Daniel (@dungeondive) delivers a tightly scripted Quick Hit on DungeonQuest, which he describes as a reduction of everything he loves about tabletop dungeon crawls: only the essential parts, nothing spare. Each player picks a hero from the four in the box or the dozen more in the Heroes expansion, enters Dragonfire Castle from one of the four corner towers, and on each turn chooses a direction, draws a random tile, and steps onto it. The goal is the dragon’s den at the centre of the board, as much treasure as you can carry, and the exit before the sun sets.
He is candid that the game is brutal, probably unfair, and calculated at roughly a 15% survival rate. Dying on your first turn is possible, and he has watched it happen to several players in the same game. Corridors are safe. Rooms draw from the room deck. Empty rooms can be searched for treasure, secret doors, or a giant centipede dealing d12 damage. Crossfire traps turn your hero into a pin cushion, dead adventurers hide either loot or scorpions in the corpse deck, and monsters offer a choice between fleeing and a game of rock-paper-scissors to the death.
The pattern is draw, move, face the consequences, repeat, and the only question that matters is when your greed gives way. Daniel frames it as a race and a press-your-luck game that plays almost like a party game: set up in moments, sometimes over as fast, and always ready to go again.
Daniel calls DungeonQuest a filler that packs a full dungeon crawl’s punch. Which other crawl gives you the whole experience in under an hour?