Hey everyone,
Long-time DOS2 fan here. I recently came across Divinity: Original Sin – The Board Game and gave the previews an honest look, but something kept bothering me: it doesn't really capture what made DOS2 special on the tabletop. The thing I miss most is the map and encounter design — the way every fight in DOS2 is a little puzzle of terrain, elevation, and elemental interactions.
So if Larian (or whoever ends up making the next Divinity board game) is listening, I'd like to make a case for looking at two games as a reference:
- Descent: Journeys in the Dark (1st Edition, 2005)
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17226/descent-journeys-in-the-dark- Descent: Journeys in the Dark (2nd Edition, 2012)
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/104162/descent-journeys-in-the-dark-second-edition(We can quietly pretend the third edition never happened.)
What made these games legendary:
- Opening chests for unique loot that actually felt like a discovery
- Tactical positioning to control enemies and protect teammates
- Action economy and turn-based decisions that mattered
- Diverse class and weapon combinations
- Custom character creation (especially in 1st Edition)
This is the kind of design space DOS2 lives in. Surfaces, high ground, line of sight, choosing who to lock down first — Descent already proved 20 years ago that this can work on a table.
But the real reason I'm posting: the Overlord system.
You might assume Descent is just another co-op dungeon crawler. It isn't. Descent has an Overlord player — a real human sitting across the table, controlling the monsters, springing traps, and playing cards to mess with the heroes' plans.
Heroes get cooperative party play, long-term character progression, and the satisfaction of pulling off a combo. The Overlord gets resource management, long-term scheming across a campaign, and the power to shape the battlefield turn by turn.
If the heroes use the terrain, the Overlord creates it. That asymmetry is exactly the kind of dynamic DOS2 hints at with its scripted encounters — except now it's a real person on the other side of the table reading your moves.
Why this matters for a Divinity board game: DOS2's signature isn't just "RPG with choices." It's tactical map design where the environment is a weapon, deep build customization, strategic readable combat, and asymmetry between sides — one party of misfits against a world that's actively hostile.
A pure co-op dungeon crawler can't reach that ceiling. A Descent-style asymmetric design absolutely can. If a future Divinity board game took that direction, I'd be first in line.
Curious if anyone else here has played the Descent games and feels the same way. And if any Larian folks see this — please consider it for the next swing at a tabletop Divinity. There's a real classic waiting in that direction.
