Stargazer's World » Dungeonslayers

Dungeonslayers: First sneak peek at the 4th Edition

Stargazer — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:30:24 +0000

Reports that the English version of Dungeonslayers 4 is vaporware are highly exaggerated. DS 4 is alive and well and Christian Kennig has released the updated character creation as a teaser today!

The 10-paged PDF contains the character creation rules, hints at the new hero classes that you can pick after reaching level 10 and gives you the opportunity to check out the artwork and layout of the upcoming book.

By the way, the German version of the game is available in a very cool boxed set, or as a free PDF version. So if you can speak German, why not check it out now?

Updated Dungeonslayers website

Stargazer — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:04:07 +0000

It seems the English version of the 4th edition of the old-fashioned role-playing game Dungeonslayers is finally nearing completion and to properly celebrate this, Christian Kennig has updated the DS website accordingly:

If you haven’t done so yet, you should definitely give DS a try. Although its name might be a bit weird, it’s a really interesting fantasy roleplaying game with an old-school charm.

[Dungeonslayers] Caera map created with CC3

Stargazer — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 10:32:16 +0000

It’s always amazing what talented people can do with tools like Campaign Cartographer 3. And undoubtedly ProFantasy’s Ralf Schemmann is no amateur when it comes to map making. He recently created this beautiful map for the game Dungeonslayers.

If you own Campaign Cartographer 3 and the recently released Cartographer’s Annual 2011, you can download the original CC3 files here. Please note that the location names and descriptions on the map are in German, but I hope Ralf can be convinced to create a translated version of this map as soon as Dungeonslayers 4 has been translated.

While I have been dabbling with map-making in both CC3 and Photoshop I am definitely not that good. But as soon as I have some time to spare I’ll work on a couple of maps for my various games.

Hellgate

Stargazer — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:00:08 +0000

If you are into computer and video games you might remember the action RPG Hellgate: London. It has been released 2007 by Flagship Studios. Alas the game was much too ambitious and the game was plagued by technical and design issues. In 2009 the Hellgate: London servers were shut down and Flagship Studios closed its doors.

But there was still a lot to love about this game. The setting was pretty cool and in my opinion would make a great background for a pen & paper roleplaying game. In Hellgate: London demons have invaded Earth and the few survivors now hide underground mostly in subway tunnels. There are three factions who use their distinctive skills to fight the demon threat. The templars is an order of divine warriors who are excellent melee fighters. The image above depicts two templars. The cabalists are seekers of knowledge who use magic to fight the Great Dark. The third faction are the Hunters, highly trained ex-military operatives who use ranged weaponry and advanced technology. While the three classes cooperate to fight the demons, there’s also some rivalry and mistrust.

Since humanity is waging a constant war against the Great Dark, a Hellgate: London campaign is probably pretty combat-heavy. But there are a lot of opportunities for roleplaying especially when the different factions interact with each other. The setting also allows for pretty intense horror elements. While I am not sure if you can use it as inspiration for a long campaign, it should provide enough background for at least a couple of adventures. The mixture of the supernatural and high tech equipment may also hold a certain appeal to some.

While playing Hellgate: London this weekend I thought it might work to create a Warrior, Rogue & Mage variant set into the Hellgate:London universe. Using the three factions as attributes (Templar, Hunter & Cabalist) might actually work quite well, especially if you don’t mind allowing the player characters a bit more versatility than in the computer game. Alternatively I believe there are quite a few rules-light games you could use to run a campaign inspired by this computer game. Savage Worlds’ fast and furious game style might be a good fit, and the Open D6 system (especially MiniSix) might be another alternative. Heck, I think even a modified Dungeonslayers might work. If I didn’t work on too many projects already, working on a Hellgate:London campaign might be a fun thing to do.

What do you guys think? Does the Hellgate:London world have enough depth to turn it into a pen & paper RPG campaign? Please post your comments below!

Dungeonslayers in the pub

Stargazer — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 08:48:22 +0000

Yesterday I had the opportunity to run a session of the upcoming 4th edition of Dungeonslayers at our regular RPG pub meeting. We actually had two groups with four and three players respectively. The second group was run by my friend Mirko.

While I have run DS before, it was Mirko’s first time. But I have to admit he put a bit more effort into it. He had prepared a couple of pregenerated characters and even brought some miniatures and his own homebrew adventure. I decided I don’t need any minis and ran “Lord of the Rats”, the introductory adventure which was already part of Dungeonslayers 3.0.

While Mirko’s group was already playing we were still creating characters. I thought about bringing pregenerated characters, too, but in the end I decided against it for two reasons: a) I think the best way to learn a new game is by starting with character creation and b) I was lazy. The players decided it was best to cover all classes and races, so they came up with a dwarven fighter, a human healer and an elven scout.

The first fights were pretty easy. Normal rats don’t pose that much threat. Things changed when the characters fought a couple of nasty Giant Rats which brought at least two of the characters close to death. In these fights Dungeonslayers showed one its great advantages: it’s fast and fun.

For some weird reason the characters took the direct way to an altar room ignoring all the other opportunities for experience and loot where they fought a couple of giant rats again. When they tried to deface a statue of the evil rat god they found out that the statue was actually a golem. Alas I messed up at that point and instead of taking the stats of the clay golem (as written in the adventure description) I used the stats of the stone golem which is at least twice as difficult to fight! After the dwarven fighter was almost killed in one stroke by the golem, I realized my mistake and allowed the characters to retreat.

After tending to their wounds they were ready to explore the rest of the dungeon. After a few more rooms, a couple of in-game jokes and some minor fights it was already 10 pm and we decided to call it a day. We all had a lot of fun playing Dungeonslayers and decided to continue the game on our next pub meeting. It’s quite possible that this game might turn into a regular campaign!

Preview: Dungeonslayers 4th Edition

Stargazer — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 09:58:01 +0000

Today Christian Kennig and the German Uhrwerk Verlag (which is the German licensee for Space 1889, Deadlands and L5R) announced that the latest edition of Dungeonslayers will be released in print later this year at the SPIEL 2010 in Essen. If you enjoyed the so-called “old-fashioned” roleplaying game so far, you’ll be in for a treat.

While the 4th edition of Dungeonslayers will be over 160 pages long, the core rules aren’t that much longer than in its predecessor, but it’s still 99% compatible to the older editions. Nevertheless DS4 has been improved in all aspects.

The book is now fully illustrated, contains a table of contents and a detailed index, new and optimized rules, an improved game mastering section, new equipment, three fully-fleshed out adventures and a setting! The games appendices contain treasure tables, rules for miniature gaming, a toolbox for creating your own player races and a condensed version of my firearms rules.

One of the new features of DS4 will be the hero classes like paladin, druid, archmage or assassin. These classes will grant access to new talents and abilities and allow to individualize your characters even further.

Christian also managed to make combats in DS4 more tactical and fun without making the rules more complex by adding Slayerpoints. You earn those points by hurting your enemies and they can be used to activate special moves, ignore some minor damage, or temporarily increase your stats.

In my opinion DS4 makes a good game even better and I can’t wait to get my hands on a print copy with will be available in October.

Here are some pictures from the upcoming old-fashioned roleplaying game:

These teasers have to suffice for now. I’ll post some more info on DS4 over the next few weeks. So stay tuned!

As far as I know, the Dungeonslayers translation team is already eager to start working on a English translation, but given the size of the latest edition, this may take a while. In the meantime I will try to keep you updated. If there are any questions about DS4 and the print release, please feel free to ask. Any questions, I can’t answer myself, I will relay to the game’s designer Christian Kennig.

Signs of things to come

Stargazer — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:28:42 +0000

In the coming days there will be some great news regarding an old-fashioned roleplaying game. I can’t give you any details right now, but you won’t be disappointed!

Stay tuned! And how do you like my new t-shirt?

Dungeonslayers is now on Facebook

Stargazer — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 07:33:00 +0000

Dungeonslayers, the old-fashioned roleplaying game, is now out to conquer the world using the popular social network Facebook. If you are a fan of Christian Kennig’s rules-light fantasy game, join us on the Dungeonslayers Facebook page and get the latest news and updates about the upcoming Dungeonslayers 4.0!

By the way, the translation team is still looking for people to help translating DS adventures and supplements into English. If you want to help with translations or proofreading, please contact the user dagndorp at the official Dungeonslayers forums!

Dungeonslayers: Fireworks!

Stargazer — Sat, 29 May 2010 12:20:11 +0000

Yesterday my Dungeonslayers supplement Feuerwerk was finally released in an English translation. Thanks a lot to the translation team, which did a great job! So, what’s Fireworks about?

Fireworks contains rules for firearms, bombs and cannons and features a new spellcaster classed called the Arcane Gunslinger. There are even some tips on how to use these rules in your DS campaign.

As always you can download the PDF for free at the official site.

Dungeonslayers: Forgeworks

Stargazer — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:44:37 +0000

Finally the first official supplement for the Dungeonslayers game has been translated into English. Forgeworks by Christian Kennig is a 4-paged PDF containing new weapons, armor, and magic items for his free roleplaying game.

The Dungeonslayers core rules didn’t include that many items for your characters and we all know how important loot is! Aside from tables for generating random magic treasure, Forgeworks also has a small list of “named” armor like the Hide of the Healer which grants the wearer +1 to Healing spells or the Robe of Power which increases its wearer’s Mind by 1.

If you need some more loot for your DS campaign, Forgeworks surely comes in handy. The PDF can be downloaded from the official website and is – like all other Dungeonslayers books – free.

Dungeonslayers: The Runes of Oblivion

Stargazer — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:55:16 +0000

Yesterday Christian Kennig released another one-page dungeon for his free, old-fashioned roleplaying game Dungeonslayers. Here’s the blurb from the official site:

“Get up!” – the elf came slowly to.

What’s going on? What happened?

The rough voice growled once more: “I said get up, damn pointy eared elf brood! What is this eldritch sorcery? Speak!”

The elf opened his eyes. He was lying on a floor. A cellar perhaps?

Where am I?

A stout dwarf loomed before the elf, cocked crossbow at the ready: “Get up already, you sylvan tree hugger and tell me exactly what’s going on here!”

Who is this dwarf? And what does he want?

The dwarf bellowed: “And who are these maggots?”, pointing to the other figures on the floor.

Who are these people? What am I doing here? What strange game is being played?

Well, it’s the fifth Dungeon-to-Go. This time for wholly unexperienced characters and without traditional prelude. “The Runes of Oblivion” await you in the Downloads. Go grab ‘em! And as always: don’t forget to HAVE FUN!!

Even if you don’t run DS, the Dungeons2Go are highly recommended. Because of the rules-light nature of the game, the adventures are easily adapted to any setting.

Dungeonslayers: Un Gioco di Ruolo All’Antica

Stargazer — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:55:41 +0000

It seems Dungeonslayers can’t be stopped! Just a few weeks ago I wrote about the French version and just yesterday an Italian publisher has released an Italian translation. This is actually the first time that a publishing studio, Wildboar, and not a group of fans has worked on a DS product. Wildboar is the Italian publisher for Traveller, Exalted, Witchcraft and Hellywood. If you speak Italian, you definitely should check their site out.

The Italian DS is currently exclusively available at the Wildboar site. As with all DS products it has been released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license and can be downloaded for free.

Dungeonslayers: Dungeon2Go #4 released

Stargazer — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:05:41 +0000

The Dungeonslayers community is still hard working to provide fans all around the world with new one-page adventures. Recently a team of five dedicated fans has translated Christian Kennig’s “Night of the Damned” into English. This adventure is suited for levels 9 to 12 and is available as a free PDF download.

Here’s the blurb from the official site:

Welcome to the newest not-so-dungeony fast food dungeon!
Instead, we want to take you on a leisurely stroll through the Night of the Damned. Idyllic forest lakes and gushing waterfalls await you – gaze with astonishment at friendly abominations and have a boating tour on the side.
Furthermore, we offer the usual bashing and thrashing, lots of loot, innocent evildoers, classical conjurations and depraved machinations. This for levels 9-12, to fend off any complaints.
As always, you’ll find the newest Dungeon-2-Go under Downloads – have a lot of fun!

Even if you don’t play DS, I can recommend you to have a look at these adventures. An experienced DM will have no trouble converting them to any other game system.

Le jeu de rôle à l’ancienne

Stargazer — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:07:56 +0000

While I was busy working on my own RPG project, the Dungeonslayers community finally released the French version of the old-fashioned roleplaying game from Germany. Here’s a quote from the official site:

Almost a year has passed since the first messages where heard from France of the intent to translate Dungeonslayers into their native language.
Only a few weeks went by until the first draft reached Germany.
But sadly, the layout wasn’t that easy and turned out to be problematic, mainly due to the French sentences turning out to be much longer than their English or German counterparts.
Some frustrating pages later, the french version migrated, more and more in the direction of the filing cabinet – to be slowly forgotten in the end….

Completely forgotten?
No, not completely, since some resilient French stuck to their guns and took matters back into their own hands, proofread the text anew and even made the layout to finally create a PDF – et voilá:
Le jeu de rôle à l’ancienne is completed – sincere thanks go to James “Arasmo” Manez from the Scriptorium and Olivier Boyaval!
The Polish version announced in the meantime will be layouted right on the spot – so delays made in Germany won’t have a chance this time.

Who guessed when I first discovered the game over a year ago, that within about a years’ time it would be translated into English, French and now even Polish? Dungeonslayers is obviously slowly but steadily taking over the world. So, what are you waiting for? Grab your sword and put on some armor to delve into dungeons the old-fashioned way.

Dungeonslayers: New adventure and upcoming setting

Stargazer — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:38:46 +0000

Recently Christian Kennig released another one-page dungeon for his Dungeonslayers game: “The Queen of Blackriver” is the third adventure in the “Dungeon-2-Go” series and was written by Bob Bretz.
Please note, that the Monster Mash supplement is needed to run this adventure. Both the adventure and the Monster Mash PDF can be downloaded for free from the official DS website (or use the links provided in this post).

Last week, Christian also announced “Valngress – City of Ruins”, an upcoming campaign setting for the Dungeonslayers written by Marcus Bone, the author of the “Into the Breach” supplement:

Announced last summer, the fair copy of "Valngress – City of Ruins" has arrived!

Once again Marcus Bone, author of the DS supplement "Into the Breach", has outdone himself. His City of Ruins promises to be an ideal backdrop for dungeon crawling campaigns, interesting not just for Game Masters of the old-fashioned roleplaying game.

We are presently working out the last kinks so it can go online soon and be raided by your parties.
Get prepared!
Until then – as always – have fun!

If you still haven’t played Dungeonslayers, you really should give it a try. It’s a rules-light fantasy game with a lot of charm that can be easily be used for a beer-and-pretzels game or a more serious campaign!

Best & Worst of Gaming 2009 [Part 3]

Stargazer — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:44:07 +0000

If you haven’t already, you should have a look at Part 1 and Part 2 of my Best & Worst of Gaming 2009 series.

Best Adventure

The best adventure of 2009 was not one, but many! If you have followed my blog you may have read about Michael Shorten’s and Philippe-Antoine Ménard’s One Page Dungeon Contest. They looked for the best one-page dungeons and on July 31st they released the One Page Dungeon Codex 2009 which contained all winners and the runner-ups, but also several blog articles about the history of the One Page Dungeon Template and how to use it. Definitely my pick for best adventure in 2009! And the fact, that my contest entry was one of the runner-ups had nothing to do with that decision… honestly!

Best Free Product

For me the best free product of 2008 was Christian Kennig’s Dungeonslayers game, because of the rules-light system and it’s great community support. For the German edition of the game you can not only download the free core rules, but also four rules supplements (which add optional rules, new equipment and new spells to the game) and over twelve one page dungeons. Aside from that there are several accessories like printable floor plans, various sheets, monster cards, a GM screen and many more free goodies. If you are looking for a great free fantasy game which is not an OD&D clone, you should have a look at Dungeonslayers.

Best Production Values

The production values of roleplaying games have improved tremendously over the years but the product line that impressed me most recently was Alpha Omega by Mind Storm Labs. The original core book had been printed back in December 2007, but the creature book called “The Encountered Vol. 1” has just been released last year, so I think the Alpha Omega game line is still eligible for this category. Like the core book, the Alpha Omega creature book is a hardcover book with horizontal format, full-color glossy paper and gorgeous artwork. If you have the chance to leaf through a copy of one of the Alpha Omega books at a FLGS, you should do so.
Close seconds in this category were the recently released Rogue Trader RPG and Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG (but haven’t we praised Paizo often enough already?).

Best Trend

The best trend of 2009 was probably the renewed interest in old-school gaming. I am sure this trend started even earlier, but last year it became much more noticeable if you ask me. Swords & Wizardry won an Silver ENnie, Grey Area Games released the awesome pseudo retro-clone X-Plorers and even Green Ronin’s latest game, the Dragon Age RPG, is very much reminiscent of old-school games and even comes in a boxed set to boot.

This concludes Part 3 of the series. I will cover the remaining categories in the fourth and final post, so stay tuned!

Dungeonslayers: Tomb of the Witchking

Stargazer — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:47:16 +0000

Some days ago the 2nd “Dungeon-2-Go” for the Dungeonslayers RPG has been released. While the German version had been available for some time now, Andreas Bösche, Sana D. and Moritz Mehlem finished the English translation just a few days ago.

Following a map they found – or perhaps just by chance – the players find a cave containing the tomb of the witch king Vundraziel, whose disciples followed him into the grave.

The 1-paged PDF is a full adventure for your Dungeonslayers campaign and can be played with characters of level 5 to 8. You can download Tomb of the Witchking at the Dungeonslayers download page. Enjoy!

Dungeonslayers 3.5 released

Stargazer — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:14:37 +0000

Quite some time ago, Christian Kennig has updated his “”old-fashioned roleplaying game” Dungeonslayers to version 3.5. Aside from a new character sheet, the latest version of DS contains some bugfixes and minor updates. Don’t fear, DS 3.5 is fully compatible to DS 3.0!

Today Christan finally uploaded the English translation to the Dungeonslayers site, so English-speaking fans of the free RPG may finally enjoy the updated version! The 20-paged PDF can be downloaded here.

What’s on the horizon?

Stargazer — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:13:24 +0000

Today I want to give you an update on what’s brewing at Stargazer’s World right now. Just today I finished the first draft of a rather long post (1771 words so far) that will go live as a guest post on Philippe Ménard’s blog in a few days. We decided that the topic would make a great post for his blog and perhaps it helps to convince some of his readers to check out my blog too. Actually I am a bit excited since it’s the first guest post I have written for another blog. And ChattyDM is one of the people who helped me a lot since I joined the RPG Bloggers Network last year. His posts and good advice over Twitter or IM always helped me to get over the deepest of slumps.

In the meantime I am reading several RPG books I purchased recently. Alas some of my offline activities are getting into the way. It doesn’t help that I am now actually an elected local politician. I have been in politics for over ten years but it’s the first time I got a parliamentary seat in our town parliament! Yay!

But back to the RPG books I mentioned. I still have to read Eclipse Phase, the new game from Catalyst Game Labs. I got the PDF as soon as it was on RPGNow and printed it out. Alas I haven’t had that much time to read it, yet, probably because I then picked up a copy of Fantasy Craft soon thereafter . Fantasy Craft is a pretty cool d20 fantasy game that was created by the guys behind Spy Craft. If you want to read more about this cool game, you should check out "Life and Times of a Philipine Gamer". But rest assured that I will write reviews of both games when I have finished reading them.

I also got both the hardcover version of Vampire: The Dark Ages and Hunter: The Reckoning from a German blogger’s "Garage Sale" for just a few Euros, so expect some first looks of those games, too. Both books are probably out of print and at least Hunter has a successor called Hunter: The Vigil that sounds pretty interesting. And even if you don’t want to run games using the old World of Darkness rules, you still can use both books as inspiration for campaigns using the new WoD line for example. Hunter (the old or the new version) also sounds like the perfect world for the horror solo game I wanted to run for some time now…

I also started working on a translation of my Dungeonslayers supplement "Fireworks" to English. The booklet contains not only rules for firearms, cannons and explosives for Dungeonslayers but also introduces a completely new class. I don’t know when the translation will be done (this usually takes a lot longer than you think) but expect some previews as soon as I have something to show off.

I am also working on a secret layout project that is way past the initial deadline. Hmm, perhaps I should make this project top priority then…

Aside from all that I also would like to work on a Swords & Wizardry campaign based on the later titles of the Ultima series. But since I am already having too many unfinished projects I will probably put this on the back burner for now.

Phew! This post got much longer than I expected. But you now should have a pretty good overview about my current plans for this blog, so stay tuned. And if you have any comments, questions or advice please let me know! Any comment is highly appreciated!

Give Dungeonslayers a 2nd chance

Stargazer — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:18:34 +0000

I am pretty sure some of you have already read about Dungeonslayers. In November of last year I first read about the project and wrote a short blog post about it. Then the idea of an English translation developed in within a few weeks we translated Dungeonslayers to English, several other versions followed.

Until then several supplements have been released (both in German and English language) and the DS community is busy working on a massive compendium containing new classes, races and optional rules. Last year nobody would have dreamed that DS would gain an international fan base in such short time and a lot of the fans are extremely productive.

So, why should you give DS a second chance? There are several reasons why you should have another look at this fine game:

Dungeonslayers is totally free
It’s free and is even released under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 3.0 license, so you can create your own rules, adventures, etc. based on DS as long as you give proper credit and don’t sell your stuff. I believe this is part of what made DS so appealing to a lot of gamers in the first place
Dungeonslayers is an “old-fashioned RPG”
Dungeonslayers calls itself “old-fashioned”. Although it’s a modern system, it has the feel of a game created in the golden days of roleplaying. Of course it’s not a real “old-school game”, but it’s a good alternative if you prefer an alternative to all the D&D retro-clones.
Dungeonslayers has a strong community
The DS community is very active and if you need some help with some rules, or if you have an idea for some new things you want to add to the game, you’ll find a lot of dedicated people at the official forums willing to help you out. Most of the new supplements are developed by the community and everyone can freely participate in the discussions
Dungeonslayers can do more than just fantasy
Recently Christian Kenning used parts from my “Fireworks” supplement to run a Western adventure. Of course he had to make some change to character creation to allow Western-style characters , but the rest of the rules worked perfectly in this genre. He even once ran a WW2 adventure with just a few modifications. There are some thoughts in the community about creating DS variants for games inspired by H.P. Lovecraft or some kind of SF Dungeonslayers. The possibilities are endless.

Of course DS is not without its flaws, but it’s a pretty awesome for a free game and if you like some old-fashioned monster-bashing fun, you should give DS another chance. And since it’s pretty rules-light it should be perfect for a short session at you favorite RPG convention.

Dungeonslayers updates

Stargazer — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:51:41 +0000

While I was busy with some other projects the Dungeonslayers community was working hard on several new supplements for my favorite “old-fashioned” RPG:

Into the Breach
This supplement adds optional rules to Dungeonslayer combat. The 4-paged PDF gives new rules for initiative, weapons and armor, and fumbles. “Into the Breach” was created by Marcus Bone from New Zealand.
Dungeonslayers 3.0 to 3.5
Some time ago Christian Kennig, added a few rules and errata to DS 3.0 and released it as DS 3.5. Alas the English translation of DS 3.5 hasn’t been released yet, but in the meantime you can download this 2-sided PDF to introduce the changes into your game.
Creature Works
Another nice addition to the game is Creature Works. The 6-sided PDF contains monster cards that contain the statistics for all monsters from the DS rulebook.

A couple of the older supplements like my own Feuerwerk (Fireworks) haven’t been translated into English. If you want to help with the translation, please check out Michael Garcia’s Dungeonslayers wiki or the official DS forums!

Grognardia reviews Dungeonslayers

Stargazer — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:41:45 +0000

Yesterday James Maliszewski of Grognardia has posted a review of Dungeonslayers. He has written a pretty detailed review and gave Dungeonslayers some praise, although he had some problems with the translation. Especially that part of the review hurts me just a little bit, perhaps because I did the bulk of the translation. But of course I am no native speaker and it seems we missed a few odd phrasings. Here’s an excerpt from his review:

I mention the translation at all, because, for its length,Dungeonslayers is in fact a very good game — simple without being simplistic, focused without being narrow, and very much in keeping with the spirit of old school gaming, even if its mechanics owe more to 3e than to OD&D. In this respect, Dungeonslayers reminded me a bit of Microlite20, another excellent minimalist RPG that pares down the bloat of the D20 rules to a more manageable level (and that serves as the basis for the terrific Microlite74 rules). That said, Dungeonslayers is most emphatically a modern game; it’s rules are not old school so much as designed to emulate the freewheeling style of old school games. For that reason, I suspect it’s probably more of interest to gamers who either aren’t interested in going “back to the source” or who never played such games in the first place.

And while you’re at it, check out these Dungeonslayers reviews:

By the way, if you know of other Dungeonslayers reviews please let me know!

Dungeonslayers review @ “Here Be Gamers”

Stargazer — Mon, 11 May 2009 04:48:14 +0000

The roleplaying podcast “Here Be Gamers” has been reviewing Dungeonslayers, the game I helped translating from German to English some weeks ago. If you like listening to RPG podcasts and are still undecided, you should check out episode #5 of “Here Be Gamers”:

Episode 5 – A sailor’s life for me!

A very full episode with heaps of news and general discussion. This episode we talk about a bunch of board games and review The Uncharted Seas by Spartan Games and the free RPG DungeonSlayers.
We also want to make people aware of the very fine www.Drawtism.com.au which is raising awareness of Autism Spectrum Disorders by getting people to play games of Pictionary. Check out this great cause.

I have to admit I’ve never heard of the “Here Be Gamers” podcast before, but it seems fun to listen to. Check it out.

Dungeonslayers: GM shield

Stargazer — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 05:02:18 +0000

There’s now an official Dungeonslayers gamemaster screen called a GM shield (I think there are not enough rules for a proper screen). Here’s the blurb from the official site:

Behold the Dungeonslayers gamemaster shield, the solution for all troubled gamemasters who are constantly fighting with those long and extremely complicated rules!

The gamemaster shield (no, we didn’t have enough material for a real gamemaster screen) lists all important rules and tables for your convenience and can be used to separate the gamemaster’s territory from the players’ part of the table!

You can get the gamemaster shield in our download section.

The Dungeonslayers gamemaster shield makes running DS even easier then before, so what are you waiting for? Put on some chainmail, draw your sword, ready some spells and let’s explore some dungeons!

Le jeu de rôle à l’ancienne and Wikislayers

Stargazer — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:46:16 +0000

The work on Dungeonslayers never stops:

Today Christian Kennig announced that a french translation of Dungeonslayers will be released as soon as the work on the layout is completed.

In the meantime Michael Garcia has created a Dungeonslayers wiki that is meant as a collaboration tool for work on further translations and rule variants. He has already posted some early drafts of the things he’s currently working on. If you want to help you can sign up here.