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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Drew" data-source="post: 2458977" data-attributes="member: 1314">Dungeon Bash is a set of rules for generating and playing random dungeon-based adventures for D&D. It’s only available as a downloadable PDF from The Other Game Company. The game doesn’t stand alone (and isn’t really meant to), but works as a supplement to standard D&D. Its acurately described as a combination of RPG and boardgame.I received this copy for free for purposes of reviewing it. I was able to play Dungeon Bash a few times before writing this review. For those who just want a short review, skip down to the very bottom and read "Conclusion." Otherwise, read on for the full, meaty review. ComponentsThe Dungeon Bash download comes with the rulebook, a set of printable dungeon tiles, a book of stat-blocks, and some bonus features. We’ll take a look at each in turn below.RULEBOOKLayout and AppearanceAs is standard for the industry, the download contains two versions of the rulebook, one for those who want to print the rules and one for those who prefer to view the rules on a laptop or desktop computer. In some products, the former is just an ink-saving version of the latter. The designers of Dungeon Bash have wisely taken this a step further, and used a slightly different layout for both versions of the rulebook. The screen version uses a three column layout that allows anyone with a sizable monitor to view the rules with little or no scrolling. The designers have made good use of color, and the various charts and sidebars are easy to find among the rules text. The only thing I didn’t care for in the screen version was the background image, which sometimes makes the text a bit hard to read.The print version, on the other hand, uses the two column design standard to print products. At first glance, it seems a little bland compared to the colorful screen version. Of course, less color means less printer ink, which is the whole point of having a print version in the first place. It’s just that the screen version uses color so nicely to enhance its layout, it makes the alternative look bland by comparison.Many PDF products, especially those produced by smaller companies, don’t feature very good art. The Dungeon Bash rulebook is only about xx pages long, and consequentially doesn’t feature very much art. What art is present is actually fairly good, and definitely adds to the product rather than detracting from it.The RulesThe Dungeon Bash rulebook is written in a friendly and conversational tone. This has the effect of making the game seem a little less formal than standard D&D, which I think lends to the beer-and-pretzels feel of the game.A typical session of Dungeon Bash goes a little something like this: players create one or more fairly standard D&D characters and generate a dungeon on they fly while trying to achieve some sort of goal. This goal usually involves reaching a final room and defeating a big bad evil guy, finding a certain item, or some similar task, although the game has enough variations on this to keep things interesting.Along the way, players encounter things typical of a traditional dungeon crawl adventure: wandering monsters, NPCS, traps, and treasure. The rules are written assuming you have someone acting as GM, whose job it is to roll random encounters, run the monsters, and generate the dungeon layout. The game also includes separate rules for solo play (play without a GM), which include a simple flow chart for determining what actions monsters take in combat. While it’s nice that they included it, anyone with a decent grasp of standard D&D monsters can probably run the enemies using basic common sense. In a nutshell: things with bows shoot, things with spells cast spells, and melee monsters engage the closest, lightest armored opponent. I think most groups will play Dungeon Bash using a mixture of the solo and GM rules, assigning the GM duties to one or more players.Before actually playing Dungeon Bash, I expected a game that played like a board game based on D&D. I’ve had experience with Games Workshop’s Warhammer Quest (which is a good game), and I assumed Dungeon Bash would play something like that. In reality, Dungeon Bash is less a board game with D&D roots and more a slightly streamlined 3E game with built-in dungeon generator. The characters are basically D&D characters (although the rules point out that some classes work better in the dungeon environment than others), and the combats are conducted using all of the usual D&D rules (initiative, feats, etc.) There are a few feats that are unique to Dungeon Bash, and a few new uses for skills that attempt to make them more useful than they would otherwise be in the random dungeon environment (such as Gather Information.) A few spells, feats, and abilities are not as useful in Dungeon Bash as they are in standard D&D, and the rules do a good job of pointing these out.The meat of the rulebook deals with generating random dungeons and then exploring them, and Dungeon Bash does very well here. The random encounter rules are clever and easy to use. I also liked the rules for tracking turn order outside of combat. I thought that the rules for random traps worked well, but I would have liked to see a more interesting variety of traps.I was pleased to see the inclusion of NPCs as possible random encounters. While adventuring, my party came across an adventurer that had been chained to the wall by the monstrous residents of the dungeon. The rules told me that I could make a Diplomacy check to interact with him. I did, and shifted his attitude from friendly to helpful. At this point, the rules said I could attempt to free him if I wanted to. Since there is no chance of random encounters during NPC encounters, there really wasn’t any reason not to sit there and continue trying to free this poor guy until it worked. Once free, he gave us a clue (increases the chance to find the final “quest room) and followed us around the rest of the adventure. Our reward for keeping him alive the whole adventure was our average party level x 50gp.That’s all fine and well, but the other eight or so NPC encounters are very similar to the one I just described. Most either increase or decrease the chances that the party will find the quest room depending on the result of a Diplomacy check. I think that a group of regular Dungeon Bash players could grow tired of NPC encounters once they’d experienced a few of them more than once. The rules would have benefited from a larger variety of NPC encounters. How about a chance that the prisoner is actually a murderous lycanthrope? Or an illusion? There was really no reason not to free the guy, and then it all hinged on a Diplomacy check. I’d also have liked to see more flavor text in the NPC encounters. It doesn’t matter if the prisoner is a filthy, scabby wretch, but it would help me get into the otherwise bland encounter.For those who want a little more variety in their random dungeons, the book includes “Advanced Rules.” For the most part, I didn’t like the advanced rules as much the simple rules. They included a number of things that added to the complexity of the dungeon without really adding to the fun of the game. For example: In the basic game, the rules assumed that there is enough furniture, debris, or whatever for a character to hide behind in any room. In the advance game, you have to generate and place the actual room contents. When I’m playing a beer-and-pretzels D&D game in a randomly generated dungeon, I’m not particularly worried about what I’m hiding behind and exactly where it is…and I’m certainly not in favor of slowing things down so that we can figure it out.One part of the advanced rules that I did like was the expanded quest chart including side quests and special quests. These add variety and flavor to each session. Plus, since you determine quests before actually starting into the dungeon, they really aren’t slowing things down.TILES AND COUNTERSDungeon Bash comes with a number of printable rooms and corridors. These are color, and would look pretty good printed out on a color laser printer and mounted on backerboards. They didn’t look half bad just printed out in black-and-white and spread out on the gaming table either. As a bonus, the tiles would work well in a standard D&D game.The counters aren’t that impressive, and just feature the name of the creature (i.e. “goblin”) written in white on a brightly colored background. They’d do in a pinch, but it’s more likely that your average gamer is going to want to tap into his D&D minis when “Dungeon Bashing.”TABLES AND SUMMARYThe tables include stat blocks for every monster and NPC that you could possibly encounter in the base game. This is a big printout, and I found it a little cumbersome to actually use at the gaming table. Between the rulebook, the monster stats book, the random tables, and the treasure charts…I felt a little overwhelmed by all this stuff. I wonder if the game would play a little easier for a group with a laptop. It would have helped a bit if the download also included an encounter book broken down by challenge ratings (or a range of challenge ratings) so that I had less paper to deal with at the table. BONUSThe download also included area templates, a blank map, a spell reference sheet, and sample characters at 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 10th level.CONCLUSIONOverall, the most important question is this: Is Dungeon Bash fun? The answer is yes, it’s a lot of fun. The game plays about as well as a low-level D&D dungeon crawl, and the added rules are clever and work well within the random dungeon. The game would be even more fun, though, with more flavor. I think the designers went for generic, and ended up a bit too vanilla. There is plenty of room for expansion, and it wouldn’t take much to add things like themed dungeons, custom NPC encounter charts, unique traps, etc. to make the game a little spicier. To their credit, the Other Game Company seems to realize this, and their website hints at a number of expansions (some of which sound like they’ll be free) in the works.Andrew Branstad</blockquote>

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