Dungeon Jam - [Slow funding now!]

Overview

Dungeon Jam  is a tabletop roleplaying game featuring no-prep dungeon busting with quick and satisfying exploration, combat, harvesting and crafting.

Dungeon Jam is also an experimental ttrpg, using both d6 dice pools and common playing cards to fuel randomization and a bunch of minigames that break up moments of roleplaying and fiction-first combat with quick team-focused games that make harvesting and crafting tactile, fresh, and fun.

Close-Up

Players take on the roles of Jamdivers; adventurers who boldly enter the Pomarian Deep to fill their sacks with as much Bruit--that's fruit-themed brutes, there are more than 40 of them!-- as they can carry, return to the surface, then process it into pots of jam to sell for a boatload of coins before starting all over again.

The game is played in two distinct phases. During the Dungeon Phase, players work with the GM to help flesh out on-the-fly generated hexes to explore within the dungeon. They choose how to navigate the inhabitants and properties of the hex in order to find the materials they need to create their tasty confections for fellow Dungeon Divers. They slowly map the dungeon as they discover it; fight, flee, or barter with strange dungeon inhabitants; and interact with minigames for tracking resources, and harvesting bruit.

When their bags are full, or their time is up, they leave the dungeon and enter the Surface Phase. During this phase they will engage with minigames for making jam and selling it. They’ll also have a moment to go shopping for gear and equipment, and get some quality rest so they’re ready for their next excursion.

Slow Funding Goals

Dungeon Jam has quickly become a House Drake favorite. We feel every game designer has a "dungeon game" in them, and this one could very well be ours. We'd love to develop it further-- adding subsystems and better fleshing out the loops to fully realize the blend of Stardew Valley, Dungeon Meshi, and Legend of Mana that we envision--  and you can help! Purchasing, sharing, and talking about this project all help us reach our funding goals so we can afford to spend more time away from our primary publishing schedule to playtest, develop, and hire professional artists to fill the book with spectacular visuals.

Perks of jumping in during this stage of slow funding:

• Snagging a copy early, while the game is in its rawest state, guarantees you the lowest price the project will ever have, and future expansions and updates to the playtest material will never cost you extra.
• Your feedback helps shape the game, we'll be monitoring the discussion board below so you can share your experiences and make suggestions or requests for consideration during development.

Perks of paying extra for the 2024 Patron Badge:

• A (family friendly, if you please!) name* of your choosing in the credit section, updated at the same time as the next game update, which will carry on past the playtest material and to any officially published future edition of the game. 
• Generate a community copy to be given away, added in batches whenever we update Dungeon Jam.

*After you back at the Patron tier, please find the "Patrons!" topic in the Dungeon Jam community below to give us your preferred name.

Funding Outline

This is the development outline, but updates may occur out of order or otherwise change depending on how playtesting, feedback, and other factors come together. Dungeon Jam isn't exactly a minimalist system as it currently exists, but we've got a lot of planned subsystems, and we're going for baroque. None of these will be mandatory. The overall design goal is to release subsystems as optional modules, so you can take only the parts your table is interested in and have them plug seamlessly into the core game, offer additional gameplay options and loops, and provide for a deeper, richer game experience. 

$500 ~  Extensive playtesting and core game patching, as well as preparing the underlying combat system and Bruits for the first expanded module including tags for crafting armor, weapons, and gadgets.

$1,000 ~ Commissioning pixel art for 1 iconic bruit per primary biome (there are 8 of them).

$1,500 ~ Iconic player classes or "job system" and character creation options.

$2,000 ~ Commissioning pixel art for player classes.

$2,500 ~ Factions and Reputations module, robust "Surface Phase" roleplaying mechanics and side quests. Potential for a social minigame.

$3,000 ~ Commissioning pixel art for a bespoke cover with iconic characters based on the classes created by the previous goal.

$3,500 ~ Fishing module and minigame to hook into the expanded crafting system.

$4,000 ~ Commissioning pixel art for beautiful and thematic page borders with variants.

$4,500 ~ Domain play and farming minigame module to hook into the expanded crafting system.

Further funds would be funneled primarily into artwork. 

Other additions, modules and supplements being bandied about over our morning coffee include additional Bruits for every Biome, premade bodget and bargain encounter tables, pre-designed hex clusters to explore for folks who prefer to have a great self-contained story laid out for them, a cute smooching sim module to tie into the factions and reputations module, and a pet module _{(gotta catch 'em all!)}.

The core of Dungeon Jam was designed for the Songs and Sagas Game Jam by fari-rpgs, September 2024.