I thought that I would ramble a little about where DS is for me.
Firstly, despite the large amount of good stuff in DS, I’m a bit disappointed with some of it too and entirely understand why some of you are quite upset. My experience is very different from yours, so the reasons may differ, and I am seldom if ever entirely happy with things because I’m a bit of perfectionist, but still…
Secondly, as I find time I’m going to add whatever fixes I can for any rules queries. This is often a very time-consuming process that can literally take hours of cross-checking for a single short answer. Not every time, of course, but sometimes, definitely. So bear with me. Remember also that I’ve worked on something like a dozen other games since I last touched DS, so it’s not exactly fresh in my mind.
Anyway…
Over the next few few days I will be dealing with some of the questions on the FAQ page with mostly inline answers rather than a PDF. Partly this is because I am away from my desk, working on a tablet without access to all my original files. Partly this I because I am not familiar with the final version of the rules as printed, and there are some notable differences.
So, if I come up with an answer that doesn’t cover the whole problem, or seems to miss out a reference, please point it out so I can refine it. Once that’s done and I’m back at my desk then I can collate them into a proper PDF FAQ.
In addition to the FAQ there are some articles which might help. I’ll look at this when the building work is finished (did I mention the builders are knocking walls down in the house before we move?) and I’m back at my desk. End of next week? Maybe sooner. The most requested article seems to be something about balancing adventures. A very tricky one, that for a number of reasons. I will have another think though and see if I can come up with anything helpful to expand on what’s in the book already.
As before, please post questions to the FAQ page rather than here so I can find them more easily. Thanks 🙂
Quirkworthy 
That’s what I call dedication to your work, thank you.
+1
Hey Jake,
Thanks for your work and effort!!!
I’m in the corner ‘We got everything we need to play’ (that makes me a ‘fan-boi’ apparenty – and I guess the ‘i’ in boy means something too 😉 ).
But of course if you are willing to give us more… I’ll take it!
Hi Jake – thanks for all your work!
I just also wanted to say that I am very happy with Dungeon Saga, so not all punters are unhappy. It’s not perfect, but it does what I want it to do and I’m happy with that.
Very glad to hear that JK.
My wife and I were playing AI overlord with random dungeon with basic new characters – we kept drawing event cards for dungeon tiles where it was 15 levels of enemy which as you might imagine finished the game rather quickly. We weren’t unhappy with the experience, if A.I. wasn’t hard what would be the point but discussing scaling my wife hit upon an idea of making new cards with ‘combined hero level +3’ for example this would still result in harder or easier encounters in the adventure but still make the challenges surmountable. Obviously however that would break the mechanic for bosses but I thought I would throw the idea out there for you to mull over 🙂
Thanks Bob.
I should also say that I think you made a fantastic game here, my only bug bear is the poor production on the adventurers companion, and I would have probably been less annoyed by that if Mantic hadn’t nailed the core box so well! Once you get past the constantly referencing a piece of paper for page numbers the actual game does shine through well now if only I could make an Ophidian Priest hero… 🙂
Thank you again Bob 🙂
Didn’t include bug bears…
That’s something else for Adventurers Companion 2 then!
I think the next book would be the overlords companion.
Surely an Overlords Companion or Bug Bear Companion is really just a Monster Manuel? http://www.thefawltytowersguide.co.uk/manuel.jpg
Bug Bear’s Companion.
In my FAQ I suggest a minion level limit for the overlord equal to twice the average hero level with a min of 2. So your zero level heroes would at worse match up against 8 levels of monsters 4*2. That is still a pretty tough encounter for them I think but not like running into 2 werewolves or something on a 15.
Thanks
Looking forward to getting the game (the Ks still hasn’t fully been distributed in the US).
On other fronts, I don’t suppose you could nudge Mantic to make some statements about Deadzone? There’s a fair amount of interest in the forums at Mantic about what’s happening, but as Mantic remains silent (and the RC), some of that interest is inching towards angst, and I hate watching that happen.
Fully, That is funny. I have yet to see any evidence that the core parts of the pledges have started shipping.
I didn’t order all of the expansions (plan on playing it with the wife and kids, and they don’t have any interest in the abyssals). My orc and dragon expansion arrived weeks ago from England.
That is why I changed it to core instead of anything. I also got some minis for DKH Dead Rising and some bone piles and crystal hearts but all the other stuff is probably still sitting in a warehouse in Chicago probably.
When I spoke to the Mantic studio manager last week about a suggestion someone had for the way the things were packed, I was told that they were all done. Normally, they shift stuff out of the warehouse as soon as it’s packed as they need the space.
I haven’t posted on here for quite some time but after receiving my Dungeon Saga Pledge, I thought I’d pop in and share my thoughts to date.
I haven’t actually played any games since receiving the Pledge, however I’ve played many games using the beta rules, and I really enjoyed those games thoroughly. Over the next week I will be getting in some serious gaming with Dungeon Saga and I’m most looking forward to eventually sampling the Uncharted Dungeons, IO Mechanics, Downtime Locations, Experience and Leveling Up.
Overall, I’m very happy with what I have received and I’d rate it a high quality product, not the highest there is available, but certainly a long way up the ladder.
I received my 2 x Carton B’s yesterday and I received my extra add-on’s about a week and a half ago. The 2 x Carton B’s were packed very well and everything was present and accounted for and all in excellent condition. The extra add-on’s package was only missing the Critters, everything else was accounted for.
Some of the mini’s need repositioning on their bases and several need the hot/cold water treatment to get them back into the correct position…neither of these things is a bother to me personally as I’m a long time miniature gamer. Overall I’m very happy with the quality of the mini’s and although I’ll be replacing the Heroes with metal miniatures from various companies that I prefer, I’ll definitely be keeping all the monsters and using them in my Dungeon Saga games.
The Dungeon Furniture is fantastic.
The card decks, board pieces and tokens are all good quality and I like the style, presentation and artwork. The only thing I don’t like here is that the information text on the cards is too small. I would have preferred to sacrifice artwork to gain more space for larger font text.
The rulebooks are all great. Well presented with lots of diagrams and artwork. It’s no secret that the Adventurer’s Companion was a let down due to error’s, and that annoyed me, however it seems Mantic have come up with what I think is a fair compromise considering the circumstances. Other people feel they were cheated on the content of the Adventurer’s Companion, and although I would like to see more, I don’t feel cheated…I feel I have all the tools required to play a dungeon crawl game with a light RPG element to it, which is what I wanted.
The extra add-ons, specifically the acrylic tokens, measuring sticks and resin traps are a major let down, especially so the resin traps, they are absolute crap!!! Mantic have offered a solution for this as well (send back for a refund), however I think I’ll just write these off as a bad experience. The resin “Pile of Bones” are ok, I’ll likely end up using them once I get them painted and the acrylic hearts (in place of the skulls) are actually very cool and I’m glad that they were included rather than the skulls.
The worst thing about the entire Kickstarter was Mantic’s communication, it’s very poor considering they are an established company.
So for me, the only real big issues here are (in regards to the game only);
1) The errors in the Adventurer’s Companion (I’m happy with the solution though),
2) The missing Critters, and
3) The absurdly poor quality Resin Traps.
Other than those things, I feel it has been a good Kickstarter.
I’ll post some more in the future once I’ve had a chance to get some games in and sample all the different elements of the game.
Thanks Danny.
You’re right, the resin traps were shocking. What I was told is that they weren’t supposed to go out, and it was a mistake in packing – basically this shipment hadn’t been approved and wasn’t supposed to go out at all. As soon as they realised what was going on they stopped sending them out, though a small number had already gone. Last I heard they’d sent them back to be done properly.
I hope they do get redone as I like the concept of having 3D trap tokens painted up for my dungeons…I can’t help but wonder why the people who made them thought they were acceptable…
Me too.
If the traps were never supposed to go out maybe when they talked about them they could have been a little more sorry sounding:
So too did we design the trap counters and pile of bones (which had to be designed so that figures stand on top of them without easily falling off!). Some of the casts of these sets do not match our quality expectations and from some of the comments we are hearing, some of you are unhappy with what you have received.
And that’s no problem at all – if you’re unhappy with the trap counters or piles of bone counters received just seal them in a padded envelope with your pledge details and post them back to us at the address here and we’ll give you a refund for them once we get them back.
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Why have people return them? Just say the traps had significant issues and credit the accounts. They stopped sending them out but it took a while. It really wasn’t until the last batch of shipments.
The pile of bones are not great but usable but they probably should not have made their example out of a multi-part plastic bits pile (or digital equivalent) that could never be cast as one piece resin component. Hearts are not skulls and should have informed backers way earlier as some people got them for other uses so people could swap them for different options.
I’ve had a chance to look through all the Quest Books as well as the Dungeon Journal and they are all very well presented and look great.
I’ve also had a decent look through the cards as well and was quite surprised at how many there are (including all the expansion cards). About 100 Spell cards with 91 different spells, that’s a lot of spells. I guess you must have had a formula to work out the levels of the spells instead of just making X spells for each level, as not all spell levels have the same amount of cards…for instance levels 7 and 9 only have a single spell.
I was also pleasantly surprised at how many Downtime Locations there are – 25 in all.
A lot of great work in there Jake, well done!!!
It’s going to take quite a while for me to become familiar with all this content, which is a very good thing 🙂
Actually, make that 100 different spells (including the Banshee Wail) and 2 x level 7 spells instead of 1. I forgot to include the core set spells in my initial count 🙂