If I were to make the perfect dungeon board game, I would...

[mitchiemasha]

And so the Mind and Body points don't increase too much, they would be connected to what you are equipped with.

Different armours, weapons, jewelry etc would open up special features like MAM, Stand Fast, Follow Through etc. As well as the +1's in Attack or deffence. Your combination of special abilities would alter how your game would play. Boots that gave you Stand Fast wouldn't give you MAM. A sword that gave you Follow Through combined with boots with MAM would be very different from boots with Stand Fast. It's up to the individual to get creative on how to use, combine the rules of each item and see what works best.

Buying and selling items in the store and actually learning the mechanics for your self in game play would be a much better XP (with out actually having XP) to advance. As you learn game play, that is your Hero learning how to use the skills in combat, what better suits your play style. Naturally you'll need to search for Treasure and complete Quests to get the money, to buy the items, to try out different fighting combination. Certain special abilities could be unknown to the Heroes until they find a rare item for the first time... $$$$Blind Card Expansion Packs, ANYBODY!!!$$$$

XP trees can be boring and so can the basic maths of adding up kills, this method seriously spices it up.

An incredibly strong armour could be a serious hindrance unless warn with certain boots. Making the sacrifice for 1 skill to obtain the other. Armour with +2 Defense dice but lose 1 movement dice combined with boots of swift wind, roll double (dadah!). To wear that armour you can't have MAW or Stand Fast enabling boots if you want to keep up.

I like the idea of including armour to add body points. A piece might give you +1 or +2 body points, you can choose to lose a BP or the +BP of the armour. Once it's absorbed more hit points than it's +BP worth, it is broken and its special ability is lost. At least your not dead. You could even do this with weapons, using your sword to absorb a Hit point instead of losing BP but it is now broken.

[mitchiemasha]

If a Dungeon Crawler ever got as big as those CCG's get, selling blind packs would be a good money earner. It could include a Quest and cards of a rare Artifact, new Equipment, Spells, Treasures and Monsters. Some Monster cards being of the minis you already have, just an extra skill added to advance it. They could even include a new Monster or Hero mini in the packet. Repeat monsters wouldn't be an issue as you'd have a few in a Quest, with Heroes and Bosses being rare.

The packaging could be a tube which you pull out a mini scrolls with the Quest on. Heroes and Bosses come with a unique hard Quest and cards to suit. Where as a Monster likely to be found often would come with more varied Quests and cards not unique to the pack but still specific to the faction.

Not forgetting an additional fancy book to slide all the Quests in.

[JasonMCM]

My list of things to include in the perfect dungeon board game.

• Combat dice (Probably would have different attack and defense dice)
• Simple intuitive rules (Anyone who doesn't follow this is going to have a hard time selling their game)
• Varied monsters (At least 3 or 4 types per 'faction' and at least 3 or 4 'factions' in the core box)
• Lots of equipment, magic equipment, and spells (A ton!)
• Either a module board or an easily varied board (Think HQ or WHQ or BOTH!)
• Standard Campaign included (Think HQ)
• Multiple heroes to choose from (I think a 5 player [4 heroes, 1 Evil Wizard] is a good number but have 9-12 available heroes in the box)
• Easily expandable (At least 3 or 4 planned expansions upon release)
• Smartly dressed female characters (I actively avoid games with the chain mail bikinis and the like)

And probably more when I think more on this.

[Big Bene]

If I were to make the perfect dungeon board game, I would...
How would you do it? What games would you steal from be inspired by?

Well, I won't discuss the pros and cons of other peoples' ideas (at least not in this first post). The original question was, what would I do, and as I have thought about this, too, here're my :

....take the best elements from exciting games:

I like the combat system from HQ
the random map layout from WHQ

The monster minis as XP counters from Dark World!

I would add some more "advanced" or "roleplay" elements, but make them as "graphic" or "physical" as possible - thinking of an inventory board, inspired by computer games like Diablo or Neverwinter Nights, where you can actually put objects "in". Skills etc. would be represented by cards - you get it.

[cynthialee]

Double sided board with differing layouts.
Maybe make the board just a hair larger so that the furniture doesn't crowd everything.

Or a two sectioned board that folds out so it is four panels instead of three. Each section folds out to be a two panel part of the board game. If this is double sided then the variation substantially increases. This would increase the space needed to play but I have the table for it...

[Schmidt]

thinking of an inventory board, inspired by computer games like Diablo or Neverwinter Nights, where you can actually put objects "in". Skills etc. would be represented by cards - you get it.

Yeah, I forgot to mention video games inspiration in the first post. That would be an easy way to come up with some original, neverthoughtof skills

[Anderas]

I like as well the idea of modular dungeon tiles. That way you never have the same dungeon twice.

[Big Bene]

thinking of an inventory board, inspired by computer games like Diablo or Neverwinter Nights, where you can actually put objects "in"

I made a draft:

Inventory1.jpg

The idea is to make the inventory "box" 3-dimensional, and the object tiles 1 mm flat to fit into it. The object tiles could be either cardboard with images printed on, or plastic with the objects represented in flat relief.

[Big Bene]

I like as well the idea of modular dungeon tiles. That way you never have the same dungeon twice.

To keep it simple, I would make all the modular tiles a standard size, so they always fit. This would be an advantage expecially when you start to use three-dimansional tiles and every new tile is an expense.
For example, if you use 6x6 squares as the standard size, tiles could look like this:

Tiles2.bmp

1-4: four different rooms
5-7: three different corridors
8-9: two more complex possible arrangements

[slev]

Over the last several years, I've done re-creations of HQ, AHQ, HeroQuest, and rule books for vrious P&P boardgames.

After a bright idea, I've already started working on such a game, which I believe would fulfil most of the criteria people have discussed:
*simple mechanics;
*low number of stats;
*simple/limited character advancement;
*Modular boards;
*limited inventry;
*campaign rules;
*Hero design rules;
*wide range of monsters, spells, abilities, etc.