As this game has expanded to several items, it is being given its own page.
Quarterlands: Dungeon Running League
Quarterlands: Dungeon Running League – Monsters
Quarterlands: Dungeon Running League – Seasons in the Pit
Quarterlands: Dungeon Running League
Premise: In a comically generic fantasy world, dungeon crawling has become a spectator sport
Summary: Competitive, team-based dungeon-crawl on dynamic board, alternating runs
System: Single die rolls vs. target or vs. contesting roll; various sizes of dice (D4-D10)
Game Complexity: Simple mechanics, a few pages of basic rules, lots of build options
Game Length: 40-60 minutes for both runs
Document Length: 53 pages, including cover, contents, rules, reference sheets, etc.
Models Needed: At least a dozen or so. At any given time there will be 4 adventurers on the field, plus probably a half-dozen monsters of up to five different types.
About: Two teams of four adventurers apiece take turns running through a dungeon, trying to kill monsters and collect treasure to score points. Everyone has four attributes, every attribute is one die, and every test will demand that you roll one of those. The game board consists of pieces that you have printed and cut out or drawn from specific patterns, laid out in an arrangement you choose. As with much of what we do here, the intent was to create a system that minimizes bookkeeping during the game, so that the action doesn’t slow. Also, since some folks suggest that they are intimidated by large rulebooks, I aimed to present this one with only the bare essentials, with optional parts, including the “campaign” rules around which the game is designed, available separately. There will be some pregame work as you design the characters that will constitute your team and the map that will be your dungeon, but once you have these things established, future games have an easy setup. The art in the book is not professional quality, but time was wasting and I needed something to fill the spaces so I could get the project to the public. Updates to the document and expansions to the system are forthcoming.
The button below is for Quarterlands: Dungeon Running League:
Quarterlands: Dungeon Running League – Monsters
Document Length: 9 pages, including cover
About: In order to keep the core rulebook lean and mean, I included only one type of monster in it, but the game was designed with three classes of enemy to bedevil the adventurers. The classic favorites of demons, undead, and cultists are all featured in the game and have their rules printed in this handy booklet, which also reprints the monster rules, since you can never say the same rules in too many different places.
The button below is for Quarterlands: Dungeon Running League – Monsters:
Quarterlands: Dungeon Running League – Seasons in the Pit
Document Length: 51 pages, including cover, contents, appendices, etc.
About: This is the book of “campaign” rules for continuous play in your own league. It features rules for drafts, player development, player salaries, magic items, postseason, awards, player decline, team finances, and much more.
The button below is for Quarterlands: Dungeon Running League – Seasons in the Pit
FAQ
Why Quarterlands?
“Quarterlands” refers to the fictional territory in which the game takes place. The reasons for tagging the game as such are two: First, it provides a unique title. There are hundreds of games out there and many draw their names from a very tight set of vocabulary in an attempt to describe the action of the game and appeal to a certain mindset, as a result of which, it is easy for the playing public to confuse or forget so many similarly-named offerings. Second, it establishes a setting into which I can place other games, one or more of which may already be gestating.
What makes it different from other dungeon crawls?
Dungeon Running League presents dungeon crawling as a sport. Like a sport, it is based on a set of simple and repeatable actions the successes or failures of which in aggregate produce different and competing scores, and over a season manifest records, according to the abilities and fortunes of the participants (in this case, the fictional adventurers and the real players). A traditional dungeon crawl has you strap in for an extended session, generally with numerous and sometimes complex interactions, during which your pieces will make incremental progress toward advancement, and/or be destroyed, and at the conclusion of which you will expect to emerge with pieces changed. Dungeon Running League will have you handle generally the same roster over a set of short engagements, making progress as a team toward championship, or at least individual records and future competition, at the end of which parts of the roster may improve, degrade, or turn over, while you try to keep the core intact.
Why alternating turns?
Two reasons, one more ideological and one more prosaic.
To the first, it means that whenever you are playing, you are focusing on your own performance. In most competitive games, you are operating in a zero-sum scenario: Every yard I gain is a yard you’ve surrendered; every point I score is a point you’ve allowed. There are two items gained by skirting this. 1) I can’t stand poor sports: They are invariably sore winners and sore losers; they have fun only when they’re winning and they can’t handle losing; and they will respond to losing by whining, complaining, and commentary designed to undercut and diminish the other’s victory to protect their own egos. By taking turns, you don’t know if you’re going to win until it’s over. You nip the crybabying in the bud. Everybody can shut up and play.
2) Furthermore, this game was designed around the idea of seasonal play. You stick with the same franchise through its ups and downs, and sometimes your team will be one of the bad ones. You’re going to have a bad season, and even a good sport doesn’t enjoy losing all the time. By having alternating turns, even when the underdog is putting up a poor showing, the player is still accomplishing things — scoring points, adding to adventurers’ personal statistics, chasing records. No one is shut out of playing for bringing the weaker side.
Secondly, because if both teams ran the dungeon concurrently, the game would instantly devolve into a death match. Everyone would build teams just to fight, and then they would run at each other and fight, and the last body standing would go do one thing in the dungeon and win. Every game would end 1-0 with 90% of the participants on stretchers. This isn’t that sort of game.
But couldn’t you—?
No, because then you are creating rules just to prevent people from taking the most efficient route to victory. You are overcomplicating the construction rather than addressing a fundamental flaw. That’s bad design. If you want people to play one way (run the dungeon) and not another (kill each other), you design the game so that the right way is an option and the wrong way isn’t.
This game has material components that require Do-It-Yourself effort from the customer. Why did you start with this?
Yes, in an ideal world, I would have begun production of this game – and operations in general – with funding such that we could create pretty tiles and books and had a swell package with which to make a debut. But that ain’t where we live, Professor Pangloss; we make do with what we got. So why was it first? It was mostly done and fairly thoroughly tested, and I had to start somewhere.