Fixing Dark Souls The Board Game
Not long ago, my new miniature painting hobby and long time love of Dark Souls conspired to guide me to the Dark Souls board game, a cooperative board game with buckets of beautiful unpainted minis set in one of my favorite fictional worlds. Of course I had to get it.
With some internet perusing, I was able to find a good collection of the game and several expansions for a reasonable price on eBay. As I had hoped, the minis that hit my doorstep were as high quality as they were macabre. This was the setting perfectly displayed in board game form. There was only one problem. The game itself kind of sucked. Perusing reviews reinforced my dismay. So, what does a game designer do when they have fantastic toys and a broken game at their disposal? They roll up their sleeves and fix the game! Here is the story. You can skip to the end for the house rules that turn Dark Souls the Board Game into the dream it was meant to be.
What works
Out of the box, this cooperative dungeon-delve board game has a good gameplay loop. After picking a starting class, you jump right into the action by entering square chambers containing nodes and revealing a card that populates the nodes with enemies, traps, treasures, and obstacles. The mechanics that dictated the actions of the foes and options of the players present tactical and strategic gold at a quick pace. The enemies act, a player acts, the enemies act, a player acts, and within a few minutes, the room is cleared or the players fail. The challenges are tense and well balanced. Victory is rarely a guarantee.
Win or lose, after each encounter the players return to a central hub where they are rewarded for their successes or punished in the case of failure. They can use those rewards to improve their abilities or equip better gear. After a brief respite, they return to the map and face another room of foes and hazards.
This process continues until the players are ready to face a miniboss, who was chosen at the start of the game. Miniboss encounters include an ingenious set of mechanics that bring the Dark Souls board game system to a new level. The miniboss actions for the turn are revealed from a small deck of cards (typically four or five) which has them chasing players down and unleashing all kinds of hell upon them. That deck of cards maintains the same order as the fight goes on. This way, players can learn the patterns of their foes and use that to their advantage. When the life pool of the foe reaches a midway point, bosses heat-up, adding new action cards to their deck and shuffling it. This is all a fantastic translation of the Dark Souls video game boss fight. There are a few additional subtle changes from the standard encounter, including a directional system for the giant boss figures that adds a tactical layer to the mix. All of these elements work together to make an exceptionally intense experience. After defeating the miniboss, the board is reset as the players work their way to the main boss. This is also a great time to take a break, or call it a day, as the game presented a satisfying, challenging arc.
What went wrong
So, what could be wrong with the game? Why is it so panned? While there are many possible answers to that question, from its kickstarter beginnings to its failure at perfectly translating every element of a beloved series, I think the fundamental issue comes down to one of its core pillars of design.
Nearly every review I found of the game included the same dirty word we gamers know all too well. That word is grind. And these reviewers are not wrong at all. What I have left out of my description of the game thus far is that your character starts out very weak and ill-equipped. It is by defeating those petty encounter rooms that you earn souls, which can be spent to allow you to carry better equipment, and to purchase random gear from a massive stack of treasures. By another name, this is a basic progression system. The colloquial term for a progression system spread too thin is grind. The Dark Souls board game’s progression system definitely grinds.
What is wrong with that? Many games are grindy and attract millions of satisfied gamers. Grind is the core of nearly every MMO or phone game, after all. And progression systems are the bread and butter of roleplaying games. They do serve to provide a steady dopamine drip of excitement as your character grows from useless peasant to god slaying behemoth, one incremental improvement at a time. These systems also introduce capabilities to players at the proper pace as to show the player their options and capabilities in a way that does not overwhelm them. But - and this is a huge but - this does not easily translate well to a board game that you are meant to play in one sitting, or even two, especially if the hope is that you would play the game more than once.
As an aside, I’d also add that grinding is a poor representation of the Dark Souls video game experience. If you are grinding in dark souls, you are probably doing it wrong. Come at me ; )
The Art of Progression
It is widely accepted that what ruins the dark souls board game experience is its implementation of grind. The game is set up with four enemy encounter rooms and one boss room, done twice. Each enemy encounter might take five minutes to set up and play through. This varies based on experience and number of players. A miniboss or boss encounter might take ten to twenty minutes. So far, so good. We’re at around an hour and a half from a short set up to a complete experience, excitement the whole way, right? Unfortunately not.
In the Dark Souls board game, you are expected to repeat the same encounters many times over before you are strong enough to face each boss. That’s right. You reveal a hidden encounter, learn to defeat it, reap a small reward, move on to the next, and so forth. When you die (or after you’ve cleared all rooms), your party expends a finite resource, called a spark, to reset your single use items and all encounters, so that you can face them all again, only slightly more capably. As far as I could tell, this process would need to be repeated three to four times before each boss.
This grind is made especially sour on your second or third time playing the game by the very limited pool of common foes. There are six types of enemies to face, and the variety of room layouts can only diversify the experience so much. Expansions correct this, but when the core game fails, who would be motivated to purchase expansions?
Loot crates are fun, right?
So what does all this grinding get you? Well, it becomes very clear that gear is the one way your character’s capabilities improve. All other advancement is merely a means to carry different gear. Unfortunately, gear is through a complete random draw that must be paid for (Think slot machine, or loot crate). You are revealing gear, one at a time, from a sizable stack, using the resource gained by defeating encounters. Will the gear you reveal be better than what you have? Will it function for your character? Likely not. So most of what you earn for enduring these encounters is thrown away at a slot machine. This way, the amount of time it takes to beat the game, and indeed whether or not you can, is significantly impacted by random chance.
The fix
The Dark Souls board game, with a rich and popular title under its wings, and a deeply engaging combat system at its core, is completely ruined by an element of design that should have never been. But, it can be fixed. A quick internet search reveals a common house rule that minimizes the design flaw: Half spark, Double Experience. This change certainly works in a pinch, but the essence of the drawback remains. It is still grind and gamble, but grind and gamble at 2x speed. I felt I could do better.
Required rule changes
The following changes to The Dark Souls board game, when employed together, remove the grind, keep the play time under two hours, and diversify the experience of each class, all while maintaining the win-by-the-skin-of-your-teeth feeling. It minimizes the impact of randomness, while maintaining enough of it to keep each game unique.
Souls
Each character has their own pool of souls, and begins the game with 12 souls divided by the number of players. Defeating an encounter earns each player a number of souls equal to the encounter difficulty (1, 2, or 3). Defeating the miniboss awards 2 experience, plus a number of experience equal to the number of sparks remaining to each player (as well as their treasure rewards). To level-up an attribute tier, it costs 1, 2, and 3 souls respectively for tier 1, 2, and 3. Souls are not lost on defeat.
This change allows players to hit the ground running and balances the pace to forgo the need for grinding while maintaining the challenge present in each encounter.
Sparks
Start with zero, one, or two sparks, regardless of the number of players. These reset to that number after defeating the miniboss. Using a spark does not reset encounters. I recommend one spark for a tough challenge. Adjust up or down to you liking.
This means that there is a limited amount of experience that can be gained in a single game. The amount of souls earnable will be enough to fully equip a character and then some, but likely not enough to fully max their stats.
The Shrine Handmaiden
During setup, separate the red icon gear from the standard gear and create separate stacks for each. At the start of the game and after each standard encounter, reveal a number of cards from the standard gear deck equal to the number of players and place them on the gaming table, where they will remain until they are purchased by any player. They cost one soul each. Players can still purchase a random item from the top of the deck for one soul.
As the game progresses, it might be useful to stack the selection of items available for purchase into a single pile in order to save some table space.
After defeating the miniboss, items are instead revealed from the red icon gear stack. These can be purchased by players for two souls each. Players can now purchase a random item from this stack for two souls or the standard gear stack for one soul. Treasure chests now reveal cards from this stack.
Class Specific Gear
During setup, place all class specific gear face down near its class board. Players can search through and purchase gear from their own class specific stack any time they could normally purchase gear. The white gear costs one soul, the blue gear costs two souls. This gear can be shared with others, but must be purchased by the player controlling that class.
Ease of Play Rules
These rule changes are not required, but do improve the game experience for me, while minimally affecting balance. Maybe you’ll appreciate them as well.
You can remove weapon enhancements
Treat weapon enhancements the same way you treat armor enhancements.
I understand the motivation for this ruling. It is in line with the source material. But, for the board game, I find it to be a negative play experience. The balance will be minimally affected.
Boss cards remain revealed
After revealing a boss card, it stays face up. They are made face down again if they would be shuffled.
While I appreciate the intent of this mechanic, I cannot stand memorization in board games. I’d rather focus on the social and tactical elements of the game. I also appreciate the fact that real life distractions are bound to happen, and would prefer a board state to be fully readable when returned to. This rule removes some mental strain (or note taking requirements) without affecting the balance of the game.
Prepare to die
The Dark Souls board game has some fantastic elements of play that I haven’t seen delivered anywhere else. Its miniatures are beautiful, and its tone and imagery are true to its source material. Unfortunately, one poor design decision corrupted the experience for many. With these subtle but impactful changes presented in this article, the Dark Souls board game is elevated to a solid experience for anyone who enjoys cooperative dungeon-delve games, dark souls, or miniatures. It is gripping, requires minimal setup, and doesn't overstay its welcome. If you are one of the unfortunate souls stuck with this game’s components, or you were turned off from purchasing the game after reading some reviews, give these rules a try.
Shameless plug
Tribulation is an indie game that streamlines the tabletop roleplaying experience, keeping the focus on tense challenges, brutal outcomes, and, most of all, your creative engagement. If you like unforgiving role playing games with well paced progression like Dark Souls, you might like Tribulation.
