Tell me about Tiny Dungeon

[Reynard]

There is currently a bundle that includes Tiny Dungeon. The bundle price is less than half of the TD price, so regardless of anything else in the bundle (which includes 5 Torches Deep which I own, and the newest version of Chivalry and Sorcery which I don't) it is a good deal.

However, I have no experience with the Tinyd6 games.

Tell me about Tiny Dungeons so I can decide whether to spring for the bundle, please. Is it a good game? Does it emulate old school play or do something different? What are its design goals? Like that.

Thanks.

 

[schneeland]

I have only skimmed it, but as far as I can tell, it's a light-weight game (most checks with 2d6, sometimes 3d6 keep lowest/highest for disadvantage/advantage, fixed damage for weapons), but rather classic in its design. No real connection to old-school games. I have heard a few reports of people playing it with their children and enjoying it.

 

[innerdude]

Tiny D6 is an ultra-lightweight attempt at creating a level 2 through level 6 BECMI-ish sort of game experience. It's probably about as close as you can come to "Free Kriegsspiel" without actually doing away with player-facing rules completely.

Its entire ethos is "trad" to the Nth degree -- GM judgement is king, and that "rules for everything" just gets in the way of the fun. The GM is largely in control of everything in the setting, will be making massive numbers of judgement calls in every single session. What very few things the GM isn't directly in charge of managing is contained in the group's assumed genre conventions.

If your players are good at adhering to genre convention, innately trust the GM to make good judgement calls, and are mostly looking for short-term (8-12 sessions) play, it's actually incredibly fun.

I think it likely works best when the GM and players all have strong shared assumptions about the game world. Like, I wouldn't ever want to play a "homebrew" setting; I'd want it to be in a very clearly defined sort of milieu that everyone innately understands --- "We're playing in the world of Fallout," "We're playing in the world of Skyrim," "We're playing in the world of Starcraft," etc.

For our game, when the GM proposed running Tiny Frontiers (Tiny d6 in space), I was like, "Awesome! Can we make it the assumed game world of the Deep Rock Galactic video game?" and he was like, "Sure!"

And it went fantastically. But just understand that it will quickly devolve into chaos if the group doesn't fully embrace the ethos that the GM is ultimately in control, and they're mostly just along for a fun ride.

Edit: For clarification, I own Tiny Dungeons and Tiny Frontiers in print, and Tiny Wastelands and Tiny Mecha in PDF.

Edit 2: The mechanics are basically, "There's a few things your character is really good at, or is circumstantially in a good spot. Roll 3d6 for these checks. There's a few things your character is bad at, or disadvantaged, roll 1d6. For everything else, roll 2d6. If you get a 5 or 6 on any dice rolled, you succeed. If you roll sixes on at least 2 dice, you critically succeed."

Like that's literally the whole game. Your choice of heritage and weapon package are basically just shoehorning you into a narrative role, and determine a couple of your "advantaged" traits.