One of the reasons I like my rating scheme (Enthusiastic, Suggest, Indifferent, Avoid) is that it reflects reality. Once I know some new title is a JASE-y euro cube pusher, I might play it, but I'll never suggest it. I could split Indifferent into a few levels, because there is some nuance.
But in any case, I have no idea what makes a 5.5 different from a 5.7 rating, or a 2 from a 1. I'll be indifferent to both of the former and avoid both the latter. Is the '1' just leaving more crucified corpses as a warning to other game designers? As much as the thought appeals, I don't know.
So, my session report for my second campaign of Dungeon Degenerates could just read -- Abandoned.
I played four random characters with default weaknesses and some bonuses to make the game easier. (Mainly luck and an extra item). The initial mission went well ... I took a different path just to make sure that I would not get the same second mission as my prior game, and took advantage of a few tips to deliver the McGuffin and move onto the second mission fairly quickly.
The second mission is "find your target and kill him." And the target is not in a specific place on the board. You have to move through an area to find an informant (which is one of three cards in a deck of sixteen) and then that places a few possible targets on the board, and then it could be at any (or none!) of those. Now, you'll need anywhere from one to fourteen encounters .... excepting that some of the cards are really two cards. I flipped a card I needed on the first try, but it only applied if I was inside and on that turn I was on the road. Did that count? I guessed not. Meanwhile I'm flipping more cards but either I'm losing fights (which puts me closer to death) or winning them (which lowers danger in my area, which means that drawing cards in the place I need to look happens less often, but the game clock in all the places I am not is ticking). And two hours later I'm still hunting for that first step of the mission and I flipped an encounter card and it was something that was not what I was looking for and seemed like it would take 10+ minutes to resolve.
And at that point, I didn't care. I abandoned the game (leaving it setup) and then the next day I just put it away, because even when I found that card I'd still have to move to the three clues (each numbers 1-6), and hope that my roll was better than that clue to find the target, with no guarantee that I'd make any of those rolls.
So that's my review.
One of my prior missions literally took one turn. But if that mission came later, it would have been incredibly grind-y (I have seen several forums complaining about it). In some ways I respect that open-ness of the game design, in that you could in theory miss all the informants by "wrong place wrong time" and spend hours looking while the world eventually burns OR bump into one on your first turn, but you have to be in the right mood for that and I was not.
So my Dungeon Degenerates Rating depends on how much I want to wildly grind. But I suspect the individual scenarios might still be good. But for now the game is back in the box and back in the closet and I suspect it will be a while before I pull it out again.
No comments:
Post a Comment