The Dungeon of Kargen, named after the fantasy city where it’s located, is 10 yo Edmond’s new homebrewed adventure location, with his brother as the unique player. I will try to highlight what happened so far with what they told me.

This is done within a 100% DIY system by the Dungeon Master in which there’s only 4 « attributes »: ranged attack, melee attack, magic attack and Defense. Starting numbers are rolled with a d20 for the main character or d20-6 (min 1) for hirelings (yes many hirelings have pretty abysmal stats…). There’s no cap on levels for characters, each level gives 3 points of attritubes to assign and 5 hit points. Melee damage is linked to attribute bonus but ranged attack bonus is only to hit and not for damage. Magic does more damage but depletes and must be purchased (a new wand). For the moment, magic is just another way of attacking and there’s no utilitarian or any other kind of spells (but that could change I was told).

The main character can bring along a maximum of 3 hirelings, or 5 when he reaches level 10 (and presumably more when of higher level). Also, a nice gameplay rule is that after 5 successful combats in the same area, it is considered « safe » (no more spawning) with the condition that at least one hireling is left in a strategic spot.

Interesting to note I think is what Edmond feels he needs to run his adventure: a list of shops and the items they sell and prices, two pages of hirelings and their stats, a chart of xp needed to advance in levels, a list of weapons and armors and their stats, a chart of bonuses associated with attributes numbers and that’s about it. Everything else he seems to create on the go.

The adventure so far:

• The adventurer Jean-Paul, an archer, enters the newly-accessible dungeon of Kargen for his first foray and explored the Caves of Riches.
• He defeats several squeletons and zombies but later on, he almost get killed by a mimic that was near a corpse holding a key in his hand.
• Back in town he hires Petit Jean (a mediocre fighter) and Rolex (a capable but fast-exhausting magic-user) with the money from the treasures he found.
• Next foray, the team reaches the City of the Imps. Most imps are non-hostile, they can control monsters to do their bidding and those are sometimes loose and dangerous.
• They reach the Armory where they have to fight Living Armors.
• Further on, they spot a throne chamber with a Lich and decide to give it a wide berth.
• Back in town, he hires Georges (capable archer).
• Next foray, they find the Area of the Lost Ones. Inhabiting the place are knife-throwing zombies that are fond of torturing people.
• Back in town, he hires Gengis Khan (average fighter).

• They find the Prison where a Dragon Squeleton is roaming. There’s many prisoners, all in separate cells. Frees and hires Robert (great fighter) from a cell.
• They find the Maze and hear the mighty roars of The Minotaur. Find and open a secret door and gets face to face with the Minotaur, who’s in fact the Level’s Boss. They manage to kill it.
• Gets in a very prolonged fight against 12 Living Armors and a Mimic in which the adventurers get the worst of it and flee.
• After a stop in town, the team gets back to one of the first area into an unexplored and very long tunnel that leads to a section dubbed the « Mixtature« , inhabited by orcs, zombies, ogres and many other monsters.
• Find 14 sarcophagi but already looted. Find a large fireplace and get into a fight with a fire elemental. The chimney leads to somewhere else but is haunted by ghosts.
• Get into a treasure room with a strange statue with one arm extended in front of it, hand open as if waiting to receive something.
• See a big fight between 3 parties of adventurers (11 total) and 40 orcs, join the fray and help kill the orcs.
• This is all been happening on the fist Level of the dungeon.

• TBC…