[KS] Return to Dark Tower (Boardgame)

[Deleted]

Ooooooooh.

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh.

[countingwizard]

At 125$ that's about half the amount an original would cost. Sounds good to me.

[Finarvyn]

I played the original once or twice but it really never grabbed me that much. Can anyone tell me what makes this game worth a hundred bucks?

[sirjaguar]

Nostalgia. If you did not play it as a child you will likely be disappointed in its simplicity.
I keep an app version on my phone and every now and then play it to hear the cool tower sounds.

Lawson

[Starbeard]

Interesting. From the description it sounds like it's a completely new game that utilizes most of the streamlining techniques and mechanics you see in Fantasy Flight games. It also seems like it requires a phone app, which unfortunately unsold me.

Not that I have the money for it anyway, and I don't have the same nostalgia since I never owned it or played it. My nostalgic 'kids' games from the time were HeroQuest, The New Dungeon, Fireball Island, Web of Gold, and Key to the Kingdom. Frankly I'm sort of surprised that HQ hasn't been revived as a limited special edition, or Kickstarted independently with all of the serial numbers filed off. People once talked about Descent being the spiritual successor, but that was hardly true first of all, and that ship has long sailed anyway.

[Finarvyn]

Great point about HeroQuest. It was an awesome game and I used it as a "RPG tutorial" to teach my children how to play RPGs, how to take turns, how to plan team strategy, and so on. (My emphasis was that the team would win or lose, regardless of which characters made it to the end.)

I've seen HQ dice for sale online occasionally, which is critical because the original dice were made so that it was too easy to rub off the symbols. It surprises me that no one has built a more complex game around their dice and their combat mechanic.

[Starbeard]

I did!

I ran an ongoing weekly HeroQuest game for about two years in the 2000s. We started with the scenarios from the rulebook, but eventually drifted away from that about half way through when it became clear the players were interested in going another direction. By the end of it we had tacked on enough house rules to make a pretty complete tactical miniatures RPG. We had mounts, a huge set of treasure tables, wizard workshops for creating and identifying potions and scrolls, rules for sneaking, light sources, overland adventures, etc.; all drawing on the same 3 or 4 basic mechanics already used in the game. It was fun, and my miniatures painting was at its most productive.

After it ended, I used the world I created as the setting for my first OD&D campaign, but set a generation later. Most of the surviving HeroQuest PCs were now the aged NPC rulers of kingdoms they had carved out or taken over, and always at war with each other. Two of them had survived since the first HeroQuest session, so it was neat to see the wizard and barbarian begin as a dynamic duo of destitute grave robbers, helping each other through thick and thin, to mighty rulers bent on destroying each other's kingdoms.

[Starbeard]

Back on track, the new Dark Tower game does look pretty interesting. I would definitely play it, but I wouldn't buy it myself. I have a hard enough time justifying $50-$60 for a board game these days.