Dash in Dungeons (DiD from now on) follows the stereotypical party of adventures crawling through a dungeon killing monsters, avoiding traps and collecting treasure. Don't let that put you off, the game is a lot of fun.

I'll also mention that I know the game's designer, however I didn't know he was producing a game until a mutual friend informed me it was released.

The little box contains everything you'll need to play. No pencils, paper or dice required. It simply contains lots of cards. And I mean lots. Almost 500. These include about fifty containing the rules, another dozen quick reference cards, three for each of the five player classes, a pile of injury cards, magic items, weapons, armour, monsters, traps, rooms, gold and even six piles for the included adventures. The cards are nicely produced in full colour and well presented. Most of the artwork is good. The cards can be a bit text rich (i.e. too many lines on a card) but most don't need to be read fully during play.

One of the players is the Dealer (GM) who reads through the module and determines the actions of the monsters and the results for the players. The remainder of the players take the role of a group of stalwart adventurers. There are five character classes available: Fighter, Dwarf, Wizard, Missionary and Streetman. The latter two correspond with cleric and rogue/thief respectively. the Dwarf is a second but differently skilled fighter. Each player starts with a number of cards that represent them, their items and equipment and skills. Magic spells are also represented by cards and in this case, the player receives a number equal to the number of times they can use that particular spell (so they hand in one card per attempted casting to the Dealer). Each spell has multiple casting options which increase flexibility. When a character finishes a dungeon, they level up and this entails a simple replacement of their character card with the same class at the new level and the addition of any new skill/spell cards. The base game covers level 1, 2 and 3.

DiD follows a role playing theme where by the Dealer describes what the players see/sense and the players say what they are going to do etc. The six sample adventures range from a three card introductory adventure (which is included as part of the demo set available on the DiD web site: http://www.dashindungeons.com/). The other adventures are significantly more substantial, the longest being spread over 15 cards. From those that I've played and run so far, the adventures seem relatively well balanced and a heap of fun for adults and children alike (our three children are aged 8 through 11 and all love the game).

The main task resolution method is to use a deck of thirty four fate cards. These are numbered 1 through 6 plus success and failure in varying quantities. The dealer decides on a task difficulty and the player draws a number of cards up to a maximum of their skill level until either they succeed or a failure card is drawn. If they didn't make the target number for the task difficulty or a failure card was drawn, they fail. Combat is handled using the same deck with the defender making a draw for the attacker's task difficulty. This method works well and is easy to understand although reshuffling does interrupt play a little.

A single game of DiD takes of the order of an hour to maybe an hour and a half. Each of the sample adventures is quick and easy to run as dealer, although the dealer does need a bit of table space to manage the dozen or so piles of cards.


All in all a good light and fun dungeon crawl game. We've played a couple of spontaneous games on an otherwise slow weekend afternoon/evening which bodes well.


- Pauli