This picture makes the game look more complicated than it is.
A long time ago (holy shit it was nearly a year ago that I started this as a weekly blog) I talked about board games as a gateway to geekier things. At the time I really intended on talking about more board games in this blog but life has a way of sidetracking you and you end up writing about Mad Max all the time.
Well, it’s time to take a look at another board game. One that you would think would be an excellent gateway into the world of Dungeons & Dragons (but you’d be wrong): Lords of Waterdeep. Before we played this game I jokingly referred to it as “Lords of Watership Down”. That’s the game that I really want to play, but I’d imagine that it would basically just end with the entire table crying over the plight of rabbits.
I guess the first thing to address is the D&D branding. I’ve never played Forgotten Realms but apparently within the setting there’s this city called Waterdeep that is ruled over by the “Masked Lords” or something that keep the town running smoothly but also have their own little competitive squabbles of one-upping and undercutting each other. I could be super wrong here, but I feel like Jono said something like that when he described the setting.
There’s D&D flavour all over the game. The “core” resources are clerics, wizards, rogues and fighters. Missions involve fighting Beholders and Orcs and whatever but at the end of the day, it’s all just window dressing. Is this background information important to the game? Not at all. Does having or not having an understanding of D&D help you or hinder you in any way? Not at all. They just as easily could have branded this as Game of Thrones, Vampire: The Masquerade or basically any fictional, historical or modern setting known for some level of political intrigue. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
