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Friday, May 17, 2013

Dungeon! Inventory



After playing Dungeon again tonight for the umpteenth time, I finally got around to checking my set (the 1981 revision) versus the inventory list found on Boardgame Geek. As it turns out, I'm missing just a few treasure cards, and no unique ones.

I was also interested in the numbers from a design perspective, since I am toying around with making an alternate board to use with the game for some variety. So using inventory lists I made a summary of the numbers of Monsters, Treasures & Rooms/Chambers in the original (1975) and first revision (1980/1981) of the Dungeon Boardgame. See above.

The first four columns list the number of Monster & Treasure cards for each level. As you can see, the number of Treasure cards exactly matches the number of Rooms on each level, and this was not changed in the revision. In contrast, the number of Monster Cards were drastically reduced in the 1981 revision. This is due to a difference in how the cards are used in the game. In the original version, the Monster & Treasure Cards were placed directly on the board in each room, so extra Monster Cards were needed for the Chambers, which restock. In the revision, the cards were made larger and no longer fit in the rooms, so they are placed in piles off the board. This meant that less Monster Cards were needed, because the monsters in the pile could just be continually reused. The number of Monster Cards was basically cut in half for each of levels 2-6, although no monsters were removed.

3 comments:

  1. And to think I wanted the 1981 set! I can't imagine playing the game without the cards on the rooms and am glad this was restored in the 1989 version I wound up getting.

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  2. This is a great resource. I'm currently on the lookout to obtain a second copy (of the 1975 version) that I can customize a bit without feeling bad about it, so I happened to notice this. I think this is the only place online to find the exact count of monster and treasure cards for the ’75 version (easy enough if you have the game, but otherwise not so much clear info out there).

    One minor thing: there are 4 chambers for level 5 in both the 1975 and 1980/1981 versions.

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    1. Thanks, Scott! IIRC I got the '75 info from BGG. You are correct about the chambers for level 5. I'll have to update that. BTW, I got to play the 1975 version for the first time this past weekend at Gary Con, in a special event run by none other than Dave Megarry himself. First time I got to see the 1975 board, card and rules as well.

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