DESKS & DRAGONS

basic questions

What are tabletop role-playing games?   They are a unique form of interactive entertainment: like living inside a book or TV series taking place in a living, breathing world. Or like a video game where you can overcome challenges in an infinite number of ways. But paramount to this, role-playing games are social. You interact around a table with real people, making connections and starting lifelong friendships.

What is the goal of the game? For you as players: to have fun while exploring a fictional universe. For your characters: to discover secrets and unearth treasure. Other than that, you will be free to explore the world, interact with its inhabitants, and face its dangers (or run away from them). Your party will set their own goals: rescue the merchant’s son, find the pirates treasure, take over the duchy… It’s always your decision!

Can I play if I’ve never done anything like this?  It’s the easiest thing. You’ll find that the switch in your brain that used to let you play Cops & Robbers when you were a kid still works. A little imagination is all you need.
 
Do I have to do anything silly like speak in a funny voice or wear a wizard’s hat?  This is not that kind of role-playing game. It’s cool to give your character a voice, but you don’t have to. Our games are more about creative problem solving than theatrics.
 
Will the game be about business skills?  Not in the least. It’ll be about exploring dangerous forests and delving into cursed tombs for treasure. But that doesn’t mean you won’t learn something about your colleagues when they leave your for dead in a pit trap… Seriously, we will be playing the same adventures you could play with your friends.

expert questions

Some of my team members are D&D pros, won’t they know all the adventures in advance?  We run our own original adventures, as well as small print productions from the best creative minds who haven’t been snatched by Hollywood (yet). We can also tailor the content to your needs, and set a theme that will help your teams work on specific problems (contact us with your queries and we’ll talk).
 

Which edition of D&D are you running? None. Eric was inspired by the D&D of the origins (1974-1983 if you want dates, Original D&D to Basic/Expert if you want names) to create the simplest, easiest to learn game that still feels like D&D. In Lunchtime Dungeons, the focus is about exploration, interaction, and creative thinking, instead of number crunching and rules mastery. It’s more an interactive story than it is a board game.

I know D&D. But what are the rules like?  Very simple, but with similar principles: roll a d20 and/or other polyhedrons to see if you succeed at a task. The rules are of the ‘old school’ variety, focusing on survival and exploration rather than tactical combat. Characters have to use their wits to survive. Also, the game encourages open world adventuring: there isn’t a single quest for you to follow. You do what you want, go wherever you like in search of adventure, and see how the world reacts.
 
Why play your game over the recognised standard?  Independent games are easy to learn and play, with rules that facilitate the story instead of being the focus of the session. In our games, the challenge is not to understand how to use the rules in the most efficient way to kill monsters. In fact, killing monsters is a very risky proposition in Lunchtime Dungeons. You’ll want to avoid violence as much as possible, because violence kills your friends as easily as your enemies. Finally, this is how our ancestors played, back in the distant 1970s: you will have a chance to get back to the origins of the hobby.