Dungeon Run 2 – Character Design Ideas

For the Dungeon Run expansion I’ve been working on, I decided that I wanted to do at least four characters, and preferably 8–which would be enough for 1-2 of each class (war, prayer, magic, & talent).  I did, for a while, toy with the idea of making up a fifth class, but that seemed to fly in the face of their “Shiny New Toys” design rule:

Each hero will be able to use roughly 75% of all treasure, which will be especially appreciated when mixed with the treasure cards from Dungeon Run. Now instead of treasures being a rare treat, heroes can spend more time focusing on choosing which horrible new tool they can wield against the others.

Having two new classes might be fun, but it would make creation of items more difficult, and exclude the new class from using most of the items from the previous edition (ie. any item that wasn’t marked as avaible to “Any” class).  So, I stuck with the basic four.

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!

Dungeon Run 2 – The Items

40k has been a tad quiet in my garage as of late.  The group just isn’t feeling it, so we spend more time playing board games and the like.  One of our old standbys is Dungeon Run by Plaid Hat Games.  If you haven’t seen, I’ve been doing a blog series about making an unofficial expansion to the game.  My last post concerned making various encounter cards, and now I’m moving on to item cards.

Unlike encounters, items won’t break up into neat little sections because pretty much all of them are the same.  I suppose I could break them into slots or classes, but I think it will just be cleaner to leave them all as one large table at the end of this post–and I’ll talk about them prior to.  Feel free to bounce back and forth as I reference items throughout.

With items, I was keeping in mind the words of the original game designers:

Each hero will be able to use roughly 75% of all treasure, which will be especially appreciated when mixed with the treasure cards from Dungeon Run. Now instead of treasures being a rare treat, heroes can spend more time focusing on choosing which horrible new tool they can wield against the others.

I took that to mean that most of the treasures should have three classes on them, so I tried to hold to that throughout.  I didn’t bother to compare them against treasures from the first set–rather I just tried to think up of ideas that may not have been fully explored in the base game.  Things like adding to specific stats, adding attack dice using slots other than hand weapons, etc.

Some of these really feel like Artifacts to me, but then I wasn’t sure how to put them into the game.  For instance, the Crown of Demigos and the Dusty Libram likely should be artifacts.  How do I incorporate them though?  Referencing them on a “stranger” card is doable, but it’s been done.  So perhaps I reference them on a specific monster card, or in a room tile?  For now, I’m just shuffling them in, and we might have to tweak them as time goes on.

Keep in mind that all of these items are a first draft.  Some of them didn’t survive in this form when I printed out the first playtest cards because of obvious balancing issues: some cards are just too good, and others make almost no sense in playing.

One thing I realize now that I have them printed out is that I’ve created more items here than were in the original game.  So, shuffling the deck means that you’re more likely to pull out an expansion item than an original.  I’m not sure just how I feel about that, but I suspect I’ll need to cut a few of these.

Below you’ll find a list of my item templates that I came up with.  In a future post, I’ll go over the rooms and character ideas I had.

Item Templates:

Name	Slot	Class	Enchanted?	Artifact?	Description
The Crown of Demigos	Head	Any	Yes	No	Roll two additional dice when using your magical rating.
Truncheon of Power	Primary Hand and Off Hand	Prayer, Talent, War	Yes	No	Roll 1 extra die when attacking with your brawn rating. When attacking monsters, apply your damage first.  If your damage is sufficient to kill the monster, ignore all outstanding wounds done by it.
Stalwart Plate	Body	Prayer, War	No	No	Ignore the first damage taken each combat. Wearer cannot use more than one MOVE action per turn.
Winged Boots	Feet	Any	Yes	No	You may move an extra square once per turn.
Helm of Clumsiness	Head	Any	No	No	If this card is obtained by a search action you must immediately equip it, dropping any item in your head slot to the ground.  You cannot unequip this helm.  As a free action, you may discard any 1 card from your loot pile to discard this helm.
Vekkid Phase Blade	Primary Hand	Any	Yes	No	Roll 1 extra die when attacking. In addition, players who are attacked by this knife can not benefit from  shields or items worn in the body slot.
Hulking Boots	Feet	Prayer, Talent, War	No	No	Roll 1 die after a moster or hero attacks you.  Any number less than 4 that could block a hit does so immediately. You cannot use this die as a hit.
Silken Slippers	Feet	Magic, Prayer, Talent	Yes	No	When you rally, you may move into an adjacent previously discovered square.
Silken Robe	Body	Magic, Prayer, Talent	Yes	No	Each time you place a new dungeon tile, you may rally.
Stone of Warding	None	Any	Yes	No	Add +1 to your Life Rating
Stone of Ferocity	None	Any	Yes	No	Add +1 to your Brawn rating
Stone of Prowess	None	Any	Yes	No	Add +1 to your Magic rating
Stone of Agility	None	Any	Yes	No	Add +1 to your Skill rating
Rod of Striking	Primary Hand and Off Hand	Magic, Prayer, War	Yes	No	Roll 1 extra die when attacking. You may attack players in adjascent rooms.
Adroit Handbow	Off Hand	Talent, War	No	No	Roll 1 extra die when attacking. You may only use this weapon once per round.
Curious Imp	Companion	Magic, Talent, War	No	No	You may look at face down treasures in your tile and adjacent tiles. Familiar: You may discard this card to absorb one damage during combat.
Faithful Hound	Companion	Any	No	No	Familiar: You may discard this card to absorb all damage from one attack during a single round of combat.
Pesky Sprite	Companion	Any	No	No	If this card is obtained by a search action you must immediately equip it; a character of your choice sharing a square with you may take any one item from your loot pile. Familiar: You may discard this card to absorb one damage during combat.
Trained Homunculus	Companion	Any	No	No	You may use one extra “Primary Hand” item. Familiar: You may discard this card to absorb one damage during combat.
Waeling Blade	Primary Hand	Talent, War	Yes	No	Roll 1 extra die when attacking with your brawn rating. Each hit that is not blocked causes 2 wound markers to be placed instead of 1.
Demon Fang	Primary or Off Hand	Any	Yes	No	You may not attack with more than 2 dice. Each attack you make with this weapon counts as a free attack.  If you end your turn on a tile with a monster and have not attacked without this weapon, the monster receives a free attack on you.
Iron Footlocker	None	Any	No	No	Items can not be taken from your loot pile.
Cat-o-Nine-Tails	Primary Hand	Magic, Talent	Yes	No	Roll 1 extra die when attacking. Each time you attack, you may also pick up one item from the tile and add it to your loot pile.  This does not count as an equip action.
Maeltrap Leg Club	Primary or Off Hand	Talent, War	No	No	Roll 1 extra die when attacking. You must sabotage players sharing a tile with you.
Divine Cudgel	Primary or Off Hand	Magic, Prayer	Yes	No	Roll 1 extra die when attacking. You must assist players sharing a tile with you.
Robe of Shifting Realities	Body	Magic, Prayer, Talent	Yes	No	Add +1 to all escape attempt rolls. If you are the subject of a free attack, you may discard this item before any dice are rolled to ignore the attack.
Bag of Bounty	None	Any	No	No	When drawing this card from the treasure deck, immediately discard it and draw two additional treasures.
Tiara of True Sight	Head	Magic, Prayer	Yes	No	The first time you draw an encounter card each turn, you may choose to discard it.  If you do so, draw the next encounter card instead.
Talisman of Blackened Ire	None	Magic, Talent, War	Yes	No	You may sabotage players from adjacent rooms.
Talisman of Heightened Purity	None	Magic, Prayer, War	Yes	No	You may assist players from adjacent rooms.
Phylacterial Remains	Off Hand	Magic, Prayer	Yes	No	Roll 1 extra die when attacking Undead or Demon monsters. Discard this weapon to automatically defeat a non-boss Undead monster.
Dusty Libram	None	Any	No	Yes	You may look at the dungeon boss card at any time. Discard this card to replace the current dungeon boss with another random boss.  Use only if the boss lair has not yet been placed.
Cloudy Potion	None	Any	Yes	No	Roll a die for each wound on your hero card.  Each roll of 4+ regains 1 lost wound.  Discard cloudy potion if any doubles are rolled.  May only be used when you have three or more wounds.
Truthseeker’s Mattock	Primary Hand and Off Hand	Prayer, Talent, War	Yes	No	Roll 1 extra die when attacking with your brawn rating. As a special action, you may discard this card.  Shuffle the current tile back into the deck and replace it with another available tile.  Encounter that tile as if it were just explored.  You may not use this effect in a tile where an encounter is already present.
Elixir of Speed	None	Any	Yes	No	As free action, consume this potion.  For the rest of the turn, you may move an additional tile each move action.  You must still stop when you explore a new tile or enter a square with a monster. Discard after use.
Waelish Mead	None	Magic, Talent, War	No	No	At any time you may drink this item.  For your next attack, roll three extra attack dice.  You cannot block attacks that combat round. Discard after use.
Jester’s Shoes	Feet	Magic, Prayer, War	Yes	No	You may re-roll unsuccessful escape attempts.
Ring of Duplication	None	Any	Yes	No	You may ignore “assist only” when printed on boss cards or dungeon tiles.
Drums of Deftness	Off Hand	Any	Yes	No	Roll two additional dice when performing skill tests or attacking with your skill rating.
Lucky Goblin’s Foot	None	Any	Yes	No	Discard this card to re-roll all of your dice in a single attack roll, escape attempt or skill test.

Dungeon Run 2 – The Encounters

I’ve been working on my expansion to Dungeon run for a while now, and while things don’t exactly flow sequentially, I find it makes for better blog posts, so I’ll go ahead and take this tact.

In actuality, I am working on four-five tabs at once, and things get fleshed out over time, but it’s just easier to reveal entire swaths at once.  So, let’s start with the encounters, shall we?

As I said in my previous post, I started by identifying all of the different columns that were available to encounter cards.  Primarily this includes name, type, race, attacks, offense, defense, escape, & life.  That covers all of the basic parts of a monster card, but it doesn’t cover traps (which also require Disarm & Damage) or strangers, which simply have a block of text.  Add those all together, and you have the bones you need to start creating the various card types.

I set forth originally to create 50 total encounter cards (though I wound up falling far short of that).  Arbitrarily, I opted on making four new bosses, four strangers, ten traps, and the rest would be monsters.  Let’s take a look at each individually

Traps:

Though I’m starting out with them (based upon the order that they fell in my spreadsheet), traps were actually the last types of encounters that I created.  This is because I felt like they were largely unimaginative: you just put a trap name and then do a little damage to players.  The one overarching theme I tried to integrate into the traps was what Plaid Hat had mentioned in their spoilers for their rendition: “The Traps in Dungeon Run 2 focus less on causing damage and more on causing mayhem.”  With that in mind, I tried to come up with trap ideas that suited that theme and this is where I landed:

Dungeon Run 2 – Ideas & Templating

In my last post, I spoke about coming up with an expansion for Dungeon Run, and I’ve started making good progress towards this.  My thought process was that it was best to start with the bones.

By that, I mean that I wanted to start with the foundation for the expansion, rather than to monkey around with art or templating.  So, I started off by creating a spreadsheet with six distinct tabs: Notes, Encounters, Rooms, Items, Characters, & Lookups.  This was to create a single location where I could put all of my ideas, and easily track/share the ideas with my friends.  I started by creating one tab for each of the different types of materials I’d need in the expansion.  Since I wasn’t planning on creating any ground-breaking concepts like entirely new decks, I knew I was going to have to create encounters, rooms, items and characters.  So those seemed the logical starting points.  See the example from the “Encounters” tab below:

In each tab, I entered the relevant sections for that type of card/tile, and then created some input validation rules.   That might be a little nerdy sounding, but what it means is that when you choose “type” from the drop down column, you could choose either “Trap,” “Monster,” “Stranger,” or “Boss” (all information that I stored on the “Lookups” tab to keep things clean and consistent).  The advantage here is that you don’t get a bunch of garbage data in your spreadsheet–no typos, etc.  So when it came down to making my playtest cards, I could easily export them with a mail merge or similar and ensure that the data was clean.