Dungeon! the boardgame that presaged Dungeons and Dragons is 50 years old!

[darjr]

There was very nearly a Tékumel version of Dungeon! called Quest. Half a dozen prototypes were apparently made, but TSR eventually decided not to publish it.
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Wow!

If it were me back then I couldn’t have gotten it published faster.

Knowing what we know now not being a part of it back then.

 

[Mannahnin]

When I was in my board game burying craze I kept hearing about this game - like it was some shining jewel of a game from days gone by . Then it got republished years after its original release, so I bought a copy. Wow, was I ever unimpressed. To each their own, but it's mediocre IMO and I traded my copy away rather quickly.

It's very simple, but that's part of its charm. It's not a deep strategy game. It's casual, and you can play it while still maintaining a conversation, and/or play with kids. And it successfully conveys the feel and theme. It's literally the first dungeon crawling board game, from which all others quasi-descend. But yeah, if you want strategic depth, it's going to be unsatisfying.

As GreyLord points out, the strategy is mostly gambling- how deep to go? How big a risk to run to find bigger treasures (which are on lower levels; but so are more dangerous monsters)> And somewhat in character selection. The stronger characters really need to go deep because they need so much gold to win, where the weaker ones can do it with mostly low level rooms and maybe a quick delve deeper.

In the late 90s I went into a phase where I would paint miniatures as a hobby and I got a box of characters for Dungeon! that I think was used but unpainted (it has a 1989 copyright and I got that way later)... They came with little cards for new spell cards, but I don't think I had the rules. They were TSR and Ral Partha branded. There were 10 characters and supposedly 4 new ones? It also includes cards for the Illusionary

Ah! Found 'em! The characters were: The Cleric, the Halfing (not halfLing), the Ranger, the Warrior, the Paladin, the Elf, the Dwarf, the Wizard, the Thief and the Gnome Illusionist. The spells were Illusionary Warrior and Telekinesis Treasure. No explanation what they do

Yeah, my brother and I had The New Dungeon! and the expansion set of minis & characters. As I recall the Ranger, Gnome Illusionist, Paladin, and Halfling were the expansion characters.

I can't remember what TK treasure did (maybe give you a chance to steal a monster's or another player's treasure without fighting them?), but I'm pretty sure Illusionary Warrior let you fight a monster using the Warrior's value/target number. Might have also allowed you to avoid injury if you lost, since the monster wasn't actually beating you up, but the illusion.

I don't think I've played it since the Bush administration, the first Bush administration, and I'm almost positive I must have played the 1989 version rather than the '75 version. But I couldn't tell you anything about how the game plays other than you go through a dungeon and kill things. I didn't even remember you had to collect treasure to win until I looked it up.

In truth, there are a lot of games I loved way back then that I have fond memories about, but I doubt I'd want to play them these days. Starfleet Battles and Car Wars are two that I can think of off the top of my head. Good times, but tedious these days.

Yeah, a lot of those older games play really slow. SFB was notorious for it back then, too. Car Wars I have a lot of nostalgia for, and even still own my old stuff, but I think newer, simpler games do the concept better nowadays. Battletech is another genuine classic that takes quite a while if you're not in practice and don't have the tables and modifiers memorized.

Definitely in contrast to those kinds of games, Dungeon! is casual and quick, and has the virtues of being the original dungeon crawler, and clearly representing monsters, characters, and mechanics (in simplified form) from D&D itself, as opposed to something kind of similar, like most such games.

My small town local library had this and we played it for a while as kids. Other than the cool box art it didn't really manage to capture out attentions for long. Especially when we had stuff like D&D, AD&D and HeroQuest.

I seem to vaguely recall the paladin being capable of healing another hero as a special thing he could do, but there was no reason to as you were playing against the other heroes.

Both the Paladin and Cleric could heal themselves or others. They did note that healing other people wasn't normally worthwhile, but there was some expectation that folks might want to make house rules or create cooperative variants. Maybe if you had four players, for example, you could play a two on two team game instead of a free for all.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I broke out my copy of Dungeon last year and played a game. It's still a fun, light game that forces you to balance risk and reward.

My cat, however, decided to play Kill the Miniatures.

Coco, eyeing up the poor Dwarf.

 

[Committed Hero]

I played the original as a tween and it definitely made an impression.

 

[Vardelm]

I had this back in the '80-'85 timeframe and loved it. It's a super simple game (TOO simple?) but it was easier to get the neighborhood kids to play a game of Dungeon! than D&D simply because of the time investment. IMO, the board back then was much more aesthetically pleasing and did a lot to activate the imagination. I saw Dungeonquest with it's tiled game-board in stores and wanted to try it, but never got to try it. A few years ago I returned to grad school and for one class on game theory & design (FUN class!!!) made a game based on ideas from Dungeon! and Dungeonquest's tiles, but with a bit of character creation tossed in. I'd love to see a board game that is essentially a TTRPG but with much less complex rules so that it moves faster, doesn't require a DM/GM, and yet doesn't have a multitude of game pieces like some modern RPG board games have, like Gloomhaven, etc.

 

[Mannahnin]

I'd love to see a board game that is essentially a TTRPG but with much less complex rules so that it moves faster, doesn't require a DM/GM, and yet doesn't have a multitude of game pieces like some modern RPG board games have, like Gloomhaven, etc.

Well, I think that's the challenge. An RPG can have really stripped-down, minimalist rule because it gets to leverage the DM's brain and the "invisible rulebooks" we all carry around in our heads. A DM-less game tends to need more rules and components because it's got to have pre-written materials to replace DM judgement and invention.

That being said, I understand that there are some indie games which kind of split up the DM creativity tasks among the players.