Re:[KS] Super Dungeon Explore : Legends failed - new Update!

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**JohnHwangDD**

Schmapdi wrote:
A SDE moba mode would be pretty sweet.

That's SDE : Arena

http://sodapopminiatures.com/media/downloads/super-dungeon-explore-arena.pdf

It needs to be updated for 2.0, and cleaned up for tournament play, but it's still playable.

**Dentry**

Do we know if the Fall Releases (Beatrix and Jack Scarecrow) factor into the KS in any way?

At this point I'm operating under the assumption that they wont be making an appearance during their campaign but I'm unsure how to budget for SDE: Legends as part of me keeps thinking we might see Caverns of Roxor 2.0 and other revamps, maybe a collector bundle including fall releases, as potential stretch goals or added pledge levels / add-ons.

**nkelsch**

JohnHwangDD wrote:
Schmapdi wrote:
A SDE moba mode would be pretty sweet.

That's SDE : Arena

http://sodapopminiatures.com/media/downloads/super-dungeon-explore-arena.pdf

It needs to be updated for 2.0, and cleaned up for tournament play, but it's still playable.

Well, less so with the massive expansion of the meta and many of the 2.0 changes. (Turtles especially)

Arena expects balance, and TFK abandoned balance for narrative beer and pretzels fun.

The only way the MOBA would work would be with symmetrical, balanced minion groups where the imbalance is with heroes. Having humans VS orcs in a very adversarial design would allow them to balance 2 minion groups for core arena re-vamp.

Without a concentrated attempt to balance any or all types of gameplay, you simply get things which can't be played competitively which alienates most board gamers.

**DaveC**

Kickstarter is in October

Super Dungeon Explore is a combat board game inspired by classic hack-and-slash video games. But that is only the beginning of the inspirations behind Super Dungeon. It is also built upon a deep love for classic Japanese roleplaying games (JRPGs), adventure games, and traditional pencil-and-paper tabletop games. Legends draws its inspiration from these well loved genres, to allow players to craft their own stories in the world of Crystalia.

Super Dungeon Legends is a campaign and roleplaying expansion for Super Dungeon Explore. In Legends, Heroes brave a series of adventures as part of an overall narrative campaign. Between adventures Heroes will learn from their previous experiences, gain new skills, increase attributes, and even craft powerful equipment of their own.

To play Legends you must have a copy of Super Dungeon Explore, either The Forgotten King box set, or the 2nd Edition box set available in the upcoming Kickstarter. Legends may be played using either Classic Mode or Arcade mode. Using Classic Mode allows players to take full advantage of Legends’ narrative and roleplaying structure. In Arcade Mode, players utilize premade adventures such as those included in Legends’ Consul’s Grimoire and unlocked digital adventures from the campaign.

The core of Legends is its three rulebooks: Hero Handbook, Consul’s Grimoire, and the Explorer’s Grimoire

The Hero Handbook is the complete guide for advancing your Heroes between adventures. It teaches you how to unlock new skills and abilities, go shopping, craft new items, and provides roleplaying tips to make a unique party of Heroes all your own! The Hero Handbook also includes a guild creation guide, which allows players to choose from multiple Heroes depending on the adventure.

The Consul’s Grimoire teaches players how to create unique adventures, enhance monsters, and craft a story all your own in the world of Crystalia! Central to the Consul’s Grimoire is two complete premade campaigns with multiple adventures and unique fiction designed to get you playing right away.

Begin your exploration of the Super Dungeon universe with the Explorer’s Guide! This tome details the history, geography, monsters, and key locations of every realm in Crystalia; as well as providing detailed information on the world’s history, heroic races, religions, and organizations. If you enjoyed Forgotten King’s Explorer’s Handbook, this expanded guide is going to be a true treat.

We’ll reveal more information on this exciting new game mode as we march towards the Super Dungeon Legends Kickstarter coming in October!

**Dentry**

Yeah. Definitely need to pick up the Legends' books. As someone that overwhelmingly plays Consul, the Grimoire is particularly of interest.

October's in a few days. We'll probably see this during the first half of the month, I'm guessing. This weekend at the earliest.

**JohnHwangDD**

At this point, SPM have shared info on all of the core options for the KS, so they can wrap it up on Thursday and launch early Oct.

**JohnHwangDD**

Or, they could give more information on Legends...

Adventures in Legends

Published by deke, on October 1, 2015.

Adventures are the heart and soul of Legends. An adventure can be a single normal game of Super Dungeon Explore, played straight out of the box. An adventure can also be a premade fixed encounter designed by Soda Pop Miniatures, or a homemade narrative experience designed by your Consul. (Adventures can also be linked to form a campaign, but that’s another article!)
super-dungeon-angry-bear-2-art-preview

A typical adventure takes 2 – 4 hours to complete, so it is always best to choose a time when players can sit down and enjoy an evening playing Super Dungeon. Plenty of delicious snacks and tasty fizzy beverages are highly recommended!

Each adventure consists of the following components: Story, Objective, Monsters, Setup, Special Rules, Victory, and Rewards

Some adventures may consist of multiple scenes. A scene is a new and distinct phase of the adventure. For instance, having recovered the Cursed Gem of Alara from the kobold Inferno Cult in the first scene, the party must now navigate the kinoko infested undercity, in order to meet their fence to trade for rare chalcedony crystals the Sanctioned Witch needs for her next potion.

The time between adventures is called downtime. During downtime, Heroes may use loot, treasure, crystals, and other rewards they gained during the adventure to customize their Heroes to fit their own particular play-style and vision for their character. Let’s look at some of the things that occur during downtime.

Award Crystals: Heroes earn amethyst crystals for defeating monsters, overcoming challenges, or roleplaying during an adventure. Additionally, the Consul earns Crystals which can be used to purchase new schemes and advance monsters.

Disenchant: In Legends the party keeps all cards they draw during an adventure in their backpack. All loot and treasure cards the Heroes acquired during the adventure must be disenchanted into their component crafting crystals. This includes both cards that were equipped and cards that remained in the backpack. Loot cards are worth one crystal of the same color as the loot. Treasure cards are worth three crystals of the same color as the treasure.

Now that you have all these crystals what do you do with them!?

Crafting: The party may spend crystals to visit the mighty crafter and enchanter, Gregorius Crystalpot the XXIV. Gregorius will take your hard-earned crystals and present you with a wonderful new item. Unfortunately, unless you’re skilled at crafting yourself, you’re never quite sure what you’ll get!

Hero Training: Heroes may spend crystals to train, allowing them to learn new skills, increase their attributes and gain other advancements.

Shopping: Crystalia has an entire industry of shopkeepers who cater to adventuring Heroes, maintaining a rotating stock of unique items. Conversely, there is also a shady network of villains, monsters and other assorted evildoers who cater to the needs of the Dark Consul’s minions. Heroes and the Consul may visit shops to purchase consumable goods, potions, and other one-use items for the next adventure.

Scheme: The Consul may spend crystals to purchase schemes. Schemes are one use cards that represent the various petty plots, dirty tricks, and machinations which monsters may use to defeat the Heroes.

Once the party has completed downtime, they’re ready for the next adventure! This is only a small taste of what Legends has to offer. We’ll continue the exploration as we march towards the launch of the Kickstarter in October!

http://ninjadivision.com/adventures-in-legends/

The details for "downtime" make Legends something of a Mordheim-type campaign game, in which a lot of stuff happens between battles, although the mandatory disenchant is a bit odd, as I doubt anything you can randomly obtain is inherently as good as a unique Treasure. At least, not after the initial dungeon run, but maybe after several iterations of stacking small bonuses might be enough.

All in all, this meets expectations for what Legends would do for Heroes. Presumably, the next thing is to shed some light on what the Consul does during downtime.

Mechanically, I wonder just how long SPM expects a SDE session to run, what with the extended V2 gameplay then an hour of Legends afterward?

**nkelsch**

A typical adventure takes 2 – 4 hours to complete

2 – 4 hours to complete

2 – 4 hours

That dog won't hunt. There is a HUGE difference for gaming for 2-4 hours and playing a single game which takes 2-4 hours.

I can play multiple different games with multiple different people in 2-4 hours. In most boardgame groups, it is expected to play and swap games or people.

2-4 hours reeks of pen and paper RPG level complexity and detail. I will believe it when I see it. 2-4 hours of story and sch sometimes is tolerable... 2-4 hours where 75% of it is dealing with fiddly slow or complex rules is not.

Right now, this doesn't seem to appeal to boardgamers and is getting WORSE than what the communities seem to want, I can't see it seriously breaking into PnP RPGers and takes longer than the largest of the wargames.

Fail all around.

At least the minis are cool and will be great for other systems.

EDIT: And Mordheim was great... Because we could have like 3 different games going on and swap opponents. In 2-4 hours we could play at least 3 different games with 3 different opponents. That is the difference between playing games for 2-4 hours and playing a SINGLE game for 2-4 hours.

**Nostromodamus**

2-4 hours is how long it currently takes me and the wife to play 1 game of co-op mode. I can't imagine what the actual runtime of this would be, with MORE details...

**highlord tamburlaine**

Man. That's way too long for me. Way too long.

I'm curious what the feedback for those lengths has been like on their official forums.

I'll keep watching this one.

Maybe since my family is pretty comfortable with Dwarf King's Hold, Dungeon Saga shouldn't be too hard to grasp. We may just have to play it with SDE figures is all, since Soda Pop doesn't seem to want to give us a quicker game.

**JohnHwangDD**

IMO, if SDE were playable in 1.5-2.0 hours, and the downtime were another half hour, it'd be OK.

However, if we're looking at basically a 4+ hour commit to play SDE & Legends, that's kinda excessive.

**Sarouan**

Well, if you look at it from a RPG point of view, time is kinda relative...

2-4 hours, depends also of dungeon size. If adventures in Legends are shorter, it should have an influence on play time.

I remember the previous edition of Descent, where the "campaign mode" was actually using smaller adventures. Same rules, but faster to play because there were less tiles and less monsters.

Wait and see, people. We don't have all information to judge.

Also, in Mordheim, downtime wasn't so time consuming. It was also something you could do later, since it usually concerns the update of your party/group/band.

**BrookM**

It helps if every participant knows the rules and abilities, including the consul. Played a game at the store once, the consul took foreverrrrrr to get his gak done, re-reading unit cards five times before doing anything.

I mean, what's wrong with just spamming gak in this game?

**Sarouan**

That picture was before the Ember Mage used her wave attack, I guess?

And yeah, games are usually shorter when you don't need to look at the rules for everything.

I must say that when I play in Arcade Mode for a 3 tiles dungeon, it doesn't take me 4 hours to finish it.

**BigOscar**

Would the 2-4 hours be for just one game, or for a campaign with a series of dungeons and downtime between?

**nkelsch**

BigOscar wrote:
Would the 2-4 hours be for just one game, or for a campaign with a series of dungeons and downtime between?

Considering it is taking a lot of people 2.5-3 hours to play a single game with 3 tiles/heroes, and SPM claims that is exactly how long it should take, I can't envision a scenario where the legend rules would make that go faster to allow multiple maps/dungeons in that 2-4 hour.

**DaveC**

Hmmm... the revamp of SDE seems to be the everyone is angry/shouting edition

- hopefully Angry Bears sculpt is very like the artwork though

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

First anime eyes,

next anime teeth

**Binabik15**

Bear has worked out, huh?

**JohnHwangDD**

New Update!

Legends Class Advancement

Super Dungeon Explore currently has over 40 different Heroes! Once the Super Dungeon Legends Kickstarter comes rolling around, there is going to be even more. One of the challenges we faced with Legends was: how do we advance Heroes? In most traditional RPGs a Hero’s advancement is two-fold: a path of advancement specific to the character type, plus advancement through a general pool of skills and abilities. Considering the large pool of Heroes which already exist, and many more on the way, it was quickly apparent that it was unrealistic to create unique cards representing every Hero, for every advancement, covering every possibility. That is, unless we wanted to severely restrict players’ ability to make their Heroes into unique creations all their own.

Fortunately, the affinity system already places both Heroes and monsters into groups of similar archetypes. Citrine Heroes are generally brawny: melee and strength-based. Sapphire Heroes are resilient: durable and armor-based. Ruby Heroes are magical: intelligent and willpower-based. Emerald Heroes are quick: nimble and dexterity-based. Affinity gave us our groupings so all we needed was a level progression system.

As we’ve mentioned in previous articles, one of the things that inspire Super Dungeon are classic Japanese video games. While many Japanese video games use traditional numbers to represent levels, we were far more attracted to many fighting and action games that proudly proclaimed a rank or class—C, B, A, or S— based on your incredible achievements. Why not apply that system to our own game? Thus, the Class system was born.

A Hero’s relative power level is gauged by six classes: C-Class, B-Class, A-Class, S-Class, X-Class, and XS-Class. The Consul uses the party’s class to help determine how powerful adventures need to be in order to remaining challenging. Premade adventures have a recommended Class level on them, so you can choose an adventure appropriate to your power level.

C-Class represents normal everyday people and creatures, whether they be human, horse, elf, emu, gnome, gnat, dwarf, dog, or something stranger. C-Class is reserved for nonplayer characters such as merchants, villagers, farmers or even basic combatants, such as town watch or basic 8-Bit monsters who are not as powerful as a Hero.
super-dungeon-ember-mage-b-class-art

B-Class represents powerful warriors, sages, and creatures that are a cut above their normal ken, but which are still a little green around the ears. Basic 16-Bit monsters are considered B-Class. Heroes always begin a campaign at B-Class, and are represented by only their initial game card.

A-Class represents Heroes and creatures that are skilled veterans. Basic Super monsters are considered A-Class.
super-dungeon-ember-mage-s-class-art

S-Class represents Heroes and creatures that are true masters of their craft. They have experiences that have elevated their capabilities to extraordinary levels.

X-Class represents Heroes and creatures that have reached the zenith of their skill and are living, breathing legends.

XS-Class represents those rare individuals who have transcended the bounds of mortal skill and knowledge. They are paragons of myth that shape the fate of Crystalia and have become demi-gods in their own right.

A Hero’s class and affinity determines what upgrade cards a Hero may possess. Heroes may only ever gain cards that are of equivalent or lower class. In order to advance through the classes a Hero must acquire crystals. Once a Hero possesses enough crystals, they are considered to have leveled up to the next class, and may begin to accrue items appropriate to their new class.

http://ninjadivision.com/legends-class-advancement/

This is good stuff, although I'm a bit surprised by having so many tiers of "classes" . I'd have tough 4 or 5 would have been enough. Oh, well, it's cute.

**nkelsch**

Meh... I have no expectaation that they know how to make good rules, let alone 5 levels of good rules.

I am curious if they will attempt to make 40 heroes X 5 classes and have 'progression' models which are the new rage in model-based RPGs. It is neat when you can have a few models which are clearly the same character in different levels of gear.

I think I would rather Genderswaps over progression designs, but who knows... 40x5=ton of cash from some backers.

**insaniak**

JohnHwangDD wrote:
A Hero’s relative power level is gauged by six classes: C-Class, B-Class, A-Class, S-Class, X-Class, and XS-Class.

Ugh, really?

At the very least, if you're going to have too many different character classes, give them some sort of descriptive names so that people can remember what they all are.

**JohnHwangDD**

I'm not quite sure how SPM is doing it, but I think it's 5 classes of advancement (i.e. B, A, S, X, XS) with some sub-restrictions by affinity (i.e.Emerald, Citrine, Ruby, Sapphire). So at most, it's 5x 4 = 20, not 5x 40+ = 200+.

The C-B-A-S tier ranking thing is semi-common in Anime / Manga-related stuff, but I don't think it's typical in Western RPGs.

**nkelsch**

I don't expect 'Fire Mage' to have a Physical path upgrade.

Since the only art we see is Fire Mage in 3 different levels, I am going to assume *IF* they do varient models, it will be B, A and S ranked sculpts, possibly X.

I would rather alt genders and more types opposed to 3-4 sculpts of the same hero/monster with new armor but who knows what people will buy?

Maybe this is their new way to balance the existing heroes? So the good ones are already A, Ninja Cola is X off the bat.

The thing is... I want to see rule mechanics pre KS end but I know we won't. I am sure the models will be awesome... The town hall vs orcs looks amazing. I hope for NPCs when they talk about townfolk so who knows what to expect.

**JohnHwangDD**

So are the SDE 2.0 models S-tier instead of B-tier? Is that what they represent?

**highlord tamburlaine**

My wallet seriously cringes at the thought of all those alt sculpts they could put out.

Hell, forget the game... just give me a minis only pledge for this. I mentioned this to my daughter and she just started wishlisting off all the characters designs she wants to see.

I mean, jeez, if they went and did upgrade sculpts for all the various classes... oh man. Better see some Dragon Blade updates! Blinged out SD dragon armor here I come!

**JohnHwangDD**

I don't think that's where SPM is going with this, just the new (digital) sculpt for each of the original models. More and more of the same has diminishing returns faster than adding new themed areas.

**JonWebb**

JohnHwangDD wrote:
I'm not quite sure how SPM is doing it, but I think it's 5 classes of advancement (i.e. B, A, S, X, XS) with some sub-restrictions by affinity (i.e.Emerald, Citrine, Ruby, Sapphire). So at most, it's 5x 4 = 20, not 5x 40+ = 200+.

The C-B-A-S tier ranking thing is semi-common in Anime / Manga-related stuff, but I don't think it's typical in Western RPGs.

Yup, ties in nicely to the SDE computer game vibe that has always been a core part of the world.

Could have been worse, could have been Stone/Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum/Pure Platinum

I'm still not sure how I feel about the RPG addition to the game, but no doubt I will be going all in, if only to keep up the SDE collection... don't you hate it when you have games that you collect because you have to collect them. Damn my OCD nature.

**JohnHwangDD**

Oh, I get the completist collector appeal, but I've deliberately skipped a few items, and may skip a few more this go around. The warbands will depend a lot on what they look like.

**Dentry**

insaniak wrote:
At the very least, if you're going to have too many different character classes, give them some sort of descriptive names so that people can remember what they all are.

I think you misunderstood. These aren't character classes like Warrior or Mage, they're power level classifications. From what they've described so far character affinities are more like character classes with fighting style / stat combinations we're used to.

Apologies if I misunderstood your post.

JohnHwangDD wrote:
I don't think that's where SPM is going with this, just the new (digital) sculpt for each of the original models. More and more of the same has diminishing returns faster than adding new themed areas.

Agreed. But I feel the new renders are distinct / detailed enough compared to the original models that they'll serve nicely as upgraded versions to those heroes. Alt-genders would be great, too, as Nkelsch suggests.

The type and class systems sounds fine to me. It's smaller and simpler. We don't really need that bit of additional complexity with each hero having individual paths.

What are the odds that they'd do hero bundles along the same lines as the ones from the Forgotten King KS? I need to fill out my collection.