Making a GLOG hack to run the megadungeon I started during for dungeon23. Hopefully having folks play in it will motivate me to continue working on it, but in order to do that I need a ruleset.
Reading Gus L.'s wonderful advice on dungeon crawling over on his blog All Dead Generations, made me realise that for a dungeon crawl type game, Risk Economy is the most important thing to figure out, i.e. how do you track time and have the passing of time be meaningful. Anything else (resolution mechanics, combat systems, magic systems etc.) functions within and is there dependent upon the Risk Economy, so that stuff will come later.
The tl;dr of his wonderfully insightful posts on Risk Economy is: Exploration benefits from risk. Risk in exploration is best tied to time: the longer you spent exploring the bigger the risk bad things happen. Also, if resources like light are a prerequisite for exploring, spending more time should eat up more resources. In sum, to run a meaningful dungeon exploration game you need a way to track time, a way to make spending time risky and a way to make spending time costly.
So here is my take on a risk economy for my Star Prison game.
Time
When inside the dungeon time is abstracted. Gus L.'s argument for why this makes sense in the fiction is compelling to me:
'Imagine that you had grown up in a society without a distinct concept of the second, where hours or other portions of the day were tracked for most only by the sound of church bells, market bells or calls to prayer. Perhaps the wealthy have access to sundials, candle and water clocks. None of these methods of timekeeping prepares one to break actions down into ten minute intervals, let alone six second ones - if the fantasy quasi-medieval culture even had a modern conception of the second, and time is an imprecise thing.'
And his argument for why this is beneficial for running games is salient to me as well: If actions take an abstract dungeon turn, there is no need to get into discussions about how many actions would realistically fit in that amount of time.
Basically we invert the relation between time and action: A turn isn't a set amount of time you can fill with actions, an action takes a turn which takes however long it takes.
So this is how I will formulate it in the ruleset:
When in the prison, any significant action such as moving to the next room, searching a room, filling a bag with treasure or taking a breather takes a turn. After each turn the GM will roll to see if a random encounter occurs, if light sources deplete, if a magical effect runs out and if exhaustion sets in.
Movement Speed
Abstract time automatically does away with movement speeds, but I notice that I think that is a shame. Mainly for the following reason: I would like fights to have potentially significant impact even if there is no death. Injuries slow a group down, which is to me way more fun than the fine-until-you-are-dead we see in most HP based systems.
Same with hauling around something really heavy or cumbersome, or even just being really tired. In a game where exploring is the focus, and risk increases with time spent, getting slowed down seems like it should be the most meaningful impact there is.
Fortunately, a suggestion by Eviltables over on the Tabletop Adventure Games forum gave me an idea for making movement speed matter if you use abstracted time: Going slower increases the odds of bad things happening.
Basically, if a turn is the time it takes to perform an action, a slower action doesn't take more turns, the turn is more likely to be costly. So if normally the chance of a random encounter is 1-in-6, when you are weighed down by a heavy sack, an injury or fatigue the chance increases to 2-in-6, or in severe cases even 3-in-6.
Finally, I would like movement speed to be somewhat of a choice. The base movement speed in dungeon crawlers is very slow, which is why it is described as a crawl. When crawling you are being as careful as you can, noticing traps and focussed on any sound that might be a sign of danger.
But what if you want to hurry, not a full blown sprint that you would only be able to keep up for a few minutes, or less if you're carrying a bunch of shit, but making haste. This should allow you to go faster but at the expense of noticing traps and oncomming danger.
Lets combine all of this the following way:
When exploring the prison, your encumbrance and approach determine how long your actions take. If you go slower the chance of a random encounter occurring, light sources depleting, ongoing magical effects running out and exhaustion setting in will increase.
Your approach can be careful or hurried.
- While moving carefully you'll notice all traps, notable features (which might hint at secrets) and most oncomming danger (such as monsters behind a door).
- While moving hurried you are faster, but eill fail to notice traps, notable features and most oncomming danger.
Your encumbrance can be unburdened, trudging along, staggering or collapsed.
- You are unburdened when you are uninjured, fit and carrying little more than arms and armor.
- You are trudging when you are battered and bruised, tired or carrying a significant burden such as a bag filled with treasure or supplies.
- You are staggering when you are seriously injured, exhausted or carrying something you can barely lift due to its weight or cumbersome size.
- You are collapsed when you are lethally injured, spent, or stuck underneath something you cannot lift.
For the GM:
Careful and unburdened is the assumed default speed. The odds of random encounters at that speed are 1-in-6. Increase the odds with 1 for each level of encumbrance and reduce it with 1 if the party hurries.
So a staggering party hurrying to get out of the prison has a chance of random encounters of 2-in-6 and won't notice traps and has an increased chance to be surprised by random encounters.
When hurrying unburdened (which I would assume to happen rarely), roll for random encounters once every other turn.
Supply
Finally, we need to determine when torches burn up, ongoing magical effects deplete and exhaustion sets in.
Gus L. suggests using the famous overloaded encounter dice, popularized by necropraxis. Though I can see what he means when he says that the somewhat weird situations that can arise from this mechanic (such as three consecutive turns of torches depleting) are great ways to create emergent stories, I find them a little bit annoying and have argued before that it is a shame that it means only one thing can ever happen at a time.
My proposed solution in that post I refered to is what I would like to use still: Seperate dice for each thing you would normally put on the overloaded encounter dice, with the duration of torches, time until exhaustion exhaustion and magical effects treated as usage dice: Go down one dice size when rolling a 1.
The nice thing about this little system is that it ties in neatly with the increased odds when moving slower. A torch will go down on a 1 when careful and unburdened, but on a 1-3 when carefully staggering.
So in the document it will say something like:
The duration of supplies such as torches and ongoing magical effects is variable. Quality of such supplies is inconsistent and magic is inherently fickle.
To track the duration of these each is assigned a usage dice (as per the Black Hack): You roll the assigned dice each turn, if you roll low enough to trigger depletion you swap out the dice for a dice one size smaller (so a d6 depletes to a d4). If a d4 depletes the resource or magical effect has run out.
What number counts as low enough for depletion depends on the speed with which you go through the prison, with 1 being the baseline.
Closing thoughts
I'm aware that if I want granularity such as movement speed I could just use numbers. However, I find tracking all these numbers rather fiddly in a way that keeping track of which dice to roll and what numbers to look out for isn't to me. Personal preference, but one I'd rather design for than trying to get myself to track movement in feet and time in minutes.
I tried out the split encounter dice thing with solo play and it seemed to work well. Adding variability in odds based on movement speed seems like it would be fun to me, but I'd have to give it a go at a table to see how players will like it.
What these rules heavily encourage is the use of porters. If you only carry arms and armor you are agile enough to out up a fight or respond to a trap, but if you are weighed down by loot or supplies not so much.
To get players on the same page I'd probably liken the expeditions the party goes on to what you see in movies like Atlantis: The Lost Empire: A few named characters doing the special stuff, with a host of mercenaries and hirelings helping out with the more mundane stuff.
Currently how much stuff counts as unburdened vs trudging or staggering is vague. I might keep it that way, as I tend to believe you can use less rules to do more. However, during play testing I might end up using a slot based system. Slots, being numbered, allow for fun little mechanics like roll over equipment as seen in Troika! to grab items during combat, but which could also be used to see if you can climb a thing, stay afloat in water or run away from someone of about equal speed (e.g. human vs human). If I use slots I'd probably go with 6 or less for unburdened, up to 12 for trudging, up to 18 for staggering and anything more than that means you're collapsed, as a start and adjust based on play testing from there.
