Two Rex Plays #10 - Dungeons, Dice and Danger
In this edition of Two Rex Plays we’re discussing Dungeons, Dice and Danger, a roll & write dungeon crawler designed by Richard Garfield and illustrated by Cam Kendal. Roll dice to determine how you move through one of four handcrafted dungeons, with the aim of seeking out treasure and fighting monsters.
Here are the design features we liked:
Combat – The first innovative system is combat; you battle monsters indirectly by working your way through the dungeon until you reach a chamber which is adjacent to the monster. That unlocks a path to inflicting damage through a particular dice roll, and the more adjacent rooms you reach, the more attack opportunities you create. The way you take damage is also novel. Whilst some damage is guaranteed after certain bosses (so you need to plan to have enough in reserve) the bigger threat is being unable to use the dice on each turn to move through the dungeon. This forces you to consider how you’ll make your moves to minimise the chance of this happening, creating some interesting risk / reward decisions.
Innovative monster design – The illustrations, by Cam Kendal, are phenomenal and help the player sheets to really stand out. This is another area where it would have been easy to fall into fantasy and sci-fi tropes, but instead there are innovative designs in each of the four dungeons. The scorpion-bear hybrid Bearpion is amazing, but we have to give a shout out to King Rex, the toughest boss in the game.
Extra Health! – OK, it may seem like we’re in the weeds here, but this has been something we’ve been struggling with – how to restore health in a roll (or flip) and write whilst maintaining the integrity of not rubbing out or introducing additional component parts (or the nuclear option of switching to laminated card). The elegant solution here is that one of the treasure rewards gives you three bonus health boxes on a separate area of the player sheet. These act to absorb damage before you return to the main health bar, effectively restoring health (it’s not quite the same, as it’s a temporary pause on losing more health rather than restoring you to a previous position, but the effect is very similar).
Friendly competition – Each player has their own player sheet and you’re not directly battling against each other or competing for resources. The competition comes from being the first to achieve certain accomplishments, such as beating a monster, which gain you more rewards than being second. This competitive element is further softened by a mechanic that deals damage to the monsters on the other players’ sheets once it has been defeated for the first time.
Handcrafted maps – The game comes with four different dungeons which I’ll reductively describe as jungle, mine, desert and prehistoric. These are a set of tailored, hand-crafted adventures where you can sense the hand of the creator. This comes through in the clever way in which a particular dungeon tempts you to go after a treasure, or that feeling of working out the developer’s puzzle and crafting a strategy that allows you to compete for the top tier scores.
To complete a dungeon, you need to defeat all the monsters including the boss, and to do that you’ll be moving through the majority of the chambers. If you’re chasing the top score, you’ll be visiting virtually all of them. That taps into the psychology of collecting everything on a map, and the odd adrenaline rush that comes when you’ve ticked everything off. And that’s achieved without a pocket monster in sight.
Interested in Dungeons, Dice and Danger? Find out more here:
Dungeons, Dice & Danger – Board Game Geek page
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/349463/dungeons-dice-danger
Illustrator Cam Kendal’s Instagram Feed
https://www.instagram.com/camkendell/
Dungeons, Dice & Danger – How to play video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUlsnAKvfCk