D100 Dungeon Version 3 First Impressions

 

 I recently acquired D100 Dungeon Version 3 by Martin Knight after seeing it on several YouTube videos explaining the game mechanics and I was intrigued by what I saw. Basically, you take on the role of a single warrior, rogue, or mage battling through dungeons trying to complete quests and encountering all sorts of monsters as you go. Typical dungeon crawl fair but I'm one of those fans of dungeon crawls and I can't get enough of them! Click read more below if you'd like to see my initial thoughts of my first play through! (Please note, version 2.2 is available free here at the Geek)

First, character creation. You choose a race, either human, elf, or dwarf. I chose a dwarf and his hero path was Warrior, of course. I always try and start my games with the standard warrior just to get a grip on the rules without diving right into the magic system. I filled in his information on the character sheet, shaded in some equipment, and rolled up randomly some nice armor. Unfortunately, I rolled up a knife for a weapon, which does -2 damage each hit! Hopefully I'll be able to pick up a better weapon pretty quick. Then on to the first training quest! Then, I named him "Kirby Undermountain." Kirby's stats are 65 str, 35 dex, 20 int, and 20 hit points. Typical dwarf!

My first quest was to bring back 3 monster parts from the monster parts loot table. Seemed pretty straight forward. In you go Kirby Undermountain!

Kirby Undermountain

This report was played over a couple of days.

Kirby made his way into the dungeon and his first encounter in the first room was with a spellcaster goblin warlock! I thought, well geeze, I'm going to have to get into the spell section already but thankfully, the Dark Magic is simply a roll of the dice and it says exactly what it does BEFORE you do the monster reaction test. By the way, monster reaction rolls are made at the start of each round of combat. They might attack, flee, or get certain bonuses depending on their hit points or whether you damaged them in combat last turn. I really like this aspect as it breaks up the monotony and really increases the anxiety of the monster running away before you can get that all important quest item! Of course, you can always try and block his escape. In this case, I got lucky and pulverized the warlock with a Mighty Blow (an explosive d6).

One comical moment right out of the gates happened. After defeating that goblin warlock, I obtained a potion off him and promptly fell on it only seconds later due to a belt check during exploration. Belt checks are sometimes called for either in combat or searching and if you roll a number with the corresponding belt item, well, it's destroyed. My stumpy dwarf legs!

After that, it was a big struggle with some zombies and I had lost 1 life already (you get 3 lives per character). Once you're at 0 lives and lose your last hit point, game over man! Most of my initial problems stemmed from having a -2 damage modifier on my knife, I blame the dice gods for that!

I really liked the exploration aspect of the game. After you're done killing and dealing with whatever is in the room, you can make a search roll. I found a couple nice pieces of armor and a shield but no weapon. There are also some hazards too, such as taking damage from traps to simply losing time on the time track. The time track is 12 boxes that you check off as you go and there are little things like burning oil, wandering monster checks, and meal time that you sometimes have to deal with. At the end of the 12 boxes, you refresh it and start it over again. While searching, you can incur a time track penalty consuming resources or even encountering enemies. So time management is something to think about but is not too intensive, as long as you have the oil for it. If not, well, that's another story!

The combat system is pretty good. You roll D100 and if your str/dex (melee/ranged) falls at or below the number rolled, you hit. Here's the kicker though, you also roll a d6 for damage as well as a D10 to show where you hit. You go down to the location you rolled and then you either get a bonus, a penalty, or no bonus. For instance, hitting somebody in the head gives a +3 to damage while hitting someone in the feet is -1 damage. This, again, breaks up the monotony of a dice fest and makes it more exciting.

Lastly, as I don't want to go on and on in this post, you have your armor and shields. At first glance you think "what good is this leather helmet if it doesn't give any sort of defense," at least that's what I thought at first from the videos I watched. Well, in addition to possible armor ratings (marked with an A for armor and S for shield), you can absorb up to 2 points of damage on that piece of armor in exchange for up to 2 pips of damage to the armor. I probably make it sound more confusing than it really is but here's an example:

A monster hits me for 4 damage on my torso. I have a piece of armor with 2 A in that slot, which means I reduce it down automatically by 2. Then I decide, well I'm low on hit points and will absorb 2 more damage to the armor at the cost 2 pips of damage on the armor piece itself. You get 1-6 pips of damage to the piece of armor to fill in and once the last pip is checked, it is destroyed. If you find a piece of armor (or weapon) in the dungeon, you have to roll a 1D3 to see how damaged the armor is when you find it, which is pretty cool. I don't think armor or weapons would be in very good condition sitting there on the dungeon floor!

I have to say it reminded me of my first days in the world of Ultima Online. Getting beat up by weak monsters, scrounging around on the ground, etc. just to survive. That is not a bad thing, as I think if you are on your first quest it should be tough. It does seem like there is a lot of stuff to keep track of but it really didn't feel that way to me.

Thanks for reading folks, hope I didn't bore you!