This is a new era in tabletop roleplaying games. This is a game made for you, by people like you. It's not a load of sterilized mass market drek designed by a room full of corporate meatplows. This is raw. This is brutal. This is DUNGEONS THE DRAGONING. So play like you've got a pair or put down the dice and go find a /My Little Pony doll.
Originally released to /tg/ on April Fools' Day, many were skeptical about what Dungeons: the Dragoning (more appropriately, Dungeons: The Dragoning 40,000 7th Edition) claimed to be. Purportedly, it was a chimaeric fusion of several popular Tabletop Games. Many people laughed, but a few brave souls checked out the PDF. What they found will go down in /tg/ history forever.
Freely available for download at http://lawfulnice.blogspot.com/
Book 2 (Dungeons: The Dragoning 40,000 7th Edition: For a Few Subtitles More) is available from the same site.
The discussion and homebrew forum can be found here.
Tropes appearing in Dungeons: the Dragoning
- Adventure-Friendly World: It's the Planescape cosmology with Spelljammer elements, with planets and cultures right out of Dark Heresy. No shortage of places to go or problems to solve here.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Paragons commonly take up such dangerous and rewarding areas as swordplay, politics and baking
- Affectionate Parody: Let's just say, the whole thing.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- The Stone Dragon capstone skill lets you give a technique of yours the Blast property, meaning it damages everything in a several-meter area. By virtue of it being a melee attack, you are by default in this blast range.
- The Void Blood Quickening for Dragonblooded. Making it so your attacks can't be healed from may sound cool, but odds are in an encounter the guy you're hacking up won't live past the encounter anyways.
- Awesomeness Is a Force: Part of the Paragon's Pressure power, which allows you to have bonuses on rolls for no reason other than the fact that you're a badass.
- Badass Normal: The Paragon Exaltation, where, instead of blessings from the gods and magic powers, you were just born that awesome.
- Crapsaccharine World: The Crystal Sphere Arcadia. Just reading the fluff can give you a chill.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Averted, save for the Necrodermis Heart's special ability.
- Darker and Edgier: In Book 2, alignments are explored in further detail, including major factions who worship certain gods. One of Vectron's factions are the Vectron's Witnesses. This group takes many cues from cults such as Scientology, and enslaves followers after extorting them. Prior to this, Vectron was one of the sillier gods, whose one tenet was worshiping him and getting others to do so.
- Dark Is Not Evil: It's quite possible to have a Chaos-aligned character who happens to be a real nice guy, and daemons aren't evil, just alien. Of course, the inverse is true as well, and daemons are distrusted for a reason.
- Elemental Powers: Dragon-Blooded Exaltations cover all of the Classical Element combinations- Greek (Earth, Wind, Water, Fire), Chinese (Earth, Fire, Water, Metal, Wood), Musashi's Five Rings (Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, Void), and Captain Planet (Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, Heart).
- Half-Human Hybrid: Lampshaded. The book points out that both dragons and humans are quite willing to screw everything, and that their breeding almost always works for reasons baffling to science.
- Lethal Joke Character: Vectron is basically the Paris Hilton of gods- his only domain or claim to fame is basically being a god. However, Chosen of Vectron have the single best resource restoration capability of any other alignment in their exaltation.
- A Lighter Shade of Grey: The Blessed Powers (Order Gods) seem to more directly represent positive aspects of their domains, while the Chaos Gods encourage acting selfishly (or Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, in Malal's case).
- Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: with the existence of Sword Schools, Gun Kata, and feats such as Lightning Attack, is mostly averted. In an odd twist though, gun specialists have a harder time catching up than melee characters at later levels, since melee weapons add Strength to their damage but guns don't get anything similar. The benefits that guns do have (easy access to multiple attacks, safety of range) are also present in casters who do get scaling damage. That's more due to Evocation being a
Game-Breaker than guns being bad however. - Mage Marksman: The Magitek Gunner class follow this to a T. Their signature class feature is the Elemental Shot series of feats which allow them to apply magical effects to firearms attacks. They gain access to both spell schools and Gun Kata styles and a feat attained in the last level lets them pre-cast and store a spell into a gun.
- Magitek: The Spelljammers, and the general melding of technology and magic in the setting.
- Magic Knight: Possible either by multi-classing (something the game encourages), taking a melee-oriented class while being a Daemonhost or Atlantean, or going through the Arcane Knight or Magic Gunner class tracks.
- Mega Crossover: Elements from six major Tabletop Games and other media are present: Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, New World of Darkness, Old World of Darkness, Warhammer Fantasy, Mass Effect, Warhammer 40,000, Scion and Exalted, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Mechanically, it's AEG's Roll and Keep system married to the leveling system and critical tables of Dark Heresy which were then welded into the framework of the World of Darkness "faction groups" where each type of Exalt has a particular set of abilities and stereotypes with Dungeons & Dragons flavouring for the magic among others...
- Noble Demon: Many, many Chaos-worshippers. The only Ruinous Powers that actively promote acting like a Jerkass is Tzeentch and Malal (who literally no one else likes, to the point where he doesn't even have real religious orders, just street gangs and the occasional wandering Champion).
- One Stat to Rule Them All: In the release version, Dexterity was, controlling to-hit, ranged weapon damage, static defense, dodge, and speed.
- Our Demons Are Different: As in, they're Warhammer daemons, if Warhammer daemons weren't Always Chaotic Evil. Oh, and they serve the Gods of Order as well.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: The Wraith Exaltation, where they make bodies out of ectoplasm and get some spooky powers. They aren't the only ghosts, but they are the only ones who've learned how to get out of the Warp.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Basically Vampire: The Masquerade Vampires (with Khaine being their ulitmate progenitor) for the Vampire Exaltation.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Werewolf Exaltation, inspired by The World of Darkness and Exalted.
- Recursive Fanfiction: of a variety. Dungeons: The Dragoning was born when Lawful Nice's group played a pen-paper game in a game of Adeptus Evangelion, which is another homebrew system. You also have several popular homebrew classes and races on the forums, making them homebrew inside a homebrew based on homebrew played in a homebrew system. Apologies if homebrew doesn't look like a word anymore.
- Shout-Out: See here.
- Team Killer: Malal is described as being the God of Teamkilling Fucktards. Actions that can require an alignment test for his followers include "needlessly preventing a death", "aiding another", "keeping your word when it would help another", and "repenting for one's behavior". Vectron help you if you're siding with a Chosen of Malal- they can receive bonuses for attacking allies or neutral NPCs.
- Weirdness Magnet: Thanks to the Ghost Die mechanic, Wraiths are inherently this.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: One of the Dragon-Blooded Blood Quickenings is Heart. At first glance it's situational at best — a bonus to Fellowship and a useful social encounter ability.
- World Shapes: Spheres, for the most part... then you got cubes in Acheron and a crystal sphere consisting of an ocean and an impossibly large mountain.
- World Half Full: Yeah sure, the "there is only war" line applies... except it's more of a Cold War, and there's genuinely good causes to fight for.
