Dungeon Crawl! Another Attempt

Every time I've tried making a "dungeon crawl" themed game, I've tried to emulate rogue-likes, or utilize a more modern RPG framework. After playing Dungeon! though, I think I've realized a much better approach. I've already talked about games like Dungeon! and the very minimalist approach they take. Having played Dungeon! finally, I can say it really does get to the heart of dungeon-crawling: the suspense of finding monsters/traps, killing them or getting killed, and hopefully looting treasure.

With all of that said I'm going try one last time at this project. I'm going to start by simply taking the Dungeon! rules (probably the 1975 version), and simply converting any material found therein, to D&D mechanics. I might add some things that need filled out, since I plan on removing the board and cards, instead making it "playable with paper and pencil". This, I think, is where it will succeed where my other attempts have failed. I'm no longer treating it like a role playing game, so I no longer feel the need to make all-encompassing rules that can cover every situation. I'm only going to focus on whats important to dungeon crawling. If players want to role-play, or do more than the rules cover, that's their choice, but it's not mandatory to playing the game, or having fun.

Part of why I'm working on this now, is I have a coworker that's wanting to play every weekend. I have a 3 hour commute back and forth to work everyday, so I have no time to prepare a proper campaign. When we do play, I don't want to have to come up with everything on the spot, especially since we haven't had a consistent play group. It's becoming very taxing to make everything make sense. In other words, I don't want to have to describe how the party gets to and from the dungeon, and I really don't want to care about whether a dragon is living next to kobolds. When I normally Referee, it's very important to me that things make sense, so the players have a logic to fall back on, so they can role-play and problem solve. This will be much easier, just to let them loose and kill stuff.

I'm not entirely abandoning making a rogue-like tabletop either, and I think I could aim for an "Advanced Dungeon Crawl!" in the future, after we play this, and really nail down what we need. As an interesting note, I'm going to take inspiration from video-game development when working on this, and expanding the game. Adding in more content as it's requested, and as we find we want/need it. I feel like that's how tabletop RPGs started, but have since kind of flipped around; now they start by building a framework for every possible play option, and often never fixing or cutting out what's proven unnecessary, or even burdensome.