Dungeons & Dragons is one of the greatest and most influential Tabletop Games of all ti𓃲me. This probably isn’t news to you. If you clicked on this article, you’re probably already a fan of it. But what if you and your D&D group are looking for another game to play every now and then? Something that you can play when the DM doesn’t have time to prepare things, or you’re between campaigns, or you’re just looking to vary things up?

This list 🥀is about board games that are related to D&D or targeted at D&♔;D fans. This list is not about RPGs in a box, or fantasy dungeon crawling board games. If you’re looking for those, check out our list of the Best Fantasy Board Games! Most of these games play differently than D&D, or offer some alternative take on D&D or its setting, often placing the spotlight on what would normally be supporting characters or different aspects of an adventurer’s life.

Updated on July 9, 2024, by Vaspaan Dastoor: Dungeons & Dragons is the inspiration behind countless pieces of media. You'll find its DNA in everything from tabletop games to TV, movies, and even video games. We've decided to update this list with a few more board games for fans of D&D.

Most D&D groups try to make their game about something more than just dungeon crawling and monster slayin🌃g. They try to make it about a story, about role-play and character development. They try to add emotional, intellectual, and moral intrigue. Sometimes, though, you don’t want to mess with all that. Sometimes you just want to kick down a door and slay a monster inside. If that’s the case, Munchkin is for you.

This brilliant D&D parody game is packed to the brim with hilarious references to our fav𒐪orite RPGs as it reproduces its core elements without any pretense of seriousness. You just draw a card to see what monster you’ll be fighting and compare its level to yours to see if you win. Your Munchkins can work together if they wꦑish, but they’re all ultimately competing against each other to be the first to reach maximum level.

Red Dragon Inn is a tavern-themed strategy game that follows a group of adventurers who just got back from their delve into a local dungeon. Now, they’re looking to relax and unwind in the local tavern, and maybe do a bit of gambling. Each player will control one of these adventurers, and be competing to last the longest out of all of them. Get too drunk, and you pass out and are eliminated. Run out of gold, and you’ll be kicked out of the tavern and eliminated♏. Each player must use their own deck of cards, uniquely designed to represent their personality and abilities, to outlast all the oth෴ers.

The base game comes with four decks cꦛorresponding to four adventurers—a fighter, a thief, a wizard, and a priestess—but there are several expansions that come wꦛith additional decks, and this game will shine brightest if you acquire all of them and play it with a dozen or more people!

Red Dragon Inn was the last game on this list to be merely thematically related to D&D. From here on out, they’re all D&D branded in some official capacity. We begin with one of the most popular D&D spin-off games, Lords of Waဣterdeep.

Set in one of the most well-known cities in D&D’s Forgotten Realms campaign setting, and full of locations you may recognize from your adventures there, this eurogame casts players not as adventurers, but as Waterdeep&rsquo𒉰;s, well, lords, managing their power and property and hiring adventurers to go on quests for them. This game is about worker placement and resource management, and it uses those mechanics to explore a familiar adventuring setting from an entirely new angle.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a game where three to six hapless fools explore a h🌳aunted mansion. They spend the first phase of the game poking around for a while, until 🍃a haunt triggers, revealing one of them to be a traitor and thrusting them all into one of dozens of pre-prepared gothic horror scenarios.

This game does the same thing, only it’s set in the city of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur’s Gate instead of a single mansion, and the horror scenarios are also 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:D&D-themed. The other elements of the game have received the same D&D themed reskin. The spooky artifacts are now recognizable magi൲c items, the playable characters now have D&D races and classes, etc. If you like either of the games this is based on, or better yet, both of them, this is a must-play for you.

Set in one of the D&D world’s most iconic taverns, home to multiple adventuring modules, the Yarning Portal Tavern casts players as waiters serving food and drink to adventurers freshly returned from their expeditions. Each of these unique characters, with their own D&D race and class, has a food order, and your job is to get food on the table to match that order in order to secure a small piece of the adventurer&rs⭕quo;s precious wealth.

The gems these adventurers give out are constantly changing in value, and making the gems you have a lot of more valuable is an important part of winning this game. It’s not a very realistic tavern simu𓄧lation, but🌳 it’s fun and engaging, and gives you a cool new perspective on the D&D world.

We said this list wouldn’t be about RPG-in-a-box dungeon crawling games, and it mostly isn’t,🐼 but we’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge the one entry in that genre that is actually D&D branded. Part of the larger D&D Adventure System, whose previous installments are compatible with this game, Temple of Elemental Evil gives you a thirteen-chapter dungeon-crawling campaign to run through using simplified D&D mechanics.

Because this game is simpler than an ordinary tabletop RPG, it’s easier to get new player♑s into, while still providing a D&D experience that will hopefully get them hooked and willing to try the real thing.

Set in another recognizable D&D location, Bedlam in Neverwinter is an interesting fusion between D&D, an ordinary board game, and an escape room. This puzzle-focused experience has you creating your own adventurer by selecting their race, class, and weapon, and using their skills and your wits to solve puzzles and escape this dungeon. There are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:monsters to battle and skill checks to be made, but the actual puzzle solving is something you’ll do yourself, with no intelligence checks to give you hints. Like the previous game, this one p🌳lays like D&D in some ways, but is a great deal simpler and easier for beginners to get into.

This simple, fast, free-for-all competitive card game casts players as 🐲adventurers who, rather than battling monsters, have decided to battle each o✤ther. Like in Red Dragon Inn, the four adventurers in this game each correspond to their own deck of cards with a wide variety of unique abilities for them, and them alone, to use.

This is a very fast game, usually just 5-10 minutes per playthrough. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and has plenty of references﷽ tying it into Dungeons 🍌and Dragons and its mythology, but it also stands on its own, and can be appreciated by non-gamers and even children.

The DM is usually the most important person at the table. However, if none of you ♐have any DM skills, you can always rely on the companion app that comes with Descent: Legends of the Dark. It will present you with encounters and even show you all the options you have during your turn.

It makes sense that Monopoly and Dungeons & Dragons would come together, considering they're titans of the tabletop. While this particular collaboration features the very mediocre Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie, the gameplay elements go very well within the Monopoly structure. Just ignore Chris Pine's face and you'll be fine!

FAQ

What board game is most like Dungeons and Dragons?

Out of the games on this list, Temple of Elemental Evil most mimics the actual expꩲerience of playing D&D. There are several other board games dedicated to fantasy dungeon crawling, like Mice♒ and Mystics or Gloomhaven, which were excluded from this list precisely because they’re similar enough to D&D that diehard fans of D&D are likely to simply play it instead.

Is playing D&D nerdy?

Yes.

Which Dungeons and Dragons board game should I start with?

It depends on what you’re looking for. Dungeon Mayhem is the simplest game on th🍬is list. Temple of Elemental Evil is the most D&D-lite experience. However, if you’re sure you want to get into fantasy roleplaying, you don’t really need a warm-up game. You can just jump right into Dungeons and Dragons 5e, or a similar game like Pathfinder 2e.