Andrew brought up the idea of doing a DM-less game some time.
Here's a quick suggestion:
1--Draw 6-10 Tiles from the stack at random, this would be the maximum size of the dungeon.
2--Come up with a table or a set of cards to draw as each room is entered. It would say if there was a treasure, monster, both, or a trap.
3--Monsters and Treasures would be rolled from the "Monster and Treasure Assortment" for the appropriate level (with a chance of encountering things from a higher or lower level of course).
4--Maybe have a small stack of Tricks or Weird Rooms to draw from.
5--To make it more interesting, since we would have few planned surprises or items of interest, perhaps have it so that we are deposited by magic or a trap, and must find the exit somewhere (randomly determined).
If we didn't want to do a dungeon, but rather an outdoor type quest, we could use that GM emulator booklet I got this summer. It was a lot of fancy falderal, but it kinda of boiled down to agreeing on the chance something would happen, roll for it and there was a chance that something weird would happen instead. It might turn out really neat once we got used to it, if anyone wants to look at it, remind me on Sunday.
Comments? Thoughts? Alternative Schemes?
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I like it! Maybe we draw a card for each tile to give it a "theme". Themes may be something like "undead", "escaped goblins", or "dwarven tomb". That would inform the tile and make it a little "mini dungeon" or "mini encounter" in itself.
ReplyDeletePerhaps we could randomize the GM to wear the hat on a tile-by-tile basis?
Don't we have a treasure deck somewhere? Could we use that?
I'll start a place on the wiki for tricks/weird rooms. Maybe we consult that table when a joker is drawn.
I like the idea of "finding the exit". Perhaps the conceit for this first go is that we have been hoodwinked and have to get out of the dungeon alive?
Have you ever looked at the "Monster and Treasure Assortments"? This was a primal tool used for randomly generated monsters and treasures, keyed to dungeon level. There's one set for each level 1 through 9. It was originally made for the Holmes Basic set, but then updated for the Basic/Expert sets, which is the model used for ACKS. I used the product as the baseline for stocking Skull Mountain, and it is really pretty good for setting out a level-appropriate challenges, but with more variety than a random table (d100 per level)
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