Exiled of the Horrid Maze and Maze of the Mad Alchemist, both products of Fishwife Games, have an identical structure.
A maze is presented, filled with symbols like a skull, an eye, a dagger, some coins.
You roll on the coins and its treasure! Roll to see how much. If you get a skull, its a monster. Roll to see which one.
I like that mechanism but I would alter it.
Suppose you encounter a red, blue, green, or purple spot. You roll on the red green or purple table.
A room with a red spot means roll on the red door table, red floor and ceiling, red traps, monsters, and treasure.
A white spot might mean it has the same atmosphere as the previous rooms but no danger.
The idea of a skull on the maze meaning a monster means you might try to avoid it (unless its blocking the one way through). Even then, you'll know a fight is there.
I covered Exiles of the Wicked Maze a while ago: plus.google.com - A read-through of Exiles Of The Wicked Maze Just a quick description of the ...
ReplyDeleteI don't think I will play the game as is. Instead, I want to borrow some ideas.
ReplyDeleteI want to make a dungeon that develops during play.
A series of tables could produce wildly different stories.
In the version I'm inventing in my head, you bump a color and roll for aesthetics. Dressing, floor walls and ceiling, doors and devices.
ReplyDeleteThen you hit generic nodes and roll on the appropriate table. If you go through red, the node is a red node. If you go through blue, its a blue node.
So the squares are blank nodes.
ReplyDeleteThere's a blank node table but you will eventually run through colors in this maze because there's only the one exit.
You go through a blue, say, and the lights change to blue. Tapping a node now will roll on the blue table. You may roll up a monster. Monsters become smooth and slippery. You might encounter wizards who crawl on the wall instead of walking and treasures may reflect water and air.
Then you bump a red spot and the dungeon becomes fiery. Monsters are scaly, wizards are aggressive. Weapons dealers emerge and walls bleed.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7dUSVbqk8qOuSoT8--e0N2bH-rA96GHgVXpzW-hwu5lpu2gWQr0Tqze4YNY3c81JeEbbl7HySo
Chad Robb side note, just in case you go about implementing this and publishing it on RPGNow: don't use a combo of red and green. While i'm not personally color blind, i've seen plenty of "aggressive discussions" on BGG involving color-blind folk who can't distinguish various parts of an expensive board game they just bought.
ReplyDeleteThat's fair. It hadn't occurred to me to publish. I was thinking of an alternative to the symbols used in the above products. I haven't read all the rules from either of these products. I was also thinking of the rules in Four Against the Darkness for encounter types and Castle Gargantua. Stuff is shifting in my cranium. Mingling.
ReplyDeletehttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/TYrcUFpDC0OZ6sX13iYeuCUl21J-y4FyTvkD9mhuMN9fE2R0Y5RX7tz25PeAS-NOnTjG5IpHggw