DUNGEONMOR: Expanded

2025 was filled with end-of-the-year chaos in both work and life. And additional complexity was added when I started play testing my fall project, The Cold Silence Within Shadows. The SHADOWDARK version was pretty straightforward, but as I got into the DUNGEONMOR translation I received some new feedback from new play testers. It wasn't about the adventure, but about DUNGEONMOR itself. To an already challenging fall season, I found myself chasing the proverbial rabbit down many deep holes. Two concerns appeared among readers and players: Gritty Play and Magic Use. Being tied to the game's player-facing core mechanic, the possibility of feeling punished by one's own abilities and dice rolls became a focus. Originally presented as The RPG That Fits On A GM Screen, its rules left this looming doom to stalk players, causing many to fear for their characters' lives. Dialing that tension up to "11" was a fundamental RPG metagame change that DUNGEONMOR and its sibling RPG, Infinite Black's NOCTURNUS, shared. These two games work very differently on the table from, well, any other RPG I can think of. They share some similarities with PbtAs, which should be pretty obvious when reading the core mechanic. But both games take that initial PbtA inspiration and depart drastically, creating a moment-by-moment style game flow of player/event/NPC interaction that really requires a different tactical and strategic grokking when it comes to conflict. Just ask any of my players from 2025's GenCon for NOCTURNUS' intro adventure, The Silence At Blackwood Keep. Now add in this rising consideration of being punished by dice rolls and a character's own abilities and I began to grow more concerned about a player's risk of feeling "beat up." So yeah, I spent a whole lot of time doing additional test playing and rules writing to give players direct agency over these things. The game works the same as it always has, but the drawback rule has been given additional definition. Previously, rolling a natural 1, 2, or 3 on the d20 meant "if something is likely to go wrong, it does." This was especially true of magic. Originally magic was meant to serve as its own risk-taking mechanic, allowing players an option to trade risk for the possibility of miraculous results to do so. Magic was never meant to be commonplace, the game taking an OSR direction with its use. But it was too easily perceived as a typical player option, no different than Sword Fighting. Highlighting this perfectly was the comment I got regarding the Wizard class-- "If a wizard can't cast spells, it's not a wizard." How did I miss this? It's a really obvious point-of-view. Context: the name Wizard is pretty strongly defined by throughout many popular RPGs, including mainstream, indy, and even in the OSR. That being that a wizard can cast a spell that produces an effect, no ifs, ands, or buts. Of course this is not entirely true (consider spell failure in games like SHADOWDARK and DUNGEON CRAWL CLASSICS), but it's very easy to see magic as a means of producing an effect for a resource spent. And even to expect, and to WANT it to be that way. The real conundrum comes when using magic with DUNGEONMOR's drawback rule. To cast a spell, the player makes a d20 check. If a natural 1, 2, or 3 shows on the d20, a consequence occurs: a spell component exhausted (meaning more must be found before it can be attempted again), a memorized spell forgotten (requiring study time), or the dreaded haywire effect, where an unexpected and dangerous manifestation occurs. Unfortunately for me, the vast majority of my play testers absolutely loved DUNGEONMOR magic--not because they wanted the world to burn, but because it was powerful and dynamic. Even a 1st-level wizard had access to results that a much higher-level wizard from 5e+ couldn't even produce. This is because magic-users in DUNGEONMOR can sculpt their own magic effects. It's the tradeoff for magic's danger, the capability of describing how your own magic manifests and affects foes. However is was just too easy to reduce the rules reading and experience to a character's abilities doing them in instead of being the resource they can count on. So what's in store for 2026? Yup, a revision and expansion of DUNGEONMOR. With so much play testing having been added, content has increased. Not due to the added rule allowing players to gauge their own risk with magic and other dice rolls (the text for this is quite short), but because there's more material for players and Watchers (our GMs), a growing catalogue of creatures, magic and special item variants, sources of magic, setting information, etc. And, of course, all of this had to be revised in The Cold Silence Within Shadows as well as the one-page adventure promised for the original Kickstarter, The Legend Of Tanglewud. There are still aspects of DUNGEONMOR that I simply don't know if RPGers are going to be good with. It's One Roll core system, the NPCs acting on Player Turns (that huge metagame shift I was mentioning above--honestly I didn't even realize how significant that was early on), the leveling rules (having shifted now from Milestones to a fill-in-checklist), or the base functions of abilities and the rules for giving them details. These are all things that I love about the game and have gotten a TON of mileage out of in game sessions. And players are having a blast with them as well. But when all of these things are put in the same basket RPGers are asked to carry... well, they might just shy away from it and go with the tried-and-true!