Dungeonquest - It's a Classic!

One of my passions is the Games Workshop Bookcase format games of the 1980s.  I am gradually completing my collection and one of the games I absolutely had to have was Dungeonquest.

Dungeonquest (or should I call it Dragon Keep)

Drakborgen was designed by two Swedes Jakob Bond and Dan Glimme and licensed to a range of board game companies.  Games Workshop picked up the license for the UK and sold it as Dungeonquest.

The game is essentially a race to the center of a randomly generated maze where you grab some of the Dragon's hoard and try to get out before the dragon wakes up.  As you generate your path you will encounter variouos obstacles, dead ends, traps, monsters designed to halt your progress or rob you of valuable turns.  

There is a heavy push your luck element to the game and whilst on your way out of the dungeon you won't have to face any of the monsters you encountered getting to the dragon, your path out may have been blocked requiring you to start finding a new path and encountering new monsters and traps.

Man, is this game stacked against you.  I remember playing it once back in the 80s but I didn't remember how hard it is to win.  It's a lot of fun 

It's a component fest with lots of cards and tiles, 4 character models in really cheap hard styrene and plenty of plastic cones which were the defacto stat tracking counter of the day.  The component quality is classic Games Workshop, thin as you like cardboard that just wouldn't fly in todays boardgame market.

Replayability is high because every game will have a different collection of tiles in your path.  Yes, the choice of monsters is limited, but the ingenious combat mechanism means that the monsters react differently and your combat outcome will vary depending on the cards you and the monster play against each other.  

Art was provided by Gary Chalk (creator of the Lone Wolf books) and it is very much of its era.

Re-releases and Immitators

There have been numerous reissues of this game.  It was rereleased in Sweden as Drakborgen Legenden in 2002 and in the 2010s Fantasy Flight teamed up to reissue a few of the Games Workshop bookcase games they chose Dungeonquest alongside Fury of Dracula and Warrior Knights (probably the three best games of the series).

Drakon is another random tile laying dragon heist boardgame which Fantasy Flight re-released back in 2006 as part of their silverline game range.  A super simple game which turns it from being a race to the center to get to the dragon into a race against the other players and avoid the dragon.  I also own this and for a time it was a go-to filler game if our friday night sessions started late or ended early.  It's a quick game and is so easy to pick up for new players.

RPG Inspiration

The tile laying aspect of this game really floats my boat.  I'm a big fan of the dungeonmorphs concept and have created a bunch of my own tiles over the years and even contributed some art to a kickstarter and the davesmapper project.

It would be childs play to use the tiles to map out a random dungeon for use in any role playing game.  Much quicker than the famous Appendix A - Random Dungeon Generator found in the Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG) in my opinion.  I might even have a go myself one day. 

Every year at Dragons Keep Roleplay Club we host a memorial trophy in honour of members who are no longer with us.  One year, I actually went to the trouble of building a 2d cardboard version of the game but with a simplified combat system and character generation which used playing cards.

Out of The Abyss - The final Session... or is it?

Tonight sees the final session of our journey through the Underdark at Dragons Keep Roleplay Club as we play the module Out of The Abyss.

Will we continue our exploration in a future rotation.  I certainly hope so, but until that time here is a chronological list of all our sessions:

• Out of the Abyss: Part 1 - Janek's Story
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 2 - Escape from Velkynvelve
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 3 -The Darklake
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 4 -The Princess Heresy
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 5 -A Two-headed Demon Giant
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 6 -Secret Missions
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 7 - An Audience with a Dragon
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 8 -The Whorlstone Tunnels
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 9 - Weird Water
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 10 -The Grey Ghosts
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 11 -Kasra's Minions
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 12 - Bupido the Butcher
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 13 - Burn Butcher, Burn
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 14 -The Black Obelisk
  
• Out of the Abyss: Part 15 -

Session Blogging - Why I Bother Recapping my RPG Sessions

I have mentioned before that I have been the defacto session writer for our group at Dragons Keep Roleplay Club for some time now.  It takes up a good portion of my weekend but here are a few reasons why I do it.

5 Reasons Why I Write Session Reports

1. It Engages Me - Yes, that's right, if I am scribbling notes througout the game I am completely focussed on what is happening at the table.  I've been roleplaying on and off for 40 years and it's easy to become blase and become distracted by the joking, camaraderie and snacking that usually fills up at least 50% of the game.

2. It Helps the GM - Most sessions begin with a recap of what happened in the previous week.  I have witnessed several instances of the GM logging onto the last session and skimming through their own game and pulling out the salient points.  It helps their worldbuilding consistency as there's always a reference to NPCs we have interacted with (especially those created on the fly).  It helps them to remember the important details of who said what and to whom.  

When I am the GM the session report is formed from my game notes and I get the players to read the report before we start the next session.  That way I don't have to do as much of a recap to the previous session and we start playing faster.

3. It Helps Players - Real-life happens and it is a more common occurence as we get older that we have to forgoe our game night to deal with other priorities.  Having a session blog helps missing players to pick up where they left and still feel like a valued member of the group.

4. Player Engagement - Players like to read about their exploits every week.  I know of at least one player in our group who loves to see their quotes in print.  They know that they can always send me an update or an amendment if they want to highlight something or heaven forbid if I got it wrong

5. Free Content for my Blog - A selfish reason, I know, but it hardly makes me a monster.  I love the fact that I have weeks worth of sessions on my blog which I reminisce about in my dotage.  I've also published session reports on RPGGeek, so if you are a member send me a gamebuddy request.

Why Don't You? 

It's surprisingly easy, why don't you have a go yourself, you just might like it.  If you are already blogging your sessions, stick a link in the comments below as I would love to share them with my readers.

The Scribe, by George Cattermole - Art UK

One Year On - Dragons Keep Roleplay Club

It's 2022 and the COVID-19 debacle rages on.  One of the casualties of the Coronavirus pandemic was my old club.  The pandemic was a catalyst for division and greatly reduced attendance as fear and panic spread across the membership, it ceased to function in any meaningful way.

Pulling the Plug

This club had been founded on the principles of democracy, every member having an equal say in how the club was run.  Unfortunately this led to internal politics when most members just wanted to turn up, play games and have fun.  Running that club became a constant battle of personalities, skullduggery and in-fighting.  The pandemic was a cover story for usurpers to spread rumour, lies and deceit in private channels in order to facilitate a popular uprising.  

Unfortunately, the patient was considered to be unsaveable and the tough decision to pull the plug had to be made.  This enabled the membership to ultimately make their own decisions about how they wanted to roleplay going forward.  The club was dead, long live the new club.

Sacrifice

Running a club is a thankless task and I have played my small part in helping to run numerous roleplaying clubs over the last 30 years.  The problems are diverse but mainly revolve around organising games so that everyone has something to play.  Clubs evolve organically, expanding and retreating as the winds of fortune blow and the real-life priorities of members compete for their valuable time and energy.

It takes a certain amount of sacrifice to run a club and a management team that can commit to doing what the club needs rather than what they need as a player or a games master for the good of the group.

I have learned a hard lesson in that a club is not a democracy.  Democracy empowers people with a voice and a platform upon which to speak their opinions.  However, without effective rules, governance and constitutional principles it can easily turn to Anarchy.  For a club to thrive it has to have strong leadership and direction, it has to have doers and not talkers, because ideas are ten a penny and talk is cheap.  A thriving club is one where everyone is engaged and they want to come to enjoy themselve and not to talk about politics or how they could run things better if only they had a chance.

Green Shoots of Recovery 

January of 2021 saw the birth of a new club, Dragons Keep Roleplay Club, founded by a small group of 6 people with the core principle of "being excellent to each other" and fostering engagement.    The management team run things for the benefit of members and the members only duty is to make sure that they and their fellow players are engaged and enjoying themselves.
 

One Year Later

I am happy to say that we have exploded in size and the membership has swelled to  around 25 members and every one of them turning up every Friday night.  We have gone from an online only existence, playing our first games during lockdown via Zoom and Roll20 to being once again an IRL club with 5 different games on offer.

We hosted our first Games Day and Christmas Party which was very well attended by members and a huge amount of games were played, turkey consumed and sprouts scowled at.  

 

 

We have produced a stable funding platform to guarantee our future.  We now have a merch store so that members can digitally pay their subs and help to fund the club through their purchases, a website which punches well above it's weight, a management team who understands what the members want and actively make that happen.

 

I am proud to say that we have created a space where people can put their work-a-day worries aside and for 4 hours escape to worlds of wonder safe in the knowledge that the people around them have their best intentions at heart. 

However, the most important thing is that this club is full of excellent people who are the most engaged bunch of players and gamesmasters that I have ever had the pleasure to call my friends.  Here is a toast to the future and the roads we will journey together.

Fellow Dragons... Live long and prosper.