Monday, September 2, 2013

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.

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