What are you missing in a dungeon bash?

Fimm McCool

Fimm McCool

Lord
Hello everyone,

I have an opportunity to design a dungeon-bash type game with a rather exciting licence which I can't say any more about at present. It would be a good entry-level roleplay along the lines of heroquest/AHQ but should also be a good game in its own right for adults and flexible enough to provide a basis for some fairly elaborate questing. My question is, is there anything in particular you feel has been missing from or under-represented in existing dungeon-bash systems? I was thinking maybe a more puzzle-solving based than the kill-it-and-steal-treasure type we have our pick of.
 
Mmmm.
I love puzzles
I like the random generation in AHQ and WHQ
but then I like the speed of set up and the flexibility of the HQ board.
I like the simplicity of the character stats in HQ or Fighting fantasy
I like the struggle to stay alive that is AHQ
I like finding spell ingredients that is Sorcery (rather than just treasure)
I also like having to scavenge equipment rather than finding enough cash to buy everything in the shop and their being a shop that sells everything in every hamlet.
I like that mapping is important in AHQ
I like the between adventure stuff from WHQ

So if you can mash that lot together ... I'm in. :grin:

I guess what is missing is the background, the setting, THE MAP. .... I'm thinking of the Gazeteer series. This leads to wilderness adventures. This leads to linked scenarios/adventures that takes you to different places in search of different stuff. This leads to clues and information being as important as treasure to complete the next challenge. These leads to story telling and narrative and epic sagas that take time to complete and cross oceans and continents in the writing.

Another thing is the variety of monsters ... but more than that the character of monsters. Too often monsters are reduced to a stat line in a dungeon bash. ... and a goblin is a goblin. Where as the wolfs skulls are different from the snake bite clan and the red Blades.

But I do love puzzles. :grin:
 
I think the thing that is missing from modern games such as Descent is a lack of player agency in developing a story. The great thing about HQ was that it was only limited by the imaginations of the players. I remember we abandoned the board itself, and went onto those erasable battle mats after finishing the quest book. We incorporated miniatures from other games, and after many months we had collaboratively created a world rich in detail and story, with the setting information presented from the game as our spring board.

A game like Descent feels as though the entire world is scripted out already and modularity is more limited, whereas HQ wasn't bound by a whole lot. HQ provided simple rules and very little in the way of setting information, and let the players take it from there. It allowed for small little one-off games and grandiose campaigns.

I think if you're going to present a game world, you should leave the players with a lot of unanswered questions about that world and limit as much as possible. Give them just enough to play a few games and a solid framework for developing the rest themselves. It's also a good idea to pack the game with a lot of props and not tokens.
 
I agree. The growing of your own world was always the best thing about HQ. Alongside the simplicity of the rules that meant you could be very flexible in adding to it. That 'let the players take control' is very much the vibe I'm wanting.
 
I agree with both entries so far. For me I'm more partial to Heroquest, so something closer to that. :lol: I like the puzzle idea aspect you are thinking, that could be pretty interesting. I wish I had clearer thoughts at the moment, but I am looking forward to what you come up with.
 
I'd also add that there needs to be a reasonable ratio between setup and play time. I found with Descent (2nd ed) that the setup would often take twice as long as the actual game. (admittedly playing with kids, which seems to slow set up a bit more than game play). I don't mind spending a while setting up a game, but the game time that follows should last longer than the setup did.
 
The joy of HQ is definitely that you 'setup' as you go along. I think that's what we'd want. Norse, Harry and I threw some ideas around yesterday and Norse has some clever ideas that revolve around a gamebook-style dynamic.
 
Gamebook style dynamic sounds very interesting. How much player lead gaming can you work into that though, since it was a pretty rigid, writer prescribed system? I'm not suggesting you can't do it, but I'd be very interested to see how!

For me the problem with the game book system is there are times when you go to an area and the only option you have is to move on to the next area/page in the book, perhaps with a monster to fight or a puzzle to solve to facilitate this. I'm often left thinking about what else there is that could be explored/tried, either to reach the next room or to take a different path altogether.

Will this game involve a GM, in typical RPG fashion, or is the idea to remove that aspect and have the GM's role fulfilled in some other way or by a particular set of game mechanics?
 
The aim is to have a DM/GM but also a way of playing solo or without one. The game book would be able to be controlled by the DM/GM and the idea would be to provide a very basic system allowing players to customise, add to it as much as they like. We haven't fleshed out the specifics yet (still researching and pondering) but we'd be careful that the gamebook presented encounters, not specific outcomes so players can find positive and negative ways of the situations rather than following the commands of the book. It would be up to the GM/DM just how successful they'd been in dealing with the encounter.
 
Sounds pretty cool. This reminds me of the FF book my brother got (and I 'borrowed' indefinitely :twisted: ) titled simply 'Fighting Fantasy', which was a sort of write your own RPG, in the gamebook style. It was billed as an intro to RPG-ing and DM-ing for kids who read gamebooks. It gave two example adventures with maps, encounters, mechanics and, crucially, instructions for the GM which allowed far more flexibility in the way situations could be resolved. It also had a plug for Citadel miniatures in a section about constructing model dungeons, gameboards and tiles!
 
Some thoughts on the games I know:
Hero Quest - nice set up for one offs. A very good board game. Due to it's simplicity it was not satisfactory for a campaign.
Warhammer Quest - nice game for friends of the Warhammer world (like me). The turn off was the switch from card driven loot and stuff to tables in the book.
The scenario boxes were nice though. Gameplay was ok but easyly became a static butchering.
Descent(1)- evil overlord GM was a nice feature but the FFG marker level was far too high. There was also no theme to the monsters-no story.

I think that the main issue is the movement in the dungeon. Due to the cramped conditions it easily becomes static and dull.
For Space Hulk this is fine as one player plays a squad and not a handfull of players one character each.
Strategic movement should be possible without becoming a "teleport #3" spell. It would have to be more cinematic than that.
Rules presentation is important (at least for me) - the same rule with a different description or a different picture can be decisive if I like a game or not.
This is often annoying with generic rulesets and your game book approach might be a good way to avoid this.
 
You didn't need to buy a copy of that.
I could have given you a copy.
I am big fan of that one.
Ran a game with that for Chris and Ben only recently.
I also have the riddling reaver which introduces the magic and the campaign/background books.
Well worth a look next time you are up.

H
 
Useful research anyhow... yes, we must game. I suggest that we use the arrival of the Twisting Catacombs stuff as a reason to have an intense weekend of dungeon-themed gaming to discover what does or doesn't work.
 
Nothing missing:

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More a question of what to leave out!
 
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