LONG GAMES

WORD
DUNGEON
About
Word Dungeon is a simple game that you can play with nothing more than a pen,
paper, and your imagination. In Word Dungeon you will be using weapons to fight
monsters to win gold!

You will write down the name of a monster that you will be fighting, and then write
down the name of weapons that share one or more letters with the name of the
monster. By crossing out the shared letters of the two words, you can deal damage to
the monster. Cross out all of the monster's letters to defeat the monster and
claim your gold!

How To Play
1 - Monster
On a sheet of paper, write down the name
of a monster that you will be fighting
(There's a helpful list on p5):

DRAGON

2 - Weapon
Next to the monster, write down the name of a weapon that you will use to fight the
monster (There's another helpful list on p5). Cross out any letters that appear in both
the monster and the weapon. You can cross out as many letters as possible in one go.
You can only use each letter in the weapon once. e.g. If you are fighting a 'TROLL' and
you use a 'LANCE' as your weapon, you can only cross out one 'L' in 'TROLL':

X X
DRAGON X X
GUN

1
3 - Damage
After you have crossed out all the letters shared by the monster and the weapon, the
monster attacks you. Take one damage. Keep a tally ( |||| ) of how much damage

/
you receive. You do not receive any damage on the turn that you kill the monster.

4 - Kill The Monster

Keep writing down weapons, and crossing out the shared letters in the weapons and
monster name until you have crossed out every letter in the monster's name. This
means you have have successfully killed the monster!

5 - Claim Your Gold!

Once a monster has been killed, you can claim your gold! You earn gold equal to the
number of letters in the monster's name minus the number of weapons used to kill
the monster. e.g. In the example below, 'DRAGON' has 6 letters. It took 3 weapons to kill
the monster. 6-3=3. Three gold would be won! Keep a tally of all gold earned.

Damage

XXXXXX
DRAGON X
GUN X ||
XXX
SWORD X Gold

AXE |||

6 - Fight Another Monster

Draw a line under the previous monster and weapons, then add a new monster. You
can use any unused letters in the previous weapons to fight the new monster (In
some cases, you might even kill the monster in the first round). Only the weapons
under the line (the ones used to kill this monster) will be used to calculate your gold.

You can only write down the name of a weapon you have previously used if every
letter in the weapon has been crossed out. e.g. If you use SWORD, you will have to cross
out every letter in the word before you can use SWORD again.

2


Damage

XXXXXX
DRAGON X
GUN X |||
X XXX
SWORD
X Gold

AXEX |||

X
XXX
BEAST HAMMER

7 - End Of The Game

The game ends as soon as you receive your tenth piece of damage. You will then leave
the dungeon with all the gold you have won!

Try to defeat as many monsters with as few weapons as possible, to earn the
most points.

3
Additional Rules
In Word Dungeon you have to come up with the names of the monsters and the
weapons. Choose pre-existing monsters, from real life, mythology, or fiction, and
not monsters you have created for the game.

When writing weapon names, only use weapons that are single words. e.g. You
can use a 'LONGSWORD' but not a 'HEAVY AXE' nor a 'MAGICAL ELVEN
WARHAMMER'. That would be considered cheating.

To earn the most gold, you should choose long monster names and long weapon
names that have multiple letters in common.

To receive the least damage, you should choose short monster names, and long
weapon names.

If you can defeat a monster by only using letters in previous weapons, and defeat
it in a single turn, you can still add a weapon next to that monster for use in the
future.

You may wish to make the monsters and weapons thematic. For example, you
may want to only use monsters from Greek mythology, and weapons found in
ancient Greece.

4
Monsters & Weapons
Part of the fun of the game is thinking of the monsters to fight and the weapons to
fight with, but sometimes we all need a helping hand. So we've provided a list of
Monsters & Weapons you could use in your games.

To add some randomness to your game, you could roll a 20-sided die to determine
your monsters.

Monsters

1 VAMPIRE 11 MUMMY
2 DRAGON 12 BEAST
3 GHOST 13 MEDUSA
4 FIEND 14 GREMLIN
5 WEREWOLF 15 SIREN
6 ZOMBIE 16 GARGOYLE
7 BANSHEE 17 TROLL
8 WITCH 18 CYCLOPS
9 GOBLIN 19 IMP
10 GHOUL 20 CANNIBAL Weapons

1 GUN 11 LANCE
2 BOOMERANG 12 SABRE
3 ARROW 13 SWORD
4 CROSSBOW 14 TOMAHAWK
5 SLING 15 RIFLE
6 SPEAR 16 MUSKET
7 BAYONET 17 CATAPULT
8 CLUB 18 WHIP
9 DAGGER 19 AXE
10 HALBERD 20 HAMMER

5
TURN ORDER

1 Write down the name of the monster.

2 Write down the name of a weapon and cross out any

letters shared by the two words.

3 If the monster is still alive (still has uncrossed

letters) receive 1 damage.

4 Keep going until the monster is killed (until you

have crossed out all of the monster's letters).

5 Claim your gold. (Gold = Number of letters in the

monster's name minus number or weapons used to

kill monster).

6 Keep going until you have received 10 damage.

6
EXAMPLE GAME

Damage Gold

|||| |||| |||| ||

/
/
Monsters Weapons

XXXX
XX
GOBLIN XXX
SLING
XX
BOW X

XX
WHIP
XXXXX
WITCH XX X X
TOMAHAWK
XX
CLUB

XXXXX XX
WEREWOLF XX
SABRE
X
SPEAR

7
 DESIGNER.....William Long
longgames.co.uk

ILLUSTRATOR..... Jason Glover

greygnome.com

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copyright long games 2022

first edition
 LONG GAMES

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