I was the Dungeon Hero

Now I’m just another set of remains to be found by the next adventurer. Binglo the Halfling made it to adventure hook 68 of the first Adventure created for Dungeon Hero, Castle Charon, which is included in Volume 1.

This quick to play game is the perfect thing for a quick morning delve into a dungeon or a quick game before your group arrives for game night. With a simple resolution mechanic, Dungeon Hero can be played in about 15-20 minutes. You roll a few dice based on your relevant traits. The list of traits is up to you to decide for your character, and need not be anything more than a set of skills and equipment that you may set out with on your adventure. You assign these traits to dice values and when prompted you decide what is relevant and roll with those trait’s dice. Whether you beat the challenge or not you will advance (unless your pool of Resolve is fully depleted). You continue to play through using your skills of DMing to invent new ideas in the dungeon based on the prompts given in each entry.

This was the result of my run through Castle Charon… Binglo did not make it.

A few dice (upwards of 4 sets of polyhedral without the d20 may be needed), pen/pencil, a printed booklet and a little imagination are all that is needed to enjoy this game. It employs a simple 8 fold zine booklet style to make it simple to play, though there are PDFs available for screen use if you prefer to not use a printed booklet. The replay value of the game should be pretty good for at least two or three runs through (YMMV). The mechanic of rolling and advancing gives a fair amount of randomness but on subsequent plays you may find yourself in similar loops as past plays.

Look at all those dice! While not necessary it was easy enough to find two sets of dark dice and two sets of lighter colored dice to keep track of whether the dice were mine or the adversarial dice. Rolling four dice at a time felt good too!

All in all for the PWYW, with a suggested price of 3 dollars I feel that this was an easily enjoyable game, worth the couple of silver spent on it. It comes with the Dungeon Hero Core Rules and two adventures (Castle Charon and Fortress of the Frost Giant Jarl) Lone Spelunker also has a Volume 2 and Volume 3 for sale with the same model each volume coming with 3 new adventures to run through of varying themes. I would like to give a special mention to the game Fable on your Table by Lone Spelunker as well, which utilizes a similar resolution mechanic and provides a bunch of paper craft materials to print, color and play with for a longer style game with a bit more engagement required than Dungeon Hero, I have not played it but it does seem like a nice game to expand upon your Dungeon Hero experience if you find yourself really enjoying it.