Ravensburger’s Horrified series may be one of my all time favorite games I’ve played. Whether it be the original flavor with classic Universal Monsters or the more recent more global versions that riff on folklore and myth, I’m never going to have a bad time even if I (frequently) lose. So, naturally, the announcement of a new version that combined it with one of my other favorite things, Dungeons & Dragons, piqued my interest something fierce. To learn more, I caught up with two members of the Ravensburger team: Lysa Penrose, Global Head of New Games Marketing, and Mike Mulvihill, Game Developer and Designer who leads the Horrified team.
Universal Monsters is my favorite games ever. oh And so having it be with Ravensbringer again has been great. And so I’m curious. how you’ve been shifting it to merge it with Dungeons and Dragons and how that process has been and what that has been, how you mesh those together.
Mike Mulvihill: Like with villains and Villainous, where we have a master list of who we want to use, we have the same thing with Horrified. We sit down and we think what are cool monsters? What combo of monsters, what themes can we use? And when it’s all said and done, who has the best monsters? Dungeons & Dragons. Some of the most iconic, most well-known monsters. One could say there’s an entire manual of monsters. They’re all there, and we were like, man, it would be really cool so let’s just set this aside. We don’t deep dive into mechanics or anything, but if this is a thing then when our team is out, can we get an introduction letter and say, “Can we do it” They’re not the only one we have plans for, but they were the one that if we were prioritizing would be the number one. And I could leave it to Lysa to figure out what happened after that. But a lot of people assume we only just do the one thing and we don’t really think ahead but with both Horrified and Villainous there’s a line up of things that we would love to do.
Lysa Penrose: I would say with Horrified D&D, we could also separately talk about the monster selection. But if we’re talking about gameplay first, we knew that we wanted it to feel very Dungeons & Dragons. We’ve also been getting pushed by Horrified fans that want to see new mechanics. So we introduced lairs and then we had some monsters that had multiple part puzzles or challenges if they were boss level monsters. With D&D being a game property and a tabletop game property as well, that came with a lot of really cool threads that we could pull on to mesh. So the d20 and integrating that in some way was sort of a no-brainer for us, while also selfishly wanting a Horrified d20 with a little ampersand on. We had several different versions where Mike was adding different ways that you incorporate it. And every time it was like, let’s just find more ways, more excuses to roll this d20. It’s so fun.
How did you narrow the monster list down to the Red Dragon, Beholder, Displacer Beast, and Mimic?
MM: And talk about another great partner. As Lisa hinted at, when we went in, we picked something like eight or nine monsters, I don’t even remember. We knew number one was Red Dragon, and so really the other ones were where the negotiation would come, which ones they wanted. And as a partner they said “here’s the ones we like”, and we said, “here’s the ones we like.” When it was all said and done, the other three that they wanted were on our master list. We didn’t have any real surprises on what that could be. You could probably sit down and make a list of eight iconic D&D monsters yourself and find out that those four are on it. But they said why they preferred those and we did not have counter arguments. We didn’t need to fight them on anything.
LP: Honestly, harder narrowing down to four.
DA: Four is hard
MM: And so we knew that. And then it became, as Lysa said, what is D&D bringing to Horrified that we haven’t done yet. So a monsters campaign, totally different than a two stage monster. How do you stop the Red Dragon? Well, first you have to go on this quest to get the magical item. That was, again, we knew the Red Dragon needed to be in there, so we needed to change how that mechanic worked. The d20 story is really funny because when we started it was all the polyhedron dice. And then that becomes so overwhelming and just too much. And so it’s like, all right, what are the cool ones?
LP: Fighting for the D12. And the D20
MM: We still are Horrified. So we still have to play in the Horrified sandbox, if you will. Then it became time where we had some for the monsters, but we didn’t really have anything for the players per se. And Hasbro said, hey, you know, don’t forget: more d20 is better. And then we took a step back and figured out how to integrate that into the player? And then it just came to me like, oh my God, the heroes have special abilities. And it’s not fun if only one character has an ability so let’s make it for all the characters! And then it finally felt like D&D and Horrified. It felt like I get to roll a die and sometimes it’s really good and I get what I want or better. And sometimes it didn’t work out. And you realize that’s why D&D has been around for 30, 40, 50 years.
Lysa: The first feature folks will notice for the d20 is those hero tiles and the random tables. You need the d20 as well to defeat the monster, there are perk cards with it. But what I really love is that when you roll a 20, in a lot of cases you get a perk card, which those are game changer in Horrified. They’re so fun because you feel clutch when you remember to use one. Being able to add that excitement to when you roll a natural 20 felt so true to a D&D experience as well.
Mike: It is very funny with this one. What I’ve been seeing is if people lose, in D&D you don’t always win. And I think that mindset has kind of come over in Horrified. It used to be like, if you didn’t win you’d get angry. Here it’s like, well, the dice roll didn’t work in our favor. All right, let’s try it again and let’s change it up. And so dice really allowed an opening of risk, if you will, and then that success/reward thing that Lisa loves.
Lysa: I think what you just described, that attitude around the game that we see in a lot of players, really captures what makes Horrified special. It’s a horror game, but it’s not just a horror game. It is very specifically a game that is about monsters. Their lore, their stories, finding all the Easter eggs about those monsters that are usually spread throughout the game. So when we’re thinking about a game, we’re thinking who or what are the monsters that we would want to meet? Who or what are the monsters that we would love to perish to? And that can be just as fun.
Mike: Sam Dawson is our director and we work with him on all of the Horrified, but in this case we got basically the green light from Hasbro to interpret Dungeons & Dragons and so I think our interpretation of Dungeons & Dragons incorporates the whatever five, six year history of Horrified and Dungeon & Dragons and like almost a perfect mix. It is just gorgeous art. The per cards have a tarot card looking feel of portraits. The monsters are incredible. The map itself is like, you you can just sit there and stare at the map. All of it comes together because we always want the rights holders to know we care and love about their product. Then they see that and then they let us do what we need to do to care and love our product. Horrified D&D may be one of the best examples I can ever show about that.
Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons is available now at Target and your FLGS at an MSRP of $29.99.
Images via Ravensburger
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