Open World RPGs
Been digging back into Breath of the Wild. Just exploring around without any real rhyme or reason is nice but I realize why I’ve put it down the rain is aggravating every time I want to climb something. Maybe I have bad luck but every time I’m mid climb a few drops of rain knocks me off. But coming back to the point I’m trying to make. Open world rpgs have good and bad points when trying to do this in a board game you are much more limited since you need some form of end goal and these types of games either fall into a sandbox style of play with an almost fake rpg or they are more of an explore to gain power then fight a big bad or do something
This is games like runebound, world of warcraft, warhammer quest, shadows of brimstone, and the like.
I may be criticized for this but I never liked runebound. I felt it was just a roll and move game at heart. If playing an open worldish game with exploration as a role and move I’d just play talisman. Now Warhammer Quest and Shadows Over Brimstone I do really like. They are the no end really in sight just see how long you can survive. I’m talking about the original Warhammer Quest not the remake.
The way the board games handle it is through random rolls and trying to keep things going ramping up the difficulty by sending higher level mobs at you where in a game you could wander into the wrong spot and be killed fast. That isn’t as fun in a board game as you don’t have save states to return to and it isn’t as easy to just reset up different areas as a video game does it. So that trade off of gradual gain over true exploration is acceptable.
While I thought I would be more negative on the game side my love for warhammer quest and nostalgia keeps me on a more positive note.
Oh and World of Warcraft the board game is 1/2 fun. The coop is fun but you never really interact with the other team you might as well not even have them except that is the race to the end of the game who can get there first. It’s a lot of downtime with no interaction. So best avoid.
