Tabletop Roleplaying Games
A dungeon game
Beginner-friendly
English
Rules-light
A Dungeon Game is a light, old-school style tabletop roleplaying game of subterranean exploration, written by Chris Bissette and published by his studio Loot The Room. It is the second edition of his earlier game A Dragon Game, whose first edition was a ten-page game released on itch.io in 2021, and the second edition was announced on 17 November 2022. The game is free: the full, up-to-date text is on the web at dungeon.loottheroom.uk, and the PDF and EPUB versions are name-your-own-price on itch.io, where it has a 5.0 rating from 53 ratings. Bissette describes it as a living text that grows with new monsters and adventures, and Dicebreaker called it "a brutally simple take on OSR roleplaying games". Its first adventure, The Moss Mother's Maze, was released in June 2023.
The system is the second edition of A Dragon Game, and its light rules are based on Logan Knight's light checks, modified.
Description
Players take on delvers who explore dungeons, wilds and ruins for silver, and the Game Master (GM) runs them with random tools for dungeons, treasure and encounters. Characters have no classes, and each player rolls an Occupation, a former job such as Archaeologist, Burglar or Healer, which gives advantage on related tasks. The dungeon is dangerous, a character who drops to zero health risks dying, and a rich haul matters more than a victory.
The game asks a table to play carefully. Time is counted in ten-minute exploration turns, wandering monsters arrive on a schedule, and magic costs a permanent price. It suits groups who want a quick, rules-light dungeon crawl and a GM who enjoys random tables, and it works as an entry point for newcomers, since The Moss Mother's Maze includes pamphlets for new players and GMs.