Daniel (@dungeondive) takes a look at In Ruins by M. Allen Hall, a dungeon-building RPG for one to six players that tells the story of a single castle across three phases: you build it, you ruin it, and then rival factions fight over what’s left. He’s only played solo, but suspects it really shines at two or three, where the competitive, semi-cooperative edge has someone to push against.
Phase one is lore and construction. You answer questions — the castle’s name, who built it, how the common folk feel — then lay out nine rooms per faction off a starting 8x8 throne room. A hand of five playing cards drives it: card value sets room size, and every door connecting a new room to an old one earns builder points, spendable on L-shapes, corridors, stairs, or a secret room only your faction knows about. Phase two spans 300 years in three eras, each with a rolled cause of ruin, and here only suits matter — diamonds damage, clubs maul, spades destroy, hearts repair. Phase three is the land grab, cards flipped to claim rooms, layer values totalled for score.
His own castle, Gloom Shade Citadel, gets a full necromantic-cult-then-bandits-then-drought history, and that’s the tell: he came for a game and stayed for the story. Thirty-two pages, and he calls it more game than he expected from an activity-shaped genre.
Daniel notes these dungeon-building games often feel more like activities than games. Where’s the line for you between a creative exercise and something you’d call a game?