S.w.a.t. quest, what's a good balanced dungeon crawler.

[The Voivod]

So we had a casual game night yesterday and decided to get some use out of my dustgathering box of dungeon and dragons, the boardgame.
I had picked this up at a flee market and hadn't used it yet.
While we had fun, not the least because of the horrific translations, we stumbled on one problem.
The same problem we always run into when playing heroquest:

This game simply isn't meant to be played with a group of tactical players in full co-op mode.

Every room was met with the same formula: fighter up front, thief in support to jump monsters from behind, wizard ready for ranged support and cleric fighting or healing as needed. Make use of bottle necks, let the monster come to us as much as possible. Divide and qonquer.
Empty room? wait several turns and let the thief do his job. Divide loot, heal, repeat.

While this is fun for a real casual night, I was wondering:
I know these games are more aimed at kids. Particulary the ones that want to kill all the mosters themselves and all the treasure.
But what dungeon crawler is really more balanced? That can handle tactical players still provide a challenge for someone ellse then the GM.

[Elbows]

Sounds like you need to get a game which is more GM-friendly.  A cruel, clever GM who will push the limit of the player characters.  Introduce more problem-solving things.  Do what I do when I GM for a role-playing group: introduce challenges which you have not calculated will be possible or not.  Throw a huge monster well above their level at them.  Players often expect that everything in a game is calculated to be "possible".  Don't plan ahead, throw a wicked curve ball and see how they handle it.

If they die, so be it.

Introduce time constraints as well.  Just because it's a board game doesn't mean you can't introduce the GM style play.

[Hobbit]

I think that if you're going to throw overpowerful creatures at a party then that possibility has to be spelt out to them beforehand - the players need to know that they're entering a world where they can't handle everything straight off. But then build in the possibility of finding an alternative solution or allow players to run away, plan and return with a chance of winning. An unbeatable monster that blocks the only way forward isn't much fun.

And appologies if that sounds like teaching people to such eggs.

[YPU]

The two suggestions above would work in a game of DnD as the RPG, the boardgame however has rules for what monster appears where. So throwing in a stronger monster would a straight cheating.

What you are looking for is descent. My DnD groups is reasonably tactical though they will often break from optimum tactics in RPG's for role-play purposes.
A few years ago we played a few rounds against an experienced descent GM and he wiped the board with us. More then once we could not get past the first room, not because it was unfair but because there was a level of tactics involved that in DnD would be munckiny but in descent are required to stay alive. Take a look at it, it might just be what your looking for.

[Momotaro]

To be honest, that style of game is always hard to balance.  How do you always get that "skin of your teeth escape" feeling when the game is over? A team of tactical players is always going play a scenario differently from a group of casual gamers.  In fact, with some groups I've played with, it's player "individuality" and flatmate/ couple arguments that has been the group's downfall, rather than monsters or traps or the GM.

Some possibilities to add "spice":

Hidden orders.  Everyone writes down their character's action for this turn in secret, then reveals them simultaneously.

Limited healing.

Wandering monsters.  If they can appear from behind the party, or there's the chance of an ambush or more than one group of monsters, you have to learn to plan on the fly.

Individual player victory goals. Heh heh heh  

Competing economies.  You pretty much have a hitpoint (recoverable) and spell (usually not recoverable) economy in these games.  What about a fatigue vs food vs encumbrance economy?  The players stay in control and have choices to make, because there's never quite enough of what they need...

Limited carrying slots.

I realise that you're pretty much creating your own game by this point...

[Daeothar]

As the suffering GM in this debacle (well, from my end anyway ), I can attest to the completely biased towards the adventurers nature of the D&D boardgame.

We also played Hero Quest in the past and it served us the same issues. The fact that our group is basically a bunch of tactically astute, meta-gaming game nerd is not helping this case one bit.

From where I sat, there was little to no challenge I could offer the players. At all.

And then we found out later that we have misinterpreted the rules to such an extend, that the players were fighting at severly limited capacity. And they still had an absolute milk run, where none of them came even close to fearing for their health and were juggling equipment cards around because they could not carry everything even after the first level played!

One of the three hero players already expressed that this game would be boring him very, very soon (and I agree with him, as I think all of us do).

So, what I think needs doing is the GM taking up actual GMing, and using his/her own discretion in creating challenges for the players, using the existing scenarios as a baseline.

For example: level 1 had 2 goblins in a room, but they were like wet tissues before my players. So next time, I'll upgrade them to orks, or double their number, anything so there is at least a challenge.

And even though I already have my share of dungeon crawlers (Hero Quest, Super Dungeon Explore, D&D Boardgame, Hybrid), I think there might be room for one more with a bit more challenge and tactics involved. I'll shimmy over to Boardgamegeek for a bit, and read up on Descent. Who knows; I might be enticed...

[Elbows]

I suppose I should qualify my earlier statement - I've never played the D&D board game, so I don't know how much give the GM has.  When in doubt you can always throw in more monsters (just add a simple +1 or +2 to each of your encounters?).  But that always has a "meh" feel to it, because everyone knows that you're trying to make the game harder.

Can you double the size of the games?  (linking two games together to make one extra long game?).  I like the ideas presented about food/exhaustion/encumbrance etc.  Jot down some notes and add additional "traits" to certain enemies?  Failing all of that, you can decrease character hit points etc.  It may just be that the game itself is not particularly good or balanced and is just intended to let the players win - which means you simply won't find the challenge.

Step aside and make some stuff of your own (that's been my solution to most gaming issues).   

[The Voivod]

Yeah, I'm really more interested in a balanced game then 'fixing' unbalanced ones.
Mind you, it'll do in the short run.
These games don't offer much room to get creative, bar increasing monsters.
I'm curious to super dungeon explore and I am a backer of the myth kickstarter.

Maybe in a while Descent might be an option.

[Elbows]

A second generation Descent is coming out - or came out right?  I have the first one, never played it, but it looks pretty good.

[Hobbit]

My original comment should have ended with "suck eggs". Damned tpyos.

I've been thinking through a dungeon bash boardgame idea for a good while now and long ago came to the conclusion that the DM vs. players concept was flawed (at least from my point of view).

The concept that I'm very slowly working on was one where each player has a party of their own working through the same complex from different directions. Partys can, in theory co-operate, but there can be only one winner (perhaps only one major treasure that cannot be split). Players draw cards as they explore, some of these are encounters, but these encounters can be played on the other parties.

EG. Party A kicks in the door and draws an encounter card, they don't like the look of it so take it into hand rather than play it on themselves (if it had been an easy encounter they could have elected to play it on themselves). Player B declines to play an encounter on them but player C has a nasty encounter card in hand and decides that it would suit Party A down to the ground; they play the card and control the bad guys in the subsequent encounter. Round one of the encounter is now played out. Then player B has his/her turn (which could be exploration or fighting), Player C takes a turn; back to player A for round 2 of that combat. Each player could, in theory, be controling both their own party and another encounter - and the monsters use decent tactics (if you play an encounter on yourself then the player to your left automatically takes control of the monsters). This way everyone gets to be a player.

Another thing to do is to make interesting rooms with features in them; pillars, chasms, pits, bridges, ledges, defendable obstacles. Have bad guys with missile weapons who always try to fight from range (esp. good if they can fly). In my regular RPG the GM often has encounters that take place at range - two of the PCs don't carry missile weapons (despite this tactic being used on them several times) and often get snotted before the bad guys can be brought to grips.

Think devious but fair.

[Momotaro]

There's a new RPG out called Torchbearer, which is pretty much "survival dungeoneering" - hardcore resource management in the dungeon.  For example, after every 4 turns of play, you get another status affliction, which adds another penalty to your actions.  Basically, the longer you stay in the dungeon, the more you're fighting the death spiral.

Things like torches (and having a hand free to use them) become critical in the game.  Killing combat is lethal to both sides, so most of the time you're just trying to scare enemies away.

The feeling I get from reading about it is the film "The Descent" - you're tired, cold, hungry and trapped in the dark, and you can hear... things... approaching.  With the added twist that you're there to loot - do you leave a waterskin behind to carry some more gold?

It's based on the Burning Wheel engine, which I personally dislike, but I may pick this one up to mine for ideas - it sounds pretty much what I'm looking for in a cave raid.  Things like a status deterioration track and carrying slots would work well in a minis game.

[Ramshackle_Curtis]

Try Dungeonquest, the old GW game. It hates you. No need for a GM, quite a quick game, and really, really hard.

[Daeothar]

A little resurrecting action here, but I felt I had to share the following:

Yesterday, a couple of friends and I travelled to Essen (DE) to pay a visit to the Spiel convention. (One of the?) largest board game conventions in Europe. While there, Voivod (one of the two buddies I was with) expressed his desire to sit in on a participation game of the upcoming Kickstarted Myth game, by Mercs. He had already pledged heavily and was eager to get some first hand experience with the game.

The table, when we found it, was pretty heavily populated, with a line building up, so we decided to skip it. But when sauntering back some time later, the line was gone and we eventually voted to wait for the current game to round up and take our places. And what a fortunate idea that was!

Not only did we really like the game, but Brian, one of the creators, decided to join the resident crew guy in explaining the game and chatting about it. Which was great, since the crew member was German, and while doing a stellar job explaining the game to the one German player at the table, he was not that quick in Engish (which is ok, after all; our German was a lot worse  ), which made Brian's nudging in very welcome indeed. (thanks both, by the way  )

And it seems like Myth is the game we've all been waiting for!

It's a great system, card driven, with no DM/GM; the system is the bad guy and reacts adversely to players either overstretching or holding back; it forces players to move forward (so no more players agreeing to skip turns for the healer to shoot arrows into the ceiling till his magic pool is fully replenished again...  ). Also the cards system, while not fully forces, at least nudges the players to think their use of their cards through and time their actions with each other.

So a group of players attuned to each other will actually make for a more enjoyable gameplay, instead of breaking the game. (although I fully expect us to be able to break this one too, if experience is anything to go by... )

Now I can't wait for Voivod to get his copy of the game, or even better; to get my own copy.

I'm really pleasantly surprised by Myth. It sort of passed me by initially, but after yesterday's demo game, I'm convinced!