More Darkest Dungeon thoughts
More Darkest Dungeon thoughts
-Although everyone talks about the brutal, old-school D&D feel of the game, the D&D rules it most plays like is 4e. In fact, 4e could learn a bit from this game. Four varied at-will but conditional powers would be pretty easy to keep track of instead of tons and tons of powers.
-Bounty Hunter + Occultist is pretty tough. Occultist marks the monster, Bounty Hunter does double damage. Sweet.
-I can’t figure out which Vestal healing power is better, the party heal one, or the 3-5 points for one target.
-I noticed my body language changing while I was playing. I was visibly tensing up when my attacks missed. Every crit you make is a victory, every miss is a tragedy.
-Speaking of the bounty hunter, I sent out some newbs while my veteran party spent time in prayer, meditation, wenching, and gambling to recover from having to retreat from a quest. The bounty-hunter and occultist became abusive in their first mission. I ran into a bunch of those skeletons with the chalice of tempting or whatever. 20 Stress per hit will fuck you up! The bounty-hunter became suicidal and attacked himself every round. He ended up at 0hp after attacking himself one last time, and the combat ended before I could heal him. Then on my way to the last room in the dungeon I got hit with hunger. I’d already eaten all my food. The bounty hunter starved to death…
I haven't played it yet, will in couple of days but as you pointed out funny how everyone is trying to make it about how DnD used to be or how it was supposed to be. I mean there are no starvation rules in any edition (mechanical ones, might be mistaken) same with character mental capacity. That was never in the rules. Light which is essential in this game was usually hand waved at the table.
ReplyDeleteI mean maybe everyone else played other DnD than I did, but in versions I've played there were none of the things that you mentioned above. I dig four special powers per character, easy to remember and get used to for easier combos. I haven't played enough 4e, but I also remember that amount of special powers available for players was staggering.
Looks like another case of something cool hitting the market and gamers trying to do some mental gymnastics so they could claim that they always played that way 😀
Radek Drozdalski I will confess I would have ignored anything about starvation in D&D, regardless of edition - but illumination distance and availability are definitely a major part of D&D.
ReplyDeleteNot commenting on Darkest Dungeon's relationship to D&D here - I only heard of the game once everyone started posting about it, and still know nothing about the game itself, really.
Yeah, it has to do more with feel than anything else. And it feels old school. Things like no guarantee of survival or being able to complete a quest. Having to retreat, etc. The similarity ends there.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny that you mention the torchlight. I typically hand-wave that. But Matthew Nelson ran 5e for us with Roll20's dynamic lighting and that ended up brutal when we ran into monsters that could cast darkness and fog cloud. It took a VTT to make it really feel old-school.
Humza K i most likely got carried away. When we played basic light was essential during mapping and in combat. What I meant to say was that not a lot of people care about the light resources, like tracking their use and figuring out who in the party is carrying the torch and such.
ReplyDeleteI admit I loved the light resource management in our DnD games, especially combined with player mapping duty. This was just enough of tactical complication to keep track of for me. Like Casey Garske mentioned the more player Character powers there are available the less interested or invested in the game I get. I know there are people out there who love it and I used to play with them, but that is not my priority when I sit down to play at the table.
This has me thinking I could hack a pretty decent tabletop Darkest Dungeon using the 4e based Gamma World rules. But I better put that thought aside.
ReplyDeleteI think the thing you might be seeing is people comparing this to first encountering the OSR-style of play. OSR old guard tend to take Uncle Gary's admonition in the AD&D DMG about keeping accurate time records (including for things like rations and torch depletion) to heart.
ReplyDeletePearce Shea the semi-official relationship to Torchbearer makes this dynamic even more interesting.
ReplyDeletehttps://plus.google.com/108011757230733144917/posts/MmW7pvVUQzD
Tempting Goblet is the worst.
ReplyDeleteI assumed Darkest Dungeon was a Torchbearer love letter...
ReplyDeleteBrendan S Yeah it does. Also interesting, and maybe I've got my facts wrong, is that Torchbearer grew out of Luke & Thor playing B/X precisely as written and my recollection is that the Basic editions of D&D are like the one edition that never really addresses running out of food and water (the closest I can remember it coming is in Expert where it gives an example of provisioning a party such that they'd have sufficient rations for each person for the trip).
ReplyDeleteB/X does have the rest every 6 turns (inherited from OD&D) IIRC.
ReplyDeleteBrendan S Yup, but that doesn't affect rations or water (failure to rest gives you -1 on all rolls until you rest). I assumed that's just for exhaustion/stress. You don't deplete rations or water when you rest and, as I recall, basic's rations are weekly (ie, one unit of rations purchased at a store is meant to last a week).
ReplyDeleteLike 4th Ed with the mood of OD&D (rations, torches, survival, also food etc). I agree, the mechanics are better than 4th Ed - D&D being a turn per turn game isn't it -with Initiative and the like - ?
ReplyDeleteAlso, Helion + Doctor is what works best for me, stun attacks being the finest.
I'm glad I'm not crazy. My first thought was 4e as well with toned down math.
ReplyDelete