This article is about the general style of adventure. For the computer game named after it, see Linley's Dungeon Crawl

A dungeon crawl is a type of role-playing adventure in which heroes navigate a labyrinthine environment, battling various monsters and looting any treasure they may find. Because of its simplicity, a dungeon crawl can be easier for a gamemaster to run than more complex adventures, and the "hack and slash" style of play is appreciated by players who focus on action and combat. The term can be used in a pejorative sense, since dungeon crawls often lack meaningful plot or logical consistency. For example, the parody game Munchkin is about "the essence of the dungeon experience… Kill the monsters, steal the treasure, stab your buddy.

A dungeon crawler (or dungeon bash) is a specific title that focuses on contained areas where the player proceeds through a dungeon collecting treasure, usually culminating in a boss battle. The enemies and items (and sometimes boss) normally reappear after exiting and re-entering a major section. There may be only a token plot involved, in order to allow focus on extensive combat, skill, item creation, and loot drop mechanics. Luck is usually heavily involved, controlling which monsters may spawn in the area or the treasure they carry. Low percentage rates for powerful items encourage the player to repeatedly clear the dungeon in order to obtain them.

Dungeons & Dragons

According to Gary Gygax (in an interview with Dungeon #112), the first dungeon crawl was part of a wargame in which the invading force entered the enemy's castle through a former escape tunnel dug from the fortress' dungeon. The group had so much fun with this scenario that it was repeated over and over with increasingly complex dungeons until the wargame aspect of the game was dropped in favor of exploring the dungeon.

The word "dungeon" probably became a standard term in the role-playing context through the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons. However, the word does not refer exclusively to prisons but to any dangerous area used as the site for an adventure, such as a cave, ruin, or shipwreck.

For pen and paper RPGs, visual aids such as maps, models, or miniature figures are often used to represent the landscape of a dungeon crawl.

Video games

See also

• Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series
• Champions of Norrath series
• Diablo series
• Dungeon Siege series
• The Elder Scrolls: Arena
• Etrian Odyssey
• Gauntlet
• Grandia Xtreme
• Guild Wars: Eye of the North
• Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom
• Munchkin
• NetHack
• Shining in the Darkness
• Swords and Serpents
• The Sorcerer's Cave
• Titan Quest
• Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series

References

External links

• The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches

This article is about the computer game. For the general style of adventure it is named after, see dungeon crawl.

Linley's Dungeon Crawl (or just Dungeon Crawl or Crawl) is a roguelike computer game originally programmed by Linley Henzell in 1995. Version 1.00 was released 1 October 1997, and the game is still being developed.

Overview

Crawl starts with the player's choice of one of twenty-six races: five different types of elves, two types of dwarves, humans, ogres, centaurs, merfolk, and other fantastic beings. Racial selection sets base attributes, future skill advancement, and physical characteristics such as movement, resistances, and special abilities.

Subject to racial exclusions, the player next chooses a character class from among twenty-eight selections. Classes include the traditional roles of fighter, wizard, and thief as well as specialty roles, among them monks, berserkers, assassins, crusaders, and elemental spellcasters. Wanderers represent an atypical option and receive a random skill set. Together, class and race determine base equipment and skill training, though characters may later attempt to acquire any in-game skill.

The Crawl skill system covers most abilities upon which adventurers might call. The skills include the ability to move freely in armor or silently, mount effective attacks with different categories of weapons (polearms, long or short blades, maces, whips, and staves), master spells from different magical colleges (the elements, necromancy, conjuration, enchantments, summoning, etc.), utilize magical artifacts, and pray to divinities. Training occurs through repetition of skill-related actions (e.g., hitting a monster with a longsword trains long blades and fighting skills).

Relative to most roguelikes, religion within Crawl varies more as a game mechanic. Its pantheon of twelve gods reward character conformance to particular codes of conduct. Trog, the berserker god, expects abstinence from casting spells and offers aid in battle, whereas Sif Muna expects frequent spellcraft in exchange for magical assistance. Some deities campaign against evil, matched by a god of death who revels in indiscriminate killing, while others prove unpredictable objects of worship. Xom, an example of the latter, toys with followers, meting out punishments and showering gifts on inscrutable whims.

The goal of Crawl is to recover the "Orb of Zot" hidden deep within a dungeon complex. To achieve this objective, characters must visit various dungeon branches, such as the Orcish Mines or The Lair, which often branch further in to additional areas, like the Elven Halls or The Swamp. Dungeon maps in Crawl persist as the player moves between levels. At the time of its development, this feature was not commonly implemented in other roguelike games.

Typical Dungeon Crawl screen

                                      wiki the Stabber

        ∙∙                            High Elf

       ∙∙∙    ####                    HP: 5/16

      #∙∙[  ##g∙∙ ##                 Magic: 2/2

      #∙∙∙∙   ∙∙∙ ∙∙#                 AC: 2     (0)

     ##∙∙∙∙####∙##∙[#                 EV: 11

     #∙∙∙∙∙∙#∙∙<∙∙∙∙#                 Str: 11

     #∙∙∙∙∙∙#∙∙>∙∙∙####               Int: 13

       #∙∙∙∙<∙∙∙@∙∙∙%∙#               Dex: 16

       #####∙∙∙∙##### #               Gold: 131

           #∙∙#∙∙∙∙                   Experience: 2/16  (2)

           #∙##∙##                    Level 2 of the Dungeon

           #∙ ∙∙#  #                  a) +0 elf short sword

           ######                     Encumbered

Versions

The crawl-ref project was formed to address the seemingly stalled official development of Crawl, yielding the variant Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Project developers characterize official Crawl development as in "something close to hibernation", with development "largely invisible to the public. The most recent version of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is 0.4, released on July 14, 2008. Work on version 0.5 is underway, with strong community participation.

Another variant with color tile graphics and mouse support also exists, released under an open source license based on the original NetHack General Public License. The tiled variant is developed by Enne Walker, a member of the Stone Soup team, and included in the version releases of Stone Soup.

The game has been ported to the Nintendo DS as DSCrawl.

References

External links

• Official website
• Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup on Sourceforge
• Tile graphics version
• CrawlWiki
• Play Crawl online
• 13 Steps To CRAWL
• Hints and spoilers