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There I was wishing there was a simpler way to interact with and take down D&D monsters without engaging in yet another D&D campaign, when in came Ravensburger at the London Toy Fair with an announcement. Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons is to be the next game in the Horrified series, they say, and just as Wizards of the Coast put up pre-orders of the 2025 D&D Monster Manual.
Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons will take on the same shape and feel of previous Horrified games, with parties of one to five crawling across the map and making moves to thwart monsters and save citizens. Though, some mechanics will lean more into D&D-style gameplay. (For a little refresher of what that might look like, why not check out the best D&D books?)
Rather than trying to avoid your average monsters from folklore and popular horror like previous Horrified games, players will cooperatively take on D&D baddies. Which monsters exactly has yet to be announced, but we can at least guess there will be a Beholder involved since there's one writ across the box – and about as close up as you can get to one before you're rolling a new character.
Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons was designed by Dungeons & Dragons board game mastermind Peter Lee, who also worked on the original Horrified: Universal Monsters. So this is someone with an intimate knowledge of D&D and the best cooperative board games that should be able to do justice to the four iconic monsters included here. Speaking to Polygon, Ravensburger's game development manager Mike Mulvihill hinted that a D20 mechanic will also be included because of "how essential a d20 is to gameplay" in Dungeons & Dragons.
Coming some time in the summer of 2025, Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons will cost around $30. So keep an eye out for more updates as to the kind of monsters we can expect to see.
For more recommendations, why not check out the best board games or best two-player board games.
