Welcome to your new adventure

If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.

— Larry Page.

This is the very first of what I plan to be many, many posts about the upcoming B.Y.O. Dungeon line. Thanks for visiting. This is gonna be good.

So, what is B.Y.O. Dungeon? I can tell you, but first I’ll show you.

That up there is a sample page showing what the system does. In B.Y.O. Dungeon you start with one or more chapbooks that are filled with creative prompts, some partial pictures, and a whole lot of space for you to make your mark.

As you read through the book you fill in sections. You don’t have to start at the beginning, and you don’t have to do it all in one sitting. Heck, you don’t even have to do it on your own.

One thing that I’m very excited about with B.Y.O. Dungeons is that it allows you to be creative with your friends. If you want some surprise in your books, just pass them on to your buddy, have them fill in a few sections and then pass the book to another friend. In the meantime, you’re filling out sections for your friends. When it comes back to you, you’ve got a unique RPG module made by people who love you, or at least who are interested in throwing some challenges your way.

The base books in the B.Y.O. Dungeon series feature an overland “hex flower” of seven different, blank territories, guidelines and space to create your own encounter tables, wandering merchants, rumors, and even a dungeon or city in which to adventure.

Can’t get a group together? That’s no problem. With the random tables in these books, you can also run them solo. Yes, solo, as in classic gamebooks.

The books are designed to be close to rules-neutral. You can fill them in with stats for OSR NPCs, maybe Fate aspects, PbtA-style fronts, and more. To make things easy for you, we’re also releasing a set of rules, called, imaginatively enough, B.Y.O. Dungeon Rules. Do you need a B.Y.O. Dungeon booklet to play these rules? Nope, they’re standalone but they integrate well. Can you use your B.Y.O. Dungeon blank books with other rules? As we said before, yes.

Go ahead and pick up B.Y.O. Dungeon Rules for free at this link right here. We’re going to be releasing more material for that system regularly. And soon you can get your hands on physical, high-quality B.Y.O. Dungeon chapbooks, but more on that later!