Daniel (@dungeondive) unboxes Mean Streets, the first big content expansion for Dungeon Degenerates: The Hand of Doom — a small box whose contents mostly disappear straight into the base game’s decks, and is the better for it. The headline addition is plague: tokens that spread through the settlements, a laminated reference card of outbreak and immunisation rules, new monster abilities, and a fresh deck of settlement encounters that finally gives the game’s towns something to do besides shopping. There are four new degenerates, two adventure missions (one an alternative campaign opening), and cards to salt into every existing deck. His only complaint is the thin rulebook stock; the writing, he argues, has taken the fluff crown off Games Workshop entirely.
The back half is a tour of his five favourite characters, picked for theme and art rather than power. Alley Cat, the lycanthrope rogue whose safety collar means her own lycanthropy can’t kill her. The Witch Smeller, devastating against demons and heretics and unremarkable against anything else. The Highway Robber, blunderbuss in hand, rolling two dice on every loot roll. Jack Slasher, a pumpkin-masked field murderer lifted straight out of Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest. And the Cloaked Killer, a reptilian assassin from a sky city, addicted to scratch.
Every degenerate regains luck in a different, highly thematic way — Jack Slasher by killing while focused, the Witch Smeller by burning heretics. Does tying a core resource to character theme make a roster feel richer, or does it just make some characters quietly harder to play?