"Into The Deep Dark...a dungeon crawl report" Topic

I spent some time going on a dungeon crawl with my favorite adventurers, trying to hammer out some solo crawling rules. Here's the results! Enjoy!

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Looks great! We actually ran a dungeon game this week as well. Good luck with your solo games.

Consider multipliers for monster difficulty when it comes to loot, level 2 is x2 or +2 coin. One way to prevent a party from harvesting near a safe point is to put a max wandering amount on loot. Once they reach 50, etc. the pocket change dries up. Consider also using copper or silver only for wandering creatures, and save gold/platinum for troves.

The rules don't have levels, per se, but a multiplier could be based on points level, which is a good idea. Areas don't reset and wandering monsters don't carry gold, but if they did, a loot max is a good idea too.

Very enjoyable read. Keep the delving coming.

I'm on a bit of a card-based mechanisms kick right now, but I'm wondering if it might work for solo gaming to get a good balance between randomness and "continuity".

The idea is to make up a series of cards, each of which describes an encounter. So one draw card per room. The continuity would come from having the content of the cards relate to each other to some extent – so for example having a dozen or (however many were appropriate) cards all describing encounters with orcs, if you were exploring an orc cave complex. Then maybe a few 'wildcard' encounters added to the deck for interest's sake.

An advantage, too is that you could have a lot of the info needed for the encounter written on the card itself, such as stat-lines for the critters, treasure, or whatever. Some of that, such as treasure recovered could be left random, or semi-random, and only rolled for after the monsters were defeated.

With the treasure listed on the cards (or at least the randomized range listed), it would allow you to make sure that there are treasures to be had where they are appropriate. You could also use the average treasure on each card as a factor in the deck design, so the adventurers couldn't get crazy amounts of loot, but if they do well they should make a profit.

There are a couple drawbacks, though. It could be a bit time intensive to begin with for preparation, since you would have to make the cards… Although these days a decent computer and a printer that will handle card-stock will make the job easier.

Another problem is that with solo gaming the player usually also does the prep-work, and so reduces the suspense that is the core of dungeon-crawling. One way to reduce that problem is to have 30-50% more cards in the deck than you have roomss to explore, so even though you know what went into the pile, you don't know what will come up or where. Making the extra cards increases the prep-time, though…

Sorry for the run-on post- kind of thinking out loud! I think making a set of cards could add something fun to your games, though.

Looking forward to seeing your next delve, regardless of whether or not you use cards ;)

I like my tables. They have all sorts of creatures, so I never know what I am going to get, and I never run out of encounters. Honestly, I think I just got unlucky. Only one result on the table is monster/no treasure. I rolled a lot of the same numbers. I might need to alter the spread a little.

I tend to stay away from cards because I find that if I dislike how an encounter works, I'm throwing away a card instead of altering line of text. (edit) But cards would be good for whole encounters, treasure included, in themed dungeons where you are picking out your encounters ahead of time.