Dungeon Crawl

[bazookajoe]

This is my first post.  I am working on augmenting D&D 5e rules to create a solo or cooperative miniature dungeon crawl game.  The basic idea is to explore a dungeon consisting of randomly selected dungeon terrain pieces and with random encounters in each terrain piece.  Of course, the encounters are not completely random as I am creating specific adventures that provide the context.  For example, in raiding a goblin lair the party will possibly encounter goblins, spiders, rats and bugbears with the overall objective of killing whoever is in charge (which is also randomly selected from a couple of possibilities). Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of dungeon terrain and a party of adventurers (Otherworld minis).  If this works, I will post more.

[LeadAsbestos]

Exactly what I'm hoping to do! Please let us know the results!

[bazookajoe]

I have played three or four "test" sessions so far and have been tweaking the rules/scenarios.  At first it seemed way too difficult for a party of four 1st level characters but it later turned out that much of that was down to me getting familiar with the various class abilities and aspects of the combat system.

[Cherno]

It was my dream to someday come up with something like you describe myself, but now perhaps I don't have to! All I want is a a dungeon crawler that combines the granularity and wealth of lore and choices of 5E with the open-ended gameplay of Advanced Hero Quest (a flawed game as far as rules go, but the exploration of dungeons itself was great, with a degree of randomness combined with "scripted" rooms and encounters here and there to support the story as well as charts full of dungeon treasure to find).

[bazookajoe]

Basically, the way it works is that you roll for a random dungeon terrain piece that the party enters and then you roll the encounter that will happen in that terrain piece (with no encounter being a possibility).  There are different encounter tables for corridors and for rooms, and for a room you also roll for "room features" (ie dungeon decor) such as rubble, crates, pillars etc.  Once an encounter is concluded, the party can move into another random dungeon piece and another possible encounter.  The mission concludes when the party encounters the "boss room" which, since this is rolled on a table, may not even come up in a particular dungeon.  If it does not come up then the party is obviously in the wrong dungeon and has to start again.  Also, a "boss room" has several possible and randomly determined "bosses" that might represent the leader of the "bad guy" faction.  I thought about using a card system so that eventually the "boss room" will come up no matter what but I thought it made the adventure too predictable so I included it in the randomly rolled list of rooms some of which are unique encounters (not just the boss).  If a party does not find the "boss room" in a particular dungeon, they get a bonus to room rolls on the next adventure that makes it earlier to find.  Like all else with this, I am still working on that. 

Here are some more pics of an encounter in a room with goblins (Otherworld) and another with a couple of bugbears (not sure why they look green in the pictures as they are not actually green).  The human cleric in the last test was killed off so he was replaced by a barbarian (Frostgrave mini).

[bazookajoe]

Here is an example of a short dungeon crawl.  First, I lay out the dungeon terrain pieces and assign each a number.  Then I roll a random piece to represent the entrance of the dungeon and a corresponding encounter.  In this case, the first piece was a corridor which was "clear" (no traps or wandering monsters).  The second piece was a room inhabited by 2 bugbears who seem to have been eating dinner at their table and chairs.  The third piece was another room which contained the "boss," in this case a goblin chief with some bodyguards.  The adventure ends with the party posing next to the goblin chief's treasure chest.

[bazookajoe]

Sorry I repeated a picture by mistake and then ran out of space.  Here are a few more from that session.  There was a huge fight at the entrance to the goblin chief's room.  After his guards were killed, the chief tried to flee but was intercepted by the barbarian and paladin.

[bazookajoe]

I am also working on a "Tomb of the Living Dead" module for my "self-DMed" dungeon.  Here are a few pics from the first test game.  It really needs to look spookier so I have to get some bone piles and things like that.  The last pic is how the dungeon looked when it was finished.  The party never did find the whoever is behind the undead infestation so they will continue looking...

[Warren Abox]

Those walls...that's a really effective look, man.  Must have been quick to assemble, and they have the creepy alien and dingy look that makes a proper dungeon so unsettling.  Bravo.

[bazookajoe]

Thanks, I was particularly inspired by model pictured on this website. The original website seems to be gone but it had many more pictures of this fantastic dungeon which is far far superior to mine.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/540471.page

I looked at a lot of different examples of miniature dungeon terrain on the internet before settling on this approach which is still developing.  I didn't like the flat dungeon tiles very much as to me they look like a board game so I decided that my version needed walls.  I toyed with the idea of getting some Dwarven Forge stuff which looks great but the cost is too high.  Anyway, I bought some cheap 1 inch thick sheets of pink foam isolation material from "Home Deport" and went to work.  The one with all the zombies was the first piece I did. They are fairly easy to build.  The only tedious part is cutting up all the small pieces for the walls and gluing them together. As I constructed more of them, I had a tendency to get lazy and cut larger pieces but the smaller ones look better.  I intend to make a few more soon.  They are painted with not very expensive "Liquitex" acrylic craft paint from a large craft store.  I didn't seal them yet they seem fairly durable.  Another principle I tried to implement, which the dungeon in the inspirational pictures did not seem to do, was to make it so that all the pieces should join together in different ways therefore making the dungeon as variable as possible.   

[DS615]

How do you decide where the "Boss' is going to be?
Is it just a random roll, or is there some mechanism?  I've tried a few different ways to sort of control that, so the big boss doesn't show up in the first room, but I haven't found anything I'm really happy with yet.

I really like your dungeon and figures.  very nice!

[petercooman123]

Very nice!

Have been doing the same myself, using the d&d adventure system stuff as a base.

I basically saw a youtube video about doing this and liked it, so i tried it out myself!



After that i tried the same thing with song of blades and heroes, and deep dark dungeons (a fan supplement)

http://deepdarkdungeons.blogspot.be/search/label/DeepDarkDungeons



Both gave a nice dungeon crawl, but both a very different game. I used the various d&d dungeon/cavern tiles i have lying about to create my dungeons, but also tried outdoor quests with the d&d wilderness/city tiles. Worked great but didn't look as good as your dungeon!

Will be following this post with interest!!!

[bazookajoe]

Thanks very much.  When I roll a room as the next terrain piece in the dungeon, I roll on a table to determine what will be encountered in that room.  The dungeon's "boss" represents the highest roll on that table (11 or 12 on a d12). Other possible encounters are things like "Goblin barracks, Storage Room, Prisoner Room, Nothing etc."  I have a rule that the boss encounter cannot happen in the first room of the dungeon so if that occurs then the player (me) has to reroll the encounter.  Actually, I am finding that a bigger problem is that in my test games the boss encounter hardly ever seems to come up and it can take around 3 games (separate dungeons within the same adventure) to actually find him.  I have come to see these as different levels of a dungeon or perhaps as different parts of a cavern complex.  As such, I add +2 to the room encounter roll if the player is on the "2nd level" and another +2 (total +4) for the third.  If the encounter roll does not add up to 11 or 12 (ie the Boss) with the modifier then I don't use the modifier and just take the encounter that would have normally been the result.  Also, the boss can technically appear in the first room of a 2nd or 3rd level.   I am still working on all this. 

Further, I want to create adventurers where the objective is not to kill a "boss" but to do something else - perhaps to escape the dungeon or something.  Yet another thing I want to do is create a "plot twist" table that could kick in at some point so perhaps one of the adventurers might actually be working for the "boss" and change sides in the climatic battle.  I have not done anything with this idea yet.

In preparing for this I also looked at the "Tales of Gold and Darkness" and associated material on the internet.  That was very important in coming up with the basic concept of a random dungeon on table top.  I found the character development too simplistic though so I went for using D&D 5e as a miniature game.

[Warren Abox]

You could use the same system for the "Goal" room.  Roll two dice, one for "Boss" and one for "Goal".

The Goal would be the point of the delve - a magic sword or scroll or prisoner, say - and it would be possible to find the goal without encountering the Boss under that system.  Or, you could fight the boss first, but killing him doesn't end the delve, it just means no more "Boss" dice get rolled.  You still have to find the Goal by rolling high on that die.  Of course, with each increase in the +2 modifier, it also becomes increasingly likely that you encounter both at the same time...

Which means you may not need to kill the Boss at all.  If you can hold him off long enough to retrieve the Goal and escape, that's still a win, even if he isn't dead at the end.

[bazookajoe]

Thanks Warren.  That is a great idea.  And I think the "goal" could be randomly generated from a list at the start of the adventure therefore making it less predictable and more re-playable.