Dungeon (game)

Dungeon!

Original 1975 box cover
Designer(s)	David R. Megarry
Publisher(s)	TSR, Inc.
Genre(s)	Adventure
Players	1 to 12
Setup time	10 minutes
Playing time	30–120 minutes
Random chance	Dice rolling

Dungeon! is a 1975 adventure board game designed by David R. Megarry, Gary Gygax, Michael Gray, Steve Winter and S. Schwab, published by TSR, Inc.Dungeon! simulates some aspects of the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) role-playing game which was released the year before, although Megarry had a prototype of Dungeon! ready as early as 1972.

Dungeon! features a map of a simple six-level dungeon with hallways, rooms and chambers. Players move around the board seeking to defeat monsters and claim treasure. Greater treasures are located in deeper levels of the dungeon, along with tougher monsters. Players choose different character classes with different abilities. The object of the game is to be the first to return to the beginning chamber with a set value of treasure.

David M. Ewalt, in his book Of Dice and Men, described Megarry's original edition of the game as "a Blackmoor-inspired board game that represented TSR's most ambitious production to date: a color game map, customized cards, tokens, dice, and a rules booklet all packaged in an attractive box".

The original edition of the game featured the , a folding vinyl cloth gameboard, four colors of Parcheesi-style playing pieces (white, blue, red, and green), a pair of six-sided dice, and an assortment of color-coded monster and treasure cards for the six levels of the dungeon. The artwork on the face of the cards was in black and white, while the backs were colored by level: gold for first, orange for second, red for third, magenta for fourth, green for fifth, and blue for the sixth level. The original (1975) game featured four character classes :the Elf, Hero, Superhero, and Wizard (the hero and superhero are warriors, with the superhero being more powerful). These were ordinarily represented by the green, blue, red, and white pieces respectively. The 1989 'New Dungeon' had six classes: the Warrior, Elf, Dwarf, Wizard, Paladin and Thief. The 1992 'Classic Dungeon' had the same six classes. As there were multiple playing pieces, custom game variations could be set up with more than one of a given character class (using an arbitrarily-colored piece), but ordinarily a game involved players selecting different classes. In the 2012 version of the game, released under the Dungeons & Dragons brand name, the heroes are Rogue, Cleric, Fighter and Wizard, with a male and female version of each, allowing for up to 8 players.