Survival of the Fittest (1979) is an odd one. It is basically a Tunnels & Trolls style solo adventure, but using D&D rules. Except they aren’t straight D&D rules, they’re heavily modified — martial characters are treated as fighters but keep one special ability tied to their class (paladins keep their laying of hands, thieves get backstab chances, monks get to dodge, etc.) while spellcasters have a choice of just four spells that work in the dungeon. Most magic items have to be left behind as well. It seems silly to make the players adjust their characters to fit the dungeon and not the other way around, especially since Tunnels & Trolls never had any similar restrictions (Naked Doom makes you run a gauntlet with no equipment, which I guess is on par with this).

Weirder: despite being a solo, you can play with a group of up to four players by multiplying the number of monsters by the number of players. A tortured little flow chart accounts for possible inter-party disagreements.

Weirdest of all: this is a pretty difficult fun house dungeon designed expressly to kill off first and second level characters you don’t like. So much to unpack there. Like, imagine making a character and being like, man, I can’t believe I am stuck with this loser, then playing a solo with the express purpose of killing them instead of…doing literally anything else. Perhaps tweak the character until you like him? Or just throw the sheet away and go for a walk?

Still, I can’t help but wonder if this was an inspiration for the Dungeon Crawl Classics funnel system…

Cool cover art. Lots of small, incidental Jennell Jaquays illustrations inside. The cover is uncredited — it might be Jaquays? I can’t really tell. Later editions sport very gaudy coloring similar to the Unknown Gods method.