Best system for dungeon crawls?

[Black Hammer]

Been kicking around the idea of running a more traditional dungeon crawl instead of my usual investigative or narrative campaigns. I haven't run too much in the fantasy milieu lately, but I know there are plenty of options for system.

I'm thinking a giant dungeon, with the initial characters going on to hire secondary parties to help explore, keep areas clear, or bring in supplies. Semi-generational. The village near the place would start small, but grow in pace to the party's activities.

I would want a system that handles the scale decently. Need combat interesting enough for the players not to get bored, considering all the room by room grinding. I'm partial to Shadow of the Demon Lord, since it plays pretty fluidly and has a lot of character class variety available.

[Trenloe]

I'm partial to Shadow of the Demon Lord, since it plays pretty fluidly and has a lot of character class variety available.
I like the system, but it runs out of scale quickly. Unless you slow the levelling, it's designed to top out at level 10 after 10 adventures. Although there is a sourcebook on the way that takes PCs beyond level 10... You'll also probably have to scale back the insanity and corruption mechanics if you want to keep the PCs going for a long campaign.

A lot of you're decision will be based around how you and your players like simulating combat - as you say, there'll probably be a lot. If you like being tactical and having each encounter on a battlemap then Shadow of the Demon Lord may not have a huge amount of variety. In this case, I'd look at Pathfinder - a huge amount of character class variety, lots of level scaling, tactical combat, etc., etc.. And with official support within FG you can run in FG too - or just have it as a GM tool at the desktop. 5E would also be a good option to keep things simpler than Pathfinder - not as many character class options and combat is a little simplified (for example - attacks of opportunity are simplified and a lot of combat bonuses/penalties are handled via the advantage/disadvantage mechanic in 5E).

If you want more theatre-of-the-mind encounters then 5E handles that pretty well, as would Shadow of the Demon Lord (with the above scaling and insanity/corruption provisos).

If you want to track the village growing, and maybe control/expansion in the dungeon, then both Pathfinder and 5E have settlement mechanics - see Ultimate Campaign here: https://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ The Legendary Games 5E product "Kingdoms" is based off this: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/189275/Kingdoms

If you're interested in character options and less overall mechanics (and definitely theatre of the mind combats) you might even consider looking at Monte Cook's Cypher System, but this system tends to be one you either love or don't.

[vodokar]

For Dungeon Crawling, I would stay with the D&D. My recommendation would be 1st edition. Dungeon Crawls were what we did back then. 5e would be my second option. You might also consider DCC RPG, however.

[Andraax]

Or C&C - which is essentially a 1E clone.

[LordEntrails]

Two other considerations;
1) Do you already have players or are you going to be recruiting new ones?
2) How much support in FG do you want?

#1 If you already have players, then this doesn't really impact anything. If not, sticking with 5E or PF will give you the easiest time and the largest pool of players.

#2 If you want the most supported and automated ruleset in FG, then 5E. If you don't need all that, then PF has some automation and some officially supported material plus a lot of community resources. Other systems may or may not have dedicated rulesets and the available resources for them may be very limited or require you to input all your own info.

[Black Hammer]

Thanks for the responses, and to address a few things individually:

Trenloe: I plan on having to homebrew the rules on the adventuring guild and village to suit my tastes. Have a lot of different rules to draw from both old D&D resources and a variety of other games, including Pendragon's fairly deep manor mechanics. The appeal of SotDL to me is that it runs smoothly, and the limited progression cap would work with the idea people run multiple character or parties at different levels rather than just running one set of PCs to 10/20/whatever the cap is. Although, as you point out, something crunchier might stay fresh longer. The downside to crunchy is that in a campaign like this, you're looking at running dozens if not hundreds of combats over the course of a campaign.

My experience with Pathfinder is somewhat limited, but I have never seen it flow smoothly in combat. It also suffers from D&D3.5's character creation being a game unto itself, where stacking bonuses and optimization can easily result in huge gaps between twinked and normal characters. Offering a bunch of character options then prohibiting half of them because balance is the bait and switch that put me off running Pathfinder in the local gaming track in the first place.

5E has got less character customization than either Pathfinder or SotDL, which makes me sad because it runs better than Pathfinder.

Cypher is a no-no because I hate it. Well, not so much hate as question its core mechanics to the point I don't see a compelling reason to run it. Also, for this I'd want something with a certain amount of tactical combat.

It does look like Pathfinder is closest to what I want, but I'll need to put in a lot of work grinding out some setting and house rules to make it feel a little more organic and less like a char-op obstacle course.

vodokar: I will give DCC another look.

Andraax: Neither 1st Edition nor C&C really "click" with me. Probably comes from my background; I didn't really get into the earlier versions of D&D, started off more in the Traveller/WW/Runequest end of things. So it's less like going back to something familiar and more like going backwards.

LordEntrails: I don't have players in mind. I've a few players in my recent experience who have expressed an interest in my running a more traditional fantasy game instead of my usual cosmic horror or pulp games, though, so I'd probably only be looking to recruit two or three more at most. Recruiting is huge pain and time sink no matter what, unfortunately, since the issue is less about people expressing interest and more about actually showing up on time or at all.

Automation isn't a big issue. FG covers the basics for the systems I'd be most likely to use anyway, and I have learned enough about muddling with FG under the hood to cover the other bases.

[Talyn]

The "best" system is the one you can run the best. I mean, you're looking for a dungeon crawl. It's not like there's a story or any major brainpower involved with a dungeon crawl. Walk into a room, murderhobo everything that moves, rinse, repeat. It's Diablo with Dice. Any RPG system out there can do it perfectly well; it's a matter of which one you prefer and which one you can run easiest/fastest and which one your players understand and play best.

[Ken L]

My experience with Pathfinder is somewhat limited, but I have never seen it flow smoothly in combat. It also suffers from D&D3.5's character creation being a game unto itself, where stacking bonuses and optimization can easily result in huge gaps between twinked and normal characters. Offering a bunch of character options then prohibiting half of them because balance is the bait and switch that put me off running Pathfinder in the local gaming track in the first place.


? I've run a number of dungeon crawls through PF be they AAW, modules, or large dedicated crawls (emerald spire, WLD, rappan). Pathfinder and 3.5 tend to stay fresh due to the crunchiness, and as a GM, I set some limits for broken classes but I don't really need to limit up to half of the classes. Have players run by you of their builds before you allow them if you're not familiar.

D&D 4e actually is great for this situation given how heavily it focuses on the combat with grid based re-positioning maneuvers.

The worst systems imho are those that aren't grid based, don't have many combat options, or lack a strong concept of tactical placement. Anything that simplifies combat really, you kinda want crunch here if there's nothing but the combat to keep your player's focus as story and lore are more traditional campaign material. It's the kind of game you order black peppered or lemon wings and get the gang together to laugh and die, and stick axes into orcs.

[Black Hammer]

Just re-bumping this thread since it's been a while. I'm still working on the project, a big ol' cosmic horror/mythos themed megadungeon, but keeping it pretty system agnostic for the time being. 5E, DCC, and Pathfinder are definitely on the nope list. Right now the main contenders are still Shadow of the Demon Lord and (heavily modified) Conan 2d20, with GURPS and Zweihander in the wings. Dungeon World popped up on my radar, but I don't think it actually works all that well for this (or possibly anything else).

[Phystus]

Have you considered Runequest? It has plenty of crunch but doesn't seem to generate broken characters, at least in my experience. And given the lethality of its combats, it will encourage players to find creative roleplaying alternatives to the "kick in a door, kill the monster, loot the room" approach.

Castles & Crusades would be another good choice, it's basically old-school AD&D with consistent mechanics and ascending armor class.

~P

[Trenloe]

https://www.sjgames.com/dungeonfantasy/

[damned]

The problem with AD&D and C&C is low level survivability in a crawl.
Once they level up a few times and spell casters have more than one spell in their pretty little heads it gets better...

[LordEntrails]

One of your earlier concerns with 5E was the lack of options. It still doesn't have the breadth of PF,but with Xanathar's and Volo's, there are a bunch of new races and class options to play.

[Black Hammer]

One of your earlier concerns with 5E was the lack of options. It still doesn't have the breadth of PF,but with Xanathar's and Volo's, there are a bunch of new races and class options to play.

It's less that than I want to avoid comfortable ablative HP pools. The HP growth in D&D and its derivatives just don't have the right feel for a game with horror elements. It comes through in a lot of the old Ravenloft stuff; they had to resort to weirdness like level drain and such to make horror even vaguely a part of a system built around comfortable controlled defensive resources.

[hawkwind]

you can do a dungeon crawl with savage worlds quite easily

[JohnD]

Nothing says horror like exploding dice when a character goes from full health to 7 wounds in just one hit.

[Black Hammer]

Nothing says horror like exploding dice when a character goes from full health to 7 wounds in just one hit.

It does undermine the theme of the game slightly when the dice are scarier than anything the DM can come up with.

[hawkwind]

There are very good Horror and Fantasy companions for Savage World's, it handles both genres well

[Springroll]

There are very good Horror and Fantasy companions for Savage World's, it handles both genres well
Completely agree with this

[Furio74]

What about ICRPG? Index Card RPG. Very light and easy to mod.

https://www.icrpg.com/

[Targas]

Did you think about 13th Age for a dungeon crawl? Combat is interesting and fast paced, there is a very good adventure available for it, which would probably hit the nail on what you want: ‚Eyes of the Stone Thief‘ by (horror author) Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, and if that‘s not enough they recently released a Glorantha (Runequest) setting for it called 13G : https://www.chaosium.com/13th-age-glorantha-pdf/

... only drawback. Just the ruleset and bestiary is available in FG. So the adventure has to be entered manually with the proceeding of the gaming group.

[NineShadowEyes]

My vote is for Labyrinth Lord with the Advanced Options stuff added in. I ran a dungeon crawlish mini campaign with this and it worked really well. It was loads of fun.