I have had a copy of Darkfast Dungeons for several years now and I have only flipped through the pdf never really stopping to learn the system. What better time than now when I am trapped indoors.
There are 2 versions of which I am aware. I have a 2014 Basic Rulebook which I played through today. There is also a much bigger 2019 Basic Book that is a complete roleplaying game. I have it as well but I have not read it yet.
The version I played through has a really sparse set of rules. They are only 30 pages and a number of the pages are random charts. This is a strength if you want to quickly learn the game. I read through it 3x trying to pick up everything. But it also means that there is little explanation of anything. I am still not certain I am following the rules as intended.
The game is for 1-6 people to play on a large table-top or floor. The 5 tile shapes that make up the dungeon floors are two-sided and meant to be printed out multiple times. In total you should have 26 tiles to play with. They are put down randomly. For my game, I created a random table to choose which tile to put down next. I played solo, with two figures (characters) and I played the crawl scenario. The object of which is to survive 12 tiles.
Once entering a new tile it is activated and you roll on a chart to find out if there will be an opponent, an event, a trap, treasure, or nothing. Characters (and opponents) each have a card that displays their attributes (to hit, damage, armor, defense, etc). To customize them you draw (or roll in my case) Talents and Dark Secrets. Dark Secrets are a secondary mission objective unique to that figure.
Combat is an attack roll + ability vs. the defender’s roll + ability. Everything is done with a d6. The difference if you succeed on the attack is the amount of damage. It seems simple, but it quickly gets complicated with gear like magic weapons adding a plus to hit and damage. Some opponents have special attacks and damage, etc. In one well-matched combat, it went on for 7 game turns before my figure finally defeated the opponent.
Some of the talents that the figure can get do not seem to have any purpose in the game. One of my characters had Scholar which gave him knowledge of history or fluency in another language. Which is it? Neither has any purpose. I assume these are of use in the full game. Some abilities do not make sense until a specific trap or event occurs. One character had the Climb talent. It appears to serve no purpose unless you happen to fall in a pit trap.
The Temple Theft
What follows is a description of the game I played. I do not have a color printer and frankly, I do not want all of the bits to spread all over the floor. So I played the game in the 3D render program blender. I created opponents, cards, tiles, the works. I tracked everything in Blender.
As the game starts we find the Cleric of good Tauser, and the hired Fighter Hans just entering a crypt in the wilderness. Tauser is tracking an orc thief who stole Holy symbols from a nearby church.
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| Two Heroes enter the Dungeon |
In the first chamber they enter, Hans finds one of the missing Holy symbols. After two more uneventful rooms, Tauser starts to become more confident and strides ahead, suddenly, there is a tremor that shakes the dungeon and the roof collapses down on top of him. Tauser is only slightly injured but it takes him and Hans three turns to clear the rubble. I rolled the Tremor event.
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| Tauser digs out after a cave-in |
Shaken, Tauser still takes the lead into the next hallway. He triggers a swinging blade trap that slices him in two and kills him instantly. I rolled a swinging blade trap that does 2d6 damage and I rolled boxcars. Then I rolled a 2 on my defense. I forgot about his Hero point but looking back I do not think it would have kept him alive. He had already lost 2 points of health.
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| The Cleric is dead |
Hans decides to check a little further in the dungeon despite the death of his boss. In the next chamber, he finds the Orc Fighter. The orc immediately attacks ferociously. After two Game turns Hans has killed the Orc. He finds the second missing Holy symbol.
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| Hans confronts the Orc Thief |
Hans decides to push on a little further, but as he steps into the next chamber he triggers a trap and a stone wall slides down behind him blocking his way back. He decides he has no choice but to move on. I rolled an event in this chamber and got the blocking wall. The event stated that the trigger to raise the wall would be located on the spawning point in the next tile. But events on the next tile made me decide this was not what happened.
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| The Only way now is forward |
Hans moves into another large chamber and triggers another trap. Walls slide down over the exits and the chamber fills with greenish, slimy water. Suddenly, a Slime worm rises up out of the muck and attacks. The combat goes on for a long time with neither opponent able to get a hit on the other. The slime worm webs Hans in slime three times but he always manages to break out. Eventually, the tide turns and Hans strikes the worm twice killing it. He finds a trigger that drains the slime away and raises the wall over the exit forward. I rolled a trap in this room that produced the flooded room and the slime worm. So I decided it was unlikely the trigger for the previous room door trap would be in this room. The combat with the slime worm seemed to go on forever. A couple of times I confused the rules. The Slime worm has almost identical abilities to the fighter. They were evenly matched. The worms web attack immobilizes the victim and he must defeat the points of Health of the web to escape. There is no explanation on how to handle this beyond what was printed on the opponent card. The web prevents the figure from using weapons so how does he attack? Does the web roll a defense roll? I thought it would not make sense for the web to roll defense and I decided the victim could attack as normal but he could not use weapon bonuses. This made it too easy to escape the webs so I suspect I might have done it incorrectly. One funny typo, the slime worm opponent card notes that it is wet and covered in smiles.
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| The hideous Slime Worm rises from the muck with a smile |
After the fight with the slime creature Hans moves down a new passage that comes out back to an earlier room he passed through. He checks the wall and finds a trigger that opens a secret door that allows him to get back to the entrance to the dungeon. Since this was the 12th room I decided there was a trigger that opened a secret door to get around the slab of stone trap.
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| Hans finds a secret door that leads back to the entrance |
Hans leaves the dungeon with the two holy symbols he was charged to find and one minor wound from the Slime worm. I managed to finish successfully and had a total of 6 Victory points. In this version of the rules victory points are only used to decide who was the mvp of the session. I assume in the full rules they would work like experience points?
Impressions
This is a simple board/card game that should not take that long to set up and play. It took me 6 hours because I was creating 3D figures for the game as I played along. I would have preferred another page of explanation on how combat worked. I was never sure I was getting it correct. The rules also need to explain some of the talents, abilities, and secrets. Some of them do not appear to serve any purpose. One confusing note in the rules is that they refer to heroes and opponents as figures interchangeably. So when they mention a figure could have the ability to fly and I am thinking how is that possible. But there are flying monsters like the demon and manticore.
For those interested in what the dungeon map ended up looking like. Below is the full play surface after the game session was complete.
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