Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: oldskoolrebel on July 30, 2016, 06:46:53 PM
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Hey,
I was wondering if people would links/details Dungeon Crawling rules and settings. I really miss Role playing but I'd probably like something more like a dungeon crawl or RPG lite.
Dungeon Saga (http://www.manticgames.com/games/dungeon-saga-the-dwarf-kings-quest.html): Much more of a board game, less scope for RPG but enjoyable. Two sides; heroes and overlord. Very tactical but quick to pick up. The Overlord player is encouraged to play to win.
CROM (http://www.matakishi.com/apps/webstore/products/show/3525005): Matakishi's game, I've only played it once. Enjoyed it but seems more random and less about character development than others. Nice system. Very much a miniatures table top game (in my opinion)
Savage Worlds: (https://www.peginc.com/product-category/savage-worlds/) Very much a RPG, although it does allow some tactical options. I've played it quite a lot; I find it allows you to play any setting or idea. A good option but not quite what I'm looking for.
Has anyone played Dungeon Slayers?
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Two Hour War Games "Two Hour Dungeon Crawl" rules. PDF$14 or Print and PDF $15.
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Goalsystem Delves would be my go-to game for that role.
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Have you taken a look at Four against darkness? Its a solo dungeon delving game. Not intended for using miniatures, but a lot of map making, quite nice and oldschool feel to it.
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Song of Gold and Darkness?
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Trapdoor is a fairly good game, available as both PDFs and hardcopy
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Trapdoor gets my vote!
http://www.wargamevault.com/product/139366/Trapdoor
*edit: ninja'ed* :)
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Trapdoor gets my vote!
http://www.wargamevault.com/product/139366/Trapdoor
*edit: ninja'ed* :)
hard to argue with free pdfs. lol
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I've been thinking about this for a while: using Ganesha's Four Against Darkness (4AD: a solo pencil-and-paper dungeon crawler) with Song of Blades and Heroes (or perhaps Tales of Blades and Heroes). What I'd plan to do is to make large card floorpans for all the possible rooms and corridors in 4AD - and to make them really large, with each graph-paper square being a 3" x 3" square. I'd be using measuring sticks, so I wouldn't worry about having squares on the floorpans, just having them all to scale. Several of each type would be required, and probably a few odd bits and bobs, so that if all the examples of a given shape were used up, more could be assembled.
Anyway, I'd play it out like this: the players each get an 100-point character (or group of characters: a leader and a couple of henchmen, for example), while the "GM" just gets the monsters that are randomly generated by the 4AD engine. Neither side knows what the dungeon looks like, as it's just randomly generated as play progresses. But the layout of the dungeon would become increasingly important, as the GM would have scope for withdrawing monsters, regrouping and mounting pincer movements. If the PCs fled from a powerful monster, then it could come after them. The odd surviving goblin or kobold might not be much of a threat on its own, but if it retreated to where larger, fiercer friends were waiting ...
I'd use the treasure-generation system in 4AD, but match experience and cash to the points system in SBH (not sure what the conversion ratio would be offhand, but I think it would be pretty simple to do). So, characters who escaped with treasure could use that to hire henchmen or upgrade their characters (improving Q or C, adding traits, etc.). That would give a nice risk/reward ratio, as there would be a real incentive to get loot and experience, but with the wandering-monster rules from 4AD, you'd have a real risk of getting outflanked or surrounded the deeper in you delved. And I gather that 4AD now features rules covering different levels.
Another tweak that would be needed would be some sort of "contents" rule. I think the best way to do this would be to have a box of "features" (tables, plinths, statues, etc.), roll 1D6 for each room, and then have the players alternate the placing of the contents, starting with the DM.
Throughout, I'd map the whole thing on graph paper as in 4AD. While I like the idea of an endless dungeon extending across a sitting-room floor, it would be more manageable if you could remove some of the rooms but have a record of them. And 4AD imposes paper-based limits on the extent of the dungeon, which would probably work well. That would entail one more tweak - an "off-board movement" rate for monsters left behind. I doubt that would occur too often, but it could be easily rationalised to two rooms/corridors - or a given number of squares - per group. All off-board models would activate in groups and move a bit faster (a bit like Space Hulk blips).
That all sounds very complex, but I don't think it would be in practice. Both 4AD and SBH are great, simple games. But by allying one with the other, you get both an excellent random-generation system for dungeon, monsters and treasure and a superb skirmish system - so that the battles are as engrossing and tactical as any game of SBH. Also, as SBH fights are often won with routs, there would be a lot of temporary victories and then a pressing need to move on. And that's exactly as it should be. Why? Because if Moria is the classic dungeon, then there should be a lot of things in this vein:
"There was a bellow and the foot jerked back, nearly wrenching Sting from Frodo's arm. Black drops dripped from the blade and smoked on the floor. Boromir hurled himself against the door and slammed it again. ... 'Now is the time!' cried Gandalf, 'Let us go, before the troll returns!'"
Anything that gets away from "room clearing" and leads to a sprawling dungeon with monsters wandering, being driven off and regrouping would be a very good thing, I reckon.
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Otherworld Skirmish is a nice mix of RPG and miniature wargaming. It definitely has an old school feel to it as well. The minis are designed with the AD&D Monster Manual in mind. Mind you, it is not necessary to use their minis to play, I use Reaper.
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Hi fellas,
Which one of the aforementioned systems have a campaign rule for leveling the pg's? I'd say all of them, but I'm not so sure. Thanks a lot.
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While I like the Goal System Delves engine, I don't like the amount of work to spec out the baddies.
Swords & Wizardry is DnD lite...what AD&D morphed from back in the day. Works well and you can use as much of the RPG component as you like.
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I use Song of Blades and Heroes and Song of gold and darkness combined withmy own dungeon crawl rules: http://deepdarkdungeons.blogspot.com/2014/03/deep-dark-dungeons-dungeon-crawl-rules.html?m=1
It's meant for a solo experiencebut could easily be played co-op.
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Coming a bit late to this thread, but I've played Dungeonslayers it's a damn fine game. Completely free, too.
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Trying Dungeon saga for the first time on Friday
I have high hopes it will be like heroquest but deeper
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I'm hoping Otherworld, maybe w a GM? Great system, either way!
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Dungeons and Dragons?
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Coming a bit late to this thread, but I've played Dungeonslayers it's a damn fine game. Completely free, too.
You're talking about the RPG game ?
http://www.dungeonslayers.com/
Is it suitable for miniature game ?
thanks
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Dungeons and Dragons?
I think this might be the right answer. I increasingly think that the search for the perfect dungeon-crawl rules is a bit of an wild-goose chase.
Here's why. It seems to me that the key aspect of dungeon-crawling is exploration. You can get that to an extent with board or miniatures games, but not nearly to the same extent as when you have a good RPG dungeon scenario, with plausible motives for the denizens, interaction between different groups of them, history, curiosities and - above all - description.
Also, miniatures games tend to limit the scale of things. It's pretty much impossible to do the Bridge of Khazad-dum (going on the vastness described in the book) with miniatures, unless you're being quite impressionistic with terrain.
Given that, I wonder if a miniatures-based RPG - like Tales of Blades of Heroes or indeed D&D - is the best of both worlds?
All that said, though, I think the best model for a dungeon-crawling boardgame might be Space Hulk. "We cannot get out ... they are coming!".
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Another vote here for "Swords and Wizardry" can be a skirmish game with some rpg elements or an rpg with some skirmish elements depending on the scenario and your preferences. I run it as a skirmish game with exploration and character advancement.
https://www.froggodgames.com/swords-wizardry-complete-rulebook (https://www.froggodgames.com/swords-wizardry-complete-rulebook)
One of the varied "0ed" D&D clones (others like OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess) gives you the core of D&D adventures before the bloat of hundreds of classes and thousands of abilities/skills and spells ruined it. Is compatible with the hundreds of D&D scenario modules that are around so you can play classic campaigns like Slavelords or Elemental Evil as narrative skirmish games with a little preparation.
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What about Advanced Heroquest, Warhammer Quest or even the new Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower?
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What about Advanced Heroquest, Warhammer Quest or even the new Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower?
Seconded. The original Warhammer Quest, whilst flawed in places, does everything discussed here, and is essentially 'Fantasy Space Hulk' but with some RPG-lite elements.
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What about Advanced Heroquest, Warhammer Quest or even the new Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower?
Thirded.
I played Advanced Heroquest enriched with some Old World lore from the Warhammer fantasy role play book and some house rules as an RPG for years.
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I've worked for a few months now on a home-brew set of dungeon delving rules that build upon Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes as a foundation. I've really tried to accomplish a lot of the same things you are seeking by emphasizing exploration and narrative elements as well as skirmish fighting. You can get a sense of the game and the mechanics I've worked up at the link:
http://imgur.com/a/JiomU (http://imgur.com/a/JiomU)
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The core question is, what kind of dungeon crawl do you want?
An exploration, where dungeon inhabitants can be friendly rather than hostile, and the aim is to loot, or discover the secrets of the dungeon, or complete a mission, or simply escape.
A resource-management sim, where spells, health levels, equipment and even light are scarce, and have to be hoarded to use at the right time if you're to have any chance of success.
A tactical battle, where the enemy is prepared with traps and troops and will respond intelligently to an incursion. Success is about scouting, infiltration, finding weak spots, choosing your battles wisely.
"Fantasy fucking Vietnam" where you take a bunch of retainers into a tunnel complex and hack your way through a bunch of unconnected encounters. A few lucky survivors will stagger out... to face the next challenge.
It's worth remembering that D&D has encouraged all of these styles of play at different times through its history.
A good modern RPG that tackles the genre is Torchbearer. It has a lot of moving parts and mechanisms, but they all work together. The game's central conceit is that every 4 turns in the dungeon, your character loses damage. Physical damage is only one type - you can become hungry or thirsty, angry or afraid as well as hurt. As you take more damage, the party's ability to work together to overcome problems becomes strained, and eventually characters start to die. Think of the film "The Descent" about the cavers lost in a tunnel system - they're deep in doo-doo even before they meet the local cannibal troglodytes.
Of course you can take food and water and other resources into the dungeon to combat this, but the raid is always a race against deteriorating condition... and that's before you meet what's down there.
Probably not a great wargame, as it abstracts combat to the same level as other mechanisms in the game - you apply tactics and bonuses as a team, and a character can die as a random result of the combat outcome. Better as an RPG or tactical boardgame rather than a straight wargame, perhaps.
Actually, the single-sided or player vs player nature of the dungeon crawl lends itself to boardgames nicely, and there have been some crackers over the years. Space Hulk, Level 7 Omega Protocol, Mice and Mystics (which at least attempts to have some non-combat challenges), Descent, Imperial Assault.
What makes a dungeon crawl work for you?
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Reading this reminded me I meant to take a look at Trapdoor, but it's no longer available on the wargames vault site. Sorry, don't want to derail the thread but as it has been recomended and if anyone knows where it is available I'd be greatful to know!
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ShortscaleDave: It's no longer available at the moment, but I actually spoke with the game's creator in the past few weeks, and he is currently refining and beta-testing a revised version of the rules that sound promising.
Momotaro: You've expertly outlined the whole spectrum of styles that can inform a dungeon crawling game. In my game I wanted to create an experience that felt thematically and narratively cohesive, not a simple romp to beat up monsters, but rather a very concrete setting where events in one part of the game might have repercussions later in terms of setting/story/encounters. But it was also important to me to create a gaming experience in which no player was relegated to the game master role; I wanted everybody at the table to have their own group of explorers. To this end, I've created some mechanics that involve players running their opponent's encounters.
The exploration side of the game involves a deck of "Room Feature" cards (see some examples at the link I shared) that try evoke a real space and invite the players to interact with and explore the room with a variety of possible room-specific outcomes. I've also included mechanics that allow rooms and corridors to be searched to reveal secret doors/traps/useful items, traps to be encountered, noise (from battles, etc.) to attract wandering encounters or alert foes in adjacent areas, etc. I've also created mechanics for introducing major plot points that again reveal the story in stages and provide significant obstacles for the characters to overcome (closing a portal in x number of turns, using an object found in an earlier encounter, etc.). To further enhance the narrative, I created mechanics for rumors that players can be privy to and ulterior motives for each player that can provide extra victory points (all kept secret from your opponents).
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Maybe Descent? Rules are free at the Website from Fantasyflight Games. Boardgame rules, but usable for Tabletop, I think
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Lots of good suggestions already but I'll add this one to the pot, very simple and quick with options to play solo, or as a group with/without a gm.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancient-Odysseys-Treasure-Awaits-Pocket/dp/0977067378#reviewBucketHeader
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I'd like to mention "Dungeon Scum" from Nordic Weasel games; it's a dungeon version of the Starport Scum engine.
I worked on it so of course I like it...
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You're talking about the RPG game ?
http://www.dungeonslayers.com/
Is it suitable for miniature game ?
thanks
Sorry mate, somehow I never spotted your question until now.
The short answer is yes, absolutely.
While DS isn't designed to need miniatures, it runs very happily with them. If dungeon-bashing is your thing, I'd recommend it in a heartbeat.
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Thank you to The Bibliophile for the answer to my question, good to know its on the way back!