Space Templars

Inspired by my recent exposure to Castle Death I decided to run an experiment.

Like Dungeon World, task resolution (including combat) will be handled with 2D6s:

Roll                 Result

10-12             Complete success!

7-9                 Marginal success.

2-6                 Failure.

This is a very free-form system, as the DM needs to interpret the results depending on context. We’ll see how I do.

I decided to use a sci-fi setting for my experiment. Ten thousand years in the future, an organization of warrior monks called the Templars (basically a rip-off of Jedis) helps to keep the peace. I have a rough map of the galaxy that I sketched out a few months ago (more on that later)

I created 2 characters – a Templar and his robot sidekick.

What about an adventure? I used the Space Opera Adventure Generator  to create a basic plot, and got:

Track a princess located in a temple while dealing with a computer failure while opposed by a starship.

OK, that last part was a little weird, so I changed it to a religious figure. Inspired by Tales ofthe Space Princess, I decided to turn the adventure into a sci fi dungeon crawl. Now I have a space princess held captive by a cult leader in an ancient temple. The heroes need to make their way through the temple to rescue the princess.

I thought about drawing up a map of the temple and then populating with random encounters, but then I decided to simplify a bit and assume a linear progression. There will be four main sections – travel through a jungle to the temple, the temple, the crypts underneath the temple (where the princess and the cult leader are), and the escape. Encounters during the first 3 sections will be random, according to this chart:

Roll	Jungle	Temple	Crypts
1	A trap	A trap	A trap
2	Carnivorous plant	Worshipers	Cultist guards
3	Deadly predator	Cultist guards	The living dead
4	Cultist guards	Sacrifices	Hell hounds
5	Lost!	Cultist guards	A puzzle
6	A boon	A boon	Mercenaries
7	Move to next section	Move to next section	The villain’s lair

Each turn, I will roll to determine an encounter or challenge. If the challenge is overcome, roll again but with a +1 modifier (cumulative for each challenge in the section). A roll of 7+ will take the heroes to the next section or the final boss.

Now I have my adventure; let’s see how it works.