Dungeon City Rules

When I start a new campaign I look at my accumulation of BX homerules and tweak as necessary to fit the milieu and style new game. Dungeon City is a monthly public open table game I run at the local game pub. It has been going for about a year and a half now. When I was getting it started I wanted to streamline things as much as possible to make things easy for new players. To this end I pulled more from Original DnD and retroclones of of ODnD than I usually run. My houserules are a hotrod/jalopy/frankenstein from many different sources. Some elements come from classic games, new games, retroclones and a lotta blogs. Some elements are my own creations. If I did it over again I would be very tempted to streamline the rules even more but some of the house rules are engaged with quite a lot by the players and would be missed I think. What follows is a breakdown of the Dungeon City Rules genome.

Character Creation
Ability Scores are rolled with 3D6 in order of course. The ability score modifiers are based on Swords and Wizardry. Negative traits instead of negative modifiers was an idea I had to make low ability scores more fun and interesting.

The "Whats Your Deal" table inspired by a Jeff Rients table of excuses or reasons for the PCs to go into the dungeon. I included it to make sure characters are focused on finding and exploring dungeons.

Character classes are kinda like Swords and Wizardry but with fighters getting +1 to hit per level and there is a thief class with d6 thief skills like LotFP but with the standard BX skill list. There are no Clerics.

I use alignment to add a tiny bit of mechanical differentiation to the character. Lawful alignment gives the character what is usually the Cleric's Turn Undead ability. Turn undead is 1D6 instead of the usual 2D6. I did this because I wanted everything to be either a D20 roll or a D6 roll. Neutral alignment introduces the possibility for changing ability scores over time and Chaotic alignment is only for characters that bond to gods found in the dungeon to acquire weird magic powers during the game. This way of using alignment evolved from an idea I had to replicate the classic horror movie genre in OSR play. A character's alignment is a big deal but at character creation there are only two options so hopefully its not overwhelming for new players. There are a lot of undead in Dungeon City so even though conventional DnD clerics are replaced by the cults and Scions of ancient elf gods with their own weird powers/spell-like abilities I thought keeping the Turn Undead ability in the PCs toolbox was important. I like adding powers/abilities and the little extra crunch that comes with these things gradually over the course of the game based on decisions made by PCs in the game rather than as default class abilities.

Buying equipment takes up so much time typically. In most old school games it is by far the most time intensive part of character creation. I wanted to get rid of it completely to get people playing quickly so I riffed on this idea from Necropraxis where equipment is based on a 3D6 roll.

Game Play
Armor class is ascending. Base (unarmored) AC is 11 instead of 10. Hit Points are D6 for all character types with Fighters getting +1 per level. Magic-Users only get a HD every other level, just getting +1 HP on level levels like ODnD. Thieves are like this too. Fighters have a lot more HP than other classes and the +1 attack bonus per level makes them really good at fighting compared to other classes.

Initial Hit Points are generated by rolling 3 dice and taking the single best result. I did not come up with this but I have no idea where it came from. Probably a house rule I found on a blog?

Saving Throws are just one number like Swords and Wizardry but all classes are the same. The Saving Throw number gets one better per level for all characters.

Experience Points are awarded as 1 Silver Piece = 1 XP. XP is not awarded for killing or defeating monsters. There is a short list of in game activities that earn XP. Like many of these house rules, this list came from my BX Home game. I remember that there was a lot of discussion on OSR blogs about this when I codified the list but I don’t think there was any single source. The most commonly used of these in Dungeon City is Wild Stunts. A wild stunt lets any character at their option make an attack with high risk and high reward. I got this idea from a blog, I cannot for the life of me remember which blog it was, not one I usually read. I have a hazy memory of an image of a leggo mini on the blog for some reason? If you know the origin of this rule let me know. It’s a fun mechanic that Players tend to grasp pretty quickly. I feel like giving XP for it was maybe mistake but its too late now!

Combat is pretty typical BX. My notion about Hit Points is that they do not represent physical damage for PCs, at least not significant damage. Hitting zero HP forces a roll on a wound table that was inspired by various blog discussions, chiefly Trollsmiths Death and dismemberment table. I allow a little bit of HP recovery for a 1 turn rest. Weapons do D6 damage with a +1 or a -1 for heavy and light weapons like in Swords and Wizardry Whitebox.

Dungeon City includes rules for spending money based on lifestyle between sessions but this doesn’t see much use. Some of the short list of Downtime Activities get used a lot more than others.

Magic is similar to BX. I let Magic-Users wear light armor which is a concept I first saw in LotFP. Magic-Users can make scrolls starting at first level which I believe originated in Holmes Basic if not ODnD. Arcane Stress is my thing. I got the spell name for the spell Witchsight from this guy.

Retroclones
Thankfully PDFs of Original Dungeons and Dragons and BX DnD are available and affordable.

older editions of Swords and Wizardry are still available free and can be found here.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP) free pdf rules are here.