Four Against Darkness - solo dungeon delving

Four Against Darkness from Ganesha Games

[4 min read]

As I explore the breadth of tabletop RPG experiences, both in groups and solo, dungeon crawling pen-and-paper game Four Against Darkness came to my attention via DriveThru RPG. Something about sitting down on a rainy afternoon with a blank piece of paper, a handful of dice, and a pencil to sketch out my progress through a randomly generated dungeon definitely appealed to me!

What is the game?

From the developer:

Four Against Darkness is a solitaire dungeon-delving game.

No miniatures are needed. All you need is the book, a pencil, two six sided dice, and grid paper.

You choose four character types from the classic classes (warrior, wizard, rogue, halfling, dwarf, barbarian, cleric, elf), equip them, and start adventuring in dungeons created by dice rolls and by your choices. When you enter a room, you generate its content on a series of random tables. You will meet monsters, fight them, hopefully defeat them (or decide that discretion is the better part of valor!), you'll manage your resources (healing, spells, life points, equipment), grab treasure, dodge traps, find clues, and even accept quests from the monsters you meet. Your characters can level up and become better at what they do, but it will not be easy.

What the game is not:

• It is NOT a miniature game. You may use miniatures to remember your characters' marching order if you wish, but that's it.
• It is NOT a roleplaying game. You may run it as a simple cooperative, GM-less game if you want.
• It is not a game-book or a choose-your-own-adventure book. There is no prose to read or numbered sections to go to, even if we could do something like that in a supplement.

My play experience

I played in two beginner dungeons over about 3-4 hours total prep and play time. 

I wouldn't say the setup is fast - while the rulebook is a relatively light 90 pages in large font with a fair chunk of them being the random tables needed to run the game, it still took about an hour to read it and generate the 4 characters needed to run the first dungeon. But setup for the second dungeon was more like 15-20 mins on character creation, and probably that would reduce over time. Of course, if your characters survive, you save on that time for the next (more advanced) dungeon!

I chose the classic warrior, wizard, rogue and cleric combo for my first run through. I managed to work my way through a dungeon, besting vermin, minions and some mini-bosses, before confronting the final boss. Unfortunately my random rolls for the final boss made it incredibly tough! All my characters died, with the exception of the rogue who'd found a magic ring, and was able to teleport to the entrance of the dungeon and flee before the end of the battle.

A more nicely drawn example of a 4AD dugeon delve than my own

For my second session, my rogue recruited three more adventurers to tackle a new dungeon with. I rolled up two new classes to see how they played - barbarian and elf - complementing the rogue and a new cleric (which I deem pretty necessary for keeping health up before you can afford a bunch of potions). With many other board games, video games and tabletop RPGs competing for my time, I ultimately did not see this second dungeon through, but it did allow me to see how quickly the game is played when you know what you're doing.

What I liked

• Set up is reasonably fast once you're familiar with the system
• Sketching the dungeon as you go gives it a more hand-crafted, immersive feel
• The system is pretty simple, allowing for a zen-like flow state of drawing, dice rolling and tracking resources as you move through the dungeon
• Rolling on random tables is always fun!

Concerns I had

• The rulebook is not structured well, making for constant flipping between sections without being sure you'll find what you need
•  The base book is designed for low level play, and without any of the story elements the developer introduces in their plethora of expansions, means interest could tire out quickly
• The lack of roleplaying built in to the base game (again, I believe it is fostered more in the expansions), makes this more akin to a board game

In summary

I was excited about the premise of Four Against Darkness, but ultimately I dropped it in favour of other game options. It felt a lot like a board game to me, but without the production quality and immersive trappings that come with a campaign game like The Lord of the Rings, Journeys in Middle Earth, as an example.

I think the experience of playing Four Against Darkness probably improves when adding additional content from the huge catalogue that is out there. Both the base game and the expansions are very affordable, typically under $10 USD each, so if you're interested in randomly-generated, hand-drawn solo dungeon delving, then it is isn't a high barrier to entry.

In time, I will try an alternative, D100 Dungeon, to see whether it was Four Against Darkness or the genre of game itself that didn't hold my attention. In the meantime, I have a ton of board games to play, so watch this space!