...once you’ve magically blasted away a skeleton’s defenses, you mostly punch it really hard. Its only special ability is that it runs down the timer if I don’t fully defeat it. For some reason, this represents a skeleton being “Undying”. That’s what the card says. Just go with it.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/06/19/little-game-one-deck-dungeon-real-handful/
Ugh, only 60% …
Are the dungeons fixed? You talked about “The Lich Dungeon” and “The Yeti Dungeon” so I guess there are no random dungeons?
Waiting on the original game plus expansion from the Kickstarter and looking forward to it!
I took a look at the Kickstarter. It seemed pretty neat, but having invested in Gloomhaven, I gave it a pass. Some clever ideas, though.
The dungeons are random! The cards are the encounters or rooms, and you’ll only pull a few of them each time you cycle the deck. So you don’t know if any given floor will be bandits, slimes, force doors, trapped chests, goblins, phantoms, or what. You burn through most of the deck to mark time, so which cards that come up as encounters is never fixed.
What is fixed is that each dungeon has a card that specifies modifiers for each of the three floors on the way to the boss. As you’re exploring a floor, modifiers apply to any encounter’s difficulty. This is mostly an added die requirement, but sometimes it’s a special condition or rules tweak. The first floor of the Dragon’s Cave is “Hall of Statues” (burn five cards off the timer because, uh, you’re admiring the statues?). The bottom floor of the Hydra’s Reef is “Poison Aura” (-1 to your wild dice). The Lich’s Tomb has a “Weakness Curse” on the second floor (discard all 2s you roll). Stuff like that.
So, yes, the dungeon encounters are absolutely randomized, but they each have specific sets of rules. Oh, and the back of each dungeon card has the specific boss you fight. For instance, ou’re never going to find a Yeti in the bottom of the Hydra’s Reef. That would be unrealistic.
-Tom
Ah, this was a Kickstarter! I should have guessed. For the life of me, I can’t recall how I heard of it. At some point, I had checked the box at Coolstuffinc for “Tell me when this is available”, so I ordered it as soon as I got the “hey, this is available” email.
-Tom
I find the game terribly entertaining and I generally do not like small box games too much. A roguelike delve in a small box that has persistent characters. I think I have played five or six games. I need to play a bit more to see about replayability. The tiny dice can be quite irritating, but overall I think the system and its depth are quite an accomplishment for something in such a small package.
I’m in for the original and expansion for Kickstarter as well. Looking forward to it!
Got my copy yesterday. Died 4 times before I realized I was in a medium dungeon. Then saw I could use each skill once, I thought you could only use one skill.
Question, can I discard dice that I’ve already rolled?
Have they already been sent out? I thought shipping wasn’t till August.
There are some video playthroughs that are really good. Think this is the one I watched:
It’s just the original, version 1.5 . I bought when Tom posted this.
I think I answered the skill die question - it goes to player’s favor.
Example:
Backstab uses 1 purple die to allow 2 yellow rolls. Since skills are done after rolling dice, I can obviously pick the lowest roll as I wish.
Played my first game of this today with my 7 year old son. We both enjoyed it - played the archer with the veteran campaign and made it to the dragon, losing on the second round. We both felt pretty good about that, grabbed a potion to start the next game with, and would have played again if not for the evil childhood nemesis ‘bedtime’
Thanks for the recommendation Tom!
Really enjoyed my first full play through of this. It felt like a true dungeon dive, with interesting decisions at every moment, and a true sense of progression. I died during the first dungeon’s boss battle, but mainly because I completed the three levels too quickly, and thus was under powered.
But you got some xp and improved your character, so time to try again!
-Tom
Uh… wait. What? Don’t I just start over?
You made it through to the boss, so that’s three completed levels and your character likely gained two or three levels, so you get exp for all of that. You can use that exp on the paper sheets to purchase additional character abilities and perks to make the next run just a little bit easier.
Such a fun little game.
Thanks. I hadn’t looked at the campaign rules, and assumed experience and such only carried over if you survived. Onward.