3DIE6 - A Dungeon Creepy Crawler RPG

Welcome to THE SHIMMER. A subterranean world of glowing mushrooms, strange creatures, winding tunnels and death! In 3DIE6, you play a member of the Roan, a city of little creatures that are part bug, part human, maybe a little bit alien and a lovely shade of blue. They also die all of the time. To help remedy that somewhat, they have evolved over time to have three distinct hive-minds inhabiting the same body. They take turns driving and, because the Roan are essentially exoskeleton and goo, they can even re-shape their bodies to specialize in skills depending on who is driving the Exoskeleton at the time. If one of the hive-minds die, the other minds can take over the body and carry on the glorious fight. Once they recover from any squashed body parts that may have killed off their old mind-mate, anyway.

The Shimmer is full of dangers, from great hairy spider-things and earth-shaking borer worms to armies of tiny fungoid spores but there is also potential to find great treasures, succulent nectar, long lost artifacts and glory in the pulsating, phosphorescent depths.

3DIE6 is a new game system, designed to be quick to learn, high on chaos and low on nit-picking. At its heart it is an old-school dungeon crawler with elements of funnel and OSR games. I wanted to create something that was easy to sit down for a one-shot or fill-in game and, because the life of an RPG designer is a lonely one, I also wanted it to be solo-able. For most checks, it's a simple stat check or a roll of the 3DIE6 dice. All you'll need to play is the Rulebook and three six-sided dice. (Ideally three different colors) A printout of the character sheet, a pen or pencil and a few markers like coins would be handy as well for keeping track of things.

The dice in 3DIE6 are used two different ways in the game. For stat checks it's a simple roll. Toss the 3D6, total them, add or subtract any modifiers and if you exceed the goal for that check, you succeed. For things like battle and special challenges, the lowly 3D6 become 3DIE6! When you roll for a 3DIE6 check, each represent a different thing - there's the Attack/Interact die, the Defense/Challenge die and the Effect die. For any check requiring a roll, you throw all three. After adding or subtracting any skills and modifiers your character has affecting it, the Attack and Defense dice tell you if you've succeeded in what you are attempting. Then the Effect die tells you how the enemy responds or what happens next!

This is the Zinequest 3 'Zine Version of the Core Rules - It includes the basics for what you need to play a game of 3DIE6.