Dinky Dungeons!

Okay, while we’re talking about game design, I should mention Dinky Dungeons.

This was a game that was designed by some Oklahoma boys who privately sold it back in the 1980s.

I met them (and their game) when I drove to the Tulsa event, OkCon. (They were from farther west, as I remember, hailing from Oklahoma City).

The idea behind Dinky Dungeons was that you got a whole role playing game in a single . . . pouch. The game was sold in a format that resulted in a tiny ruleboook that fit in tiny plastic bag with tiny dice. If they had called the game "Tiny Terrors," they would never have had to rename it.

The Dinky Dungeons guys enlisted me to work on a superhero variant of their game called Hoakey Heroes, but I don’t know that this ever came out.

The amazing thing about all this was that the game design actually worked–despite the fact that it lacked all the extra-whazzits doo-dads that game designs normally have. Just you, the dinky rule book, and two dinky dice were enough.

It showed that most role-playing games were way, waaaaay overbuilt.

LEARN MORE ABOUT DINKY DUNGEONS AND ITS SUCCESSORS.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin