The Dungeon of D

The Dungeon of D is a "print-and-play" (PnP) game, meaning it's not available for sale, but instead you can download PDFs of the components and print them out to make your own copy. In other words, it's an amateur rather than a professional production, but it's worth remembering that "amateur" has its roots in the Latin "amare" (to love); that is, an amateur does what he does for love, not for money. While its rare for any amateur product to reach or exceed professionally-produced products, it can and does happen -- as it has with this game.

Dungeon of D is a dungeon-crawling game; you draw one character card to represent your character, but can encounter others (and learn their special skills) in the dungeon. Your character starts with zero in all stats (strength, intelligence, and agility), but can increase them in play. You also start with 9 "power" cards, which are used in many ways during play -- to overcome obstacles, to determine the power of a monster you fight, to determine what normal or special item you encounter, and what kind of potion you've got. They also represent hit points: you have as many HP as cards currently in your hand.

There are eight levels to the game, and winning means finding the Amulet of D'eugor (read it backwards). Each level contains 9 rooms, one of which is the portal to the next level, but as challenges increase with level, you don't always use it when you find it -- you may want to explore the rest of the level to gain power and items.

There's an inventory system as well -- everything handled with cards, there's no recourse to dice or the like. A clever system of positioning cards under or nearby your character card, and turning them to display different values, suffices for almost everything.

In short, playing The Dungeon of D is something like playing a Rogue-like, but there's also a strong strategy element in choosing which of your Power cards to use (you want to keep the best for critical moments, even at the cost of possibly failing actions in the shorter term).

It's also a beautiful game, mainly because fans of the designer's original edition put together a set of cards that are of professional caliber -- close to Magic: The Gathering's cards in both attractiveness and intelligent information design.

And because it's purely a card game, it's easier to assemble your own PnP version than with most such games -- just print on cardstock and cut apart.

Unsurprisingly, The Dungeon of D has a better-than-7 rating on Boardgamegeek -- which is quite impressive for an amateur effort.