Dungeons and Dragons Board Games: How to add some RPG Flavor

For those unaware, Dungeons & Dragons is experiencing a resurgence in popularity. Long gone are the days when D&D gamers were confined to the social stereotypes of bespectacled adolescents crouched around a table in a basement or secret school clubs of pimply teens that were best avoided less the contagious stigma of being labelled a nerd dampen your 'coolness'.

Nope. Those days have passed. Not that there was ever anything wrong with those stereotypes. In fact, I quite proudly associated myself with those circles and gleefully accepted my nerdyness. But times have changed. As was prophesized, the geek shall inherit the earth and judging by anything mainstream and cool these days....man have we inherited!

Ask anyone in the know and Dungeons & Dragons is now more popular than ever before. Shows such as the acclaimed web series Critical Role have brought the tabletop game into the mainstream with lead voice actor and Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer and his band of adventurers known as Vox Machina. Popular TV shows such as Netflix's Stranger Things have also peaked an interest in the game.

But I digress.

My personal interest in the game has, and judging by the content of this blog, grown quite considerably over the past few years as well. The D&D board games, while great games on their own, are very different in style and structure to the actual  Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game. In fact, the board games are not RPG based but rather, are self-contained games that follow a more linear style of gaming. Recent additions have attempted to add some campaign-based narrative to the overall story arc but the games are still lacking in the actual role-playing element. While most D&D fans would still benefit by purchasing these games for the awesome miniatures and game tiles, the board games are, to hardcore RPG players, more of an accessory than a must-have.

I have recently looked at ways of extending the D&D board games to include some RPG flavor and received some positive feedback from our recent D&D session. Here's some of my tips on how to run with it:

1. Pick a theme:

There are now 6 versions of the D&D board games that have been released, each with its own unique theme and atmosphere. I would suggest you start off by picking a particular theme which would fit your planned gaming session. Are you opting for some dark Gothic-inspired setting with lots of undead creatures and dark gloomy dungeons? Then consider Castle Ravenloft. Or do you want you players trying to traverse dark labyrinthine caverns deep below the surface of the earth where spiders and all manor of creepy monsters dwell? Then opt for The Legend of Drizzt. Or perhaps you want players exploring the ruins within a dense and exotic jungle? Tomb of Annihilation has you covered for this. Or have your players suggest the setting by voting on a poll or even just random selection. Or you may choose to combine different games and create your own overall narrative. Which brings us to point 2...

2. Craft a backstory:

Welcome to little village of Barovia, in the North-Eastern lands at the foothills of the Balinok mountains. The village is perpetually seeped in mist and dense fog and always under the shadow of the great castle known as Ravenloft. Ahh...Ravenloft. The castle was once mentioned with dread and fear and was home to the villainous Count Strahd von Zarovich - a Vampire who once terrorized the town and surrounding lands. But Strahd was defeated and his essence trapped within the castle and sealed down with powerful magic. It has been close to 100 years and the castle is all but abandoned and the fear of Strahd all but forgotten...until now...

Why have your players come to the village? Perhaps the village council has summoned the brave adventurers to aid them in defeating a menacing threat or perhaps the players just felt drawn to this place through dreams and visions and now all find themselves in the same place at the same time. D&D is all about storytelling. You want your players to be immersed in the overall narrative. You want them excited and enthralled and eager to participate and your back story has to engage them from the start. In our session, our players were a group who were just passing through when a grief-stricken young man burst into the tavern in tears and anguish: His beloved bride-to-be Cassi was taken into the castle by a shadowy form that seemed to resemble a bat!

3. Setup the objective:

Keep you objective simple and obtainable as if you were playing one of the adventures from the books. Are you trying to recover a lost jewel and return it to the village elders? Are you searching for some ancient temple which contains a clue that will lead you on to your next mission? Are you on a monster hunt to try and defeat all the undead or seal the crypts so that they won't terrorize the villagers? Are you hoping to defeat the big-boss by entering his lair and taking him out?

Once you have a solid objective you can build around it and add few minor objectives if needed. You can also decide on some mechanics to match the overall theme: If this is a heist, how will you enable the players to employ stealth tactics or if this is an all-out monster brawl, will you vary the difficulty with higher powered monsters? Decide on the basic rules upfront when setting up the objective.

In our session the objective was quite simple: Rescue the damsel in distress. But, because Strahd had taken her into the crypts, the players had only until sunrise to complete the mission or she will have been resurrected in the image of Strahd's beloved Ireena Kolyana - and become his immortal vampiress bride! A time-based mechanic worked quite well in this instance. The damsel, Cassi, was given 8HP tokens and I set aside 9 time tokens of which I flipped over 1 at the start of every player turn. Once all the time tokens were flipped, I removed one HP token from Cassi. If all the HP tokens were removed, the players would lose the mission and Cassi would become a vampire.

4. Setup the dungeon master:

I used some makeshift dungeon master screens in our session. Behind the screens I stored all the monster cards, encounter cards, tokens, traps, monster and villain miniatures that we would be using in the adventure.

As a point of fairness I opted to add the same randomness that the normal adventures offered but with increasing difficulty as the players delved deeper into the dungeon. For this I setup 5 Monster Tracks with 5 flipped down monster tokens in each track, loosely based on the number of tiles in the adventure. For the first two tracks, I shuffled only '1 Monster' tokens together with two 'No Monster' tokens and then placed them face-down in front of me. For track three I replaced the 'No Monster' token with a '2 Monsters' token and for track four I added two more '2 Monster tokens'.

However, you could discard this randomness altogether and decide what (and how many) monsters appear and when.

I also setup a time track as mentioned in point 3 as well as any other important tokens that may prove useful in game. As the DM, I would be controlling the encounter and trap decks as well as the monsters and their order of activation. So all the cards remained on my side of the table but players were free to look at any of the monster and encounter cards/ traps currently in play. I used some sticky notes with the player names on to keep track of which player controlled which monster.

5. Have more interaction:

Spice it up! Don't shy away from adding some voice-overs for any NPCs or characters or when you think it might benefit the game with some cool moment or dramatic event. The board games all use a single D20 roll for attacks and defense but that doesn't mean it has to be boring! So the players have been having a really hard time in trying to evade that really mean old teleporting hag. Eventually the brave Paladin manages to slap some interdimensional shackles on her and as she teleports away, there is a howl of pain as the hag's left foot is torn from her leg as she attempt to teleport away. She screams: "Murderous filth! A curse on your custards! May your bowels be wrecked with gluten-intolerance...arrraaahhhhhhh!!!!"

Have your players interact more often as well. It's not always easy, particularly with new players but one way to break the ice is, after you have the backstory all laid out, go around the table and have the players introduce themselves, their chosen characters and why they have come to this dismal village!

"My name is Tarak - I am a half-orc rogue and I have come here to rescue that voluptuous beauty and hope to get rewarded with some good payment for my efforts...else I might just not return her!" 

6. Choose a play style:

Will you opt for a pre-built dungeon or will this be an expand-and-explore adventure or perhaps a combination of both? I opted for a pre-built dungeon for our first session - well, to be honest, it was mainly for the effect and pre-built dungeons look really cool. The D&D board games work well for either option.

In the pre-built dungeon, black arrow tiles still trigger encounters whenever players end their Hero phase on a tile with a black arrow. Players 'explore' a new tile by moving on to that tile - if you're having difficulty keeping track of which tiles are explored and which are not, add HP tokens to the tile and remove them once a player moves onto that tile. Or, alternatively, place the monster tokens on the tiles instead and have players flip them up when moving on to a new tile.

For the expand-and-explore, if you have a higher player count (say 6+), then extend the starting tile with an additional tile or two to accommodate for more options of 'expanding' the map. Or have 2 starting tiles and have the players split into 2 groups and connect to the tiles up as they explore!

7. Add a plot device(s):

To drive the story along and prevent too many side quests, add a plot device (or two). This will assist in any improvising you require in game in order to encourage players towards the overall objective.

My players objective was to rescue Cassi from the crypts but since the Crypts were sealed shut, the players would need to explore the dungeon to find a way in.

In our case, the macguffin was a lever which could be shifted a total of 4 times. The first time unlocked all of the dungeon doors, the second and third times rotated any of the named tiles clockwise twice and anticlockwise once respectively and the fourth time would have opened the door to the crypts. However, the lever was a token hidden deep into the castle and I had no guarantee that the players would be inclined towards that path. So I added a second plot device: A key token which would enable access to the crypts through a secret door. Luckily, my players managed to find the lever and were able to access the crypts. They also used the lever to an advantage and managed to trap the Dracolich inside of the castle walls!

8. Have fun!:
Probably the most important of all the above points - have fun! As a DM you want to make the session as engaging and rewarding as possible. If a single player has had a few bad round and in desperate need of a healing surge, go right ahead and tweak the randomness or remove an encounter or add a few more magic macguffins in to allow that player a moment to shine. Likewise if a player has been on a winning streak in terms of good dice rolls, up the ante a bit and dish out some higher level monster or encounter for them to contend with. Tweak the tension as you see fit. Add a few moments of bizarre hilarity - like when Strahd for the 4th time, unluckily rolled a dismal 1 on his bite attack and exclaimed: "You know vor a vampire, I really do suck!"