Board Game Review: "Dungeon!" (1975)

This week, I would like to take a look back at another well known "Old School" product, albeit not an RPG.  Sort of.

Dungeon! is a competitive board game where players race through the eponymous dungeon, slaying monsters and taking their stuff.  The first to reach their particular adventurer's gold piece goal and race back to the starting point wins.  Since adventurers have different gold piece goals and the dungeon has different levels of difficulty and loot, the game remains roughly balanced even though adventurers have different abilities.

The mechanics are quite simple: upon entering a new room or area, the player draws a monster card appropriate for the dungeon level that lists the target numbers for each adventurer.  If successful, the player draws a treasure card appropriate for the dungeon level.  If not, something bad randomly happens to the adventurer (including death).  Old School!

If fact the mechanics are so simple that for many gamers from the early days of tabletop role-playing, Dungeon! was a gateway to RPGs: you can get your dungeon crawl on without worrying about story or campaign elements.  This simplicity is also a reason for Dungeon!'s recent renaissance, as the children of those same early gamers come of age, such as the daughter of my AD&D DM!

Dungeon! is also of historical interest since Dave Megarry, the primary designer, was a friend of Dave Arneson and a member of the Blackmoor campaign, from which grew the rule set that eventually became into Original Dungeons & Dragons.

So, gamers can see and experience a version of the earliest days of tabletop role-playing.  Thus, in a way, Dungeon! is the closest that many gamers will get to adventuring in Castle Blackmoor.