Dungeon Run 2 – The Rooms

In continuing my design review of an expansion I’ve been making to Dungeon Run (for personal use, mind you, not intended for resale), we now come to the update on the rooms.  As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I didn’t write these up in nice sequential orders, but rather brainstormed things and bounced back and forth whenever I came up with an idea.  It’s just easier to push content out in neatly divided sections.  Because of that, I’m stepping through each tab of my spreadsheet in order until I complete them all.

The only real advice I had when starting up was the designer’s hint at “the Vortex of Souls:”

The new Vortex of Souls tile is a great example of how players are encouraged to stay together. When the Vortex of Souls is revealed, all players place a discarded ability card on the tile. They can remove their card if they move onto the Vortex, but until they do so, they will receive a wound at the beginning of each of their turns. Ouch!

That room was effectively created, but for the other rooms, I tried to integrate some of the other referenced mechanics, like elections.  Some rooms cause you to enter a voting process.  Other rooms I tried to design to add things that weren’t in the original (such as ways to heal), or things that we seem to wish were in the original (more ways to spawn monsters consistently through the game: a la “the well room.”)

The chart below contains the various room ideas that I’d come up with in the initial design phase.  Naturally, I also plan on making more “normal” rooms so that not everything in the game is a special tile.

Room Ideas:

Name	Treasure	Encounter	Special	Exits?	Effect
Treasure Hoard			Yes	2	Draw an encounter card and a treasure card.  In successive turns, spawns treasure on 5+
Dead End	5		Yes	1	Draw an encounter card.  Also place an encounter card on the room you just entered from if one is not already there.
Secret Passageway			Yes	4	Exits from this room do not need to align with hallways from other rooms.
Sparring Room			Yes	3	Heros can not use their Magic rating in this room.
Laboratory	1	5	Yes	3	Heros can not use their Brawn rating in this room.
Dampened Corridor			Yes	4	Enchanted Items do not work in this room or adjacent rooms.
Hall of Mirrors			Yes	4	Assist only.  No Escaping.
Trapped Room				3	Roll Skill upon entering 2 rolls of 4+ = Success Failure = 2 wounds
Torture Chamber			Yes	3	Damage done to monsters is increased by one in this room.
Vortex of Souls			Yes	4	When revealed, all players place a discarded ability card on this tile.  At the beginning of each of your turns that you have an ability card on the vortex, you receive 1 wound.  As a free action, you may retrieve your ability card from this tile if you are on it.
Forgotten Shrine			Yes	4	Roll Magic upon entering 2 rolls of 4+ = Success Failure = Discard 1 training marker
Latrine			Yes	4	Draw an encounter. When revealed, heros initial attack in this room counts as a free attack.
Jail			Yes	4	When revealed, all players vote.  Voted player is incarcerated.   Special action to roll a die.  3+ to escape.
Sanctum			Yes	4	Boss Monsters and the First Player may not enter this room.
Mystic Study			Yes	3	Special Action to search: 1 receive a wound, 6 take the top ability card off your deck
Throne Room	5	4	Yes	4	Special action to search: 1 receive a wound, 6 take the top treasure card off the deck.
Crypt			Yes	4	When revealed, place the top monster card from the Encounter discard into this room.
Barracks			Yes	4	Spawn an encounter here each turn, whether or not heros are present.
Pantry		3	Yes	4	Roll for encounter when none is present.
Arcane Portal			Yes	1	As a special action in this room, move to the tile with the summoner’s stone.