True Adventures - True Dungeon

True Dungeon

Although True Dungeon shares some characteristics with live action roleplaying (LARP) games, the game's developers don't consider it a LARP. While players are free to role-play particular characters, True Dungeon does not emphasize role-playing aspects; characters lack backgrounds and names. Instead characters primarily are collections of spells and statistics useful for solving puzzles and battling opponents. The rules mechanics are loosely based on those of Dungeons & Dragons. Combat is played out by sliding weapon counters along a waist-high shuffleboard table. True Dungeon focuses on riddle and puzzle solving along with the shuffle board combat system.

Jeff Martin originally ran yearly immersive games of this sort for groups of friends. Gen Con owner Peter Adkison was invited to one of these events, then running under the name "Jeff Con" for about 30 people. After his experience, Adkison invited Martin to run the game at Gen Con after participating in one of Martin's events. True Dungeon was first run at Gen Con Indy in 2003. The first event was arranged at the last minute; there was no promotion and tickets were not in Gen Con's system.

The events takes about 100 volunteers to run. The 2006 event supplies filled two semi-trailers.

Equipment for player characters exists in the form of "treasure tokens". These are marked wooden tokens indicating various pieces of traditional Dungeons & Dragons equipment. Examples include rope, small steel mirrors, weapons, and armor. In 2005 players were given a random weapon and random armor; they were expected to trade within their group to optimize their equipment usage. In 2006 players were given a random bag of 10 tokens. Since the game began players could also purchase additional bags of random tokens. There is a sustantial after-market for these trade-able tokens on eBay.

True Dungeon provides an interactive environment, complete with multiple solutions to many problems. There are a small number of NPCs as the plot requires. Players move through various rooms in the game world. Each room contains a challenge in either the form of a puzzle, a fight, or both. The puzzles can be very difficult and the game has a high rate of character death, although the game's lethality has dropped over the years. Jeff Martin said of the 2004 Gen Con Indy game that only 20% of characters survived, while in 2005 42% did.

Closer to live action role-playing, players are expected to physically explore their surroundings, not simply describing interactions with the gamemaster Many interactions do require gamemaster interaction, with some details of the environment described to players by the gamemaster assigned to each room.

The first few years, each group of players were accompanied by a gamemaster throughout the dungeon. In 2005, this was switched to having a gamemaster assigned to each room to ensure more consistent rulings for a given room.

To maximize throughput of players, each room of the dungeon has a group of players in it. Groups all advance to the next room simultaneously. As a result, each room has a hard time limit. If players finish early, they must wait for the time limit to expire before advancing. If the players are too slow, they are penalized hit points and are moved into the next room. The plot for each dungeon usually provides a reason for the time limit. One year the plot specified that the characters were fleeing lizardmen. Sometimes the rooms themselves explain the time limit; in 2005 one room had a moving wall that would crush characters who failed to open the locked door into the next room quickly enough.

Player success in True Dungeon (and True Heroes) is tracked in the form of Experience Points. Players with larger numbers of Experience Points (or XP) are given levels. These levels have no impact on the gameplay, but offer benefits outside of the game.