Dungeon and the DRGN Operating System

By Michael:

Dungeon is still too boring, and I still feel the need to add stuff to it.

I have a set of rune stones. Don’t ask how I got them. Anyway, after determining that they’re not magic rocks (and they’re not), I decided to deface them in the name of gaming science.

This started a strange train of thought going through my head. What is this? What does this mechanic represent? Well, sticking with the Dungeon Punk and Magitech themes, I figure these represent hacking the dungeon itself.

Wait a minute. The dungeon is just a bunch of 10 x 10 stone corridors and rooms underground. What’s there to hack?

Yeah. I changed that too. Since my copy of Dungeon is starting to take on a life of it’s own, I figure I might as well go whole-hog. Enter the DrgnOS.

What. The. F.

Let’s back up a bit. This approach to Dungeon is inspired by three things. First, I’m not a big fan of traditional fantasy. I prefer stuff like Eberron and Conan the Barbarian. Second, I’m currently obsessed with Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine. Third, as the Cortext Hacker’s Guide says, “A dungeon crawl is just a badly planned heist”. These three ideas are what’s fueling this mad dash to mark up as much of my unused stuff as possible.

As you’ll notice, I just took a Sharpie to the runes and wrote whatever came to mind. I spent all of an hour on it. And I’m still not sure how I should implement it. But that’s not really a problem. They exist. They’re rocks. They disrupt the game. They feel and sounds awesome when you rub them together. To me, that’s all that’s important.

Wait. Do one of those runes say “hireling”? What hirelings?!

Oh, I haven’t made those yet. But they’re coming. And they’re going to look real familiar.