- Castle Ravenloft
- Wrath of Ashardalon
- Legend of Drizzt
- Temple of Elemental Evil
I love the board game but my issue with it is that it is predictable and does not give enough the feeling of heroes crawling in a real dungeon. So after a bunch of plays, I've decided to try out a couple of variants to randomize monster appearance, number of monsters that appear, how often encounters happen and whether the heroes are able to surprise monsters.
Dungeons and Dragons Adventure System Board Game Variant Play
Random monster
generation
Instead of having
monsters on every tile that the heroes explore, the random monster generation
will keep the monster appearance unpredictable (Yes there can be 0 monsters as
well)
·
Instead of an automatic monster card draw after
drawing a new dungeon tile, roll the D20 and follow this:
o
easy – Number of monsters = D20 divide by 6
rounded down
o
med – Number of monsters = D20 divide by 5
rounded down
o
hard – Number of monsters = D20 divide by 4
rounded down
·
Or if preferred roll a D6 or D4 instead
o
easy – Number of monsters = D4 divide by 2
rounded down
o
med – Number of monsters = D6 divide by 2
rounded down
o
hard – Number of monsters = D4
Monster Perception
& Hero Dexterity
Determines whether
hero is able to make a surprise attack on the monsters and for how long before
the monsters realize this
·
Instead of monsters activating on the active
hero’s turn, roll a D20 to check if the monsters notice you. If it’s a surprise
attack, for how long?
o
easy – Surprise value = D20 divide by 6 rounded
down
o
med – Surprise value = D20 divide by 8 rounded
down
o
hard – Surprise value = D20 divide by 10 rounded
down
·
The surprise value shows how many turns the
monsters
Encounters
Encounters are a chore
to deal with and it’s not fair that you get punished every time you don’t
explore. However, they are still required for a good DnD experience. Take out
the normal encounters that happen during the Villain phase and do the following
instead.
·
Place number of tokens equal to the difficulty
level (any tokens e.g. hit point tokens) on top of the encounter deck. Whenever
you would draw an encounter card, remove one encounter token instead. When the
tokens dwindle to 0, draw an encounter card and resolve.
o
easy – 4 tokens
o
med – 3 tokens
o
hard – 2 tokens
·
Optional for higher difficulty – If you draw a
dungeon tile with a black arrow, add one more monster to the number of monsters
rolled on that tile.
·
If you draw a special dungeon tile (one with a
name on it), then refer to the PocketDM for its specific encounter entry.
The reason I did not
include random dice rolling for encounters as well is because too much dice
rolling can ruin a DnD experience. The encounters are still unpredictable but
you can still plan around this. The PocketDM really helps to build story into
your games.
Summary Table of Notations:
|
|
Easy
|
Medium
|
Hard
|
|
Random monster generation with D20
|
*D20
/ 6
|
*D20
/ 5
|
*D20
/ 4
|
|
Random monster generation with D4 or D6
|
*D4
/ 2
|
*D6
/ 2
|
*D4
/ 1
|
|
Surprise attack values (number of turns)
|
*D20
/ 6
|
*D20
/ 8
|
*D20
/ 10
|
|
Encounter token counter
|
4
|
3
|
2
|
|
Black arrows
|
0
|
0
|
1
additional monster
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
*Notation – [dice] divide #number rounded down
So try it out and let me know how it goes...
