Venture & Dungeon (PDF)

Introspective heroic fantasy and kids dodging bullies at school — two new perspectives on the classic High Fantasy genre.

Venture by Riley Rethal is a game of introspective heroic fantasy.

Venture gives us magic-filled forests and looming castles, champions in shining armor and vagabonds with dazzling charm, markets of ill-repute and duplicitous authorities, and uncaring gods high above always asking, “What do you do next?”

In Venture, we will play as a group of adventurers traveling through a fantasy world, making their way across the terrain while learning about themselves and each other. They will meet townspeople with storied cultures, criminals with shady agendas, mages with esoteric power, and a strange darkness encroaching on the horizon.

Dungeon by Jay Dragon is a game about teens playing games of their own.

Dungeon gives us trap-riddled school hallways, dragons in the boiler room, the endless grid of suburbia, doodles of monsters in the margins of planners, and a grinning game master always asking, “What do you do next?”

In Dungeon, we will play as a group of teenagers on the verge of the greatest danger of their lives, whether that danger is the vast dungeon they explore once a week, or the existential terror of high school. They’ll need to confront mocking skeletons, surveilling monstrosities, bloodsucking bullies, and (of course) the dragon atop its throne of gold. And all they’ll have is an old and battered sourcebook, and each other.