Excellent OSR. If 5e is not your thing (it can be intimidating at times, you can't go wrong with this

Excellent game. I also have the RC and reread it alongside Dark Dungeons. Dark Dungeons has clearer rules and, imho, better organization; but with public domain artwork. I think the only place where it's a toss-up as far as organization, is with weapon feats/mastery: both are okay, and have their own strengths and weaknesses. There are some house rules baked-in, and a few other (welcome) minor differences from the RC.

All in all, a great effort by Blacky! You can't go wrong with DD!

Been running this for about a year or so. Its pretty much perfect. My old group was bored with 5e. Nothing in particular, we all sorta fell out of love with it, everything started to feel the same after a while. Someone had an old RC laying around and we dove into that, then someone got sick and that group broke up. New group, playing 5e again, couple people mention wanting something more. I am about to get an RC pdf (before the latest POD), then find DD. Cleaned up RC with frankly simpler combat calcs and full Immortal rules/wep profiencies......sign me up. Most of the group bought a pod copy via lulu.

Love the game, the group is very happy with how the characters are turning out and to be honest its just more fun than 5e for campaign games IMHO!

Great game! I already own a printed and PDF copy of the Rules Cyclopedia, but the rules in this book are better explained and maybe better organized, without mentioning that it also includes the immortal rules. It is clear that there is a LOT of work in this book. Just read one 4 star comment complaining about the fact that this game is a retro-clone. Just think it's completely unfair, considering that the author makes it very clear in the book about the nature of the game as being a clone, and that if you were looking for a modified version of the game you should go for Darker Dungeons. The funny thing is that the person giving the 4-star review already knew this... Well done Blacky!!!

Overall Dark Dungeons is a solid retro clone of the Rules Cyclopedia, although it's not 100% perfect (as with most retro clones). The author chose to incorporate a few of the optional rules in the RC and made them "canon", such as removing level caps for demihumans and allowing them to attain any level desired. The only offset to this is that a demihuman requires more XP to level up than a human. In all honesty this isn't that big of a deal breaker because let's be real, who used the level caps back in the day? Get Dark Dungeons if you want to play Rules Cyclopedia but refuse to pay the price-gougers on eBay.

I went looking to buy a used copy of the Rules Cyclopedia and found the price prohibitive. A little reading online sent me to check a few retro-clones, and this one seems to be the nearest thing to the original. It has some minor modifications, which for the most part are improvements or errata corrections. I ended up also getting a print copy from Lulu and it is very reasonably priced - not sure if it is print on demand from this site. If you are looking for some retro D&D style play this is a great all in one rule book, well worth the cost. Digital copy was perfectly clear.

Probably my favorite of the OSR games, as BECMI was a most playbale version (none of the excpetions and odd rules of Advanced). It is also cooly an homage to Dark Dungeons, the famous anti-D&D religious tract, even having the famous chatacters from it in the examples of play. Good layout, good cover. It dos suffer the same disappointment that all of these seem to have: they don't stray far from the original, all essentially rewrting the old rules over and over... trying to capture the good things in OSR but not willing to make the game better. There is another version of these rules called Darker Dungeons (not yet avialable here) that does make some changes for the better. One of the reasons stated for making these things is that the old rules are unavailable, although the originals are all available in PDF these days. Still, if you are going to run some Basic/Expert modules and want a ruleset that is the best, actually better than the originals, even the complete D&D Rules Cuclopedia, as all of the errata is included and conflicting rules are eliminated.

"Party like it's 1989."

Put simply, this amazing, all-in-one summarization of that most Basic version of the classic RPG has no business being free. No longer confined to Lulu, Blacky the Blackball's comprehensive tome of essentially every rule you'd ever need for fighting your characters' way up the totem pole from lowly dungeon delver, to Baroness of an isolated Northern region, to immortality. I bought a print copy and so should you- you will not find a better deal on this entire website. Thank you for your dedication and generosity, Mr. Blackball- you even helped to improve thieves' progression and incorporated elements of Advanced rulesets, allowing my friends and I to play the space-farring pirates we never knew we wanted to be. Folks, this book is a gem, a tribute to the OSR. Grab it and enjoy.

For those interested in seeing the thought-out design decisions which led to the creation of this book- never mind the history of a certain game which it draws heavily from- have a look at the following link: http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=4436&sid=36dfee80e70e5b35b29541c4d32919d4