All you need in a simple little book! I have nothing bad to say personally, but my group has gravitated more to Old School Essentials and Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Still a great rulebook for old school fantasy!

This is an excellenent rules compilation, that got me excited about rpgs again. The format and layout are conducive to learning and referencing the rules. The designer insights do a great job of explaining what was changed and why.

My favorite OSR ruleset so far. Not only it has all you could possibly need to run a High Fantasy campaign in a single book, but it also unified everysingle check from BECMI under a simple D20 mechanic while still keeping the percentages of success/failure the same.

It was the first retro-clone I've found that actually took the time to give you advice about how Thief Abilities should be used - and the solution it proposed to the age old question "What if the Fighter wants to hide?" is more than satisfactory in my opinion.

I didn't like the idea of swapping Elf and Magic User, since demi-humans need to be versatile for "Race as Class" to work (in my opinion), but the book explains how you can easily swap them back if you want, so it's not a big deal - if anything, it served to exemplify how much the classes are re-flavorable (for example, I allow players to use it's original Clockwork class to play Artificer/Gadgeteers).

As for my practical experience, I've used it to run one-shots for high schoolers who had never played an RPG before and they had no problem understanding the rules - heck, they understood THAC0 in seconds (first ruleset I've seen that sticks to THAC0 and puts some effort in explaining it in an intuitive manner instead of giving up and providing AAC as an "optional rule").

This work is really a rare piece of art. I could just say "it's better than the original", but it would sound too fanatical. The truth is that to create Dark Dungeon (and Dark Dunegon X), it was certainly necessary for the author to acquire a great intimacy with the original work. We all know that nothing is perfect, and the same applies to the original work. There are always small spaces for improvement. The author managed, through his experience, to create a system fully compatible with the original, but filling in the gaps and trimming edges. Perhaps this would happen naturally if the original work was not discontinued. Well, thank goodness we have Dark Dungeon X!

PS.: Sorry for any error, my language is Portuguese. Ah, how I wish there was a Portuguese translation of Dark Dungeon X!

Ok so I've read a lot of core rulebooks. (a LOT). I have the Cyclopedia this book was originally written to emulate. This book is one of my favorite to read. Certainly the best book I have gotten from DTRPG. It has nice thick pages that smell of freah ink. Its an enjoyable experience. I dont agree with the whole book. I hate what he did to Elves. And Magic-Users could maybe use better weapons but certainly not armor. I don't even like his reason for doing it. Lupines are meh, but certainly not worth losing the Monk! (Mystic, Whatever OK) Ask any player you know who started with the Red Box if they want a (not)Wearwolf or a Monk. Everyone will choose Monk.
Throw all that out the window when you start reading it. This book is slick. It's better than the book it emulates. The layout makes absorbing the material easy. And it is so easy to add material.
There is no rule for 3 dimensional movement like flying or going underwater. All movement is 2 dimensional based. I just added the rules from an AD&D retro For Gold and Glory and it works fine.
The Immortals rules are cleaned up. I think I finally understand how to run that. The mechanics behind Thief skills and Cleric Turning Undead are now streamlined. I like the feeling of symmetry this promotes in the book. I even like the name. I remember those chick pamphlets from the 80's he named his book after. That was a dope move. I'm starting my first campaign next week. Running all the classic Modules fronm yhe 80's. I fixed the Magic-user, Elf and resurrected the Monk.
5 Stars

The previous edition of Dark Dungeons (gold logo, no X) was my first D&D and I've since gone back and read every other edition and many of the clones, played many of them too.

On a meta level, I agree with the decision to merge in Darker Dungeons, and I appreciated the commentary so much. That made it worthwhile to read the book even if I'm not gonna use it.

It does make more sense to release a Darker Dungeons sequel than a clone of a game that is now once more readily available.

However, I disagree with every single change in the character' chapters! MU and elves swapped? Where's my Elric? Mystics are lupines now but not werewolves. (Which also exist...?)

On the domain and War Machine level is where this variant is the most worthwhile; it seems like it builds upon the Immortals Companion and simplifies it even further. The "public works" innovation from IC was a brilliant simplification, compatible with the full rules a few pages earlier when you do need the specifics. I love these chapters, they have all the deets I love from the vanilla RC War Machine and none of the cruft I didn't love. It almost makes me feel bad for buying a POD RC (which I got primarily for War Machine, and as a reference for old school that's easier to find things in, and clearer written, than the Old School Essentials clone set) since I'm more likely to use this ruleset. Or, to build on it, since it's so generously open source, which is one of the best features of this fantastic publisher's games.

Overall a fun read, clearly written, I like it. I really don't wanna play it as is because of the way the character-level game works with the sword-wielding MUs and such. It's easy to swap everything back, it's all clearly labeled (kudos for that!) but I'd rather use the RC than an un-Darkered DDX.

Summary: Get the RC for characters and get this book, or the Immortals Companion, for domain level stuff.

I like a lot how warmachine and domain rules are simplified. I'm using them in my game which is based on original game rules othwerwise. Great layout and clarity.

What an exquisite document. Congratulations on being in print/pdf for 10 years and having accomplished so much in the decade that has elapsed. I can’t begin to share how immensely helpful this book has come to be for me. I never had access to the original growing up as a kid and this TOME (all 400+ glorious pages of it) has bridged a gap in my gaming knowledge and understanding of this game (nay life experience) that has been a part of my being for going on 30+ years now. I only hope these words do your work a small service. The layout is impeccable, well designed, carefully laid out, and presented in such a fashion as to highlight the content and make it both more enjoyable and more accessible to the reader. The liberal use of examples and developer commentary sprinkled throughout adds immensely to the readers understanding of how/why you designed this game as you did, but also provides contextual clues to develop a greater understanding of in-game strategies, concepts, and stratagems. A fantastic, thorough table of contents and index allow numerous ways to locate frequently used information (not to mention being a fully searchable pdf). Numerous charts and tables add value to help understand key concepts and ideas. My only criticism, and I hate to share this at the end, hoping it won't overly detract from the awesomeness of your work, is that it could have only benefited from more pictures (even if they did belong to the public domain). It is entirely clear you spent every bit of 9 months and 500 hours creating this labor of love. Thank you for your dedication, perseverance, and hard work, in your willingness to sacrifice to offer the gaming community this hefty contribution and here is to many successes I hope you have in your game design future!