I had a great time this past weekend at Total Con (https://www.totalcon.com/) as they celebrated their 40th anniversary. They took care of me very well, and I got to run five two-hour sessions of Dungeon Survivor for a total of over 20 people. The players were a mix of friends, people I’d gamed with before at Total, and total strangers. We used the new play mats, which seemed to help people grok the rules and keep track of their dice. I got to experience some new parts of the rules—dispel magic got some use in an encounter with an extremely annoying imp, the fighter who managed to lose dice in both his melee attack and his second attack switched to grappling enemies—, I had some excellent practice improvising how to reward high levels of success, and I was challenged with making a trip through the slums of a merchant city into a “dungeon.” I’ve been thinking about this a good bit—the game is designed for dungeon crawling, but for the purposes of the game, I’m defining a dungeon as a place with ever-present danger and clear boundaries. A forest definitely can be a dungeon, a friend posited making a nautical adventure as one, which I think would work, and Avalon, the city created by the B in Gaming & BS. Thanks to all the great players, and thanks to Total Con!
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