Polyhedragon

 A small game of fantasy adventure

You will need: 1 set of polyhedral dice.

How to play: Pick characters, communicate clearly, be good friends.

Characters:

Everyone has one flaming torch and one packed lunch. Destroy items after they’re used for something cool.

Fighter (d4), 4d4 HP: When you attack, roll your die instead of doing 1 damage. You have 4 Protection Points. When you or an adjacent ally takes damage, either spend a Protection Point or forfeit your next action to roll your die and reduce incoming damage by the number rolled. You can spend multiple points at once for multiple rolls if you want.

Thief (d6), 2d6 HP: Before an adventure, roll your die on the Tool Table twice and get those items. If you use an item for something cool or useful it will probably be destroyed (same as with any character), but you can keep items that don’t get destroyed to use on your next adventure.

Tool Table: 1. Tinderbox, candle and mirror. 2. 20ft of rope and a giant fish hook. 3. A convincing disguise. 4. A pot of grease and a pot of glue. 5. Ball bearings and a clockwork mouse. 6. A spyglass and a knife.

Cleric (d8), 3d8 HP: You can roll your die, immediately lose half that much HP (rounded down), and then use healing magic to restore that much HP from yourself or others. You can split the number between multiple targets. Healing magic has the reverse effect on undead, dealing damage.

Wizard (d10), 1d10 HP: To cast a spell, pick a target and say the spell’s name out loud, then roll your die on the Magic-o-Meter. If the number you roll is equal to or higher than the number of the spell, it works. If not, you cast the spell whose number you rolled instead, at the same target.

Magic-o-Meter: 1. Bright Light. 2. Fireball (damage equal to die roll). 3. Handy Heal (3 HP). 4. Goose Grease. 5. Goblin Glue. 6. Frightening Lightning (loud, no damage). 7. Transform-a-Toad (turns animals to people and back). 8. Teleport. 9. Sudden Death. 10. Magic Wish.

Barbarian (d12), 1d12+12 HP: Any time you want, you can frenzy - roll your die and deal that much damage exactly, spending damage first on enemies, then allies, then yourself. You take half damage (rounded down) from weapons and traps, excluding your own.

Dungeon (d20): Make up a fun adventure for your friends and see what they do. Give them magic treasure if they do well.

If they get into a fight with monsters, let everyone involved take a turn doing one important thing, then keep doing that until the fight ends. Roll your die to see how much HP a group of monsters has, and tell your friends how scary they look based on that number. Your friends’ attacks do 1 damage. When a monster attacks, the person they’re attacking rolls their die and loses that much HP - same with anything else that would hurt.

If you’re not sure what happens next, roll your die. Use the Dungeon Decider to come up with ideas for monsters and stuff to use in your adventure, or make up your own.

Dungeon Decider:

1. Skeletons, one is wearing a crown and giving orders, they’ll all obey whoever wears the crown.

2. Zombies, very slow and stupid, hate fire.

3. Rats, roll your die to see how many, each attack kills one.

4. Skeleton Rats, same as rats.

5. Mosquito Bats, attracted to light, or whoever has the most HP if there’s no light.

6. Goblins, clever and mean.

7. Skeleton Goblins, less clever.

8. Troll, smart and greedy, roll your die each turn and restore that much HP, unless it was hurt with fire.

9. Dog People, easily become friends.

10. Cat People, easily become indifferent.

11. Pit Trap, big hole that’s hard to cross.

12. Spike Trap, very obvious, spikes come up from the ground if you step here.

13. Arrow Trap, very obvious, shoots arrows at head height.

14. Fake Carpet, nice carpet, comes alive and attacks if stepped on.

15. Jelly Cube, big transparent cube of jelly, tall and wide as a corridor, bits of old adventurers inside.

16. Armoured Ghost, each time it takes damage it takes 1 less than it would, wear it if you beat it, each time you take damage take 1 less than you would.

17. Vampire, all the normal rules about vampires work.

18. Ancient Wizard, can cast spells like the wizard but can’t cast Sudden Death or Wish and uses your die.

19. Many Eyed Beast, if it does damage to someone they turn to stone on an odd number of HP.

20. Dragon. Can’t be beaten, might be tricked.

If you want to use a map to show everyone the dungeon layout, use another set of polyhedral dice to mark where everyone is.