Daniel (@dungeondive) reviews Gunpowder Studios’ Bag of Dungeon, a tile-laying small-box crawl he originally backed on Kickstarter, dropped, and then accepted as a review copy after the publisher reached out via BGG. Two plays in: one win, one loss, and entirely happy with both.
You take one to four heroes (party combinations are flexible: fighter, healer, dwarf, elf each with different HP, action points, and combat values) into a randomly tile-built dungeon, exploring until the last tile is placed. At that point the magic ring is randomised onto a monster space and a red dragon spawns on the exit; recover the ring, slay the dragon, escape. Items are paper-doll chits drawn from a bag and slotted onto character sheets — Daniel’s favourite touch, and an idea he wishes more games would copy.
Combat is opposed dice: roll your hero pool versus the monster’s, difference is damage. Some monsters are vastly above what a starting party can handle, so much of the play is scouting routes and hoping the ring doesn’t land behind a 15-HP brute. The Dragon Scrolls included add modest variety; Daniel argues a 30-card expansion of branching mini-quests would push the game from “good simple” into something more.
Bag of Dungeon sits one step above TSR’s Dungeon! — is that the right ceiling for a small-box crawl, or does the genre demand at least one more layer of decision-making?