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The Alchemist's Bench: A Profile of TSR's DragonQuest

History

DragonQuest, released in 1992, was TSR's first attempt at a HeroQuest-inspired board game. Unfortunately for a product that was represented to be a board game, its rules are much more complex than HeroQuest's, it includes only one 3-level adventure, and it was distributed to the book and hobby trades rather than to toy stores. All of these factors likely contributed to its failure in the marketplace. Certainly, TSR handled all of those considerations differently in DragonStrike, their much-improved second bid for the HeroQuest market.

In fairness to TSR, it should be conceded that they wanted DragonQuest to serve as an introduction to D&D, and they therefore marketed it like a D&D product. The problem, really, was that DragonQuest's rules system was not simplified enough -- despite the fact that it comes with figures and a board, it's about 90% D&D and 10% boardgame.

Package

DragonQuest comes in a box that is 12.5" wide, 8.5" tall and 4" deep (32 cm x 21.7 cm x 10.5 cm). This makes the box seem smallish and overly deep by board game standards. TSR's choice of box shape was probably governed by the need for it to fit comfortably on bookstore shelves.

It is worth noting that TSR chose to include a girl among the players in the photograph on the box's underside. Unfortunately, it wasn't until their next board game that TSR included female Heroes in the game itself.

The Board

DragonQuest's map board is the component of greatest potential interest to HeroQuest players. It can readily be used with HeroQuest.

To accommodate the box's limitations, the generously-sized board, which is 32" by 24" (81 x 61 cms) when unfolded, was cleverly sliced and folded into eighths. When folded, the board is 12" x 8" and about three quarters of an inch deep (30.5 cm x 20.3 cm x 2 cm). It is made of a sturdy cardboard stock with a simulated leather texture in its backing paper.

The board's dungeon layout design is clever, potentially because it was designed in reaction to HeroQuest's. Instead of crossing the center areas, the corridors pretty much only run along the outer edges. This frees the board's center for a conglomeration of differently-sized rectangular rooms that abut one another directly. These range in size from 4 x 4 spaces up through 6 x 6, with various size and shape combinations falling in between. Additionally, there is a grouping of seven 2 x 2 rooms in one corner that are all arranged along one short corridor section, producing something looking distinctly like a cell block.

Based on the sample adventure and DM suggestions that accompany the game, it can be assumed that TSR wanted to provide a board design that could be used for nearly any scenario. DragonQuest assumes the players will rely on the gamemaster's spoken descriptions rather than furniture and props to visualize the action.

The board art is pleasant but does not create a sense of atmosphere nearly as well as HeroQuest's. Walls are depicted in 3/4 perspective, giving the rooms a sense of depth that HeroQuest's lack. The floor tiles -- used to measure "spaces" of distance when moving characters -- are depicted as pitted and cracking. The design appears to have been created as black and white pen-and-ink art, then tinted in pastel colors. It is not a realistic painting like HeroQuest's board.

The DragonQuest board's spaces average 7/8" square (2.2 cms square). Because of the 3-D perspective, spaces near some walls are smaller. This effect is at its most extreme in hallways, where some spaces are as narrow as 9/16" (1.4 cm).

Minis

DragonQuest includes both pewter and plastic miniatures to represent the heroes. There are six of each, but the figures in each of the two sets are identical. In other words, the game comes with pewter and plastic versions of six different figure designs. The designs are (and, at in 1992, already were) older Ral Partha fantasy designs taken from several different lines, including Three-Stage Heroes and Dungeon Miniatures.

According to the box, the pewter figures were only scheduled to be included in the "Special Edition." However, the game didn't survive long enough for there to be any other editions.

Cardboard stand-ups are provided to represent all monsters and doors. This means the sculpted Heroes confront a horde of cardboard enemies. The stand-ups are illustrated with decent color artwork but are printed on lightweight cardstock. (Actually, the door stand-ups are illustrated with color artwork on two sides. The monster stand-ups have color artwork on their fronts and a black silhouette of the same image on their backs.) They move around or fall over in response to the slightest breeze. They are perforated and their fold lines are pre-scored, so they are easy to assemble into their triangular "A-frame" stand-up design. There are no bases provided, but it is possible to bypass the "A-frame" in favor of folding the figures flat and putting them in bases from other games.

No other scenery or furniture was provided with the game. Once again, the designers intended for the players to rely on spoken descriptions provided by the DungeonMaster.

Books

DragonQuest came with a 32-page Rule Book, a 24-page Adventure Book and a 4-page "The Adventure Continues" brochure. All of these have a page size of 8 3/8" x 10 3/4" (21.3 x 27.3 cm).

The two larger books are stapled, but their covers are detached so that they can serve as DM screens. (This is the classic format for D&D modules.) The Rule Book's cover contains charts and lists that summarize the game system. The Adventure Book's cover contains floorplans for the three provided quests plus one blank floorplan. (There is no monster icon key associated with these maps because DragonQuest's maps are not used to indicate monster or scenery placement. Each room is marked only with a letter to indicate which room description corresponds to it.)

As noted above, DragonQuest's purpose was to serve as an introduction to regular D&D, which in 1992 was still positioned as a game novices could learn before moving on to Advanced D&D. Even though DragonQuest's rules are more streamlined than D&D's, they still constitute a light RPG system rather than a board game. In effect, in DragonQuest, TSR tried to sell kids an RPG (with some props) disguised as a boardgame, rather than a true boardgame with fantasy elements.

As streamlined RPGs go, DragonQuest presents some interesting innovations that TSR later used in other products. The polyhedral dice are color-coded so that the designers are able to say things like "Look at the green die. It has four sides and is called a d4."

The 24-page Adventure book begins with one page of fiction and art, a 1-page Table of Contents and two pages of DM advice. The last two pages in the book contain a breezy but complete discussion of quest design, and two other pages are spent on full-color full page artwork.

The Adventure Book's remaining pages are spent on three quests that combine into one large adventure. The adventure is a good one, worth adapting into HeroQuest. There are no major surprises for anyone familiar with the fantasy genre, but the writers did a good job of releasing information slowly in a suspenseful fashion.

Unlike HeroQuest's (and DragonStrike's), DragonQuest's scenarios contain substantial amounts of descriptive text. They are presented in the same style and format as Dungeons and Dragon's modules, with boxed text that the DM should read aloud to the players and unboxed text for the DM's own reference.

The four-page "The Adventure Continues" brochure contains three pages of text and one full-page blank dungeon map. (This one is twice the size of the blank map in the Adventure Book's cover.) About a quarter page is spent on plugging D&D. The rest of the text explains how to play D&D modules under DragonQuest's rules. This, then, is another hope that TSR had for DragonQuest -- that it would increase the demand for D&D modules, even if customers decided not to buy the D&D rules.

Cards

In DragonQuest, objects and creatures are summarized on baseball-style cards. An explanation is in order for our those of our readers who are unfamiliar with baseball cards. The format consists of an 8.9 x 6.4 cm card with a color image on one side and text on the back. Normally, the color image is a photograph of an athlete and the text consists of the athlete's career statistics. Historically, baseball cards were printed on rather cheap cardstock, but competition in the collectibles market has led to an increase in production values in recent years.

TSR's DragonQuest cards (like the AD&D Trading Cards that they released annually in 1991, 1992 and 1993) are printed on a good-quality bright white cardstock. The picture side of each card is glossy.

There are 180 cards included with the game, all in the one format, including the Hero Cards. Each Hero Card has artwork cropped from old TSR illustrations on its front and a miniature D&D-style character sheet on its back. Monsters are covered in a similar fashion, as are weapons, armor, equipment, dungeon phenomena (e.g., "This room contains a fountain"), traps, artifacts and spells. Where appropriate, duplicate cards are included so that more than one player can have a copy. There are also eight blank cards to enable the players to create their own additions.

Cards in some categories, like Traps, have the same image on all of them. However, most of the cards are well-illustrated with either excellent art recycled from previous TSR products or adequate new art.

So what's the bottom line for a HeroQuest player? Some of the cards, particularly the artifacts, traps and spells, are useful for HeroQuest. The Artifact cards, of which there are 31, include interesting descriptions that could serve as story hooks. Of course, the DragonQuest game statistics will have to be translated or ignored if the cards are to be used with HeroQuest.