Simulating the D&D experience

There are many board games and video games that use the "RPG" label. However, they never replicate the same experience that you can play in a tabletop RPG like Dangeons and Dragons. This is mainly due to the lack of a dungeon master: In D&D you can announce every imaginable step and a good dungeon master will at least let you try and ask you for a skill test. So yes, in D&D you can *jump off the porch* and attack trolls from above, even if that action isn't part of the quest module your party is playing. You can't do this in a board game or video game unless you have a "leap over the chandelier" listed.

Still, let's look at some D&D gameplay elements that can be modeled with a board game or video game:

• A story where your choices affect the outcome.
• Characters with traits and abilities.
• Verbs whose success depends on character traits and skills.
• Bound by combat, traits, and power.
• Rewards in the form of experience/levels or items that usually increase a character's stats and skills.

When you play a video game like Baldur's Gate 3, you get all of these elements. So if you don't think about the list of possible actions coded in the game, you at least have a very D&D-like experience. To a certain extent, these games try to give you the illusion that your choices affect the outcome and may have a limited number of slightly different outcomes. But sometimes the front is too thin, and if you play the game a second time, you'll notice many elements of the story that you can't change even if you try to make a different choice. *Spoiler alert* In Baldur's Gate 3, the mind-flare nautiloid "ship" will *always* crash and end up in the same place as you, no matter what you choose in this early phase of the game.

In board games, the storyline is sometimes more linear and/or shorter. Most board games have no apps and are limited to telling visual stories. So if there is a story, it is limited to reading text aloud. For obvious reasons, you don't want the text to be too long, at least when the game has multiple players. I just ordered Legacy of Dragonholt, which is quite an expensive book with a sheet of Choose Your Own Adventure character; I'll probably play this alone because if I played with my wife I would have to read a lot of songs. But at least Legacy of Dragonholt has a lot of decision points, and the skills you choose when creating your character will determine what you can do. So if you create an orc fighter or a dwarven alchemist, you'll get different abilities and therefore different options, even if you're playing the same story. The only thing missing in my opinion is the dice roll and efficiency control system. Other people might like it if you go for stealth power, you will still succeed if stealth is actually an alternative to history.

I do like board games when they're story-driven, but that's definitely a matter of taste. Yesterday I mentioned the new Descent: Legends of the Dark that I will not be buying. But it's based on my choice; If you're looking for a game that features mostly tactical battles and a wide range of character development systems with lots of skills and abilities, then New Descent might be the game for you. You still have to consider how much the app bothers you, whether the price of ট্যাগ 175 is too much for you and how satisfied you are with the 3D cardboard terrain. But if you want a dungeon crawler with a nice miniature and a decent strategic combat system to start with, I wouldn't blow Decent. Especially if you prefer dice-based combat over card-based combat in GrimHarbar.

I still think Lands of Galzar would come very close to a lightweight two player D&D style game for me and my wife. However, this game is of course still crowdfunded, and it will be at least another year before I can test that guess. Baldur's Gate 3 will also be released next year, although you can buy the game and play the beta now. So in terms of games, I'd recommend Solasta: Crown of the Magistrate if you prefer a previously released game that's pretty close to D&D.

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