Review: TSR’s The New/Classic Dungeon Game

by Nathan Stout (of AccordingToWhim.com)

Today I will talk about a great old board game called The New Dungeon (or also known as The Classic Dungeon). The game is by TSR (the makers of Dungeons & Dragons).

In the 80’s TSR came out with Dungeon, a board game-simplified version of their Dungeons & Dragons role playing game. A few years later they released an upgraded version (bigger board and some changed rules and such) called ‘The New Dungeon’. A couple of years later they came out with another edition of the ‘The New Dungeon’ called ‘The Classic Dungeon’. This is the same game with new artwork.

I purchased both the ‘New’ and ‘Classic’ Dungeon games at various Goodwill stores for dirt cheap. They seem to be completely interchangeable.

In the game you pick a character and dash about a dungeon fighting monsters and collecting gold. Once you have a certain amount of gold (listed on the character’s card) you head back to the ‘start’ and win the game. You can play with simplified rules where all players have the same abilities and gold goal. In the advanced game you choose from a larger range of characters with their own unique abilities.

• Warriors – Average strength character
• Elfs – Average with a little better chance to find hidden doors
• Thief – Average with extra ability to ambush other players (to steal their treasure)
• Wizard – Ability to use spells but weak against hand to hand (weapon) attacks.
• Paladin – Less than average but with ability to heal
• Dwarf – Slow but tough character

Things you can do in this game (besides attacking monsters) are:

• Ambush the other players to steal a piece of treasure.
• Use special abilities in certain chambers in the dungeon (like transporting, healing, and spell recharge).
• Roll to ‘attempt’ to ‘find’ secret doors on the map.

Some of the treasure items you get off of monsters don’t have a gold value but are useful in playing the game. They are:

• Pendants for using ESP (see monster’s stats in a room you are about to enter).
• Charms for automatically finding secret doors (very useful).
• Swords that give your combat rolls bonuses.
• Pendants that allow you to mentally see creatures AND treasures in any room on the map.

The game play is fun and once you get done the basic rules it is a lot of fun. The more players the better the game gets. There are only a finite number of treasures so if you have a lot of players you will eventually have alto of ambushing going on. Players can also play cooperatively to defeat really tough monsters.

I highly recommend this game. You can read more about it at BoardGameGeek.com