Map by Dyson Logos
Today seems like a good day to share. I’m developing a dungeon fantasy roleplaying game intended to broadly work with the adventures and framework of traditional d20 fantasy games (like D&D). It’s a simpler answer to games like Level Up: Advanced 5E, with less randomness than Shadowdark or Dungeon Crawl Classics. For now, I’m calling it Hundred Dungeons.
A note on influences
To be blunt, I started working on this when the fifth edition SRD entered creative commons in early 2023, and you’ll notice right away there’s a chunk of that material here for accessibility. The games I mentioned above have all informed how I’ve gone about assembling this “5E light” approach. You’ll also see some ideas that resemble concepts from FATE, Knave, Uncharted Journeys, Blades in the Dark, the Alexandrian, and Sly Flourish’s Lazy DM products. I’m trying to find the Venn diagram overlap between OSR, 5E, and indie games.
Thanks to Ben Milton, Steven Lumpkin, David Perry, Mike Mearls, Rodney Thompson, Jeremy Crawford, Kelsey Dionne, Cam Banks, Jon Harper, Rob Donaghue, Fred Hicks, Michael E. Shea, Teos Abadía, Shawn Merwin, Justin Alexander, Eric Menge, E. Gary Gygax, and Dave Arneson, all of whose work and instruction inspired this creation.
Introducing Hundred Dungeons (this post)
The Wild (wilderness exploration)
The Dark (dungeon exploration)
Recuperation (resting and downtime)
HUNDRED DUNGEONS
This is a game in which players take on the role of audacious fantasy figures who venture into hidden places and draw forth awe-inspiring magic. It’s more sword-and-sorcery than high fantasy, more level-headed than silly — and while it emphasizes emergent play over pre-planned scenarios, the goal is for it to be usable in running existing fantasy adventures.
This is a dungeon game — that is to say, it’s based on d20 dungeon fantasy and the stories that inspired that popular format. But a dungeon is more than an underground chamber.
You know dungeons. They’re dark, dangerous places with nooks and avenues that tempt you to explore them; places of sudden death and sudden wonder, where cunning and boldness mingle with the luck of the fates to determine who makes it out. You may escape alive, but no one escapes unchanged.
A dark tunnel beneath a castle is a sort of dungeon. So is a haunted wood, or a mountain pool filled with the forgotten dreams of a dead civilization. Your mind can be a dungeon. There are hundreds and more dungeons that take every form we can imagine. In this game you explore them, and create a story with your choices that will surprise everyone — even the Game Moderator.
Yes, there’s one player whose role is to have final say over the game, a judge or facilitator. We call them the Game Moderator, or GM. They’re tasked with curating the experience with the players.
This is important because a collection of words in a book can’t by themselves create meaningful gameplay for a group of humans. The people themselves create the gameplay with their interpretation, their choices, and creative contributions. The GM does all of that, with the additional responsibility of overseeing the structure and tone of the game. If they learn the rules, that’s cool too, but it’s not the most important part.
Players get to make choices as their characters, and those choices impact the game. The GM takes those choices into account and contributes their own, but almost more important than any other responsibility the GM has is the job of ensuring that the world around the characters cares about those choices and responds to them.
If you’re the GM, run the game as you please. Hack its rules apart and mix them with other similar or different things. Just remember that this isn’t my game — it’s not even entirely yours. It belongs to and reflects the player characters who inhabit and shape it.
THE PREMISE
Hundred Dungeons is a game with several goals. It was made from the bones of other d20 fantasy games, so the first goal is that it remain familiar to players who like those games.
The second goal is to preserve the possibility of low fantasy within the 5E sphere. Not every class is magical. There isn’t a mountain of wild player options. Hundred Dungeons makes space for both magical heroic characters and those who rely on sheer bravery and exceptional training to accomplish their goals.
Lastly, this game seeks to empower the players to make rulings that work at the table without creating stumbling blocks of ambiguity. The rules attempt to be direct, tidy, and easy to apply.
HOW TO PLAY
You have a character (even if it’s just a few phrases on a notecard), and the Game Moderator has a scenario (even if it’s just a couple bullet points). The GM describes the circumstances, environment, and events. Your character navigates that scenario through your descriptions: “I’ll examine the altar,” “Let’s chase that thief,” or “I call upon the spirits of the dead.”
As you respond to the scenario with your own descriptive declarations, the GM responds again to describe consequences and developments. You then respond to those, and so on in a cycle through which the story of your character’s exploits grows and advances.
You could stop right here and play the game. Literally that rule above is the only one that matters. Obviously there’s more to the game, but it’s all technically optional. You could describe a castle to a 3-yr-old, ask them what they’d do in it, and if they respond with a choice, you just played Hundred Dungeons.
THE DICE
Dice come into play when you want to resolve tension. It sounds hyperbolic to say, “only roll the dice when you can’t stand not rolling them,” but it’s true that dice resolve tension. But tension is where the fun of a story is, so we want to keep it going as long as we can until a satisfying resolution presents itself.
So we roll the dice when the consequences of your choices are no longer obvious. You don’t roll because you’ve got a great bonus in that task, or just to get the players rolling for fun. We roll dice when we want something to rock the narrative — and we embrace the result whatever it is.
There are three broad kinds of rolls in Hundred Dungeons: ability rolls, effect rolls, and table rolls.
Ability rolls use a 20-sided die (we call it a “d20”). Roll the die, add the ability score called for from your character (usually a number between -1 and +5), and announce the result. The GM will assess that number (often with a “difficulty” in mind—a number at which positive consequences happen) and declare the consequences.
Effect rolls use other types of dice: d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12 (the number reflecting how many sides the die has). Effects will influence the story differently depending on the circumstance, but include things like the amount of damage by a weapon or how much a character heals during a rest. Usually effect rolls are stated with more specific terms, such as “damage roll.”
Table rolls generally require percentile dice (abbreviated as d100). These are two 10-sided dice, one of which has results listed in tens (10, 20, 30, etc.). Roll both 10-sided dice and add them together to get a number between 1 and 100. In a table roll, you’re usually comparing the d100 result to a table of random options. The GM makes these more than any other players.
ROLL AN ABILITY
When you roll an ability, you roll the die, add the ability score, and compare it to a number (representing the difficulty). When we say “roll Intelligence at 12” that means “make an Intelligence roll — the result must be a 12 or higher to succeed.”
If no difficulty is provided for a roll, the GM either decides on a difficulty between 5 and 25 based on the circumstances (25 being the most difficult), or looks at the result and interprets the consequences based on how high it is.
To make a roll mighty, roll two dice and keep the higher result. In a weak roll, do the same, but keep the lower result.
The ability scores are:
Strength: Bodily power, athletic training, raw physical force
Dexterity: Agility, reflexes, and balance
Constitution: Health, stamina, and bodily resilience
Intelligence: Mental acuity, accuracy of recall, and the ability to reason
Wisdom: Awareness, intuition, and attunement to your environment
Charisma: Force of personality, sense of identity, and social ease
Sometimes the GM will allow for a group roll, in which multiple players roll an ability at the same time, tracking the number of successes. If at least half of the characters succeed, that entire group succeeds.
SKILLS
In Hundred Dungeons, skills allow you to add your renown to an ability roll. Renown begins at 1 and increases as you gain levels. Skills cover things like equipment training, areas of study, and other learned expertise. There is no complete list of all skill options. They’re not an optimization tool.
Whenever a skill is relevant to your ability roll, announce it and get the bonus — but only add the bonus once for a given roll.
Some skills are of your choosing, which means you decide write in a skill that’s unique to your character, or use one that appears elsewhere in the game. Skills should be specific enough to make your actions distinct, but not so narrow that they rarely come up. Your GM will help you strike a good balance.
RENOWN
Characters advance in level from 1 to 10, representing their increased prowess. As level increases, they’ll also go from renown 1 to renown 5, representing their overall stature as legendary figures.
INSPIRATION AND TRAITS
Hundred Dungeons is filled with traits: descriptions that attach to story elements, such as a character, location, item, or action. You’ll invoke them to spend or receive inspiration. Traits differ from skills in that they define part of your character’s fundamental identity.
Whenever a player rolls a 1 on a d20, that player chooses one player to become inspired. Inspiration doesn’t stack: A character is either inspired or not. You can track inspiration with a token that can be passed back and forth between you and the GM, or simply mark it on or off on your character sheet.
While you’re inspired, you can call on a trait to help you at any point, turning over your inspiration to the GM to:
Reroll a die
Take a second action during a turn
Once per session, add a temporary element to the scenario
Likewise, while you’re not inspired, the GM can hand you inspiration to invoke a trait from a character or the scenario — and more often than not, this will make your situation worse.
Rerolling a die is what it sounds like. Pick one die you just rolled and reroll it. This can be after the GM says you failed, but it should be before the story moves forward or someone else acts.
The option to take a second action during a turn can be applied in the Wild, Combat, or any other mode of play where actions are declared in turns. We’ll discuss detailed rules for turns in the various modes of play later.
When you add a temporary element to the scenario, you take the reins of the story for a moment, adding a useful item, location, person, or circumstance. The GM approves your description and integrates it into the action. These elements usually remain useful for an encounter or part of a session, then fade. They’re less about solving problems and more about making circumstances favorable for your course of action. The GM shouldn’t allow temporary elements to become persistent benefits.
Examples
Greghen the Dwarf is scanning dark tunnels for enemies and traps. His player invokes his Dwarf of Furrow Mine trait to find a lost miner who knows something useful. The GM approves, collects his inspiration, and describes the miner in detail, who knows where the old shafts lead to an inhabited chamber.
Meliad the Paladin pleads with the priest of the Eyeless One to release her companions. She invokes her Unbreakable Conviction trait to narrate that the priest is touched by her unwavering faith. The GM narrates how the priest weeps before her and unlocks the prison door.
Yorguth is lost in the Sands of Twilight without a guide. The player invokes their trait Guided by Visions to have an ancestor’s specter lead them to a ruined caravan whose map is miraculously pinned beneath a dead camel.
MODES OF PLAY
There are four modes of play in Hundred Dungeons: the Wild, the Dark, Combat, and Recuperation. Each mode has its own method for determining who has initiative, but turns are taken around the table in each.
The Wild hosts journeys over large distances in which characters explore, endure, and supply. In the Wild, a round represents 8 hours of activity.
The Dark is home to mystery, danger, and strange encounters. Characters investigate, delve, and pursue specific objectives. In the Dark, a round represents 10 minutes of activity.
Combat is where life, death, and honor hang in the balance, where characters attack, intimidate, negotiate, or otherwise confront hostile forces. In Combat, a round represents 20 seconds of activity.
Recuperation is a time for characters to divide and store resources, rest, and engage in non-urgent activities more flexibly. Rounds in Recuperation usually cover a specified number of days.
EXPLORING THE ENVIRONMENT
By its nature, adventuring involves interaction with the environment. The GM at times describes in general terms how you move through space and how long it takes. When you need to know more precisely, the GM uses the rules for each mode of play to adjudicate.
Your movement is walking by default. Characters attempting to climb steep surfaces, swim, or pass through difficult terrain move at half their normal speed and may be required to make an ability roll. Some game elements may grant climb, fly, or swim speeds to freely allow that mode of travel at the speed provided. Additionally, some creatures can burrow. If a creature teleports, it moves from one places to another instantly without moving through any of the intervening space. Its destination must be unoccupied, or it gets moved to the nearest unoccupied space.
If you use multiple speeds (such as walking and then flying) during a turn, subtract the distance you’ve already moved from the new speed.
For example, if Morrigan moves her typical 60 feet in a Combat, and then casts the fly spell (gaining “fly 120 ft.”) she can fly another 60 feet, not the full 120 feet granted by the spell.
DIFFICULT TERRAIN
In any mode of play, difficult terrain halves the speed at which you can move. Different types of difficult terrain don’t stack.
Hundred Dungeons character sheet
SIZE
Your size is Medium by default. Medium creatures are between 2 and 9 feet tall. They have a reach of 5 feet, and occupy a 5-foot space.
Small creatures are up to 2 feet tall, and can share space with other creatures. They must share a space with something to reach it.
Large creatures are between 9 and 15 feet tall. They have a reach of 5 feet unless otherwise stated, and occupy a 10-foot space.
Huge creatures are between 15 and 25 feet tall. They have a reach of 10 feet, and occupy a 15-foot space.
Gargantuan creatures are between 25 and 40 feet tall. They have a reach of 10 feet unless otherwise stated, and occupy a 20-foot space.
Colossal creatures are so massive they function as terrain in addition to their normal attributes.
Generally creatures larger than Small don’t share space unless all those creatures are willing. To move past or through an unwilling creature’s space, roll Strength or Dexterity at 10 + their Strength. Willing or unwilling, other creatures’ space is treated as difficult terrain.
Creatures smaller than Colossal can squeeze to occupy space as if they were one size smaller. While squeezing, their attacks and Dexterity are weak, and attacks against them are mighty.
CARRYING EQUIPMENT
The equipment you carry, your load, is limited to a number of slots. By default, you have load slots equal to 10 + double your Strength score (minimum of 10). This can be increased with containers (see Gear, Tools, and Containers). Items take up a set number of load slots, described under Items and Equipment. If your slots fill up, you can’t move until you reduce your load.
JUMPING
You can jump a number of vertical feet equal to your Strength score. To determine how far you jump horizontally, roll Strength and round the result up to the nearest 5. That’s the distance in feet you jump. If you run for 10 or more feet leading up to the jump, make the roll mighty. Spend 1 foot of movement for each foot you jump.
FALLING
If you have no surface to support you, did not jump, and cannot fly, you fall straight down for up to 250 feet. If this doesn’t take you to a surface, you fall another 500 feet on each following turn. When you strike a surface after falling, you fall prone and take 1d6 bludgeoning damage for every 10 total feet you fell.
If you take 100 damage or more from a fall, you begin dying.
SUFFOCATING
You can hold your breath for a number of minutes equal to half your Constitution score (minimum of 20 seconds, or until the end of your next turn in Combat). If you don’t get a breath before then, you die. Each time you take damage while suffocating, add 20 seconds to the count of how long you’ve held your breath.
VISION AND SENSES
Light sources can be dim or bright. Bright light always sheds an equal amount of dim light beyond it. For example, a torch sheds 20 feet of bright light and 20 further feet of dim light. This is occasionally abbreviated as, “Sheds light (20 ft. bright / 20 ft. dim).” The GM is responsible for adjudicating where light sources end, and which effects apply.
In dim light, ability rolls relying on sight are weak. This ranges from Intelligence rolls searching for hidden doors to Dexterity rolls to avoid a spell effect.
If there is no light source in an area, it is in darkness, which creates areas of obscurement. Obscurement makes everything in it invisible to creatures without any special senses to counteract it.
The following special senses exist, generally restricted to non-player characters and monsters unless granted to a player character by magic. Where these senses appear, they function within a particular range, given in feet.
Blindsight: Allows a creature to sense all creatures and objects, regardless of visibility.
Darkvision: Allows a creature to see in any lighting conditions with no obscurement.
Infravision: Allows creatures to see heat levels as a spectrum of color, thereby spotting flame, lava, warm-blooded creatures, and other obvious heat sources regardless of obscurement.
Nightvision: Allows a creature to see in dim light as though it were bright light.
Tremorsense: Allows creatures to sense vibrations in surfaces, and thus discover creatures also in contact with that surface, if they are in range.
Truesight: Allows creatures to see:
Areas in normal and magical darkness, ignoring the effects of obscurement
Invisible creatures and objects
Visual illusions, automatically detecting and avoiding them
The original form of shapechangers and creatures transformed by magic
The Ethereal Plane, a realm of spirits and visions
CONCENTRATION
Tasks that span more than one turn sometimes require you to concentrate. You can only concentrate on one task at a time. If something threatens your concentration, such as suffering damage or being shoved, roll Constitution at 10. If you fail, your concentration ends.
DAMAGE
Hit points are a number that represents your health. When you suffer damage, subtract that number from your hit points. If you reach 0 hit points, you begin dying. The dice rolled to determine damage are specified by each weapon, spell, or other harmful effect.
If an effect, such as a trap or spell, inflicts damage on multiple targets at once, roll the damage once and apply the same amount to each target. Damage is inflicted in types, which may be reduced or trigger other effects, depending on circumstances. The damage types are:
Acid: Corrosive, dissolving materials
Bludgeoning: Blunt force attacks, falling, constriction
Cold: Contact with ice, sudden or sustained low temperatures
Fire: Flames and extreme heat
Force: Magical energy focused into a damaging form
Lightning: Electric blasts and shocks
Necrotic: Disease, energies that kill flesh or sap life force
Piercing: Stabs, bites, and impaling
Poison: Venomous or toxic substances
Psychic: Mental attack and psionic pain
Radiant: Light, searing divine energy
Slashing: Chopping and laceration
Thunder: Concussive bursts of sound
Damage is categorized as magical or nonmagical, depending on its source.
RESISTANCE AND VULNERABILITY
Targets with resistance to a type of damage halve that damage. Targets with vulnerability take double.
Resistance and vulnerability are applied after all other adjustments to the damage inflicted. They only apply to the actual number by which your hit points would be reduced. Multiple sources of resistance and vulnerability don’t stack, and the two effects cancel each other out when both present.
Resistance and Poison: Characters can be resistant to the poisoned condition, making their ability rolls to avoid it mighty — but characters are never resistant to poison damage, only immune. In general, poison either affects you or doesn’t.
YOUR CHARACTER
To play, you need a character who can enter the scenario. Character creation in Hundred Dungeons is quick. It isn’t meant to be a strategic or mathematical exercise.
You can use a character sheet to record your character, but any medium will do. It could be a note on a device, a scrap of paper, or an illustrated page of a sketchbook. Follow these steps:
1. CHOOSE A CLASS
A character’s class is the most impactful choice you’ll make. Each class comes with a set of exploits that unlock as you gain experience (XP) and grow in might and status. There are 10 classes: Acrobat, Bard, Berserker, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Warrior, and Wizard.
At level 1, your class grants you one or more exploits. It also determines:
An ability score to increase by 1
Your number and type of skills
Hit dice and starting hit points
Starting gear
One trait you gain per renown
Spell list, if any
The classes are described in detail later.
2. ASSIGN ABILITY SCORES
Your broad capabilities as a character are measured by your ability scores. They are: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.
When you start a new character, assign one of these numbers to each ability:
2, 2, 1, 1, 0, -1. These are your ability scores. Consider putting a score of 2 in the ability increased by your class.
A detailed breakdown of abilities appears later.
3. WRITE IN YOUR BACKGROUND TRAITS
Every character’s background includes three traits that you consider essential to that person. You write these aspects of your background. Like with skills, traits should be specific enough to give your character a place in the world, but not so narrow that they’ll never come up in the story. Your GM will help you strike a good balance.
Your background consists of 3 traits:
A lineage: ancestry, culture, or personality
An alignment: ideal, allegiance, or former occupation
An asset: connection or resource (non-magical, non-transferable)
Example:
Elf of Sunset Isle
Devoted Healer
Scholar at the Tamden Observatory
4. PURCHASE GEAR
Your character begins the game with a small assortment of gear from your class. You can spend silver to buy anything else you want from the equipment lists.
5. RECORD Combat Stats
Last, you’ll want to finalize some reference numbers.
Hit Points are a measure of your health. At level 1, your hit point maximum is the highest value on your hit die + your Constitution score.
Defense is 10 + your Dexterity score. If you equip armor, it’s 10 + the armor’s defense bonus.
Combat Initiative is rolled at the start of Combat, using a d6 + your Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom scores.
Hit Dice are used to heal hit points during rests. Yours are listed in your class description.
Speed is 60 feet by default, but some exploits and other effects can modify this.
Attack Bonus is added when you roll an ability to attack, and changes depending on the weapon or spell. If you’re skilled with the weapon you’re using, it’s the ability score + your renown, like other skilled ability rolls.
6. DESCRIBE YOUR CHARACTER
Give them a name, describe their appearance — whatever spurs your creativity and makes you feel invested.
EXPERIENCE AND GAINING LEVELS
When you accomplish your goals during play, you gain experience (or XP). The GM will tell you how much you get and when.
Level represents your overall prowess as an adventurer. You start at level 1, a novice of your trade. The highest level in Hundred Dungeons is level 10, which sees you master all the exploits of your chosen class.
You gain a new level when you’ve gained XP equal to that level (or the total levels you’ll have if you gain a level in a second or third class). Then clear your XP. You don’t gain multiple levels from one instance of receiving experience.
Each time you gain a level, you:
Add 1 to your hit dice, then roll that die and add your Constitution score — add that to your hit point maximum
Add the exploits listed under your new level in your class’s description
If your renown increased, gain +1 to an ability score of your choice, and record the new trait listed on your class’s table
Look over your character sheet and adjust your attack bonuses and defense based on your new exploits and ability scores
NEXT TIME
Thanks for checking out the core rules of Hundred Dungeons. Next I’ll be sharing rules for the four modes of play (the Wild, the Dark, Combat, and Recuperation), then classes and my approach to designing them. It’s fairly familiar territory for the 5E player, but with a number of specific changes that improve quality of life and adjust the game’s approach to magic and spells. Notably, there are five predominantly martial classes (acrobat, berserker, ranger, rogue, and warrior) and five predominantly magical classes (bard, cleric, druid, paladin, and wizard). I’m excited to give a peek at these!
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at https://dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
Hundred Dungeons is created and written by Graham Ward © 2023
Permission granted to copy for personal use only.
