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Apocalypse World owns, I think everyone should play Apocalypse World at least once. You can get a good idea of the full gameplay experience in like half a dozen sessions. And then you can either keep on playing or play a sort of an anthology in the same setting but with different characters. It rules.

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Our favorite photo from when I was trying to get a Christmas-card worthy photo.

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Sire, the elf has been fucked to pieces

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Running D&D in 2024 is like, the player community collectively convinced each other that dungeon crawls, resource management and attrition are bad, so now everyone runs games where characters can expect to get into one or two fights a day and characters are never stretched for resources, and most Reddit threads about D&D are GMs asking for help challenging their groups because of said ignoring of the resource management aspect and getting told that a good GM could make it work so obviously they must be a bad GM.

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You know, I always get a tear in my eyes from "BUT WHAT ABOUT WAFFLES" follow-ups.

Not the *initial* response, everyone makes mistakes. I mean the second, equally tone-deaf follow-up.

On that note, do you know about about Holmes Basic, because it's one of those editions people always bring up but never elaborate on.

So Holmes Basic was, to my knowledge, the first attempt at making a Basic version of D&D. It basically took the rules and structure of the original game plus some things from its supplements and sought to create a simplified, more coherent version of the game.

I have not read the game in full but my understanding is that by its rules it is much closer to 0D&D plus supplements than either AD&D or B/X (which was effectively a revision and expansion of Holmes Basic). For example, Dwarf, Elf and Halfling were not presented as classes like in B/X, but neither did they have all the options available to them as in AD&D.

Holmes Basic was also very much meant to be an introductory game that would lead players into AD&D. It only had three character levels and since there were no Expert rules yet it was expected that people would shift to AD&D, and the rules were chock full of references to it.

It is a very interesting version of the game, and while 0D&D does have its charms Gygax also was in great need of an editor, and Holmes Basic is a really good and coherent game which you could easily expand upon with 0D&D and its supplements.

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(Possibly cursed) counter-argument to the whole "Dungeons and Dragons doesn't need dungeons" thing: they're all dungeons. Ancient ruins? Obviously dungeons. Natural caves? Also dungeons. Urban environment? Dungeon, pre-ruin. Thick forest? Just a particularly open-plan natural dungeon. All dungeon-delving rules still apply.

I'm actually a proponent of this! I think while a dungeon is archetypically represented by a sort of a mythic underworld but with medieval architecture that sort of kinda just exists for no particular reason, at the end of the day it is ultimately a way to structure gameplay and prep! Ultimately the exact structure of a dungeon is irrelevant in my opinion as long as just the act of moving through and exploring it is somewhat precarious and carries a time pressure, as long as the spatial relations between places are meaningful, and there is some degree of agency involved in how to tackle it. (An entirely linear "dungeon" is more like. A corridor with a dungeon theme.)

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People who respond to criticisms of games and how some games don't in fact work for certain playstyles with "let people enjoy things" or "you just think people are having fun wrong" are doing a bit of a rhetorical sleight of hand where they are trying to turn a discussion about games and how they are played into a moral discussion, immediately casting the person making the criticisms in the part of an evil fun-hating Grinch who thinks others should be as miserable as they are. This is obviously stupid and we should always point and laugh at the people doing this, but another reason it doesn't work on me is because talking about games, even critically, is fun to me.

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I'm sorry but this is such a pissing on the poor reading comprehension take.

This post is about observations of a play culture where people clearly are not having fun, as attested to by hundreds of GMs trying to run the game in a way it's not optimized towards and suddenly having to do a bunch of work to patch over those newly discovered issues! That's what the first post in this chain is about: people have self-inflicted a playstyle onto themselves which simply does not harmonize with D&D, but because the current play culture of D&D doesn't consider the GM's fun a factor they need to deal with toxic memes like "a good GM can fix it" when they shouldn't, in fact, have to fix things if the game were fit to purpose!

So yes, this post is about people who clearly are, by your definition, having fun wrong while playing D&D, because they have made the job of running the game way too stressful for themselves! And the purpose of this post is to say "You don't have to run the game like that. You can just take the game at its own word and let the game take the reins. That way you, the GM, will also have to do less game design on the fly."

Running D&D in 2024 is like, the player community collectively convinced each other that dungeon crawls, resource management and attrition are bad, so now everyone runs games where characters can expect to get into one or two fights a day and characters are never stretched for resources, and most Reddit threads about D&D are GMs asking for help challenging their groups because of said ignoring of the resource management aspect and getting told that a good GM could make it work so obviously they must be a bad GM.

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That @prokopetz post I just reblogged reminded me of a post I once saw on here, the thesis of which was something along the lines of "why do people criticize D&D for not having deep social mechanics? I can't see the point of having a system where characters, like, make social skill checks against a target's social defence to deal damage to their argument or something."

Part of the post was founded on an honest misunderstanding of one of my posts: I often criticize D&D for having very bare-bones support for social activities, but that's more a criticism of people who try to use D&D for meaningful social gameplay. D&D itself is fine, but if your purpose is to run a game where characters can actually make meaningful choices in social interaction supported by the mechanics, there are systems that support that type of gameplay much better than D&D.

But that framing of deep social mechanics as just a different coat of paint on what are basically combat mechanics does betray a point of view heavily informed by unexamined expectations set by D&D, which is something you may have seen me post a lot about recently, and I feel the anonymous asker who sent that question to prokopetz was also channeling that ("if we just rename the six stats in D&D and keep everything else it can totally tell stories besides fantasy combat").

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Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Arcana Evolved, a sort of an "alternate Player's Handbook" for D&D 3e which featured all new races, classes, feats, a brand new magic system, and a unique setting, meant to interface effortlessly with the 3e DMG and MM for a unique d20 fantasy game, is very interesting. There's genuinely cool worldbuilding here and while Monte Cook isn't my favorite designer out there he has some fantastic ideas here. It's genuinely fun and it would be fun to explore this game!

However, he also shows his whole ass while discussing the philosophy of the game, especially with regards to magic: Arcana Unearthed somewhat reduces the effectiveness of spells. This is a noble goal, because D&D 3e kind of skews the balance in favor of spellcasters. But then as an example of how this manifests he goes "For an example, there's no magic missile here. It's simply a bit too good." Which is a baffling statement to anyone who's familiar with the game balance of D&D 3e. And this is coming from one of its lead designers.

I love D&D 3e and I think Arcana Unearthed/Evolved has some cool ideas, but statements like this make me want to become the Joker.

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That @prokopetz post I just reblogged reminded me of a post I once saw on here, the thesis of which was something along the lines of "why do people criticize D&D for not having deep social mechanics? I can't see the point of having a system where characters, like, make social skill checks against a target's social defence to deal damage to their argument or something."

Part of the post was founded on an honest misunderstanding of one of my posts: I often criticize D&D for having very bare-bones support for social activities, but that's more a criticism of people who try to use D&D for meaningful social gameplay. D&D itself is fine, but if your purpose is to run a game where characters can actually make meaningful choices in social interaction supported by the mechanics, there are systems that support that type of gameplay much better than D&D.

But that framing of deep social mechanics as just a different coat of paint on what are basically combat mechanics does betray a point of view heavily informed by unexamined expectations set by D&D, which is something you may have seen me post a lot about recently, and I feel the anonymous asker who sent that question to prokopetz was also channeling that ("if we just rename the six stats in D&D and keep everything else it can totally tell stories besides fantasy combat").

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I love the idea of mega dungeons but I don't have a consistent group. Are there any games for doing mega dungeons in a zoomed out way? I'm thinking that you might deal with a room in as little as a single dice roll, and get through multiple trips into the dungeon in a single session of play.

The interesting thing about a mega dungeon to me is how it changes and evolves over repeated delves.

I could probably build a PBTA system but hopefully someone already has.

THEME: Sped-Up Mega Dungeons

Hello friend, I have a few different things that you might find helpful in speeding through dungeons and getting as much game as you can packed into just a few hours! I focused mostly on games that did dungeon-ing quick, less so on actual mega-dungeons. Also, sadly nothing here is PbtA.

WanderSquares: The Underwood Tunnels, by Dreamjar.

WanderSquares is a fantasy table-top roleplaying game for adventurers 9 and up. It features an ever-changing map, a choose-your-path adventure guide and 16 inspiring characters to choose from.

The WanderSquares map is made up of 32 interlocking Adventure Squares. Each square is a tiny story; with monsters, puzzles and treasure. The map grows in endless combinations with each new direction the players choose. Three Special Squares contain major magic items (and mini-bosses). Recover the treasure and you'll unlock the final challenge.

I don’t know exactly how long it takes to explore each square in Wandersquares, but I think it has two big strengths. The first is that it is designed to be simple, because it has kids in mind, so learning the game should be easy and quick. The second is that the adventure locations come in tiles that you can place out as you explore, with a choose-your-own adventure guide you can use to narrate each option quickly. Even if you don’t like the base system, having these location tools can be a big help in streamlining the dungeon, because all of the information is already there, including some imagery on the tiles that can be very evocative for the players.

Dungeoneering, by Grinning Rat.

DUNGEONEERING is a quick-and-dirty tabletop role-playing game where players explore dungeons, gather treasure, and fight monsters. Game Masters are encouraged to use the sample dungeon within, or generate their own with the creation tools, to facilitate these dangerous delves.

Dungeoneering sells itself as a quick-play game, slimming dungeon crawls into something called dungeon turns. You can explore one room of the dungeon in each dungeon turn, with checkpoints every 2, 12 and 24 turns to replenish torches, eat & drink, and rest.

I do think that Dungeoneering could be a more slowed-down game if you paused to roleplay more often, but rules-as-written, you’re rolling for simple pass or fail, and hit points are fairly low, reminiscent of what I see in gritty OSR-style dungeon games. The game comes with a starter dungeon, but it also has tables to help the GM build a dungeon on their own - whichever way you decide to go, I think that if you’re going to try and speed-run the dungeon, you definitely need to have the dungeon mapped out ahead of time, or you’ll slow the game down simply because generating rooms takes time.

Dungeon Dash, by Cosmic Sorcery Society.

Dive into the Dungeon Gig Economy!

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In Mythica, dungeons are no longer treasure troves for heroes. They're monster-infested labyrinths, a constant threat to the cities and a source of risky, yet potentially lucrative, gigs for the daring.

Become a DungeonDasher! Team up with fellow adventurers and delve into the depths, slaying slimes, dodging traps, and cashing in with DungeonCoin (Ɖ), the hot new crypto that's making waves.

Described as “fast and furious”, DungeonDash sounds like it can be played in very short bursts. If you decide to use it to play a longer game, I’d reason that you can then go through quite a few dungeon rooms in just an hour, perfect for one-shots. Because it’s meant to be played in short bursts, I don’t know how much of the game focuses on how the dungeon changes over time - that might have to be an aspect that you as the GM bring to your table from somewhere else.

Out of the Dungeon by @toyourstations.

You have arrived at a dungeon rumoured to contain the secrets of a civilisation of wizards thought to be long perished. Your party has reason to believe that they are not – in fact you have reason to believe they are behind everything wrong with your world.

Your world is illogical. You didn’t know it as you grew up but the older you got and the more you travelled, the more you began to see the oddities. Monsters spring from nowhere to attack villages. Bandits haunt every road but don’t seem to live anywhere, or steal anything to eat. Rangers insist there simply isn’t the ecosystem to support the dragon in the mountains. And then there’s the occasional odd flicker of the sky, a mosaic of quickly shifting squares flittering across your vision like lights dancing on the ceiling of the world. 

Out of the Dungeon uses a deck of cards to help generate the rooms that your adventurers move through. More than any of the other games on this list, I think Out of the Dungeon has the capacity to give you the feeling of changing the dungeon as you venture through it, because your characters need the dungeon to change if they’re going to escape it. It’s still in a pretty rough ash-can place, but I think the ideas behind it are pretty resonant with what you’re looking to achieve.

A Golden Flame, by Mundos Infinitos.

A Pamphlet TTRPG adventure where you explore dungeons and survive the Dungeon Master. Based on a Whim-based system, this game is classic-style, not OSR, and is easy to learn, play and hack.

A short pamphlet game, A Golden Flame doesn’t come with a pre-generated dungeon, but it does come with dungeon generation tools that the GM can take advantage of during their prep. A unique game system for this game is called Whims - a resource that is given to everyone at the beginning of the game, and can be used by players to level up, expand the world, conjure magic, or engineer a lucky circumstance.The GM uses Whims to eliminate people or things precious to the players, change how effective an action is, create custom challenges, etc.

I’m not so sure I’m a fan of the rules that penalize players for poor table manners by giving the GM more in-game powers - I’m a believer that out-of-game faux pas are best met with out-of-game responses, rather than in-game punishments, but I do like the idea of giving the GM visible currency to give them a reason to generate challenges for the characters.

Overpowered, by Technical Grimoire Games.

Overpowered is a solo framework for speedrunning your favorite tabletop rpg adventures. Manage your power, choose your path, and perfect your strategy. Achieve a high score and dominate the online leaderboards. Try the demo adventure for free right now! 

Overpowered converts adventures from various ttrpgs into something that can be played through solo, using specific pieces of information as challenges that your character will have to overcome. The game seems to work best with pre-written dungeons, and rewards play that is cautious but ambitious. If you have a lot of adventure modules that have creatures, treasure, and puzzles, you can probably speedrun them using Overpowered.

Overpowered is also probably the most professional-looking game on this list, and that's simply because Technical Grimoire really knows what they're doing when it comes to making a nice-looking product.

Bite-Sized Dungeon by @sprintingowl.

Bite-Sized Dungeon is a 9 page tabletop adventure game that you can play with absolutely no equipment.

You can use it to dive a forbidden ruin, fight monsters, steal treasure, and hightail it back to safety---all in the time it takes for your pizza to arrive, or for the bus to show up, or for the doors to open at the convention hall.

Use your hands to resolve checks, play modules from other systems with very little trouble, and hack to add in additional content.

Bite-Sized Dungeon uses some very simple rules to determine whether or not your adventure succeeds or fails in any given action, and has a simple way to keep track of your health - you can get Squashed five times before you’re eliminated, and you need a new adventurer. The game is designed to be able to be played anywhere, which is useful for the players, but I’m not sure how well you’d be able to play the dungeons on the go, unless the dungeon master has either a printed reference or a very very good memory. I do appreciate that the game has links to 5 different dungeon modules that you can use with this game, or any other dungeon game!

You can also check out the Remastered version of Bite-Sized Dungeon if you want to see what the author’s been doing with the game recently.

Also…

If you want more Dungeon games, I recommend checking out some of my following recommendation posts:

Fantasy - With Tools

Modern Magic

Crunchy Dark Fantasy

Echoes of D&D

I also think Planet Dungeon does some great dungeon-crawling stuff.

If you like what I do, you can leave a tip at my Ko-fi page <3.

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looks can be deceiving

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performing the "u-turn of blowjobs" because i do a little bit and run away and also it does bug type damage

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