Blasphemy and Horror!

The Prototype
Recent efforts with a (virtual) card-based dungeon crawl game have been proceeding well, so I decided to create a physical prototype.

I picked up a jewelry box (about 6 x 8") and some wound tokens from Litko. I put a rules summary, character sheet, and encounters on index cards. Throw in some dice and the game is ready.

Blasphemy!
Do you see the bit of blasphemy in the picture above? I did something that I don't think I've ever done on this blog before.

Yes, those are 10-sided dice.

For years, I have been a proponent of the ubiquitous D6, eschewing all other dice. But as I worked on my dungeon crawl rules, I realized that there were drawbacks to both a D6 system (not enough granularity) and a 2D6 system (difficult to make multiple attacks with a single roll). I decided to experiment with D10s and purchased a whole bag of them.

Horror!
Anyway, I ran a character through the dungeon. Below are all the encounters, along with the final boss.

At first, I thought the dungeon was too easy. My paladin character entered the final encounter with a single wound (out of 6 health points).

Then disaster struck!

In one turn, the Goblin King inflicted 4 points of damage on my intrepid explorer! A couple of turns later, with both combatants down to 1 health, the Goblin King struck the decisive blow.

Thoughts
Despite the defeat, the system worked fine.

The dungeon:

• The dungeon consists of 6 encounters, then the final boss. There is an Empty room card and a feature card (a healing fountain in this dungeon), so the hero may not have a full 7 fights.
• For each encounter, draw 3 encounter cards from the deck without looking at them, then choose one. I think this creates an illusion of choice, which adds interest to a random dungeon.
• Unused cards are shuffled back into the deck.

The hero:

• A lone hero will take on the dungeon.
• The hero and monsters are given ratings for Fight skill, Damage inflicted, Defense (e.g. Armor), and Health.
• The hero also has some abilities, like D&D feats. Each is usable once per dungeon, so this creates some additional decision making.

Fighting:

• Combat resolution is a simple D10 + Fight >= 5 + enemy's Fight. This is the same whether the hero is attacking or defending.
• I do it this way because a more skilled opponent will be harder to hit, even if he/she has no armor. I can attest to this from years of fencing. A poor fencer like me will never get close to touching a master.
• The hero gets 2 attacks per turn. This makes it likelier for a lone hero to win.
• The bad guys don't roll to attack. Instead, the hero rolls to avoid enemy attacks (the hero is assumed to either dodge, block, or parry the attacks).
• The enemies are like Hollywood bad guys; they don't all attack at once. There is a limit (an Attack stat) to the number of attacks per turn for the whole group. This also helps the lone hero; he/she is less likely to get steamrolled this way.
• If hit, then roll damage, with a possible health point loss of 0 (a graze) to 2 (a serious wound). Most minions can only take 1-2 health points while I started my hero with 6 health.
• Armor plays a role when you get hit, as a negative modifier to the damage roll. After all, armor doesn't stop you from getting hit, but it reduces (and possibly negates) the amount of damage done.

As I mentioned, my hero breezed through the early encounters. I was worried that I made him too powerful (due to bonuses, he had +2 Fight and 3 Defense/Armor) or the enemies too weak (most had 0 Fight). However, he succumbed to the Goblin King so I may need to experiment more before fine tuning stats.

Ultimately, I intend to create nicer cards with illustrations. Here are some prototypes for the encounters from the the above dungeon (not all were used), using graphics from the internet.