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Assassination is the only way to remove a character from an adventure for longer than the usual 12 minutes. After obtaining a writ of assassination from one of the three guildmasters of the Assassin’s Guild, the assassin is free to perform the assassination by dagger, arrow, or poison. The attack must be a mortal wound. When the assassination is performed, the writ is left with the victim. Assassinated players are out of the game for 24 hours. At higher levels, assassins can torture other characters, make poison and detect the disguises of other characters.

CLERIC • The True Dungeon cleric has a lot of similarities to the tabletop version. Prayer beads are associated with virtues, and the player is required to memorize those virtues to maximize the effectiveness of the cleric’s spells. Turning undead is grouped as an ability along with the cleric’s other spells.

Clerics in Darkon have access to many of the same spells as their Dungeons & Dragons counterparts, including healing spells. They can turn undead at eighth level and are able to return dead players to life at tenth level.

FIGHTER • In True Dungeon, fighters are defined by their ability to slide discs on the monster shuffleboard—that is, the player’s skill is measured, not the character’s. However, they do have one in-game advantage: Power Attack. Using Power Attack, the fighter hitting a monster by sliding a 19 or 20 adds +5 or +10 damage respectively. Anything less is a miss. In this way the ingame effect of the character enhances the player’s skill at sliding.

In Darkon, fighters are permitted to wield any weapon, use any size shield, don any armor, and wear any style of costume. They gain the ability to bind their own wounds by tying a white cloth with a red cross on it around a wounded limb so that it can still be used. At higher levels they can repair destroyed shields and armor.

MONK • Monks seem like an odd choice for a True Dungeon, but given the abstraction involved in using pucks on a shuffleboard table to attack monsters, monk attacks are just variants of equipment tokens. In essence, a monk adventures with only the clothes on his back. His armor class is higher than his companions’ without the benefit of equipment. He can attack with two sliders at the same time, representing the “flurry of blows” ability of the third edition monk. He can also stun a target once a day on a successful hit. The evasion ability—taking half or no damage from an attack—can be used once per combat. The monk can even deflect missile weapons once a round.

In Darkon, monks are able to use their hands, feet, or weapon to deflect incoming non-magical missile weapons, a trait that carries over from Dungeons & Dragons. Monks must call out “Monk” upon making a deflection. As the monk advances in level, he can feign death and heal himself. He becomes immune to disease, poison, and illusions, and his skin becomes tougher, bestowing armor-like qualities.

PALADIN • As in the tabletop version, paladins in True Dungeon can detect evil three times during an adventure, cure a certain amount of hit points split in any fashion across the party as per the “lay on hands” ability, and can smite an evil monster once during an adventure for an additional +3 damage.

Instead of paladins, Darkon has cavaliers. Only those with the noble title of Knight Baronet can join this class. Upon joining, the Knight Baronet forfeits all battle credits achieved with the noble character and begins as a first rank cavalier—effectively a prestige class. Unlike paladins, cavaliers must pick an allegiance to an alignment, and thus can be neutral, evil, or good. Cavaliers wear a sash of white, gray, or black to represent their allegiance. Cavaliers must also adhere to a code of chivalry, which is very similar to the code for cavaliers as presented in Dungeons & Dragons’ first edition Unearthed Arcana: death before dishonor, combat is glory, honor to all above station, and the like. Cavaliers receive a variety of paladin-like powers, including