Bag of Dungeon

Posted Sat 19 Feb, 2022.

Turns out, we are playing a bit of D&D -almost!-. I bought "Bag of Dungeon" to my wife last Christmas, and it is a table top game a bit like a rogue-like board game. It is not that different from an hex-crawl (or a dungeon crawl, if that's a thing in D&D), but very streamlined: very direct mechanics, the dungeon tiles, monsters and character sheets make it easy to get into.

We have been playing with our boys, specially the 4yo (soon to be 5). I think he could play regular D&D as well (white box, may be?), but this game simplifies everything to the point that what we have left in front of us is pure excitement for him. Today he surprised us with a "I'm going to teach that troll a lesson" that was quite funny, and he seems quite chill with the idea of his character dying -the game gives you three lives, and we have lost a couple in every single game we have played so far-.

The game can be a bit too long, though. After two sessions that we couldn't complete the game, today we decided to play only 12 tiles, and we got to the end of the dungeon and killed the dragon -with a lot of team work-. The length of the game was about right, may be next time we can add a couple of extra tiles.

The rules are simple to play, and the mechanics are reminiscent of Hero Quest -or my memory of it-, with simple maths (2D6 + modifiers to attack, minus the monster throw; positive is damage to the monster, negative to the hero). There is variety of enemies and items -my wife got a trap as loot from killing one monster, that was unexpected!-, and it is easy enough to add house rules.

Obviously there's no story or narrative, but we we will get to that when we play actual D&D. For now, this rogue-like is a lot of fun and helps to scratch my itch of playing a table top RPG!

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