These are a set of very simple dungeon-bashing rules for youngsters and the young at heart. It is classic kick-in-the-door, kill the monsters and steal their treasure stuff.
Here are the rules: dungeoneer-v1
As I playtest these with my 10 year old son and his friends I will publish supplements, dungeons and other goodies 
For those who don’t have a good set of dungeon floortiles or battlemaps to hand with which to play these rules I’d like to recommend the following sites:
Crooked Staff Productions – http://www.enworld.org/CrookedStaffProductions/
Dream Weaved Worlds – http://www.dreamweavedworlds.com/index.html
RPG Mapshare Gallery – http://rpgmapshare.com/
The first two are essentially one-man productions, yet both provide a range and professionalism of production to suit just about any taste. The latter is a cooperative site which ranges across fantasy and sci-fi. All three are free.
If you don’t have a handy stock of 25mm fantasy figures to hand you could do worse than visit One Monk Studios, a fine purveyor of excellent paper figures (download, print on card and voila!). Amongst his many sets there are quite a few tasters for free . You can find him here:
Another excellent paper figure artist is Bhoritz and his figures can be found here:
http://www.gwindel.eu/Autre/Figs/Figurines.html
I hope these help you have many evenings of fun and slaughter 
Filed under: Fantasy RPG Rules
Hi Juha,
Brilliant! It is the 7-11 year old age group that these were aimed at
Please let us know if they work for your kids and if there is anything else we can do for you.
These are the first set of rules I published here and have not had a lot of love since. Dead Simple became the RPG I spent most time developing. If the kids find Dungeoneer too complicated try them with Dead Simple.
Cheers,
Craig.
Just translated these to Finnish to introduce rpg:s to my 7 and 10 year olds. Interesting to see especially the younger ones reaction.
Hi AJ,
So make it up
and if it work let me know and I’ll update the rules.
Cheers,
Craig.
What better treasure to find than something you can use
Not sure if I’m performing a little bit of thread necromancy here, but I noticed that in the rules you didn’t list a way for elf characters to get more arrows. Otherwise, great job.
Hi Adam,
Good to see you taking time out from The Forge
They are not really rpg rules, more an homage to Heroquest and that genre. I am working on a set of rpg rules using my usual core principle of KISS (keep it short and simple). I just need to get the magic rules sorted.
In the meantime we have a 2nd edition to polish.
Cheers,
Craig.
Hey m8, adam from the forges board; really like these rpg rules – given them a read and its fired me up to start some rpg stuff – which any of mates will tell you is a miracle (i hate DnD)
Hi Grün
Welcome to the blog. Don’t worry, your English is much better than my German
I’m glad you like the rules.
I am sorry I did not answer you before but I have just started a new job 200 miles from my home and there is no internet access there during the week, so I can only communicate at the weekends.
If you would like some dungeon plans go to this link: http://crookedstaff.proboards.com/index.cgi?
My friend Kris is publishing a dungeon map every day throughout May, and they are all free to download.
Cheers,
Craig.
Greetings from Germany
I wanted just say: What a great game!!!
I´m looking forward for the promised goodies
Hope my English isn`t so bad and you understand me
Yes there is. I found out about that only after I had published this one, but thanks for the heads-up. However all the publicity I have for this game by various kindly website owners calls my game ‘Dungeoneer’ also so I am loathe to change its name at the moment.
Anyhoo mine is a set of simple and free rules, rather than a commercial effort. I am sure the publishers of the commercial version realize that, and are not yet corporate enough to consider any use of this fairly common word in our gaming world to be an attack on their holy copyright (not like a well known workshop of games I could mention).
After all if we were to take this to its illogical extremes, the estates of Messr’s Gygax and Arneson could come after them seeing as this term first appeared in early D&D
There is already a game called Dungeoneer:
http://www.atlas-games.com/dungeoneer/index.php
Sorry!
Looks like good old fashioned fun
I have downloaded the adventure and admire the way you have presented it, very clean and easy to follow. You have a set a very high standard that I am now going to have to follow.
As for Diabolical well it is being worked on as I write. The difficult bit is replacing the D&D D20 spells with ones more appropriate to the game setting. Everything else works OK.
I am also working on a new version of my Goblins rules – Nasty, Brutish and Short. When my friends first played this several years ago the atmosphere was very much like Paranoia or Toon, with the players’ goblins getting blown up, shot, sliced, diced and mangled at every step (and not always by the enemy).
Cheers for the input Matakishsi, you’re a good ‘un
Craig.
I look forward to that.
I wrote an adventure and ran it for some friends yesterday, the first dungeon game I’ve played in 28 years. It was fun in a nostalgic sort of way but not as satisfying as I’d hoped. It made us remember why we’d moved on from dungeon bashing all those years ago. I guess you can never go back…
Having said that, everyone enjoyed it for what it was and we might do a couple more from time to time. You can download it here if you’d like to see it: http://www.matakishi.com/dungeonadventures.htm I don’t have an email for you or I’d have sent it.
Thanks again for the rules, good work.
Hmmm… I have just reviewed Diabolical and realise that you have to be au fait with D&D 3.5 to use them really.
I am presently working on a new version of Diabolical which will be self-contained (i.e. not require people to refer to other rule sets) and has appendices outlining The Known World setting and a mini-campaign for new characters.
I should have this up by the middle of next week.
Thanks, I’ll take a look at them
Diabolical D20 is already up in the Fantasy RPG section of the blog (just scroll down to the bottom).
It is a game loosely based upon the Diablo series of computer rpg’s. The rules engine is really simple and comes from the Microlite D20 stable. In essence it is just one step up from a skirmish game and thus might be what you are looking for.
I thought as much, I only asked in case you’d already done a list so I could add armour into the treasure list. I had a question about how multiple combats worked too but I can add my own stuff for that. Dungeoneer was a great catalyst for getting me thinking of a fantasy project (something I haven’t done for about 10 years) but I think I’m going to need something a little more involved. Although, I still want a skirmish feel not a role playing feel to the proceedings to begin with (I’m assuming it’ll grow into more of a role play as the games progress but I want it to remain old-school for as long as possible).
I’d like to see Diabolical…
Hi Matakishi,
The answer is… complicated
The Defence Value is a combination of armour, skill and (in the case of the Cleric) divine protection. There is no particular logic to it as this was never meant to be more than a coke’n'pretzels game (ten year olds can’t have beer).
I added the columns naming characters’ weapons and armour simply to give it a bit more atmosphere.
Hope that helps?
If you want a more detailed game I can put up Diabolical if you’s like…
Craig.
Another question, it’s not clear what the difference between different armour is and how much of the defence bonus is part of the character (since defence bonus can be improved and armour can too).
Hi Matakishi,
Your site is one of my favourites, always full of great hobby projects, so I am flattered you like my simple rules.
I think you are right about the Wizard, I’ll have to review how that would work. Thanks for the feedback
Craig.
Excellent set of rules, I’m going to stick them on my site if that’s ok with you, might inspire me to do some fantasy painting. One thing, there is no way for a Wizard to increase the number of spells he/she can have which may, after extended play, make them rely on their weapons which they can increase which isn’t very Magiciany in my opinion. I suggest 200 or 300 gold to have another spell, not allowed to exceed their magic bonus (so that makes 300 or 400 per spell as they’d have to add one to magic before hand). or not, if you prefer