The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermTabletop term

Dungeon crawl

An adventure in which characters explore a confined labyrinth of rooms and corridors, fighting monsters, avoiding traps, solving puzzles and hauling out treasure. It is the oldest scenario in roleplaying and the template for countless board and video games, from Dungeon! to Diablo.

An adventure in which characters explore a confined labyrinth of rooms and corridors, fighting monsters, avoiding traps, solving puzzles and hauling out treasure. It is the oldest scenario in roleplaying and the template for countless board and video games, from Dungeon! to Diablo.

Origin

The underground expeditions of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign (early 1970s), published with Dungeons & Dragons (1974).

Quick answers

What does "Dungeon crawl" mean?
An adventure in which characters explore a confined labyrinth of rooms and corridors, fighting monsters, avoiding traps, solving puzzles and hauling out treasure. It is the oldest scenario in roleplaying and the template for countless board and video games, from Dungeon! to Diablo.
Where does the term "Dungeon crawl" come from?
The underground expeditions of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign (early 1970s), published with Dungeons & Dragons (1974).

Nearby in the archive

Blackmoor

Campaign setting1971

In a Twin Cities basement in 1971, Dave Arneson sent his wargaming friends beneath a model castle to hunt monsters and gold — and invented the dungeon adventure.

Tomb of Horrors

Adventure module1978

Gary Gygax's deliberately merciless dungeon of false doors, sphere-of-annihilation mouths and gloating riddles, built to humble players who boasted their characters could survive anything.

First-Person Dungeon Crawlers ('Blobbers')

Digital genre1975

Six adventurers, one square at a time, down a wireframe corridor toward something breathing in the dark: the first-person party crawl that players nicknamed the 'blobber'.

Dungeon-Crawler Board Games

Tabletop genre1975

Plastic heroes, cardboard corridors and a door about to open: the board game that stages the dungeon crawl room by room, with one friend playing the evil wizard or the deck itself springing the traps.

Roguelikes

Digital genre1980

An @ sign, a dungeon that never repeats, and one life: the college-terminal genre named for Rogue, fought over in Berlin in 2008, and reborn as the indie roguelite.

Wandering monster

General term1974

A creature met by chance rather than placed in a room, determined by rolling on a table at intervals. Wandering monsters make lingering in the dungeon dangerous; their video-game heir is the JRPG random battle.

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