Here you can get a glimpse look at the game play in Dungeon Bash. The button below will open a new browser window, which takes you to to the first page of the introduction.

This introduction uses basic rules only (none of the optional advanced rules), plus the solo play rules - so no Game Master was involved. It illustrates the first few rounds of a random dungeon.

Note: For this intro we only used the floor tiles and makeshift counters included in the final product. If you've got miniatures/counters and/or terrain of your own, the game will look considerably better.

Part 1: Quest & Characters

At the beginning, each player selects one of the pre-generated characters (dwarf cleric, human sorcerer, halfling rogue and half-orc fighter). Of course you could generate your own player character, but to start adventuring right away, the players choosed to go with the pregens.

One of the players rolls on the Main Quest table to find out why the party ventures into the dungeon in the first place. She rolled a 26...

... so it's Fight the Warlord, the most straight-forward quest in the game (and the most likely quest too). The party's mission: find the warlord hidden in his dungeon and get rid of him.

Now that we know why the party enters the dungeon, we're ready to start adventuring.

Part 2: Instant Exploration

We join our four adventurers as they set foot into the dungeon.
Now that the characters have entered the dungeon, it's time for them to have a look at their immediate environment. As they can see further than their starting section, one of the players rolls on the Dungeon Generator to find out what the next sections are like. She rolled a 11...

... so a t-junction is placed at the entrance. Because there aren't any other sections visible from the party's position (or else the table would've told them so), the t-junction is placed so that the corridor continues to the left and right.

The door could've been placed on any of the new sections (of which there's only one: the t-junction), at any wall.

Now the party is ready to explore the dungeon.

Part 3: First steps

As the characters aren't in combat, they act in order of initiative (no roll required). But before they can do that, they need to check if a random encounter does occur -. each and every round starts that way. They rolled a "13" on a d20, so nothing happened - if they rolled a "1" instead a random encounter would have occured. (Note: at the end of every round the chance for random encounters might increase, so that chances of random encounters vary from 5% to 40% - although the latter is very unlikely).
Each character moves twice her speed. The rogue begins and enters the t-junction. As he now can see the corridors to the left and right, both are generated immediatly. The rogue's player rolls twice on the Main Exploration Table, scoring a 5 for the corridor on his left, and a 2 for the corridor on his right.

After these tiles are placed, the rogue continues his move. He opens the door in front of him, so another roll is required, this time on the "Door Opened from Corridor" table. Again he rolls low - a 3 - so it's a small room:

As each room holds an encounter - be it opponents, traps or the occasional NPC - he needs to generate that too. Again a poor roll (4), but that's a good thing, because the higher you roll on the encounter tables, the more difficult the encounter is.

A single goblin occupies the room. Now all that's left to do is determine if either side is surprised.

The rogue tries to sneak up on the lone goblin (making a move silently check opposed by the goblin's listen check), and succeeds! The goblin is placed smack in the middle of the room (as he had no time to prepare himself - by hiding or by moving further away from the door, for instance), and the rogue gets a surprise round.

Nevertheless, the chance for random encounters during combat is increased (because of the noise).

The fight is short and brutal (luckily without random encounters), and the party collects the treasure (some gold pieces), before moving on. They decide to check the door next.

Part 4: A large room

One round and one uneventful random encounter roll later, the party opens the door - and finally rolled a higher number: a 14...

... a large room. Each large room could be the quest room (in this case: the room where the warlord is), so they instantly check if it is (every previous large room greatly increases the chance of a large room being the quest room). Unfortunately, it isn't - but fortunately, that means there'll be a standard encounter, as quest encounters are considerably tougher.

4 Kobolds? That's a lot more challenging than the lone goblin (which was killed by the rogue alone). Neither side surprises the other one, so it's a straight-forward fight with all combatants rolling initiative.
The half-orc fighter, having the highest initiative roll, goes first and engages the first kobold - a miss. The sorcerer is next, moving from the rear and fires a magic missile - only 2 points of damage, not enough to kill a kobold.
Suddenly, things are looking grim for our characters...

We're leaving our party, as we've seen enough for a start. This is just the tip of the iceberg, though, as we haven't seen how traps, NPCs and random encounters work, among other things. Still, you should have a pretty good idea of how Dungeon Bash is played.