Ballads of Dungeon Delving

After discovering and playing a few games of the tabletop skirmish rules Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes in 2016, I developed an itch to play in a "dungeon" setting, like I did so many times in my youth with Dungeons & Dragons. I had tried to scratch this itch with some dungeon-themed board games, but none of them were as fun or satisfying as the tabletop miniatures games I had recently discovered. So I spent months reading through other miniatures rule sets that attempted to bring the basics of wargaming to such a setting, but most were either too simplistic and reminded me of board games, or they required one person to act as a game master while the other players had the fun of clearing out a dungeon. Most of them also failed to meaningfully capture the experience of dungeon exploration, and tended to have rote mechanics for generic encounters. Even Songs' own dungeon delving supplement only got the system part way to where I wanted to end up. 

What I realized I ultimately wanted was a head-to-head set of dungeon delving rules that still played like a wargame and allowed all players to take their own warbands into the dungeon to explore, fight the denizens, and eventually cross paths with each other in the dark depths. I also wanted it to have some thematic and narrative tissue that connected the experiences and encounters in the dungeon environment, something D&D was particularly good at. 

The photos below were shot during the first play test of my home-brew rules and materials for this head-to-head dungeon crawler. The basic mechanics sit atop the base rules for Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes. Entire days disappeared in early 2017 as I generated enough material just to start beta testing everything, which I finally got to do last March 5 with my great friends Jared and Ash.

Interspersed with the game play photos below are some examples of the card decks I've created for the game. My rules have been designed to be scenario-based to avoid everything feeling too generic. The encounters, treasures, room features, wandering monsters, traps, etc. are all thematic and location-specific. I plan on creating similar decks for other settings such as ruined temples, prisons, abandoned keeps, etc.

130+ cards across these decks. 

Home-brew rules built atop base core from Song of Blades and Heroes skirmish game.

An example of one of my game's mechanics is the "Room Feature" card deck. These cards are designed for exploring the scenario's crypt (the Crypt of Lord Thule, in this play test scenario). When a room is first entered, the active player rolls on a table that determines if there are any "special features" for the room in addition to things like monsters, traps, etc. These crypt-specific room features run the gamut from intricate murals to family tombs to armories for equipping Thule's army in the afterlife. 

One such feature an adventuring party may happen upon is the "Epic Poetry Reading Room," which involves the opponent first placing bookcase markers on the map. These bookcases can be searched, requiring the player to roll on a table that will reveal what happens as a result. I've got 16 different room features for the crypts, and they all have at least three outcomes, usually positive, negative, and mixed/neutral (e.g., treasure, traps, secret doors, or some sort of event that reinforces the theme of delving in Thule's crypt).

Keeping the outcomes of the Room Features on separate cards helps preserve the mystery around the other possible outcomes, which helps with re-playability. I decided to go with a deck instead of rolling on a table for the Room Features in order to force the players to cycle through all of the possibilities before repeating any of them (as would likely happen with rolling for results on a reference table).

The exploring player draws a Room Feature card and hands it to his opponent to administer, remaining unaware of what the possible outcomes could be.

The opponent places three bookshelves in the room. If the exploring player decides to move up to and investigate these bookshelves (searching/interacting with a feature usually requires one action), then he or she will roll 2d6 against the above card's table to determine the outcome, which is again read and implemented by the opposing player.


"Epic Poetry Room" random search result B

"Epic Poetry Room" random search result C

"Epic Poetry Room" random search result A

Fires raging in a neighboring room where one of the other adventuring parties is located...

This hound casts a long shadow...

Why are those rats in the well?!?!

Alright then, we'll just investigate this other well instead...

"You want me to lift this portcullis and hold it for how long?"

"What's that putrid stench?!? I'm not going in there..."

Stupid imp with its stupid treasure...

Nothing like a swarm of spiders wandering down the corridor you thought was empty.

What will you find when you search the weapons rack?

DIE!!!

"How many units are in base contact with my sorcerer now?"

Bashed down door...hell hound on your trail!

"So, one wall goes here..." Ash, the expert wall drawer.

Iron doors...heavy (requires an extra action) and noisy (triggers a wandering monster check).

Why are chests always in the farthest corner of the room?

Ash's fire-breathing little imp flew about the crypts for much of the game...

"You shall not pass!"

Gotta keep a lot of doors on hand for this game...

<a-hem!> "I said...'You shall not pass!!!'"

Ash's drawing in purple of a pile of desiccated corpses piled in the room on the right...

Always good to have some pillars on hand that can be rolled up as part of a room's terrain...

Ash now drawing a room half full of webs (a Rough Terrain feature that can be encountered in the crypts).

While waiting along the table's edge for a chance to be called into service, these horrors while away their time guarding the "Door Trap" cards...beware!

More rough terrain in this room...this time a putrid stench so sickening that eyes water and characters gag (character's Quality rating is at -1 until making it through to the other side).

Each scenario has some number of major encounters that can be triggered that offer special challenges and drive the narrative forward.

"Must...draw...webs...faster..."

"C'mon...we're ready to fight somebody...anybody!"

This little guy was an asshole...

All the noise you're making in combat will possibly draw some wandering monsters into the room!

Flames continue to burn in the neighboring room while foes battle on...

Piles of desiccated corpses in one room...

I will now run through this door to my death!

Lots of wet erase markers to make this dungeon materialize, room by room, trap by trap...

Finally one of the wizards decided it was best to burn those webs away...

The game with Jared and Ash was a lot of fun, but it probably wasn't ideal as a first play test to have three players run separate adventuring parties. Unfortunately, I've only managed to get in one more play test (with John Sears) about a month after this first one.  This second game with only two players saw the adventuring warbands enter from opposite sides of the dungeon. Here are a couple of photos from that session....

My band of intrepid tomb raiders stumble into a room with a bedraggled band of orcs around a makeshift fire, drying out from the storm raging outside the crypts. Once I dispatch them, I'll search that mural along the wall...

John chances upon the open hell portal that keeps the crypt stocked with undead guardians. Can it be closed before more fiends come climbing out and into our world? (This special room came into play about half way through exploring the sprawling underground complex.)

"Okay, greybeard, if I open the door, then you've got to unleash some deadly mojo on that wandering swarm of spiders on the other side."

Custom Dice

After a couple of play tests, I continued to refine and add to the rules for dungeon delving. One idea to help speed up room and encounter generation was to develop a set of custom dice that could be rolled simultaneously to generate all of a room's basic information faster than making four or five sequential rolls and cross-referencing each die against separate tables in the rule book. Below are some photos of the dice followed by a very short video (80 seconds) in which I explain how they are used.

 

A couple of random shot of all the dice.

When a party enters an unexplored area, the player rolls to see if it's a room or corridor. In this example above, it's a room.

Then, instead of rolling several dice in sequence and cross-referencing five tables for the results, the player rolls these six dice to generate the room's size and other characteristics. In this case, the room is 10 x 8 squares on my grid, with a "Special Feature" to explore (necessitating a card draw from the Special Features deck), an encounter (drawn from the Encounter deck and run by the opponent), and two doors made of stone (I created rules for various door types, including a portcullis).

When the player exits the room through one of the two stone doors, a die is rolled to see if they can open the door freely (as indicated above)...

...or perhaps it's locked requiring a spell, a character with the thief trait, or a bashing down of the door (which is noisy, so beware those wandering monsters!), or...

...perhaps the door springs a trap, unless the character detects it first and then chooses to try to disarm it (again, traits or magic can help here).

Perhaps that stone door opens into a corridor (above).

Then the player rolls a somewhat different set of dice to determine the corridor's features. Here the corridor is four squares long, with one door in addition to the entrance the player just entered from, and that door is broken (harder and noisier to open). There is also a wandering monster in the corridor (1 in 6 chance), necessitating the drawing of a card from the Wandering Monster deck.

80-Second Video of Dice in Action

Unfortunately, I have yet to be able to get a third play test in of these rules, but I'm hoping to soon. Any volunteers to enter the Crypt of Mighty Lord Thule? Let me know!