What's your favorite co-op dungeon crawl?

[Ebonsword]

This being the Codex, I'm sure I'm not the only one who like a good dungeon crawl board game.

Unfortunately, a glaring weakness in many of them (Descent, Hero Quest, Dungeons & Dragons: The Fantasy Adventure Board Game, Dorn, etc.) is that they require a Dungeon Master (or Game Master or Referee or Tomb Tyrant or whatever the hell you want to call him).

I don't know about you folks, but when my friends and I get together, we want to tackle the dungeon together as a team, not have everyone else gang up on the one guy who knows the rules best (who is usually me).

Luckily, there is a subset of dungeon crawl board games that dispense with a DM and unleash the players against the system itself. These include:

- Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft (and its sequels)
- Warhammer Quest
- Citadel of Blood
- Sewers of Redpoint
- Gears of War

Personally, I find that all of these games are somewhat lacking, but what does the Codex hivemind think? Is there a favorite co-op dungeon crawl board game out there?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Is there any solo RPG that ditches the dungeon master?

 

[SinVraal]

Is there any solo RPG that ditches the dungeon master?

Tunnels & Trolls (Developed by Ken St. Andre of Wasteland fame)
http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/tandt.htm

Mythic
http://www.mythic.wordpr.com/page14/page14.html

You can also try the Lone Wolf adventure game books which are mostly available for free here:
http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Home

There is also the Fighting Fantasy books which vary in quality but you can find for decent prices on Amazon and Ebay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Fighting_Fantasy_gamebooks

 

[Ulminati]

I think a dungeon crawler without a dungeon master could easily get pretty boring. If your friends are truly averse to having someone taking turns controlling the monsters, I suppose you could look up Arkham Horror. It's not a dungeon per se, but you still explore areas, acquire lewt and battle monsters. Monster movement is controlled entirely by drawing random cards, so no "DM" player required. The base game gets pretty easy once you learn which events can happen where, but there are numerous expansions to jack up the difficulty once you get used to it.

 

[shihonage]

It's not really a dungeon crawl but I really fucking miss Fighting Force.

 

[Ebonsword]

Well, it's been over a decade, so I figured I'd give this thread a bump to see if any good co-op dungeon crawlers have emerged.

 

[Lagi]

I played Descent 2 - and have great time. Like a proper rpg experience. But lookslike you need overlord, not sure if the owner of the game houserule it, or just playalong as PC and Overlord, and didnt say anything.

League of Dungeoneering - its like a warhammer 3ed. Loads of generating dungeons, tables, card drawing, dice rolling etc just to setup the scene. Its more of autistic solo game for basement dwellers. But i am looking to buy myself one, especially as 2nd print would be updated with feedback. It comes with tons of 2d standes, which is great as i loathe concrete colored minis.

Massive Darkness 2 - play it 3x. Very streamline experience (enemies are a cluster of minis on 1 space). Loads of dice rolling and reading effects. Its way too easy, at later levels each pc one shot each mob group. I suggest to limit PC attack to 2 (yeah houserules, BGG is full of it for MD2).

...in general all of them dont fit your requirments :D. I hear that Midara is great, but it have anime graphics. Someone recommend Shadows of Brimstone as best crawler ever, but its wild west so totally not my coup of tea.

I played Frostheaven once. A massive campaign game, you build town between dungeon missions. It plays specific with turn pressure, each turn you lose some cards so you need to complete dungeon run in let say 5 rounds. I dont like it.

Mageknight you explore wilderness. A bit complicated. I enjoy it after 2nd game, when the rules settle down in my mind.

Zombicide - its a definition of ameritrash. Hordes of zombie, buckets of dice, and angry at you co-op players that you didnt do what they want in your turn ( because its usually only one optimal movement).

 

[JamesDixon]

AD&D 1E has rules for solo play that can be adjusted to coop play.

 

[L'ennui]

OSR games usually have good dungeoncrawl procedures and tools to generate dungeons and such. If you're a fan of those kinds of games but are wary of using them for solo/coop because of the old-school fragility of characters in OSR games, you can try these solo rules: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/114895/Black-Streams-Solo-Heroes These are designed to make PCs sturdier and more combat-worthy, while still maintaining an element of danger.

Now all you need is a replacement for the GM. I believe the current "state-of-the-art" product in that field is Mythic GM Emulator, 2nd edition: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/produc...-Emulator-Second-Edition?src=hottest_filtered Note that even if you don't want to go the above-mentioned OSR route, this GM emulator is genre- and system-agnostic so you could use it in pretty much any kind of game.

You might give that a try, and once you get the gist off it, there are countless other (usually free) "oracles" that you can also try to see which fits your playstyle better.

Have fun!

 

[Galdred]

I played Descent 2 - and have great time. Like a proper rpg experience. But lookslike you need overlord, not sure if the owner of the game houserule it, or just playalong as PC and Overlord, and didnt say anything.

League of Dungeoneering - its like a warhammer 3ed. Loads of generating dungeons, tables, card drawing, dice rolling etc just to setup the scene. Its more of autistic solo game for basement dwellers. But i am looking to buy myself one, especially as 2nd print would be updated with feedback. It comes with tons of 2d standes, which is great as i loathe concrete colored minis.

Massive Darkness 2 - play it 3x. Very streamline experience (enemies are a cluster of minis on 1 space). Loads of dice rolling and reading effects. Its way too easy, at later levels each pc one shot each mob group. I suggest to limit PC attack to 2 (yeah houserules, BGG is full of it for MD2).

...in general all of them dont fit your requirments :D. I hear that Midara is great, but it have anime graphics. Someone recommend Shadows of Brimstone as best crawler ever, but its wild west so totally not my coup of tea.

I played Frostheaven once. A massive campaign game, you build town between dungeon missions. It plays specific with turn pressure, each turn you lose some cards so you need to complete dungeon run in let say 5 rounds. I dont like it.

Mageknight you explore wilderness. A bit complicated. I enjoy it after 2nd game, when the rules settle down in my mind.

Zombicide - its a definition of ameritrash. Hordes of zombie, buckets of dice, and angry at you co-op players that you didnt do what they want in your turn ( because its usually only one optimal movement).

They made an app that plays overlord for Descent 2. It used to be good. I really liked the campaign of D1. It also required an overlord, but as OL, you had a lot of cool upgrades you could take.

 

[Snorkack]

Imo the OG Gloomhaven is still the gold standard for dungeon crawlers. Jaws of the Lion is a streamlined experience that is excellent if the big box is too daunting. Forgotten Circles expansion and Frosthaven on the other hand are both a letdown. They suffer from "more = better" fallacy and add complexity to the formula without adding fun.

Calling it a 'board game' is a bit of a stretch, but Rangers of Shadow Deep is also excellent. It is basically a coop PvE version of Frostgrave (a casual fantasy skirmisher in the vein of Mortheim). There are quite a few official and homebrew campaigns available.

 

[Lagi]

chronicles of Drunagor

will play it this week i hope, looks interseting. and the game system seems well thought out.

 

[FritzedProcess]

Gale Force 9's "Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps". It's not what you'd expect to be classified as a dungeon crawler, but mechanically it's pretty much one. It can be played with 1-6 players, and there are two modes of play: campaign (it follows the film's plot) and bug hunt, and three expansions, which add the dropship pilots, the marines that kick the bucket early on in the film, Bishop, the power loader, an alternate Ripley, the Weyland-Yutani exec, special types of xenomorphs, the alien queen, extra and expanded campaign missions, and extra character progression and alien player optional rules.

The xenomorphs have mandatory movement and attack rules that do not require another player to play GM, although one of the expansions (the one with the alien queen) introduces rules, resources and mechanics that allow the game to switch from PvE to PvP.

The gameplay is akin to your usual dungeon crawler but with pulse rifles and smartguns, and a deck of cards that is used as the party's resources and equipment, so the more you gear up, the less ammo you will have, and once the deck runs out (or the party wipes and you are out of bodies), it's game over, man, game over.

I bought the whole thing (base game and the three game expansions) two months ago and expect to play it for the first time during this summer, with the whole set of miniatures painted, hopefully. Oh, yes, the miniatures require assembly (if you are unused to miniature assembly it may be a PITA, if you are used to GW's models it's a walk in the park, as the miniatures have at most 4 parts and none of them are fragile), and painting unless you don't mind the marines looking like green army men, so at least get yourself a flask of Tamiya Extra Thin plastic glue, an X-acto-like knife, and some sprue cutting pliers.

 

[Hell Swarm]

I bought the whole thing (base game and the three game expansions) two months ago and expect to play it for the first time during this summer, with the whole set of miniatures painted, hopefully. Oh, yes, the miniatures require assembly (if you are unused to miniature assembly it may be a PITA, if you are used to GW's models it's a walk in the park, as the miniatures have at most 4 parts and none of them are fragile), and painting unless you don't mind the marines looking like green army men, so at least get yourself a flask of Tamiya Extra Thin plastic glue, an X-acto-like knife, and some sprue cutting pliers.

I had thought of picking some of these up to make a OPR alien hive army. Are they proper hard plastic or the usual pvc garbage board games shove down your throat?

 

[FritzedProcess]

I bought the whole thing (base game and the three game expansions) two months ago and expect to play it for the first time during this summer, with the whole set of miniatures painted, hopefully. Oh, yes, the miniatures require assembly (if you are unused to miniature assembly it may be a PITA, if you are used to GW's models it's a walk in the park, as the miniatures have at most 4 parts and none of them are fragile), and painting unless you don't mind the marines looking like green army men, so at least get yourself a flask of Tamiya Extra Thin plastic glue, an X-acto-like knife, and some sprue cutting pliers.

I had thought of picking some of these up to make a OPR alien hive army. Are they proper hard plastic or the usual pvc garbage board games shove down your throat?

It's hard plastic of the polystyrene type, with a decent amount of detail.

Edit: if you are only interested in the miniatures, they do sell boxed sets of marines and aliens, each of which costs about half of the base game.

 

[Pathfinder: Kingmaker]

Machina Arcana.
Easy to setup and manage, doesnt take too much table space, nice character progression via equiping items (with powerful and varied itemization), decent amount of content with addons which arent too expensive. Decent survival horror atmosphere. While you character can fight and does feel powerful, you WILL become overwhelmed and die if you spend too much time fighting, so you feel pressured to constantly move, loot, do objectives and escape instead of just standing and killing everything.

 

[gabel]

Space Hulk: Death Angel — The Card Game

More atmospheric than most big box games, extremely thematic, good gameplay/decision-making to set-up/tear-down and fiddliness-ratio (once you know how it works obviously) and way more skill-based than is apparent at first. The game is deep, despite seeming totally luck-based initially. I don't really play it anymore, but over the course of 150 games or so my win-ratio went up from 10% to 90% or so. There's also a ~100-page strategy guide somewhere online. There used to be 4 print-on-demand expansions as well, all of which are worth it, especially the Death Wing and the Tyranid ones, not sure if they're available anywhere, but it's a great game even without those, imo better than the Space Hulk BG; basically the definitive Space Hulk experience. Play length ranges from 20 to 90 minutes depending on number of players/how many squads you take, how the run is going and analysis paralysis.
IMO it's best as a solo-game though.