeakable darkness" ended up as The Adventurer's Companion, a half-hearted and disinterested tack-on work with a bestiary that barely covered the add-on packs sold during the KS campaign.  The solo/co-op rules and random dungeon rules appeared to be barely tested, if at all, and the book itself was so full of rules errors and typos, Mantic ended up feeling obligated to do a corrected print run and sending them to backers at no extra cost.  The miniatures were decent enough sculpts for Mantic, but the PVC they used was soft and bendy, and didn't capture the details of the masters shown during the KS very well.

Other Mantic/Quirkworthy first editions turned out to be just good and interesting enough to warrant second edition KS campaigns to fund their rewriting and updating in-house, without Quirkworthy's involvement.  This resulted in much stronger, better written/designed, and more fun second editions for Deadzone and Dreadball.  Dungeon Saga, however, I dropped a few hundred on, and ended up with a medium-sized box of great dungeon tiles, adequate KoW minis, and decent-enough PVC terrain, with a much larger box of rulebooks, PVC minis, and game cards that got quickly consigned to a dark corner of storage.  The keepables were just enough to leave me stuck with the "maybe if in my retirement I completely run out of miniatures to assemble and paint (HA!) box o' crap.

Dungeon Saga: Origins appears to be that long-overdue second edition re-write of the original.  But in the 9 years since the original KS, there have been other games released/re-released to fill these niches.  Not least of which, the re-release of Heroquest by Hasbro begs the question of why the Mantic knock-off is necessary.  And they don't seem to be pushing the concept of a WHQ95-like upgrade this time, which is good - what we got in that regard for the original nearly constitutes false advertising.  I don't know - if you skim the rulebooks on this campaign's site and feel interested, go for it, but be aware that odds are it will be "almost" what you're imagining and there's a re-released Heroquest, Dungeon Universalis, League of Dungeoneers, and the currently-funding BattleSystems dungeon crawler out there too, now.  I would gently encourage you to check those out before making a final decision to back Dungeon Saga Origins.

[Elbows]

That smacks of modern Hollywood.  "Oh, hey you're doing a new movie that was popular in the 1980's!?  That's awesome, who's directing it?" - "Someone who vehemently hates the original film". 

[Malebolgia]

Still sticking with Dungeon Saga for now, but in for a quid for Maladum. Maladum still doesn't convince me I will play it a lot, but I do love how it looks and what it offers for other games. I want Maladum's scenery, Mantic's miniatures and the game system from another game. Arghhhhh

[Elbows]

If you're clever with the Kickstarters and you self off some of the gubbins you could just get both and combine it.