Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Monopoly Review

D&D Honor Among thieves Monopoly comes in a taller, more square box, a subtle hint that this ain’t just a re-skin of the game you know. The board is adorned with vibrant colors, and the location spaces each have an excellent, painterly landscape depicting the property. The playing pieces are uniquely shaped and represent the 5 main characters, and instead of paper money, you get gold, in increments of 10 and 50. You also get a D6, and oddly, a D20, which does come into play later! 

Now, this is quite similar to base Monopoly, with the goal of acquiring the most property and money, but there are a lot of key differences! Selecting your character is quite important in this version of the game. Each character has a unique special ability that can give you an advantage, such as Edgin’s ability to get out of jail immediately, or Doric’s ability to draw 2 Magic & Mystery cards (this edition’s version of Community and Chance cards.) Portal Spaces allow you to move to any space between it and the next portal (unless you’re Simon, where you can go anywhere!) When it comes to acquiring properties, you can either pay for them, or roll a D20, and try to roll higher than what is shown on that property’s card. Roll high, and you get the property without paying, roll low, and you must pay a fee and miss out on the property for that turn. Critical Successes and Critical Fails also exist, also known as Nat 20’s and Nat 1’s, letting you collect or pay 50 gold respectively on top of any other consequences (Holga gets to ignore the Critical Fail fee, neat!) Magic & Mystery cards can give you helpful items to aid in your quest, or monster encounters that you must deal with. If you run out of money, and go bankrupt, you’re still in it, just roll death saves with your D20 each turn until you get an 8 or higher (4 if you’re playing as Xenk) to revive yourself and collect 50 gold.

The final differences come in the Dungeon Master Cards. These optional cards can be added to the game beforehand and  increase the difficulty by altering some property spaces and introducing difficult monsters and a Red Wizard boss card. But don’t worry, if you ever end up in jail, just wait for another player to visit, as they’ll automatically spring you out. In this case, it pays to be a thief!