Learning to Crawl

I've done some dungeon crawl experiments recently.

Sort of Order of Eventide

I created an extremely stripped down dungeon format for my OoE characters. Here is the dungeon sheet I created.

I also revamped the character classes a bit, using a mix of Four Against Darkness with OoE. The game worked, but I do have concerns about its long-term viability, specifically how how higher levels will work.

The Surge and Blunder concept for OoE is really growing on me. I like how it tailors the results to the class or monster, providing different effects that feel natural.

Loner

I then tried Loner.

I created a character based on my example from my first impressions post. Brok, a burly barbarian that is skilled with a sword and has a good sense of direction but has persistent nightmares, ventures into a goblin lair.

Note that good sense of direction and persistent nightmares came from some of the Loner: Dungeoneer random tables. I'm not sure how relevant they'll be, especially the nightmares, in my type of dungeon crawls.

I initially tried to use the tables in Dungeoneer to create the dungeon but I quickly gave up. There were a lot of tables that gave more info than I wanted and the encounter results did not give enough combat. I ended up scrapping them all, jotting down some encounters, and then went at it.

I recorded the dungeon with pencil and paper. Brok did not explore the shaded rooms. I generated them after the fact to see how the whole dungeon looked.

I was pleased with how easily and effectively the Loner task resolution system worked. Statting the monsters was easy - I just decided if Brok had an advantage or disadvantage, or was evenly matched.

I had to tweak the Luck rules. In his first combat, I treated the rats as a collective, with 6 Luck total. They quickly whittled Brok down to 3 Luck. I then evoked the 4AD morale roll when the rats were halfway down. They fled. I gave Brok a healing potion, which brought his Luck back up. After that, I started most monsters with less than 6 Luck. Brok was able to make it through the rest of the dungeon without issue.

I did struggle a little with defining And and But results, but ultimately I came to decision (I was not using the damage system suggested in the book as it seemed too deadly). Ands were critical hits that allowed victor to make an extra, free attack. Buts allowed the loser to make an counterattack.

What Next?

Ironically, I like Loner, but not for solo play. Why? Because,

• I prefer to run multiple characters, not just one.
• Rolling multiple dice per character slows down the game. It's quicker to roll 1 die per character.

I liked how streamlined Loner was when handling a single character. I would totally run it with multiple players each controlling a single character, but that's not what Loner is for. In fact, the author recommends using Freeform Universal for multiple characters.

Where does this leave me? I find myself drawn back to my Micro Dungeon rules. I think the solution to my scaling problem is to reduce hit points. Either do not increase them with levels, or make it difficult to increase them. I'll have to experiment some more with it.