What's your favourite dungeon crawl "engine"?

[phreedh]

I've always loved dungeon crawling... be it computerized, rpg driven or board games. Haven't found that perfect table top experience though, so I'm looking for alternatives.

I have a very extensive home made Warhammer Quest-set but we didn't really enjoy that as much as we had hoped. Felt too limited and combat was very static. Likewise, we tried Dungeon Bash with D&D 3.5 and that was too much faffing about.

We're looking for a good co-operative two player experience, rules light and with random exploration and monster encounters. It must allow for character progression and diverse equipment lists, so a higher resolution than 1D6 combat dice is probably needed. Best bet would most likely be to strip a retro rpg system.

There's an expansion for Song of Blades & Heroes called Song of Gold & Darkness. While pretty decent for most of our requirements, character and monster profiles are a bit too stripped down and basic. For instance, the lack of wounds means everything dies from one hit. I'd prefer a little more granularity, especially for the sake of player character attrition (losing a little health every time a group of monsters are encountered, micro managing potions and healing spells).

Anyone have any own experiences of putting something like this together, or have a nice out of the box solution ready? The first person who say D&D 4E gets a swift kick in the nads. =D

[dijit]

I have to confess Phreedh I'd like to hear an answer to this. Played quite a bit of W.Quest for a while, but want something with a little more flavour.

[Onebigriver]

I love Advanced Heroquest.

[Erny]

Basic  DnD perhaps with some house rules, a table for random rooms/corridors but use the rules to stock it. Down load Labyrinth Lord for free and your away.

[phreedh]

Down load Labyrinth Lord for free and your away.

That's actually my plan, but I want to see what options there are and if someone have allready done this I might not need to re-invent the wheel.

The DM-less dungeon crawl is a holy grail game of many, many gamers. It baffles me to no end that there's no clear option for it... it's 2011 and we still haven't figured it out?!

I'm leaning towards a heavily edited and rewritten Labyrinth Lord rule set, with cards (hate tables) for dungeon construction, monster encounters and loot.

Is it koscher to share a rulebook "based on" Labyrinth Lord in the same way LL is based on the old D&D?

[Operator5]

I use my own .45 Adventure 2nd edition game tailored to fantasy.

The last time we ran it was here:

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=27574.0

[SgtHulka]

Melee http://bluwiki.com/go/Tft-melee and Wizard http://bluwiki.com/go/Tft-wizard. The old DM-less microquests might be hard to find, but Dark City Games http://www.darkcitygames.com/publishes some excellent, compatible ones in their legends of the ancient world line. I particularly recommend Raid on Cygnosa.

[Heldrak]

Sounds like Super Dungeon Explore might actually fit your needs. Download the free demo rules here:

http://web.sodapopminiatures.com/selectcharacter?product=SDE

[Backyardpatrol]

We played Quest for years, it doesn't get much better at higher levels . We played Descent by FFG, it was close to Quest, but the setup of the game was murder...
Played DND 3.5 but it was too rulesy.
Haven't yet found that holy Grail of Dungeon Crawls...

[Doomsdave]

I recently started playing the FF Descent boardgame with the family.  Everybody enjoys it immensely.  My wife likes it as a "lighter" D&D.  She's not into the recordkeeping and complex combat mechanics.   

[phreedh]

Problem with Descent is that it's NOT a dungeon crawl but a race game. Drag your feet and explore, and the overlord gets you.

I want something capturing the feeling of Alternate Reality: The dungeon, or Bard's Tale (old computer games for you luddites or whippersnappers). You have a small party of four, venture off into a randomly generated dungeon for a randomly generated purpose, fight randomly generated monsters and get randomly generated loot. For your randomly generated characters, ofcourse.

Smooth, but detailed. No faffing about. Rules out in the open, no leafing through 300 pages of rules only to find that the table you're looking for is in the OTHER 300 page book.

Labyrinth Lord might be it - but there's plenty to strip away.

[capthugeca]

Have you looked at the Dungeon World rules available free from Pendraken and highly suitable for their 10mm dungeons and figures. You can download them from http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=1001.0

And Ganesha Games are meant to be brininging out a far more detailed game than Song of Gold and Darkness, called Tales of Blades and Heroes. It is meant to be coming out in the early months of 2011. See http://www.ganeshagames.net/tales-of-blades-and-heroes-rpg/

[Grün]

First of all take a look at Dungeonslayers : Link.
This is an old fashioned roleplaying game.
Next idea, Dungeoncrawl : Link. This is classic HeroQuest with some ad ons (for example a very nice skill system!)

[pauld]

Have you seen the new Wizards of the Coast games

Castle Ravenloft  http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/59946/dungeons-dragons-castle-ravenloft-board-game

and

Wrath of Asharladon  http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/66356/dungeons-dragons-wrath-of-ashardalon-board-game

they use (unpainted) D+D miniatures figures and are a solo/co-op stripped down D+D 4th edition dungeoncrawl

gameplay is a little simple but as a sandbox you get all the bits you need to beef it up a little

and the dungeon tiles are an amazing system for making random dungeons every time - this element works very well

[Mister Rab]

I hear you, Phreedh. I failed to find anything I liked so far, so am kicking around a homebrew set at the moment with a Malory-influenced twist.

That said, I'm a lazy b*gger, so I'll be checking out all the suggestions above.