I've always loved the concept of a dungeon crawl. Exploration, combat, recourse management, everything I love in gaming is there. Not only that but, many of my favorite fantasy concepts are also represented. The adventure, the history, the treasure! In this series of 5 parts (this may change). I'm going to look through dungeon crawls across gaming and other media too. In this part, I'll cover board games what makes a perfect Dungeon Crawl Board Game. Without further ado, let's begin.

My introduction to the genre was Dungeon!, which though bad is important. This is because, Dungeon! has everything that makes a dungeon crawl a dungeon crawl. These things are what I call the three core Tenants, and in this chapter I'm covering them in full.

Tenant number one, crawling. Crawling ( or maze exploration) is a the most important tenant. Crawling is best described as tight exploration. Your in the dungeon and you can't just go to where you want as there are barriers stopping you. Because of this you don't have a lot of choices, making the choices you do have matter. Another key part of Crawling is variety. In Dungeon!, secret doors abound. These doors open up new rooms and passageways to those who can find them. This is important as it not only gives you more choices but, more variety as well. This variety doesn't have to be secret doors, it could be traps or NPCs. What's important is that the game doesn't fall into a routine when crawling.

Tenant number two, combat. Fighting es muy importante en el Dungeon! as it's how you'll get the gold needed to win. In Dungeon! fighting comes down to the roll of the dice. You can increase your chances with spells but, most characters can't do this. This encourages characters to grind, something that gets very old very fast. But, a perfect combat system starts interesting, and evolves to STAY interesting. One of the easiest ways to do this is treasure, which is the next tenant.

Tenant number three, treasure. Treasure is THE most important thing in Dungeon!, deciding if you win or lose. Yet, the treasure in Dungeon! isn't that interesting, because you can't do anything with it! You can't buy things with it, you can't use it in gameplay, it's a score, and that's boring. Treasure shouldn't be boring, it should useful, and valuable, because it's TREASURE. You can still have bad, or pathetic, treasure, but that should be used to make other pieces even more special. Going back to, Dungeon! does have some cool treasure. One example is the magic sword which ties into combat, but these are so rare that most will never get it.

In conclusion, though far from perfect, Dungeon! is a great example of a Dungeon Crawl Board Game. It has everything that is essential to the genre. And side note, can you blame Dungeon! for being terrible? It was the first to adapt one of the key facets of D&D, so of course it was going to be rough. Though, I'm glad it's rough, as it created room for innovation. A room that was almost filled with Heroquest, the next game I'll cover. So stay tuned, as In search of the perfect dungeon crawl Chapter 2 is coming.