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?

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.

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.

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.

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

Anders wrote:
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

FLEB wrote:
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.

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.

flammifer wrote:
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.

"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 :)

flammifer wrote:
"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 :)

flammifer wrote:
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.

zmobie wrote:
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.

zmobie wrote:
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.

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).

Here are some other games you might consider looking at for inspiration:

Rune RPG
d20 Iron Heroes

I've heard that the DnD Eberron setting uses action points also, but I have never played it personally.

flammifer wrote:

zmobie wrote:
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?

OK, after sitting on this idea for a little while I have finally come up with a base to work from.

The most important trait in this game will be perception. Everything will hinge on your perception trait.

Perception will go up according to your level. So a first level character will have a 1 in perception, at 5th level it might go up to 2 and so on.

Your perception score determines how many focus points you may move per round. So for the first 4 levels, you may only move one focus point per round. However, you MAY invest focus points in your perception skill to have them at the ready.

So a 3rd level spellcaster would have 8 focus points total. He has 3 invested in his "Defensive Stance" a combat maneuver available to any character that boosts your armor class and reduces your attack skill. The rest of his 5 focus points are still invested in Perception. The wizard knows that the boost of 3 to his defense is enough to fend off the kobolds sling attacks, but he is still waiting for some other threat to rear its ugly head.

Sure enough, in the middle of the battle, a large red dragon drops from the dark ceiling. The wizards perception score of 6 ( 1 for his level + 5 perception points ) wasn't enough to see past the red dragons invisibility spell ( +10 to hide ). The dragon has made himself visible to attack the wizards party. On the wizards turn, he may move up to 6 of his 8 focus points to whatever skill or ability he needs to.

The wizard moves 3 points into conjuration and 3 points into evocation giving him a 5 in each of those magical skills ( focus points add +1 to whatever skill they are on). To create a minor seal of conjuration you need 5, so the wizard creates a minor seal of conjuration. But the wizard needs a regular seal of evocation to finish his spell. A regular seal costs 7 points, so the wizard must pay 2 Action Points to raise his skill enough to conjure the seal. With each seal in place, the wizard successfully casts the fireball spell and engulfs the kobolds and the red dragon in flames.

I still have a lot of stuff to tweak, obviously, but i like the idea of keeping focus points in reserve in order to ready yourself for more grandiose things. As characters go up in level they will be able to react more quickly and efficiently to new threats and spend less of their allotted Action Points.

I have also decided that focus points can take the place of skill points and action points. Action points are used to pull off maneuvers (defensive stance, backstab, etc). Skill points are what you gain every level to spend on traits like jump, hide, strength, etc. So your focus can increase skills or take over for your AP for conservation purposes.

I also came up with a pretty nifty magic system. Each of the different schools of magic (which i am basing on DnD until i come up with something a little more streamlined) have an innate ability attached to them. You don't need to do anything other than make a skill check to use that ability. Each ability is minor, and skill based. So if you have a skill of 1 in abjuration, you can give anyone in your party +1 to AC as a magical skill. To cast more flashy and interesting spells, you have to set up different seals. Minor, regular, or Major seals in each school, depending on what spell you are trying to cast. This requires the expenditure of Action Points (or the investment of focus points). Spells with duration will require you to invest a certain amount of focus points into that spell to keep it going.

zmobie wrote:

flammifer wrote:
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,

The wizard moves 3 points into conjuration and 3 points into evocation giving him a 5 in each of those magical skills ( focus points add +1 to whatever skill they are on). To create a minor seal of conjuration you need 5, so the wizard creates a minor seal of conjuration. But the wizard needs a regular seal of evocation to finish his spell. A regular seal costs 7 points, so the wizard must pay 2 Action Points to raise his skill enough to conjure the seal. With each seal in place, the wizard successfully casts the fireball spell and engulfs the kobolds and the red dragon in flames.

I still have a lot of stuff to tweak, obviously, but i like the idea of keeping focus points in reserve in order to ready yourself for more grandiose things.

Callan wrote:
I think your getting all turned around by the 'sense' word. Concentrate on what you wanted - for players to think of the imaginary world and with that in mind, make a bet on what they should focus on, before they head into the room. Screw whether focus on swordsmanship sounds rediculous - the fact is, your trying to bring something extremely meta game (player guts) into the game world. It's always going to look silly, just like in dogs in the vineyard where at one point in a gun battle the character simply cannot die, but the next second he can. That's rediculous. But it's there because the player is able to decide when the characters life is on the line...when they would commit that fully.

The wizard moves 3 points into conjuration and 3 points into evocation giving him a 5 in each of those magical skills ( focus points add +1 to whatever skill they are on). To create a minor seal of conjuration you need 5, so the wizard creates a minor seal of conjuration. But the wizard needs a regular seal of evocation to finish his spell. A regular seal costs 7 points, so the wizard must pay 2 Action Points to raise his skill enough to conjure the seal. With each seal in place, the wizard successfully casts the fireball spell and engulfs the kobolds and the red dragon in flames.

How much of that involved the imaginary world that your trying to grasp at? Here, your giving an example of boardgame mechanics. I'm not saying it wouldn't be fun to use numbers that way, but is it the fun you were going after when you made your first post?

I still have a lot of stuff to tweak, obviously, but i like the idea of keeping focus points in reserve in order to ready yourself for more grandiose things.

For some reason I do like that and yet I feel its missplaced. Big fan of the old D&D 'do I use my fireball now or save it for latter' tactical crisis. But in this case I think it's different and I suspect it's going to kill tactics - no one will take the risk of making a bet, when they can just horde their action points and 'see how things turn out'. Ie, they don't make bets, there is no dramatic tension and certainly they don't have to think about the game world/guess what might come up next. Because when it does, they can just throw their reserved points at it. They wont be engaging the game world, thinking about how it works (in an effort to bear it). Instead, it'll be the GM saying 'Balrog' and then they go into boardgame style point expenditure. Again, that is fun. Just double check what fun you want to have.