Thursday, January 26, 2012

Another Game (2): DungeonTeller

I was really happy to discover a free, new RPG called DungeonTeller yesterday. It reminded me in some ways of KIWF, because your ability to fight is affected by your health. From the introduction:
This game is designed as family fun in the spirit of classic fantasy roleplaying games, where you and your friends take the role of a band of heroes venturing into dark caverns in search of mystery, riches, and danger. I’ve loved those games for thirty years, and I do have a soft spot for them, but I must be getting old, because I don’t have the patience for the complexity of traditional roleplaying games. This game is the result.
What’s different about this game? You can get a DungeonTeller game started in five minutes, without lots of dice-rolling and writing down numbers. Elect a game master, pick a role for your character, grab a free adventure from my blog (coming soon, I hope), and let the adventure begin.
When we play, “dad” is the game master, and the heroes are a group of our friends and their kids. Even folks who have never played an RPG will be able to pick up the basics right away. I’ve tried to replace gamer lingo with plain speech – no “hit points”, “saves”, or “critical hits” in here.

In DungeonTeller, each player has luck (taking the place of HP in traditonal games) and associated pools dice (rolling 5s and 6s nets you success). These dice act as both your hit points and your fancy-power enablers. If you run out of luck any hit could end you, but the rules are written with an attitude that failure is just a complication to be overcome, suggesting things like TPKs are actually everyone getting caught, etc.

Anyways, the beauty of the system's streamlining is very appealing to me, and there is lots of material for it already. It is really intuitive, making it good for bringing people into the fold of roleplayerdom.

Get the main rules here.
Get the monsters here.
Get class rules (also included in the main rules) here to facilitate a quick pick up and play session.

2 comments:

Doug said...

Thanks for the mention, Clay!

Claytonian said...

My pleasure. Keep up the good work!