Get the Rule Book on BoardGameGeek.com
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| Rêve de Donjon game ready to start play with my rule book and reference aid |
I've completed my English translation of the rules for the French game Rêve de Donjon (1986), originally published in Jeux & Stratégie magazine issue 42 (December 1986).
First and foremost, here is the link to the download page hosted on BoardGameGeek.com. You need an account on the site in order to download the file, but if you are reading my blog, you probably already have one:
The Dream of a Dungeon?
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| The green team of adventurers in a starting tower |
Rêve de Donjon is a fantasy game in which four teams of adventurers race through a non-Euclidian labyrinth on a map heavily inspired by M. C. Escher. The teams search for treasures, slay monsters, form alliances with creatures and genies, and try to keep from going mad as they battle each other in this strange dream world.
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| Rêve de Dragon advertisement (1985, uploaded by Clark Timmins) |
The name of the game is a nod to Rêve de Dragon (Dragon's Dream), a popular French fantasy RPG first published in 1985. In that game, "the world is but a dragon's dream" (Le monde est un rêve de dragon), in that the entire game world is the shared dream of a bunch of sleeping dragons. Each character in the game is being dreamed by a single dragon and when that character dies, it means that dragon woke up. Since you can't have fantasy gaming without Dungeons & Dragons, the Rêve de Donjon designers decided that dungeons can dream too.
Upgrading the Game Components
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| Yellow team adventurers encounter a friendly griffon in room 6 |
The original game was a magazine insert and all game counters were printed on the map as a slick four-fold paper poster. I scanned in the original counter art, cleaned up any printing errors on my computer, then printed the counter images on stiff cardstock. I used artist-tac adhesive sheets to adhere the cardstock to a thick, dense cardboard before cutting out the counters with an X-acto knife.
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| Blue team adventurers take the stairs, passing by a green team stack |
I placed a sheet of plexiglass over the map to protect it during play and to keep the fold creases flat.
Three Games in One
There are rules for three different types of games, depending on the number of players.
2 Player Fantasy Wargame - The adventurer teams form alliances of warm colors (red and yellow) and cool colors (blue and green) and start in their towers. The alliances are two teams of 7 adventurers each, for a total of 14 units for each player to track at the start of the game! The winner is the player that controls the most objects at the end of a predetermined time limit. The instructions state that you should set an alarm, then place the clock and all other time keeping devices out of view of both players. It should be a surprise to all when the game ends!
1 Player Solo Adventure - The player selects one adventurer and sets a goal for themself to complete (Eliminate all Enemy Monsters, Find all the Objects). There is little here to guide the player in how the game works and it seems like an afterthought.
Getting into the game
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| Red adventurers are aided by two genies as they attack a green team stack |
There is a question about the stacking rules in the game. You can have a maximum of 4 friendly units (adventurers, monsters, and genies) in one space together. As can be seen in the gameplay images above, I broke up the teams into smaller "parties" of adventurers that stacked together. On re-reading the original rules, it states that each space may be occupied by no more than one adventurer at a time. However, in that same sentence, the rules refer to adventurers (plural) in a stack. There are also rules for multiple adventurers taking losses together when defending in combat (which only makes sense if they are in the same space).
So, I added a Party Variant rule to the game, which allows multiple adventurers of the same team to stack together, as long as they don't violate the 4 unit stacking limit. This gives the player the choice to split their team into many stacks that can spread out across the labyrinth quickly, or travel in fewer, larger stacks of adventurers that can better survive combat.
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| The warm color teams win with 7 objects against the cool color teams' 5 objects |
Yellow team got lucky by finding several good objects early and allied themselves with a powerful griffon. The yellow and red teams gained control of 2 genies each, powerful allies that add their power in combat and give bonuses to die rolls in attacks. Blue team was unlucky and lost several adventurers to madness, but still ended the game in control of 3 objects.
Analyzing the map
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| My analysis of the game's two paths (red/green) and the orphaned spaces (orange) |
In his designer's notes, map illustrator and co-designer Philippe Fassier stated that he had to carefully manage the creation of this network of walkways "so that no unit would find itself alone and forgotten in the general tumult" (J'avais un réseau de passerelles à étudier de manière à ne pas laisser un pion solitaire et oublié du tumulte général) (from Fassier's unpublished book, page 86, referenced here: https://laurent36.typepad.com/blog/2007/12/les-encarts-de-jeux-et-strat%C3%A9gie-n-41-%C3%A0-50.html.)
I've analyzed the game's labyrinth (above), which comprises of two interlocking paths, colored red and green for clarity. The green path is accessible to (is the "floor" for) the two starting towers in the top corners of the image. The red path connects to the two other towers in the bottom corners of the image. The floors of the red path become the walls of the green path, and vice versa. Characters may interact with each other if they are on adjacent spaces, but the only way to cross from one path to another is by using a teleporter (the game rules state clearly, "no climbing the walls!" (Pas question de grimper aux murs!).
The orange spaces are co-planar with the red path, but do not appear to be connected to that path. They are literally "alone and forgotten." There is no way to access room 15 (the teleporters don't go there), since your unit must stand in the space in front of a door in order to open it (you can't open a door that is on your floor).
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| Proposed errata 1: add a staircase next to room 15 |
A staircase should be added next to room 15, as shown above, in order to make the orange spaces accessible.
Another problem is that the player that starts in the upper right tower is at a disadvantage. Their starting path leads either to a dead end (the doorway space labeled room 12) or are forced to travel past the upper left tower, where another player can block the path. This tower is 16 spaces (4 turns of movement!) from the nearest doorway threshold space. Compare this to the upper left tower where a threshold is only 5 spaces away and can be reached on turn 1.
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| Proposed errata 2: insert hidden space next to room 16 |
A hidden space should be added under the walkway near room 16, as shown above, in order to give the player in the upper right tower another option. Hidden spaces under walkways and staircases do not cost movement points to travel across and cannot be occupied, but they provide connectivity for spaces on either side of an elevated walkway. This would give the upper right tower access to a doorway threshold that is only 8 spaces away.
The map image is absolutely stunning and is what drew me to the game. In practice, it can take a moment to determine if two adjacent spaces are co-planar, at a 90° angle (like floor and inner wall), or at a 270° angle (like outer wall and roof). If the map was drawn with dashed lines separating co-planar adjacent spaces, thin lines for 90° angle adjacent spaces, and thick lines for 270° angle adjacent spaces, it would speed up gameplay and make the spatiality of the game world easier to understand.
