This article begins back in the far reaches of time past, 1973. Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), Inc. released a game unlike any other at that time: Dungeons & Dragons. During the next 24 years, that company would grow to become a market behemoth for roleplaying games, and then collapse under financial pressure.
Wizards of the Coast (WotC) bought TSR, Inc. in 1997 and were themselves swallowed by Hasbro in 1999.
Parker Games (under Hasbro) released Dungeons & Dragons: The Fantasy Adventure Board Game in 2003 for the UK and European markets. That title was not sold in the USA and is not part of this series of board games.
The mouthful that is the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure System Board Game is a series of loosely interconnected settings that use modular board tiles, pregenerated characters, cards, chits, and miniatures. The games are designed to be played directly out of the box with a minimal amount of setup (about 15 minutes if the game box is organized). Players choose a character miniature and take the corresponding equipment, spells, and character board. They then read the introduction to the adventure, place the start tile, and begin. The game board is assembled as play progresses.
Released in 2010, the first of these box sets was Castle Ravenloft, published by Wizards of the Coast (under Hasbro). This was followed in 2011 by Wrath of Ashardalon, and then The Legend of Drizzt later that same year. Both Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon received some support from the Wizards of the Coast website in the form of web-exclusive adventures. By the release of The Legend of Drizzt, however, the writing was on the wall, as Hasbro was sunsetting the old Wizards of the Coast website. It seemed the line was dead. No new titles would be released, and no additional support would follow.
Four years passed before another company would license the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure System. WizKids released Temple of Elemental Evil in 2015. It was followed two years later, in 2017, by Tomb of Annihilation. With the pandemic of 2019 came Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage. The last of these box sets, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, was released in 2021. That installment is less a full game in its own right than it is an add-on. It has fewer tiles and only eight miniatures, and the reception of this half-sized edition at the same full price was not well received. WizKids has released nothing further for this system since then.
So, once again, it appears as though the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure System has seen the sunset. Most of the Wizards of the Coast versions can still be acquired on Amazon and eBay, though prices are much higher than they were at release. The WizKids versions are also available on Amazon and eBay, as well as directly from the WizKids website.
The Wizards of the Coast rulebooks released for these games shared a color palette with their respective boxes and card designs. However, this was not the case for the adventure books. The adventure books for the Wizards of the Coast releases all used the same color palette as Wrath of Ashardalon. The web-exclusive releases used a third design that was even more inconsistent with both the adventure books and the rulebooks, appearing more like an afterthought than a finished product.
All of the rulebooks have previously been released for free on the internet. The web-exclusive adventures were also previously released for free. Four of the seven adventure books were released for free as well. I have endeavored to convert the adventure books and web exclusives to be consistent in design and visual aesthetics with the rulebooks and box art. My original adventure book for Wrath of Ashardalon had a few glaring errors, including missing pages, which have now been corrected in the uploaded PDF.
Click any of the following images to access the PDF file.
Each of these boxed games comes with a plethora of chits, cards, map tiles, and (with the exception of Ghosts of Saltmarsh) 40 or more miniatures. The sculpts for the miniatures are the same as the sculpts used in the Dungeons and Dragons pre-painted collectable miniatures game. That places them in the same scale as the regular Dungeons and Dragons Role playing game. If there is interest I can post my visual archive of the contents for each game as there is slight variances between the releases.
– Dru
Dru's Den of Ill Repute 