Epic Dungeonering

I’ve had an interesting idea. Inspired by the little ones lobe of the Hunger Games, I’m looking at developing a second way of playing the game. Rather than co-op to kill the monster/wizard; what if you fought each other.

This wouldn’t require any change and could be seen as a different mission. My thinking is two starting points with a random card and a centre arena between the players. This would allow exploration for treasure and monsters and you could set up ambushes.

I think the first thing is to make these new cards and give the game a wirl and see what happens.

Had another go at playing the game with the changes from last time. This time Emmie managed to press gang my wife into playing with us, who provided a fresh set of eyes.

The one thing that happened was that we ended up playing two games as the first dungeon ended up drawing three dead ends. The second game ended up been a more drawn out affair. So what did we noticed this time.

●The game needs more corridor pieces or interesting rooms with at least two access points.

●The game needs more event cards. It can get a little repetitive. More traps and possibly treasure.. But could do with something else

●Personal the constant rolling a d6 and adding a number feels a bit arbitrary.

●The same is true for the number of monsters per room. Maybe consider adding numbers to the cards to reflect the numbers of monsters in the room.

I have another playtesting session booked in for later this week, so I will have a go at doing some of the changes

Work continues on the cards at a pase but I need to decide whether to paint these little fellas in colour or black and white to match the vibe of the game?

Whilst I was testing how the cards fit together I came to a realisation, it is possible to go put down the end card without realising it. So as a way to mark out the story cards I have coloured three backgrounds in black so when they are drawn they stand out compared to the others.

I need help naming this game. Currently it’s just been called 10mm dungeon which is basic and descriptive but doesn’t capture it.  It needs to capture the fantasy titles of the early 90s that I grew up with.

I asked my D&D group for help but didn’t get any serious suggestions back. So I’m opening it up to the community, does any one out there have any good ideas?

Since I’ve nothing new to share as I’m just making more cards, I thought I’d go through how I make them.

The first step is to draw a grid, of 1cm squares in pencil

The next is to draw out in pencil a rough design. The cards have to be 6cm by 10cm with an entrance and or exit on the centre two squares. Next draw over everything using a 0.7 pen to create a strong outline. Then all the detail is done with a 0.1 pen.

The original test on paper were done in a far lighter pen, but I discovered they didn’t make the desired impact on card.

Afterwards I go over with an eraser to remove the pencil marks.

My usual Friday ritual is watching the Weekender, (the weekend starts now bit really marks the time to breath out) but this week I was working till late running a séance so I didn’t get home till the early hours of the morning. So imagine my surprise to discover that I was the first article on the show.

Thank you everyone for the kind comments. The movement is a tricky one.  I’ve been starting to think about the characters and if they need a little difference down to health and pluses to movement.

Each hero as 3 wounds
They kill an orc on a 3+ a troll/evil wizard on a 5+
Each hero move d6 per turn
Currently each hero is a model rather than a class.

Each tiles creates d6-2 orcs
Trolls are only created via wandering monster cards
Orcs and trolls have 1 wound and wound on a 5+
wizard also wound on a 5+.
Wizard has 3 wounds

I pretty much agree with Em. It does feel really slow sometimes, which I think could be sorted by making movement 2 d6  But only one card can be flipped per player turn. I also think some form of range attack maybe needed as well.

With this in mind the monsters movement would need increasing as well to accommodate for this.

In our test game I couldn’t find the 10mm wizard model, but I found a dragon which I substuded him for.. But the dragon seemed a lot of fun so a special dragon pit card might need adding.

This is Emmie

She is 10 and she is the first tester of the game and this is what she thought of it :

Good bits

●Liked the suspense of random draw

●Simple rules

Bad bits

●Could move faster

Extra

Add big monsters other than the wizard.

I love the old Fighting Fantasy/90s fantasy art work and this blog will be littered with it, but I can’t always find the artist to credit there work. So if you know who a particular artist is please tell me so I can rectify the issue.

I’ve had my artwork stolen in the past and passed off as there’s in the past (in one case they tried to sell it to a friend) so it’s something I would like to rectify

I wasn’t planning on doing this post but the last post was published twice so I needed to add something.

Anyway I found this picture on Facebook. Post on artwork to follow.

My 10 year old daughter has now got involved in this project and what’s to give it a play through. So we have set a date of Sunday morning to give it a play through so we can see what else needs to be added.  This should be useful as if a clever 10 year old can understand it a normal adult should be fine.

Pre the games test I know I need to work out and make

• Wandering monster cards
• Trap cards and how they will work
• Treasure cards
• Design art work for these cards
• Work out how to do furniture and carpets. At the moment everything is flagstones and I want to add a bit of life to the game
• Find 10mm monsters. My thinking is orcs and trolls as wandering monsters

I’ve done the first tiles and if I’m honest I quite like them. I’ve let my main playtester have a go with the three I’ve made, and they seem to work.  So the next stage is make more to give it a better try.

I’ve begun with a couple of tests. Each card measures 10 x 6 cm with the idea that each card has to link to the next card at the centre two squares

My thinking is to draw the tile sections on playing cards. That way they can be randomly drawn to produce a random dungeon. I’ve always been a fan of the Zombies!!! game by twilight creations. So as a bases I’m going to steal this system rules and design till I can develop my own to fit.

To keep with the old school gaming feel everything has to be hand drawn. Each card will be individually drawn warts and all, so it has that classic feel.

This story begins like all good stories begin with a girl. Back in my early teens I had fallen in love with a girl who lived a couple doors down the road, it never came to anything, but she had an older brother who had Hero Quest and a collection of random fantasy models, and it was this that became one of the great loves of my life.

This wasn’t the only thing to happen that autumn. I have various mental disabilities, and I had been placed in special needs at school and the English teacher realising that we weren’t going to be able to learn in the same way took an interesting turn and we studied Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon story telling. Stories of exploring caves in search of dragons and treasure fired my young mind. It was soon after this that I found a copy of Dragons of an Autumn Twilight in the library and so unfortunately my fate was sealed.

So why am I telling you all this and what has it to do with the Dungeonalia. Well the issue I have with boardgames is that they don’t capture the feel these dungeons had in those early days. Even Hero Quest feels very confined, and I believe the issue is scale. Its hard to capture these unfeasibly large spaces at 28mm. But what if you don’t. What if you play at 10mm would the game work at that scale.

For anyone that has read any of my projects before my remember that I was an archaeologist, and not only do I have the experience I also still have all my drawing pens, so I can draw corridors and temples at 10mm scale.