Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons
- James Fox
- Apr 15
- 3 min read
After visiting the 'real world' monsters of America, Greece, and, well, The World, Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons brings fantasy into the franchise with what might be the most famous IP in the genre. Like its predecessors, it's a cooperative game for 1-5 players. Your team's task is, once again, to save the citizens of a town - this time Waterdeep - and defeat two or three monsters in doing so. While there are four different monsters in this box, as with World, one of them is particularly difficult, making the ultimate challenge of four monsters almost impossible.
As in all Horrified games, players choose characters that each have their own special abilities: here, the classic D&D quartet of Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue is joined by the Bard but, in a change to previous Horrifieds - and more in keeping with the iconic icosahedron - the effect of their ability changes at the whim of the die. On each turn, all characters have four actions with which to move around the board, pick up items, and rescue citizens to earn powerful Perk cards. Actions can also be used to gradually defeat the monsters which move around the board trying to attack you and the citizens. If too many citizens are lost or characters knocked out - or if you simply run out of time - everyone loses the game.
The Dungeons & Dragons theme has been implemented well, with the four adversaries - Beholder, Displacer Beast, Mimic and Red Dragon - having suitably thematic powers to attack with and particular ways in which they can be bested. For the Displacer Beast players must figure out which creature is real and which ones are illusions; whenever you succeed, it becomes easier because the number of illusions is reduced. The Mimic hides as an item on the board, so players must work out which item it really is; this is tricky because new items appear every turn and, even when you find it, the Mimic can disappear again. The Beholder is perhaps the most interesting monster; each attack against it removes eyes one at a time - each has a different ability that activates when it attacks using the d20 die, so you must choose which to destroy...
Finally, the toughest monster is the Red Dragon - the rulebook even calls this box 'the Red Dragon campaign' (unsubtle hint that there's another D&D iteration on the way!). As with Cthulhu in the previous set, it is a two-parter: players must first solve the puzzle of the dragon’s orb, then head to the dragon's lair and battle it out while the orb and other items are in place. This one beast can take most of the game to defeat on its own, so adding more than one other monster to the mix is a challenge for experienced players only. Testing yourself against the other three monsters simultaneously, tho', seems to be the sweet spot for a gamer's coop challenge. Horrified: D&D uses the same iconography as Greek and American, so the monsters from those games can be brought in and these taken out.
While not as nicely produced as the original Horrified, the components and art are all very thematic and serviceable, with one exception: we found the board to be confusing, partly due to the multiple 'levels' accessed by teleporters and tunnels, but also because of the tiny font used to show the location names. Twenty of the locations are actually numbered, to be used with various mechanisms - like the Wizard's teleport - but the item tokens you add don't reference those numbers, so time is spent hunting around the board for a specific location... and squinting to see that text. It does feel like the rulebook has been improved; tho' as someone who has played many games of Horrified I didn't have the challenge of learning the game from scratch.
As a gaming experience, Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons is a step up from Horrified: World of Monsters and, tho' it's still not as good as the original version, with its Universal Monsters, it's a fine option when you fancy playing a cooperative game, whether it be gateway gaming at two monsters or gamers' gaming with three. Let's just hope that, if Tiamat or Venger are in the next campaign, Uni is relegated to just a Perk card: I may be just 15 but, of course I've watched the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series!
(Review by James Fox)
