Adventures In Random Roleplay: Tiny Dungeon Edition – Part 2 – Tiny Beginnings and Growing Up

Welcome back, dice fondlers! Last week, we shrank ourselves down to take our first steps into the world of Tiny Dungeon 2^nd Edition. This week, let’s talk character creation and gaining experience. No sense staying tiny forever, am I right?

Everything You Need to Create Tiny Characters

Tiny Dungeon uses a set of steps that will seem familiar for most RPG players by this point. Pick a Race, then pick Traits. However, after that, you choose a Weapon Group to be proficient in, followed by your Family Trade, and finally, your Belief. Some of those are new to the process, particularly if you’re used to Dungeons and Dragons, so let’s break these down, shall we?

Select Character Race

First of all, let’s take a look at how Tiny Dungeon handles race. There is a wide range of choices to pick from, including standard Humans, Fey, Dwarves, Goblins, Treefolk, and Karhu (lumbering bear people). As we mentioned last week, in Tiny Dungeon, your race determines your base HP.

For example, if I were to choose Human, I’d begin with 6 HP. Conversely, if I chose to be a Treefolk, I’d start with 12. Each race also starts with a bonus racial trait, which is usually specific to them. Human adaptability allows Humans to choose a bonus trait in addition to the ones they’d normally get to pick.

However, if we chose Treefolk as our race, we’d gain the trait Ancient Heart, which means we can only restore health by standing in direct sunlight (at one hour per hit point), or by sleeping.

Pick Three Traits

Once you’ve selected a race, it’s time to customize your character by choosing three traits (four if you picked Human). Traits range anywhere from Blacksmiths, who can perform a test in order to repair items on the go, to having a Familiar spirit that follows you around, to being Spell-Touched with special magic abilities.

This is where you really get to set your character apart by mixing and matching the cool things you can do.

Weapon Groups

Choosing a Weapon Group is pretty easy. We’ve already discussed them somewhat last week in our section on combat. As a refresher— Light Weapons use one hand and can reach up to 5 feet away, Heavy Weapons take two hands and can reach up to 10 feet away, and Ranged Weapons take one hand to hold, two to fire, can hit any target on the field, but take an Action to reload. Once you’ve chosen which one of these Weapon Groups you want your character to master (i.e. gain advantage with), you’re good to move on to Belief.

Character Belief

What is “Belief” in Tiny Dungeon? Bluntly, it’s irrelevant on a purely mechanical level; it doesn’t affect experience point gain. After all, the GM is encouraged to reward the entire group XP evenly based on the group’s behavior at a rate of 1-3 XP per session regardless.

Instead, think of your character’s Belief in Tiny Dungeon as your primary roleplaying hook. What is the driving goal for your character RIGHT NOW? After speaking with your GM, you can always change it later as your character grows, but at the start, it defines how your character interacts with the world around them.

Character XP

That leads into our final topic: character growth. I already gave away a few minutes ago that GMs are supposed to reward players 1-3 XP per session. So what do you do with XP once you have it? 1 XP can gain you an additional hit point, 2 XP can gain you an additional proficiency or Weapon Group mastery, and 3 XP lets you gain a new Trait. Nice and easy, right?

And that really is all there is to it. Tiny Dungeon is a compact game you can pick-up and play in a hurry. It contains plenty of adventure ideas and a bevy of assorted monsters to throw at your party, as well as a scale for judging how difficult a given fight should be.

With that, I’m going to leave you. Next week, we’ll roll the dice and see what other new games we have in store. Until then, remember to….