What Non-D&D Would You Use For A Dungeon Focused Campaign

[Reynard]

Just chatting:

Whether it is a game about going from dungeon to dungeon in search of the 13 Shards of Whatsit, or a sandbox megadungeon exploration: what non-D&D RPG (this includes official, retroclones, OSR and clear derivatives like Shadowdark) would you use for this purpose? Why? What tools does it bring to the dungeon focused game?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Shadowdark, which not only handles the combat and spells and such well, but it takes away everyone being able to see in the dark -- important for making dungeons mysterious and scary, IMO (just watch Barbarian if you need an example) -- along with putting a premium on resource management (torches especially, but food and water as well) without requiring anyone to have a laptop running a spreadsheet at the gaming table.

 

[Reynard]

Shadowdark, which not only handles the combat and spells and such well, but it takes away everyone being able to see in the dark -- important for making dungeons mysterious and scary, IMO (just watch Barbarian if you need an example) -- along with putting a premium on resource management (torches especially, but food and water as well) without requiring anyone to have a laptop running a spreadsheet at the gaming table.

Flag on the play.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Flag on the play.

Whoops, missed that part of the message.

Uh ... the Dungeon! board game? It's got a swell megadungeon map!

 

[Reynard]

I bet you could do a pretty good dungeon focused campaign with the Alien iteration of the Year Zero Engine.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I bet you could do a pretty good dungeon focused campaign with the Alien iteration of the Year Zero Engine.

Mothership would also work, for similar reasons. And Gradient Descent is supposed to be a very good megadungeon for the system.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

HeroQuest

 

[bsss]

Do you consider 13th Age a clear derivative? (I understand why one would, but I figured I'd shoot my shot.) If allowed, 13th Age. A close second for me would be Cypher System.

13th Age balances the things I want out of a D&D pretty well, and adds good mechanics to support collaborative storytelling, but I think it'd work best for a dungeon campaign that includes combat as a major, if not default, factor in any exploration. Cypher System would trade the crunchy combat for a core mechanic that highlights attrition --- choosing when to spend from your pools, avoiding foolishly overcommiting to a combat and risking your ability to go forward, valuing the ability to get good downtime to recover, that kind of thing.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Tough question.

Maybe...

Year Zero Engine for a gritty resource and attrition style campaign.

Cortex for a more narrative approach.

For the record, I like 13th Age. And Shadow the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard. So those would be my two F20 choices depending on how heroic vs gritty you want to go.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Worlds Without Number (very different system than D&D IMO), or The One Ring if that's too close for you. Maybe GURPS.