House Rules for Dungeonquest

The Dungeonquest game was actually designed by swedish BRIO AB, and released as "Drakborgen" (Dragon Castle), before a deal was made with Games Workshop to produce an english version of the game. Dungeonquest/Drakborgen is an excellent game, so it was only natural that Games Workshop produced 2 expensions for this fast and furious board game.

However, in my opinion, neither of these 2 expansions were particularly succesful.
Dungeonquest Catacombs (Based on a BRIA AB expansion) allows players to explore the tunnels and catacombs below the dungeon within Dragonfire Mountain, but with no board to explore the catacombs are pretty dull. Furthermore, players have next to no control over where they end up, so there is very little incentive for going down there in the first place. Heroes for Dungeonquest is a little better, adding 8 new (and 4 not so new) characters to the 4 from the basic game. Unfortunately, the new characters are needlessly complicated, requiring each player to do quite a bit of reading before the game can begin: Every character has to have his own unique table for shooting, etc. etc., making it impossible to learn the rules by heart.
But sets are a few laughs, but they are not great.

As much as I love the basic game, I have to admit that it also has it's flaws. In my experience, the dungeon is just a bit too lethal. It would be a lot more exciting if there was ever any real competition about who makes it out with the most gold, rather than the winner usually being the player who refuses to venture far into the dungeon, escaping safely with a few coins.
In time, this made my mates give up on the game.

That is why I created the house rules presented below, as well as some slightly beefed up characters - breathing new life into our quests into the dungeon. The rules for room cards and searching are also meant to make the rules a bit easier to remember, meaning less flipping through the reference sheet.

Happy questing!

The House Rules

• Expansion Cards: I removed all of the cards that were the catacombs expansion, except the Passage Down room cards. I didn't remove any of the new tiles though - I just changed the rules for using passages.

• Door Cards: I removed 2 Door Jammed Shut from the door card deck, because it's got to be easier to open a door than to locate a secret one.

• Search Cards: I changed the Giant Centipede card to read "Damage: D12 - Strength" rather than just "Damage: D12", making the Centipede a lot less lethal.

• Cave-Ins: I changed the rules for cave-ins, so that if you roll the number that you picked you do not die instantly, but lose D12 life points.

• Chamber of Darkness Tile: You may refuse to enter a Chamber of Darkness. In this case, you may retreat to the tile that you came from as your next move. If you do enter a chamber of darkness, then only count the unblocked exits when rolling to escape.

• Bottomless Pit Tile: You may refuse to enter a Bottomless Pit tile. In this case, you may retreat to the tile that you came from as your next move.

• Cave In Tile: You may refuse to enter a Cave In tile. In this case, you may retreat to the tile that you came from as your next move.

• Treasure Counters: I removed the Book, and made the Chest worth 2d6 x 100gp.

• Catacomb Rules: In any tile with a catacomb entrance, you may go down into the catacombs instead of leaving via the normal exits. A catacomb entrance will lead to one of the 4 square diagionally adjacent to the entrance tile. Roll randomly between the 4 possible exit points, and reroll if this results in a square that already has a room tile in it. The player may turn the tile in which he emerges in any direction he likes.
  Exception: If there is already a catacomb entrance in any of the 8 squares adjacent to the entrance, then the entrance automatically leads there. If there is more than one such exit point, then the player decides where he wishes to go.

• Searching: You may search any number of times in each room. Furthermore, you may search in any room or corridor (except a Chamber of Darkness), as long as that room has at least one exit blocked by a wall. If you do find a secret door than you can not exit by it until you have have passed any tests that the room requires. If you search in the Treasure Chamber, and do not find a Secret Door, then you must take a Dragon Counter at the end of your turn as normal.

• Room Cards: You only need to draw a room card in a normal room tile (yellow arrow), portcullis room tile (purple arrow), or catacomb entrance room tile (black arrow).