Dungeons: The Dragoning

"This is a new era in tabletop roleplaying games. This is a game made for you, by people like you. It's not a load of sterilized mass market drek designed by a room full of corporate meatplows. This is raw. This is brutal. This is DUNGEONS THE DRAGONING. So play like you've got a pair or put down the dice and go find a My Little Pony doll."

Originally released to /tg/ on April Fools' Day, many were skeptical about what Dungeons: the Dragoning (more appropriately, Dungeons: The Dragoning 40,000 7th Edition) claimed to be. Purportedly, it was a chimaeric fusion of several popular Tabletop Games. Many people laughed, but a few brave souls checked out the PDF. What they found will go down in /tg/ history forever.

Freely available for download at http://lawfulnice.blogspot.com/.

Book 2 (Dungeons: The Dragoning 40,000 7th Edition: For a Few Subtitles More) is now available, from the same site.


 * Adventure-Friendly World: It's the Planescape cosmology with Spelljammer elements, with planets and cultures right out of Dark Heresy. No shortage of places to go or problems to solve here.
 * Affectionate Parody: Let's just say, the whole thing.
 * April Fools' Day: Released then.
 * Badass: If your character isn't this, you're doing it wrong.
 * Badass Automaton: The Promethean Exaltation.
 * Badass Normal: The Paragon Exaltation, where instead of blessings from the gods and magic powers, you were just born that awesome.
 * Buffy-Speak: The classes Fight Guy and Master Fight Guy.
 * Crap Saccharine World: The Crystal Sphere Arcadia. Just reading the fluff can give you a chill.
 * Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Averted, save for the Necrodermis Heart's special ability.
 * Darker and Edgier: In Book 2, alignments are explored in further detail, including major factions who worship certain gods. One of Vectron's factions are the Vectron's Witnesses. This group takes many cues from cults such as Scientology, and enslaves followers after extorting them. Prior to this, Vectron was one of the sillier gods, who's one tenant was worshiping him and getting others to do so.
 * Dark Is Not Evil: It's quite possible to have a Chaos-aligned character who happens to be a real nice guy, and daemons aren't evil, just alien. Of course, the inverse is true as well, and daemons are distrusted for a reason.
 * Determinator: One of Humanity's racial feats and the Pressure power for Paragons.
 * Doing It for the Art: Lawful Nice regards it as a labor of love.
 * Elemental Powers: Dragon-Blooded Exaltations cover all of the Classical Element combinations- Greek (Earth, Wind, Water, Fire), Chinese (Earth, Fire, Water, Metal, Wood), Musashi's Five Rings (Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, Void), and Captain Planet (Earth, Wind, Water, Fire Heart).
 * Grey and Gray Morality: Perhaps because of the Exalted elements, but only the Dark Eldarin seem really evil.
 * A Lighter Shade of Grey: That being said, the Blessed Powers (Order Gods) seem to more directly represent positive aspects of their domains, while the Chaos Gods encourage acting selfishly (or Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, in Malal's case).
 * Half-Human Hybrid: Lampshaded. The book points out that both dragons and humans are quite willing to screw everything, and that their breeding almost always works for reasons baffling to science.
 * Heroic Host: Daemonhosts.
 * Instant Awesome, Just Add Dragons: The Dragonblooded Exaltation.
 * Knight Templar / Well-Intentioned Extremist: The majority of Order alignments promote this behavior...except for Bahamut (who embodies social justice and protection) and Pelor (who embodies charity and peacemaking). Conveniently, they both also tolerate working with Chaos (Bahamut just doesn't like taking orders from it, and Pelor doesn't mind if it isn't cruel), and since the Ruinous Powers don't care if their servants cooperate with order...
 * Magitek: The Spelljammers, and the general melding of technology and magic in the setting.
 * Magic Knight: Possible either by multi-classing (something the game encourages), taking a melee-oriented class while being a Daemonhost or Atlantean, or going through the Arcane Knight or Magic Gunner class tracks.
 * Mega Crossover: Elements from no less than 6 major Tabletop Games and other media have been identified: Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, New World of Darkness, Old World of Darkness, Warhammer Fantasy, Mass Effect, Warhammer 40,000, Scion and Exalted, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
 * Mechanically its AEG's Roll and Keep system married to the leveling system and critical tables of Dark Heresy which were then welded into the framework of the World of Darkness "faction groups" where each type of Exalt has a particular set of abilities and stereotypes with Dungeons & Dragons flavouring for the magic among others...
 * Noble Demon: Many, many Chaos-worshippers. The only Ruinous Powers that actively promote acting like a Jerkass is Tzeentch (who makes up for it by promoting Magnificent Bastards) and Malal (who literally no one else likes, to the point where he doesn't even have real religious orders, just street gangs and the occasional wandering Champion).
 * Order Versus Chaos: The primary cosmic conflict. Both sides have a point.
 * Our Demons Are Different: As in, they're Warhammer Fantasy Battle daemons, if Warhammer daemons weren't Exclusively Evil. Oh, and they serve the Gods of Order as well.
 * Our Ghosts Are Different: The Wraith Exaltation, where they make bodies out of ectoplasm and get some spooky powers. They aren't the only ghosts, but they are the only ones who've learned how to get out of the Warp.
 * Our Vampires Are Different: Basically Vampire: The Masquerade Vampires (with Khaine being their ulitmate progenitor) for the Vampire Exaltation.
 * Our Werewolves Are Different: Werewolf Exaltation, inspired by The World of Darkness and Exalted.
 * Pure Awesomeness: Part of the Paragon's Pressure power, which allows you to have bonuses on rolls for no reason other than the fact that you're a badass.
 * Recursive Fanfiction: of a variety. Dungeons: The Dragoning was born when Lawful Nice's group played a pen-paper game in a game of Adeptus Evangelion, which is another homebrew system. You also have several popular homebrew classes and races on the forums, making them homebrew inside a homebrew based on homebrew played in a homebrew system. Apologies if homebrew doesn't look like a word anymore.
 * Refuge in Audacity
 * Shout-Out: EVERYWHERE.
 * It's probably easier to list the things there aren't shoutouts to.
 * CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
 * Team Killer: Malal is described as being the God of Teamkilling Fucktards. Actions that can require an alignment test for his followers include "needlessly preventing a death", "aiding another", "keeping your word when it would help another", and "repenting for one's behavior". Vectron help you if you're siding with a Chosen of Malal- they can receive bonuses for attacking allies or neutral NPCs.
 * Weirdness Magnet: Thanks to the Ghost Die mechanic, Wraiths are inherently this.
 * What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: One of the Dragon-Blooded Blood Quickenings is Heart. At first glance it's situational at best- a bonus to Fellowship and a useful social encounter ability...
 * Heart Is an Awesome Power: ...Which is incredibly awesome on a social character, and their claws have the Orgone Array power, which can trigger psychic phenomena.
 * World Shapes: Spheres, for the most part... then you got cubes in Acheron and a crystal sphere consisting of an ocean and an impossibly large mountain.
 * World Half Full: Yeah sure, the "there is only war" line applies...except it's more of a Cold War, and there's genuinely good causes to fight for.