Dungeon Action!

[zmobie]

I've been inspired as of late.

http://www.studiohunty.com/dungeon/
http://www.dragons-lair-project.com/

The video dungeon games of the 80's and the lo-fi remake "dungeon escape" have really reminded me of what playing a great dungeon crawl is all about. Action, adventure, magic, daring-do, a mystery behind every door. The more I play these great old games, the more i realize that when i was a kid, playing dungeons and dragons was all about the dungeons and the horrible fantastic things that were behind the next door.

Getting older my tastes have obviously matured. I am not content to play a dungeons and dragons dungeon crawl. The rules of DnD actually somewhat hinder the enjoyment of a good dungeon for me. I think it might be Dnd's simulationist tendencies that get in the way. DnD seems to be first and foremost gamist, then simulationist, then narrative. But it lets the sim get in the way of the game sometimes. The game slows to a griding halt when trying to do anything more complex than whack some orcs on the head due to its sim inspired gamism.

Insert Dungeon Escape. Admittedly the game is simple. You prepare your eyeballs for the flashing spot on the screen and hopefully you can click it in time to narrowly escape death and move onto the next room. Why is this game so fun to me? Why does it invoke all the old feelings I had about a dungeon crawl, and how can i use it to make a killer pen and paper game i can play with my friends?

To avoid the pitfalls I run into with DnD I'm going to try to put simulation LAST on my priorities list. I like how simulation can ground you in the world, make it feel like a living breathing setting, but i DONT like how details can crush the fun of playing a game. I want gamism and narrativism to take the spotlight in this game much like gamism and simulation do in DnD. I want a mainly gamist game that is supported and inspired by narrative aspects. I also want this game to focus on dungeon crawls. The game isn't planning on leaving the dungeon any time soon. I want the game to be fast paced, highly descriptive with players inadvertently narrarating their actions by merely playing the game system.

The group i play with mainly focuses on the game aspects of all the rpgs we play. Most of our gaming experiences are nothing more than extrememly complex board game sessions. Sometimes, when the everything goes smoothly, and the rules don't take over the game, everyone really gets into character and enjoys themselves. I want to write this game for them. They wont play an rpg unless the gamist aspect of it is fun, but i don't have fun unless the game fades into the background and imagination takes over.

My initial idea has to do with focus, preparation, and reaction. I want characters to decide, before they face a challenge what they will be focusing on. Will they be preparing themselves for battle, will they have a spell at the ready, will they just be focusing on searching the room for the exit? They will then move a certain amount of focus points to that specific action. They can split up their focus. The more focus points they have in a specific action, the less action points it takes to raise its value.

For example. A warrior has 3 focus points, and before he enters a room he listens at the door (his listen skill is set at 4, he can raise it temporarily by spending action points until his listen score is a more desireable number) his listen of 4 is sufficient to hear something in the next room, although not enough to tell what it is, the player decides that this is enough and doesn't want to waste action points on hearing more details. He moves his all his focus into his sword skill so he can easily destroy whatever is beyond the door. When he opens the door and enters, the door shuts abruptly behind him. He can dodge the mechanical closing door successfully with a 3 or better. The warrior has 1 in dodge, so he must spend action points to not take damage from the closing door. Since he has no focus in dodge right now, the action point cost of dodging the door is increased. He spends the action points and narrowly escapes losing a limb just in time to see a giant spider crawling on the ceiling. If he had put some of his focus into his "spot" skill he would also have noticed the swarm of baby spiders behind him, but that threat goes un-noticed for now.

The Warrior's initiative is higher than the spiders, and the spider doesn't want to spend AP to go first, so the warrior gets to attack the spider. The warrior "slashes" with his sword. Slash is a skill that falls under his swordsmanship skill. He put the Focus points in swordsmanship which gives bonuses to all his sword techniques, but if he had focused on just his slash, the bonuses would be exponentially greater. There are a number of skills that can react to a slash (shield, dodge, parry). An entry of this attack would look like this

Attack - Slash 5 - defense (shield +3, dodge +6, parry +4)

This means the warriors skill in "slash" is 5. To guard against this attack with a shield would cost 8, to dodge it would cost 11, and to parry would cost 9.

I know there are glaring holes, and that the system shown here doesn't work AT ALL, but its kind of the rough sketch of how the action will go. Does anyone have suggestions on how to do a game like this? does anyone know of games that exist that are like this?

[Vibilo]

You may want to look at Donjon. Its not really anything like what you describe but it has the spirit you seem to want to bring out.

[FLEB]

I find this preparation and "mindshare allotment" idea interesting... I don't know if it would be too unweildly, but here's just an idea I had. I'm thinking of an array of columns of boxes, each column representing your current ability level. Your permanent "skill ratings" would consist of permanently-filled boxes, and your extra "attention points" would be some manner of markers, something like small transparent bingo chips, coins, or the like. You would divvy out your "points" before an action, round, or whatever unit of time worked best, and those stats would be the unchangable sum of your attention and abilities for that time.

[Tommi Brander]

Donjon is very much worth a look. It is also available for free under the Creative Commons. If you can't find it, PM your email to me, or ask Clinton about it.

[Anders Larsen]

One thing you should consider very carefully with this kind of games is character death. In a typical dungeon crawl the main conflict is: do the character live or die, so for a challenge to be exiting, the player have to feel that there is a good change that his character will die. The problem is that either is the game not challenging enough or the character will have a high risk of dying. Normally a game master don't want characters to die too often, so while he set up powerful monster to give the game excitement, he will begin fudging the dice roll or change the monster's stats, to keep the characters alive - give them a lucky escape.

And this will ruin the game, because now there is really no challenge any more.

There is different ways how this problem can be solved. Here is what I can think of right know:

1) Each player have a number of character, so it doesn't matter if a few of them die.
2) There can be an respawn mechanic, so the character will get a new life, but will lose some px. This will also be true to the computer game idea.
3) The character is very hard to kill, but will easily get some annoying wounds that give them disadvantages. In this way the characters have time to back out of a fight that is too much for them, but they have to find a place they can get healed before they can fight again.

In these ways the challenges can be high, without the fear of character death.

- Anders

[zmobie]

One thing you should consider very carefully with this kind of games is character death. In a typical dungeon crawl the main conflict is: do the character live or die, so for a challenge to be exiting, the player have to feel that there is a good change that his character will die. The problem is that either is the game not challenging enough or the character will have a high risk of dying. Normally a game master don't want characters to die too often, so while he set up powerful monster to give the game excitement, he will begin fudging the dice roll or change the monster's stats, to keep the characters alive - give them a lucky escape.

And this will ruin the game, because now there is really no challenge any more.

There is different ways how this problem can be solved. Here is what I can think of right know:

1) Each player have a number of character, so it doesn't matter if a few of them die.
2) There can be an respawn mechanic, so the character will get a new life, but will lose some px. This will also be true to the computer game idea.
3) The character is very hard to kill, but will easily get some annoying wounds that give them disadvantages. In this way the characters have time to back out of a fight that is too much for them, but they have to find a place they can get healed before they can fight again.

In these ways the challenges can be high, without the fear of character death.

- Anders

I like the respawn idea, because i dont like PC's who are basically superheroes with magical gear. Im still concentrating on games like Dragons Lair, where you go into the dungeon with your trusty sword, wits, and reflexes alone. Games where you are some kind of uber-powered adventurer dont seem as exiting and dangerous to me.

When you mentioned a respawn mechanic, I had an idea. Respawning somewhere provides some problems for a multi-player dungeon crawl game. Do the other characters wait for you to catch up? are you automatically resurected? how exactly does this all work? Well, one way to do it would be to have the exp for each adventure be a communal pool of resources for the entire party. Say, you get 10 exp per session. If a character dies, he can prevent that death for 3 or 4 xp. Players can also use xp for other things to save thier butts throughout the adventure, but it will reduce the reward at the end of the dungeon.

does this seem like a good system?

[zmobie]

I find this preparation and "mindshare allotment" idea interesting... I don't know if it would be too unweildly, but here's just an idea I had. I'm thinking of an array of columns of boxes, each column representing your current ability level. Your permanent "skill ratings" would consist of permanently-filled boxes, and your extra "attention points" would be some manner of markers, something like small transparent bingo chips, coins, or the like. You would divvy out your "points" before an action, round, or whatever unit of time worked best, and those stats would be the unchangable sum of your attention and abilities for that time.

Yes exactly! working out the details is proving to be a bit more difficult than expected, but thats exactly the system i want to go for.

you have to anticipate the actions of your enemies and challenges.

I had another idea regarding the action points that each character would get. What if the action points you could spend, were based on, and even granted by each encounter. So if i was the DM and I made an encounter that was a 20 point encounter (10 points for a hydra, 5 for falling stalagtites, and 5 more for the whole encounter being underwater) the PC's then have those 20 points as resources to spend for that encounter. It would be kinda hard to balance out, because if those 20 points could get you through the room with relative ease, then what would be the point in playing the game? You'd have to make the average points spent to overcome an obstacle be more than the points granted by it so the PC's would have to rely on thier focus points.

or

The focus points could reduce the cost of raising skill levels

[flammifer]

I like the focus distribution thing! It introduces a new element of tactics without making things too complicated (and there aren't *that* many places you can make tactical choices in a dungeon crawl outside of combat.

Maybe there could only be a limited set of "directions" the player can focus on - focusing on swordsmanship or slash doesn't make as much sense to me as focusing on initiative or dodging. Once the guy sees the spiders and hits them, the strength at which he hits them shouldn't depend on how "ready" he was, but the speed of his reaction should. The goal isn't to have a perfectly realistic simulation, but rather to make the system easier to balance by not having too many things you can focus on. I'd say:
- looking for stuff
- listening
- getting ready for a fight
- getting ready to dodge/run
- getting ready to cast a spell
- avoiding being noticed

Too much granularity, and things may get too cumbersome to keep track of, especially if you need a small grid with tokens on it.

I also recommend respawning, in a zombie game we played, dead players' spirits would immediatly move into another bystander, it kept things moving quickly while allowing for gruesome deaths when unlucky / not careful. It tied in with the story pretty well, too, and players still weren't careless with their lives.

[zmobie]

I like the focus distribution thing! It introduces a new element of tactics without making things too complicated (and there aren't *that* many places you can make tactical choices in a dungeon crawl outside of combat.

Maybe there could only be a limited set of "directions" the player can focus on - focusing on swordsmanship or slash doesn't make as much sense to me as focusing on initiative or dodging. Once the guy sees the spiders and hits them, the strength at which he hits them shouldn't depend on how "ready" he was, but the speed of his reaction should. The goal isn't to have a perfectly realistic simulation, but rather to make the system easier to balance by not having too many things you can focus on. I'd say:
- looking for stuff
- listening
- getting ready for a fight
- getting ready to dodge/run
- getting ready to cast a spell
- avoiding being noticed

Too much granularity, and things may get too cumbersome to keep track of, especially if you need a small grid with tokens on it.

I also recommend respawning, in a zombie game we played, dead players' spirits would immediatly move into another bystander, it kept things moving quickly while allowing for gruesome deaths when unlucky / not careful. It tied in with the story pretty well, too, and players still weren't careless with their lives.

I've had a couple of ideas regarding focus. I thought of having a number of focus points that can only be split up 3 ways. The focus points would reduce the amount of action points you'd have to spend to raise your skill number. Certain abilities would require a minimum amount of focus points to pull them off... difficult spells for example, would require almost all of your focus, whereas more simple effects would require only a few. As you go up in level, you don't gain tons of hit points and become a god-like entity, you just get really good at doing the things you do and focusing on doing certain things while paying attention to others.

[flammifer]

"The focus points would reduce the amount of action points you'd have to spend to raise your skill number." <-- I'm not sure I fully understand how you use action points. But then, I don't remember playing any game using action points (does Full Metal Planet count?).

I'd imagine a system like:

You have a certain amount of focus dice, that you can pool in different directions (preparing spells, recovering, anticipating combat, hiding, listening, searching). Something happens - for example you pass a secret door, so you roll the focus die you had in that direction (searching), and try to beat a a given score, function of the difficulty and your skill level. If you get a critical success, you get an extra skill point in that direction.

What's a critical success is to determine, maybe something like getting at least two tens if you're rolling D10s (which means you can't go up at all if you invest only one focus die in that direction, and have 5% odds of going up if you invest four), or at least a 20 if you're rolling d20s.

An more balanced alternative would be to have some experience points to spend, and when you get a critical success, you get an opportunity to spend one XP to boost that skill. This means the XP you get should be roughly equal to the critical roles you're expected to get. The unused XP can be used to boost other maybe slightly less valuable skills (learning new spells, new combat moves, languages, etc.)

This would probably need quite a bit of tweaking, but the general idea is to have progress in one skill depend on how often you use it, without having to resort to some advanced bean-counting. That'd be one way of implementing "you just get really good at doing the things you do". Probably not the system you have in mind, but since I can't read your mind, it's how I'd imagine it :)

[zmobie]

"The focus points would reduce the amount of action points you'd have to spend to raise your skill number." <-- I'm not sure I fully understand how you use action points. But then, I don't remember playing any game using action points (does Full Metal Planet count?).

I'd imagine a system like:

You have a certain amount of focus dice, that you can pool in different directions (preparing spells, recovering, anticipating combat, hiding, listening, searching). Something happens - for example you pass a secret door, so you roll the focus die you had in that direction (searching), and try to beat a a given score, function of the difficulty and your skill level. If you get a critical success, you get an extra skill point in that direction.

What's a critical success is to determine, maybe something like getting at least two tens if you're rolling D10s (which means you can't go up at all if you invest only one focus die in that direction, and have 5% odds of going up if you invest four), or at least a 20 if you're rolling d20s.

An more balanced alternative would be to have some experience points to spend, and when you get a critical success, you get an opportunity to spend one XP to boost that skill. This means the XP you get should be roughly equal to the critical roles you're expected to get. The unused XP can be used to boost other maybe slightly less valuable skills (learning new spells, new combat moves, languages, etc.)

This would probably need quite a bit of tweaking, but the general idea is to have progress in one skill depend on how often you use it, without having to resort to some advanced bean-counting. That'd be one way of implementing "you just get really good at doing the things you do". Probably not the system you have in mind, but since I can't read your mind, it's how I'd imagine it :)

thats a really good idea. I like only advancing in skills that you use, but my idea was different.

I wanted to avoid dice to keep the action open for more narrative. When playing RPG's with the group i play in, dice seem like almost and endless distraction. Sometimes people in my group will roll dice and start adding up numbers without even telling the DM what they want to do, or narrating the action at all. The game itself seems to take away from the narrative. The story and actions are lost because of the players inclination to "win". To do away with dice i was going to have an action point system. Your skills are all at a certain skill level (dodge 3, jump 4 etc) and when you come to an encounter, it requires that you have a certain number to get past that obstacle. If you don't, you have to spend your AP to raise that skill. If your focus points are invested in that skill at the time when you perform it, the skill is cheaper and easier to raise.

I wanted a system that was more narrative without skimping on the game. Where the game and the narrative are intertwined so that even if you get lost in the gamist aspect, you still inadvertently narrate the exiting action. The gamist part of the game enhances and encourages the narrative rather than the other way around. I have no idea whether the game I'm working on will accomplish this as of yet, but i guess we'll see.

I wanted game play to move smoothly between actions and reactions and back again. I wanted the GM to describe what is going on in the environment, and the players react to it quickly by narrating their own actions based on their skills and focus. Then the players narrate their actions and the GM gets a chance to react.

The game would move quickly from encounter to encounter and the main challenge of the game would be resource management  and the puzzle of figuring out what is the most effective action to take. Killing a hydra would require the whole party to concentrate on chopping off heads while dodging its myriad of blows. Surviving a room with walls that close in on you would require the stronger members of the party to try to brace the walls while the smarter group members would search for the mechanism to disable the wall. Combat with intelligent opponents would require each of the PC's to focus on exploiting enemies weaknesses and guarding against their strengths. It should be a cinematic experience that relies on problem solving and resource management to drive the action and suspense.

Maybe i am wrong about the dice. Maybe the system could use dice without it being a huge distraction, and your system would probably work very well. I don't want to move away from convention at the expense of the fun of the game, but if dice can be avoided to the games advantage, i want to do it.

[zmobie]

Maybe there could only be a limited set of "directions" the player can focus on - focusing on swordsmanship or slash doesn't make as much sense to me as focusing on initiative or dodging. Once the guy sees the spiders and hits them, the strength at which he hits them shouldn't depend on how "ready" he was, but the speed of his reaction should.

i was thinking hard about this, and focusing on swordsmanship does seem kind of ridiculous, so i came up with the idea of focusing on a specific enemy. How much focus you have on one enemy decides how effectively you can dodge him, hit him, etc... but putting all your focus on an enemy blinds you to other dangers. That leaves the problem of not being able to focus on an enemy until you come upon one. This could be alleviated by having a mechanic for initiative and pre-combat. All foci you put into any pre-combat skills can be automatically transferred to your opponent for no cost.

So if you are aware that there is an enemy on the other side of the door, you can put all 3 foci into your initiative. You bash through the door, win initiative and all 3 foci you set aside for pre-combat are automatically transferred to the opponent... that is of coarse if you can easily see him.

I failed to mention earlier that there should also be a mechanic for shuffling your focus. You shouldn't be able to automatically move your focus points from skill to skill at lightning speed. Shuffling focus should be based on your ability to notice dangers and the speed at which you can react to them.

Maybe the "spot" or "notice" skill could act as a conduit through which your foci pass. The more skill you have in "spot" the more focus points you can move at a time. You can actually invest foci in your "spot" skill if you are expecting some sort of surprise while you are doing something else.

[flammifer]

I wanted to avoid dice to keep the action open for more narrative. When playing RPG's with the group i play in, dice seem like almost and endless distraction. Sometimes people in my group will roll dice and start adding up numbers without even telling the DM what they want to do, or narrating the action at all. The game itself seems to take away from the narrative. The story and actions are lost because of the players inclination to "win". To do away with dice i was going to have an action point system. Your skills are all at a certain skill level (dodge 3, jump 4 etc) and when you come to an encounter, it requires that you have a certain number to get past that obstacle. If you don't, you have to spend your AP to raise that skill. If your focus points are invested in that skill at the time when you perform it, the skill is cheaper and easier to raise.

Ok, I understand better now :)

Are there any other systems that use action points instead of dice? I'd be interested in knowing what consequences it has in practice.

Also, when/how do action points "recharge" ? At the end of each scene/round? Between adventures?

[flammifer]

i was thinking hard about this, and focusing on swordsmanship does seem kind of ridiculous, so i came up with the idea of focusing on a specific enemy. How much focus you have on one enemy decides how effectively you can dodge him, hit him, etc... but putting all your focus on an enemy blinds you to other dangers. That leaves the problem of not being able to focus on an enemy until you come upon one. This could be alleviated by having a mechanic for initiative and pre-combat. All foci you put into any pre-combat skills can be automatically transferred to your opponent for no cost.

So if you are aware that there is an enemy on the other side of the door, you can put all 3 foci into your initiative. You bash through the door, win initiative and all 3 foci you set aside for pre-combat are automatically transferred to the opponent... that is of coarse if you can easily see him.

I failed to mention earlier that there should also be a mechanic for shuffling your focus. You shouldn't be able to automatically move your focus points from skill to skill at lightning speed. Shuffling focus should be based on your ability to notice dangers and the speed at which you can react to them.

Maybe the "spot" or "notice" skill could act as a conduit through which your foci pass. The more skill you have in "spot" the more focus points you can move at a time. You can actually invest foci in your "spot" skill if you are expecting some sort of surprise while you are doing something else.

I'd say the most important moment in which focus can shift is at the beginning of combat (or of any other quick sudden action that requires reaction, such as the floor opening over you). So I don't think it's necessary to use a specific stat for "shifting foci". I'd just say, if you didn't invest enough in "anticipating combat", you can't act during the first round of combat, and if you did invest enough, you get to re-attribute your focus to combat (or maybe, re-attribute your "anticipating combat" to "focus on combat").

It makes sense. The second you see the orc rushing at you with his sword, you're not looking for hidden doors any more, you're 100% focused on him.

And yeah, focusing on a specific enemy is a good idea :) I'd thought of something like "focusing on attack", "focusing on defense", but doing it for specific enemies is good. So you can have "I duel with the goblin, keeping an eye on the shaman with the staff of fireballs" (if you think the goblin's not a very dangerous foe, but dedicating all your attention to him might result in your head getting blown off from behind). You can even keep some focus in "anticipating combat" while you're still in combat, which would mean looking out for new enemies. For example, if you're in the lightless naveof the spider-temple, and some little red spider comes scuttling out of the shadows to try to bite your foot, you'll probably want to try and squash it, but you better keep your eyes open because the Great Spider God all in His Chitinous Glory might lower himself from up above and bite your head off.

That can give rise to some pretty interesting tactics, if the DM can come up with enough situations where single-handedly focusing on the monster at hand is not the optimal choice. Looking for weaknesses in it's armour or biology, or carefully studying it's fighting pattern could be interesting, and might mark the difference between a barbarian with an axe and a duke with a rapier.

Another aspect you might want to be able to distribute focus points on - moving! You probably don't want movement to become completely managed by focus points (unless you rename them "action points", which they nearly are already), but spending focus points on running, or moving during combat, would make sense. Maybe all movement through focus points is more realistic (it makes sense that when you're not moving, you can search around and listen even better), but I'm afraid it'd slow the game down by giving the players too many things to manage. (Maybe just "if you're not moving more than a careful step at a time, you get one extra focus point" ?). Only using focus points for movement actions that can result in success or failure (running away from / catching up with somebody, moving around an enemy you're fighting) seems more reasonable than having some formula for how much / how fast you can move for a given number of focus points.

(Hmm, that was long :P)

[flammifer]

Ah, re-reading your first post, I think I got a better idea of what you mean: what you mean by "action points" is close to what I mean by "focus" :) So you'd have action points that regenerate quickly, so yeah, it makes sense that focus points don't, since they more or less correspond to "how well you were prepared to what you are doing now" (as opposed to "how much attention you're paying to it", which is how I had undestood it).