I’m pleased to announce that Dark Dungeons X, the 10th anniversary edition of Dark Dungeons is now available at DriveThruRPG in both print and PDF format here.
When deciding to write a new edition of Dark Dungeons for its 10th anniversary, I took stock of the change in circumstances since I released the original game ten years ago.
At that time, the original edition that it was based on wasn’t available to buy except for extortionate prices second-hand on eBay. That unavailability was the impetus for me to write the game. However, a desire to emulate that original edition as closely as possible led me to write two games, not one.
Dark Dungeons was the version of the game designed for maximum fidelity to its source material, for those who wanted to replicate the experience of playing that source material without needing to pay inflated prices for a second-hand copy of that material. Darker Dungeons, on the other hand, was the game as I actually played it. While the rules for Darker Dungeons were more streamlined and consistent than those in the source material, this necessarily meant that they were less close to it.
So I had the two games. Dark Dungeons for those who wanted closer emulation, and Darker Dungeons for those who wanted improved rules.
However, ten years later the situation has changed. The original edition that Dark Dungeons was based on is now cheaply available in both electronic and print formats. This makes the older Dark Dungeons mostly redundant – since if you want a high fidelity copy of the original rules you can just use those original rules now.
Therefore, when planning Dark Dungeons X, I made the decision that I would use the improved Darker Dungeons rules as a basis for the new edition rather than the Dark Dungeons rules. Since there’s no reason to slavishly copy the original game because those who want that can just buy the original game now I might as well use the improved rules for those who would rather have that.
So that’s what Dark Dungeons X has. It’s based on Darker Dungeons, freshly edited and reformated (I’m the first to admit that the first printing of Darker Dungeons was badly edited – that’s why I never put it up on DriveThruRPG: while I was happy with the rules, I was never happy that the book itself was edited and formatted to an acceptable standard), and with “Developer Commentary” side-bars explaining how the game differs from its source material and why I made the decisions I did when writing it.
But I am more than happy with Dark Dungeons X, and it is now available at DriveThruRPG in both print and PDF format here.
Gurbintroll Games 