Setup

To play this game, you'll need:

These instructions
Two 20-sided dice – one for your hero, one for enemies
Paper and pencil to track everything

How to play

Your goal, brave hero, is to hunt The Beast that has been terrorizing the realm. You’ve discovered its cavernous lair, a long forgotten dungeon, high in the mountains.

Currently, you stand at the entrance – a narrow opening, barely big enough for a lone adventurer to enter.

The Beast's dungeon lair is cursed by a strange magic, causing the rooms to shift and change.

You've been given a Magic Lantern that will always help you find the path back out, but Hunting the Beast is up to you.

Every day in the dungeon, you will:

Explore - Discover the next room by rolling the dice, and looking up the number
Encounter – engage with what it holds (instructions in the room)
Resolve – If you survive, discover the results of your actions, and see if you can find any Clues to help you hunt The Beast.
Rest (Optional) – make camp in any room where there's no danger, and prepare for the next day of your journey. Regain 1d20 HP, and use certain items.

Clues are the main goal of the early game. If you have 3 or more, you can try Hunting the Beast!

Rolling Dice

The respective 20-sided dies have names:

The hero's die: marked with a lantern in place of 20. You should already have this!
The adversary die: representing the obstacles, enemies, and the dungeon itself along your journey.

Most actions in the game are completed by rolling dice, which are often annotated, for example:

1d20 - roll one 20 sided die.
2d20/4 - roll two 20-sided dice, then divide the result by 4.

Modifiers

Some special items or situations will tell you to modify your rolls, for example +1 means "after you roll, add one to value on the die."

Special Rolls

Battle Rolls: Roll the hero die and the adversary die together. The higher one, after modifiers, "wins" the round. The difference between the dice (including modifiers) is the "result" – which is usually used for a subsequent effect, eg. damage to the loser for combat.

Lantern Rolls: If you roll a 20 (before any modifiers), this activates the power of The Lantern in your die, causing something good to happen. For example, in combat, you immediately win the Battle Roll, and deal double damage.

Luck

Lucky Roll: roll that die twice, and take the higher result (before modifiers), then proceed normally.

Cursed Roll: roll that die twice, and take the lower result (before modifiers), then proceed normally.

Other Mechanics

Combat

Any time you directly fight an adversary, you are in combat. Usually that looks like performing a Battle Roll, and applying the difference as damage to the loser – one round.

Repeat until you or they have 0HP.

In between rounds, you can use or drop Items. All potions can be thrown, if you like, and they always hit.

Stealth

Whenever you enter a room, if combat hasn't happened here, you have a chance to Sneak and become Hidden – granting you the ability to completely bypass the fight, or deal greater damage initially.

Escapes

If you're in too deep, you can always make an Escape Attempt – or even Turn Back completely to refill your health.

Secrets

Every now and then, you'll see something like this:

Example Secret

This is a secret!

Don't open it unless the game tells you you can! (You can try this one out!)

Clues

If you can read a Clue, you've found it. Mark it on your character sheet.

Good luck

Should you successfully protect the realm by slaying the beast, you will be given titles worthy of your triumph!

Start by Creating your hero