Today, we tried something new at the PaRoll event by Kabilang Dungeon. Apart from it being our comeback to running the game at events, we tried a dungeon crawl. We already know this game works as a modern roleplaying game for political intrigue, open war and other adventure scenarios, but does it work as a dungeon crawl with miniatures (we borrowed from someone's Dragonbane set), maps and dungeon tiles.

Five adventurers made their way into a cursed dungeon that was said to delve into the underworld to retrieve the soul of a princess they were all responsible for in their own ways. This scenario features a fully procedurally generated dungeon (via dice roll) too. There were twists, turns, several dungeon rooms and, funnily enough, an entire town of friendly goblins that forgot their hatred for outsiders over generations of being stuck underground.

So does this game work as a dungeon delver.

Short answer: Sure.

Long answer: Yes, but...

It's not gonna be Pathfinder or D&D. This isn't about what your characters can do and familiarizing yourself with spells, feats, multipliers and mathematical acrobatics. This isn't about detecting traps, fighting monsters and collecting treasure... yes we did do a lot of that, but that isn't where the rules of the game played their part. The creativity came in when the players worked through their character archetypes to accomplish tasks. Do I generate more narrative control if I face this minotaur head on, or if I sneak up to it? Will facing the threat or going around it get me that destiny point and milestone? Can I hit my story milestone by going into a flashback to the death of my laboratory assistant while we cook this burnt up minotaur?

It was never about how the characters solved their problems, but why. Why are we doing this? Why risk my life?

The highlight of the game wasn't the fight with the minotaur or the big boss battle against Cerberus (I know it's a manticore but we didn't have a three headed dog figure, okay?) and his undead minions. What the players remembered at the end was walking through an empty prison cell only to see themselves and their loved ones behind bars for crimes they committed, hearing about dead loved ones from the goblin tribe that met them in the past or even turning a dead minotaur into dungeon bulalo and sharing stories.

Even the death that happened towards the end happened rather quickly, but its consequences were felt when the party returned home with the princess' soul but realized they had no necromancer to return it to the body. Tears were shed, relationships were mended, and sinners were redeemed.

If I were to describe how it felt, it was more like Final Fantasy where the dungeon was merely a plot device to tell a story about sacrifice, faith, redemption and forgiveness rather than being the center of the gameplay like you'd see in some D&D modules. The problem solving elements and combat situations still existed, but the conflicts, arguments, confessions and character arcs took center stage.

We saw a lot in that dungeon; the thief who discovered motherhood, the oathbreaker knight who redeemed his promise, the charlatan mage who undid their crime, the queen who reclaimed her kingdom and the necromancer who gave their life to finally cast one good spell. Every room peeled away at them until they faced their vulnerabilities at the final boss fight.