A quick bit of background before we start: I’ve had quite a lot of “life” going on lately, and I didn’t get my planned September column done. If you read my August column, you saw that I planned to start discussing a game written to facilitate an old-school gaming style, using modern RPG design principles. That’s still the plan, but it won’t happen this month. Maybe in October. But September was too crazy, so I had to default to this “back up” column, which is related to the game system, at least partially, but should work more or less with any system.

Meta-Systems

I’ve had an interest in meta-systems for a while, ever since I read of a Battletech meta-system in Dragon Magazine way back in the day. By meta-systems, I mean a game system that overlays an existing system (and might be workable with a number of systems), and does something beyond what it ordinarily does. The Battletech meta-system provided a board/strategy type game, with production capabilities, research for new technologies, etc., which used Battletech to resolve combats. It was directly tied to the Battletech system, of course.

What I’m doing here isn’t going to be tied to a particular system, although it will be a good fit for the Modernized Old-school Roleplaying Engine (M.O.R.E.!!!) that I’ll be introducing in my next few columns. It could also be used with any edition of D&D, GURPS, HERO, Savage Worlds, or whatever.

Quick Dungeon Delving Metagame

The idea behind this game is that you will draw semi-randomly to build the rooms in the dungeon, again to populate them with obstacles (generally traps and monsters), and again to populate them with treasures (generally expendable items). Treasures serve both to help the player advance in the dungeon and to provide a way of keeping score (the point values of all items that have not been expended are totaled at the end of the game).

The goal is to reach and defeat the boss and return to the exit, all the way scoring points.

Cards can be index cards, special blank playing cards, or regular playing cards in “deck protectors” (do they still sell those or is the day of the CCG really over?) with a slip of paper slipped between the playing card and the clear side of the deck protector. It doesn’t matter, honestly.

You’ll end up creating four decks, none of which will see use during play, only at startup: Rooms, Obstacles, Treasures, and Bosses.

Designing the Dungeon

First, choose how large the dungeon will be. Recommended sizes are 7, 10, 15, and 20 rooms, with 10 being the “default.” Each room will have its own card, and will have 1, 2, 3, or 4 exits (one in each of the four cardinal directions, N,S,E,W). For example, a 10-room dungeon might have 3 one-exit “endcaps,” 3 two-exit rooms, 3 three-exit rooms, and 1 four-exit room.

Shuffle the rooms, then draw and play in order. If playing a room card would leave no open exits, place that card on the bottom of the deck and continue to the next one. Continue until all rooms have been played. It is okay to have hallways that lead to nowhere, but every room should be connected to another room, and there should be only one connected group of rooms (you shouldn’t have two groups that are not contiguous).

Designate one room as the Entrance. Designate another as the Boss room. The Boss room should be one of, if not the, farthest rooms from the entrance.

Obstacles

You should first decide on about twice as many power-level appropriate encounters as you have rooms. Clearly, what this means will vary based on what game you’re using, but most D&D editions have a great deal of advice on this. These encounters should be easy to beat individually, but, if things go badly or the player makes poor tactical choices, they could wear the PC down over time and lead to defeat (either at the hands of the Boss Monster or at the hands of one of the later Obstacles).

Then you should record either the stats or a reference information (for example: Monster Manual 2, page 13, Evil McGuffins[x3]) for each one on a card. Note that traps, skill and athletics tests, and so on are perfectly reasonable Obstacles; they don’t have to be combat encounters. Each monster has a Flee Difficulty between 1 and 5, based on their aggression and quickness (you must decide this when creating the monster – base it on how good they are at catching people who try to run away, based on the system you’re using). To flee successfully, the player must beat this number on 1d6. Successful flight will put the PC back into the room from which he or she came. Monsters will not follow a PC. Use this system instead of the system in the base game.

Then draw a number of Obstacle cards equal to the number of Rooms minus 2. Place one in each room except the Entrance and Boss rooms. You created more than twice as many as you need so you wouldn’t know exactly what was coming up at any given point, and to add replay value.

Optional Rule: include some blank cards in the Obstacles and Treasures deck. This can make the game much easier or harder. If, for example, you draw several blank Obstacle cards, the game gets easier. If you draw several blank Treasure cards, you lose one of your main sources of power to recharge and defeat your enemies.

Treasures

Like the Obstacles deck, you should create about twice as many Treasures as you’re going to need. These should be expendable items like healing potions, short-term stat boosts, etc. Don’t get too hung up on system rules. Buffs will last for one encounter only, most items will have a single charge, etc. The character will already be appropriately armed and armored, so don’t worry about that too much. Think of short-term stuff you can use to get an advantage. Also, don’t worry about class restrictions on scrolls, potions, etc. Just let that slide for the sake of this game. Every Treasure should be usable by the PC.

Each treasure is worth 1 Point, but that point is lost if it is used (when a Treasure is used, the player has to discard the card anyway). You can also create Treasure cards that are merely gold and gems, which have no function to help the PC, but which provide 2 Points each at the end.

Then draw a number of Treasure cards equal to the number of Rooms minus 2, and place one in each room except the Entrance and Boss room. If you overcome the Obstacle in the room, you get the Treasure card.

The Boss

You should create a few significantly more powerful encounters, ones that the PC has a chance of losing in a straight-up fight, ones that the player will need to think, and probably use some or all of the Treasures, to defeat. I’d say five to ten of these encounters are good. Then draw one at random and place it in the Boss room in the dungeon.

If the PC defeats the Boss, the player should take the Boss card, which is worth 2 Points, and add it to his or her Treasures. The goal then is to make it out of the dungeon intact.

Game Play

The PC begins in the Entrance room, and each turn, may move into an adjacent room (one room’s movement per turn). Upon entering a room, the PC must deal with that room’s Obstacle. If successful, the player takes that room’s Treasure. The next turn, the PC can move into another adjacent room. Note the PC can backtrack through rooms he or she has emptied out with no problems, but it still takes a turn to move through them.

If the PC is unsuccessful against a trap or environmental Obstacle, the character can automatically retreat to the room he or she just came from and either try again or go into a different adjacent room, if there is one.

If the PC is losing a fight with a monster Obstacle, he or she can try to Flee. Each monster has a Flee Difficulty between 1 and 5, based on their aggression and quickness (you must decide this when creating the monster Obstacles). To flee successfully, the player must beat this number on 1d6. Successful flight will put the PC back into the room from which he or she came. Monsters will not follow a PC. Use this system instead of the system in the base game. You may rule, if your PC is unusually good at running away in the underlying game system, that the PC gets +1 to Flee rolls. Making a Flee check does not substitute for the PC’s action, and can be done at the end of each round of combat (the rounds your base system is using).

Escaping the Dungeon

Once the Boss is dead, the remaining monsters (Obstacles that are combat based and can physically move) begin to move, one space at a time, into the player’s escape path. Traps and other such environmental Obstacles do not move. This may mean that the PC is in for several more fights, but it may also mean that a clever player can double back and grab treasures that may currently be unguarded. Each turn, however, the enemies will try to move in on the PC. Enemies will not “double up,” nor will they go into rooms that have traps or other Obstacles (there is a maximum of one Obstacle card per room). They will enter the Entrance room and Boss room, however, if the Boss is defeated.

So Where Does the Strategy Come In?

A lot of it is resource management, knowing when to use the limited number of expendable boosts and potions when the nature of your upcoming Obstacles is mostly unknown. Some of it, however, will be inherent in the game system you’re playing, and that will clearly vary between systems (Hero vs GURPS, for example) or editions (Rules Cyclopedia D&D vs D&D Fourth Edition, for example).

Gaming Without a GM? Really?

In such a limited scenario, it’s no problem. The cards will create the dungeon, and as far as mechanical rulings, you should either flip a coin or simply do what will be the most fun for you. After all, if only one person is gaming, only one person is really going to care how the ‘GM’ rules.

The GM is mostly there to run NPC’s, to handle complex mechanical and setting issues, and to facilitate the massive freedom inherent in RPGs, in which the players can at least try to have their PCs do just about anything. This metagame has constrained that freedom to the level of a board game, essentially, and those rarely have GM’s. Any “rulings” can be handled by consensus of the players (or decision by the player, if you’re doing this solo).

So Why Not Just Play World of Warcraft?

(Or insert your favorite CRPG here)

Well, that’s a good question, and my answer won’t satisfy everyone. But a lot of us work with computers all day, and sometimes just can’t stand the thought of staring at a screen for one minute longer. And sometimes I don’t want any reflex component, even the relatively limited one in a CRPG. And sometimes I want to have a bit more control over the way things run (rather than letting the video game designers decide). Quick, pickup-style solo and duo- adventures are surely a niche product within a niche hobby, but really, that’s okay.