Playtesting A Really Simple Dungeon Crawl

My oldest loves playing board games, from Super Dungeon Explore to Forbidden Desert to Carcassonne, and my youngest has taken a very keen interest in my minis, dice, and other gaming bits, and even occasionally fires up Chronicles of Mystara despite not having a grasp of the controls (or even the controller).

I figure it's only a matter of time before they want to try out a role-playing game proper, so I've been working on a kind of "really simple dungeon crawl" as sort of a transition game. Something that doesn't have a lot of "math", fiddly bits like feats, or lists of weapons or armor to choose from.

I've been looking to board games like Super Dungeon Explore and Descent, as well as more mechanically simplistic role-playing games like Gamma World and Fright Night for inspiration, and after a several nights of designing and writing we took it for a few playtesting spins.

Before I get into the mechanics I want to go over what the characters look like, as it'll clarify what I'm talking about in terms of gameplay.

For starters you've got four stats (currently): Might, Agility, Intellect, and Willpower. I want to change Willpower to something more "cleric-y" (maybe Discipline?), since right now each stat is keyed to a "classic" archetype: fighters rely on Might, rogues Agility, and wizards use Intellect for their magic. They start at d4, d6, or d8, though maybe at some point I'll make a really focused class that starts with a d10.

Then you've got skills. I'm (also currently) mostly pulling from 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons for this, so you've got stuff like Arcana, Perception, Religion, and Thievery, but there's also Weapon (though I might break it up into Melee and Ranged). Like stats they're also represented by dice, starting at d4 (if you're untrained) or d6 (for default proficiency).

Finally at 1st-level, aside from your default stats and skills, you have one main thing that separates you from everyone else. For example fighters can choose to be way better at shrugging off blows or hacking monsters apart, clerics can choose from a variety of ways to buff others (though there is no healing), rogues are more mobile and have more skills, and wizards can do various things with their magic depending on which school(s) they have access to.

Initially I wanted the character sheet to take up at most a notecard's worth of space, but now I'm thinking of whipping up a kind of digest-sized, trifold layout. Something to give ample space to draw their character, as well as fit graphics of the dice and all of the talents. If there is multiclassing, it would also be nice to have blank space to write in other talents.

The core mechanic of the game is similar to d20 games in that you roll against a target number to see if you succeed or fail. One way it differs is that you don't roll a d20, but two or more dice, add them up, and see if you meet or beat the number. Another difference is that the players roll the dice regardless as to whether they are attacking or defending themselves, and typically are the only ones rolling the dice (though some monsters have random modifiers to their stats).

When you wanna do something you build a dice pool using the relevant stat and skill, so attacking a monster would be Might + Weapon or Agility + Weapon, forcing your way through a door would be Might + Athletics, and hiding would be Agility + Stealth. When it comes to defending your armor determines what die you add to your Might or Agility: no armor is a d4, light armor like leather is a d6, scale armor is a d8, and plate is a d10. Shields just add +1 to your roll.

Some race abilities and talents add more dice, but you always just take the two highest dice (well, I suppose you don't have to if you really don't want to).

Playtest Notes

During the first playtest I gave each monster an Attack and Defense pool of their own, so that you rolled against each other. Unfortunately this caused the first encounter, which only featured two lizardfolk, to drag on for a while. So in the second encounter I reduced their pool a bit, but while this made things go somewhat faster it still dragged for longer than we would have liked.

For the second playtest I gave each monster a static Attack and Defense value, which you rolled against when defending yourself and attacking it respectively. This sped up things quite a bit, and also allowed their party of three (Melissa was handling two characters at once with ease) to tackle nearly twice as many enemies in a much quicker time frame.

Monsters

Right now monsters look like this:

Lizardfolk Warrior
Attack: 7
Defense: 5
Wounds: 2
Special: Lizardfolk attempting to hide in water add +1d4 to their Difficulty.

So, if you wanna hit him you gotta get a 5 or higher, and if you want to avoid getting hit you're going to need a 7 or higher. He's got two wounds, so it'll take two hits to take him out. The special line is a place to note any noteworthy abilities that the monster has. In this case when the GM determines how hard it is to spot the lizardfolk, it gets an extra tacked on to the 1d4 to the Difficulty.

Other stuff could include:

• Gains +2 Defense against slashing and piercing weapons (for stuff like skeletons).
• Takes -4 Defense against silver weapons (therianthropes).
• Cannot be harmed by non-magical weapons.
• An ally gains +1d6 to it's Attack.
• Can make an attack against two adjacent characters.
• If a character fails it's Defense roll by 2 or more, that character is grabbed until it escapes (Difficulty 9). Until the character escapes, each time the monster takes an action the character automatically suffers a wound.
• Regains 1 Wound on it's turn.
• When it inflicts a Wound, the target takes -1d6 to it's next Defense roll.

Just some basic things like that. Mostly I'd want to keep the rank-and-file monsters simple, while leaving more complex stuff to the champions/elites and "boss monsters", like dragons, warlords, sorcerers and the like.

Take the lizardfolk champion for example:

Lizardfolk Champion
Attack: 7
Defense: 7
Wounds: 3
Special: Lizardfolk attempting to hide in water add +1d4 to their Difficulty. When the champion attacks it adds +1d4 to it's Attack.

Better than the typical lizardfolk warrior, but still pretty simple and a bit unpredictable to boot.

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