Roll and Write games have become wildly popular recently. This game, like most in the genre, comes with a pad of paper “player sheets” and dice. Paper Dungeons has six dice, half black and half white, each with 4 different class symbols, boots, and a skull (along with numbers used essentially for bookkeeping.) The pad of paper is mostly a dungeon map layout and then a bunch of tracks to mark progress on.

In setup there is a dungeon card randomly chosen. This modifies the dungeon so every game doesn’t have the same pattern to go through. There are six entrances at the bottom of the sheet, so you will likely be entering from a different spot than the other players. While six dice are rolled, you only choose three of them to use on your turn. At specific turns in the game there is a boss fight. Your actions will determine how prepared you are for the boss fight, and if you ignore preparing for it then things won’t go well for you.

This is a relatively light and easy to learn game with lots of replayability. Having said that, an expansion with new boss monster cards and dungeon cards would be amazing. (There is an expansion to it called Sidequest expansion. While I don’t have it, it looks more like a stand alone game as it has a new pad of dungeon sheets.) It says it is a 30 minute game, but anyone who has played recent games knows those numbers are lies. If you are sitting with a group of 4 friends playing this, there will be talking and general distractions from playing. So more like an hour seems reasonable. And while it does play 1-8, the solo mode is meh. Normally games with solo mode give you something to play for. A score to beat. A dummy player to race against. Or even just a chart to tell you how poorly you did with your score. This is just play a map. I suppose if you do multiple solo games you can track your scores to compare against yourself, but I would suggest getting a friend (or 7!) to play with.

Definitely a game that is worth picking up and adding to your collection. For me it gets 8 stars.