Skyrim Dungeoncrawl Boardgame

[Cherno]

TL;DR: A "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" boardgame I am currently creating (a purely personal project). Scroll down for images.

There have been various attempts at recreating Skyrim on the table top, mostly be adapting an existing RPG ruleset. I have been a fan of dungeon crawl boardgames like Hero Quest, Advanced Hero Quest, and Warhammer Quest (which I consider to be the three classics of the genre), but the one thing that annoyed me with these games was that their campaign rules were lacking; due to a lack of granularity, players very quickly got to a level where they were so powerful monsters could only hit them with en obscene amount of luck, and dying was out of the question anyway. On the other hand, my experiences with real RPGs like D&D 4E taught me that combat (which is an important part of dungeo crawling) shouldn't be so detailed that it takes an hour to resolve a small skirmish. What is needed is a balance between both worlds.

What I have in mind is a ruleset that combines the best aspects of D&D 5E for combat rules and general skill checks, Advanced Hero Quest for dungeon exploration, and Descent: Journeys in the Dark 1st Edition for it's slick action-oriented gameplay. I already made a bunch of notes that describe the general outline of how things will work.

A character has three attributes: Health, Magicka (Mana) and Stamina. These fluctuate during gameplay depending on certain events. Health points are lost when a character is hit during an attack. Magicka is spent for casting spells, and stamina is used for moving faster and power attacks. Some heavy weapons also cost stamina just to attack normally with them. A character can rest at any time, meaning he forfeits his actions for this turn to replenish a number of magicka and stamina points. Potions are available as a backup, but they are fairly rare.

What really defines a character are his skills. These are basically the attributes from D&D, meaning they have a value of 1 to ~20 and a resulting modifier that gets added to a D20 roll when a skill check is made.
There are also perks. Each character starts with one or more racial perks (fire resistance etc.), and skill-based perks can also be chosen when a character reaches a higher level. Some perks can be taken more than once to make them more powerful, and some become more powerful on their own when the character reaches a certain level threshold.

Perks, along with equipment and spells, are represented by small cards. I like having lots of physicsl components on the table. It gives players a better sense of their achievements if the legendary sword is depicted on a card in front of them, instead of just being a line of text on their character sheet.

Speaking of which, here is what I cam up with yesterday:



Here are some cards for perks, spells, and equipment.



Some cardboard miniatures:



A floor tile I quickly assembled, depciting a nordic ruin/tomb:



More to come

[Nord]

Aaah, memories of many an hour spent in Skyrim. You have certainly got the feel of the game right away. Watching this with interest. 

[DoctorPete]

Falmer! (shudders)  I hate Falmer!  Sorry, just a little flashback there.  Very good looking start and quite ambitious.   

[Cherno]

Falmer! (shudders)  I hate Falmer!  Sorry, just a little flashback there.  Very good looking start and quite ambitious.   

I have chaurusphobia 

[DoctorPete]

Oi!  Those things are even worse when they get wings!   

[beefcake]

Very nice. Great work with the cardboard minis. Will you be trying to get 3d ones?
I really liked the Falmer as a race. The "history" behind them is really cool.

[Giger]

I'll be keeping an eye on this with interest

[Cherno]

Very nice. Great work with the cardboard minis. Will you be trying to get 3d ones?
I really liked the Falmer as a race. The "history" behind them is really cool.

No "real" minis planned so far, although it would be cool to have a full range. It would be interesting to see how many stand-ins can be found and how much would have to be customized and build from scratch. In my dream, there exists a boardgame by Fantasy Flight Games that has a ton of plastic miniatures

[Knightofspades]

Looks great man!

[beefcake]

No "real" minis planned so far, although it would be cool to have a full range. It would be interesting to see how many stand-ins can be found and how much would have to be customized and build from scratch. In my dream, there exists a boardgame by Fantasy Flight Games that has a ton of plastic miniatures

That would be awesome.

[Cherno]

A question for those familiar with Dungeons & Dragons:

I am currently thinking about how to implement the armor skills from Skyrim (Light & Heavy Armor). These are skills like any other and together with the actual armor worn, determine the total armor value.
D&D, of course, has only Armor Class, along with the seperate system of Proficiencies for light, medium and heavy armor. So far, I just gave each Skyrim race light or heavy armor proficiency depending on their racial bonus. However, that resulted in Orsimer / Orcs being the only race with heavy armor proficiency, while most others have only light, and the por Altmer and Khajiit have none at all! To make it closer to Skyrim, the Light and Heavy Armors would indeed have to be skills like 1-Handed Weapons and Archery, and add their skill bonus to the base Armor Class. This, in turn, would result in inflated AC values since even starting character can expect to easily have a +3 bonus for their armor skills.
Any ideas?

[Red Orc]

Not sure I understand the problem.

What are the 'ranges' for armour, and how do these affect 'hitability' and 'damagability'?

What races use what sorts of armour, and why does it matter (if only orcs use heavy armour, why shouldn't only orcs have the bonus)?

Maybe you could use proficiencies to limit damage? A proficiency in the armour-use might mean that that damage is reduced by -1 instead of adding it to AC.

[beefcake]

Do you think having a lower value could affect the other skills negatively? ie wearing heavy armour but being untrained in it means you become worse at using a sword? not really in line with Elder Scroll mechanics though.

[Cherno]

Not sure I understand the problem.

What are the 'ranges' for armour, and how do these affect 'hitability' and 'damagability'?

What races use what sorts of armour, and why does it matter (if only orcs use heavy armour, why shouldn't only orcs have the bonus)?

Maybe you could use proficiencies to limit damage? A proficiency in the armour-use might mean that that damage is reduced by -1 instead of adding it to AC.

D&D armor is dived into light, medium and heavy, corresponding with the feats light, medium and heavy armor proficiency. Wearing armor without having proficiency means having a severy disadvantage when attacking (2 D20 on the to-hit roll are rolled, the lower dice is counted). The better AC an armor has, the higher it's encumberance, which is the malus that is subtracted from dexterity-based skills checks (acrobatics, climbing etc.).

Generally it's not a problem if only Skyrim's Orcs have heavy armor proficiency, they are regarded as excellent blacksmiths after all. Still, at least the different human races (Nords, Redguards, Imperials etc.) are different enough even between members of the same race that all kinds of armor are worn.

I think your idea of using proficiency to limit damage is a sound one. I will think about it.

[Cherno]

Worked some more on the rules in the last days. Here is the current Character Sheet:



One thing that I'm currently undecided on is the way enemies use Stamina. Each character has a Stamina pool, starting with about 4. A character can spend Stamina to move further or perform power attacks, which costs between 3-5 Stamina. This is fine for player character who can easily keep track of the pool on their character sheet or by using a stack of tokens, and it's also not too much of a task to track the Stamina pool of single boss monsters. However, if there is a group of normal enemies, each should be able to perform power attacks etc., otherwise frost damage from magic weapons and spells, which decrease the target's Stamina, lose effectiveness against these.
My current solutions are
a) using tiny dice on or near the enemy model's base to show the Stamina pool
b) "handwaving" it by saying "if the enemy wasn't victom of a frost attack yet, he can perform one power attack".

Also: Renders of the Draugr that will be used for some of the undead standees