Give Dungeonslayers a 2nd chance

I am pretty sure some of you have already read about Dungeonslayers. In November of last year I first read about the project and wrote a short blog post about it. Then the idea of an English translation developed in within a few weeks we translated Dungeonslayers to English, several other versions followed.

Until then several supplements have been released (both in German and English language) and the DS community is busy working on a massive compendium containing new classes, races and optional rules. Last year nobody would have dreamed that DS would gain an international fan base in such short time and a lot of the fans are extremely productive.

So, why should you give DS a second chance? There are several reasons why you should have another look at this fine game:

• Dungeonslayers is totally free
  It’s free and is even released under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 3.0 license, so you can create your own rules, adventures, etc. based on DS as long as you give proper credit and don’t sell your stuff. I believe this is part of what made DS so appealing to a lot of gamers in the first place
• Dungeonslayers is an “old-fashioned RPG”
  Dungeonslayers calls itself “old-fashioned”. Although it’s a modern system, it has the feel of a game created in the golden days of roleplaying. Of course it’s not a real “old-school game”, but it’s a good alternative  if you prefer an alternative to all the D&D retro-clones.
• Dungeonslayers has a strong community
  The DS community is very active and if you need some help with some rules, or if you have an idea for some new things you want to add to the game, you’ll find a lot of dedicated people at the official forums willing to help you out. Most of the new supplements are developed by the community and everyone can freely participate in the discussions
• Dungeonslayers can do more than just fantasy
  Recently Christian Kenning used parts from my “Fireworks” supplement to run a Western adventure. Of course he had to make some change to character creation to allow Western-style characters , but the rest of the rules worked perfectly in this genre. He even once ran a WW2 adventure with just a few modifications. There are some thoughts in the community about creating DS variants for games inspired by H.P. Lovecraft or some kind of SF Dungeonslayers. The possibilities are endless.

Of course DS is not without its flaws, but it’s a pretty awesome for a free game and if you like some old-fashioned monster-bashing fun, you should give DS another chance. And since it’s pretty rules-light it should be perfect for a short session at you favorite RPG convention.