Dungeon Delvers Twelve

In 1990, I plotted out the paths of a Choose your own adventure game, fascinated with the structure & flow, I delved into the world of Roleplay Games, Within 6 months I had written my own little version, a year later, A roleplay system "Dungeonworld". By 1994, I had 50 customers, a little cliq, a blip in the world of Roleplay.

In 2002, I was asked to bring something new to the world of English Teaching, so I grabbed my RPG rules and brought 100+ people into my world and they brought their own little 'worlds' into mine. Dungeonworld came alive, more than ever before, so I started to think I could take this further.

In 2012, I returned home, I began in earnest to bring Dungeonworld to the public. My first setback, in 2009 another group took the name Dungeonworld, regardless that I owned (and still do) the website, the trademark and now thousands of followers (some of mine who thought this was my game), Should I have fought for it? Instead I took a look at what my game was about, at its core and renamed to something that would be less likely to be 'accidentally' stolen.

There are 12 distinct class/lifestyle structures to my game, It has evolved from 6 to 8 to 12 from 1998, 2005 and 2012 respectively. The Primary goal of adventurers is to 'clean' up the ancient dungeons from times lone past, and while the world is full of dungeons, its more about the delvers themselves.

In the first booklet, 50 pages, I cover all the basic rules, simple techniques to build your own races, classes, lifestyles, weapons, monsters, towns, and Dungeons, everything that a creative mind could want, simple enough to be read in an afternoon and playing by the next weekend.

Each latter booklet covers 1 topic each, so if your player really wants to flesh out her Warrior, or another wants to build a great blacksmith, they can use the creative jumping points to make the character of their desires.

Another aspect of Roleplay, often forgotten, is Solo-play. Sometimes we just don't have the time to get out friends together to cover all aspects of the game, so how about if we could follow some kind of rules to build our character, follow through plot points, without the need for a GM?

In Solo Play, you can use the already existing rules to trade, craft, influence society, make friends, socialize, build up local rapport, help the community and have them help you in return, allowing players to "play out" their character creation, as much or as little as they need.

While Originally, I may have started making a roleplay game for me and my 50 customers->friends to play, over time, Its become more of a goal to cover the aspects of roleplay often forgotten or hand-waved away by designers too constrained by the 'top' games, Parts of roleplay we always thought were fun too.