Despite a slew of dungeon crawlers lately I've always wanted to make my own. Unfortunately I've run into a problem with what I think is a 'trying to please everyone' route.
My inspirations for the system come mainly from Heroquest/Advanced Heroquest ... but my initial feedback on a desired dungeon crawler many said a GMless and randomly generated system like Warhammer Quest is preferable.
Although I feel I've meshed elements of both, the end result is ... lots of card decks, 15 to 20 in fact. Cutting out some decks cuts out an element of depth, which may or may not be a good thing. I'll go most of the main decks and see what you think.
GENERATION DECKS
Dungeon Deck: Simply enough, when you prepare to exit one room/passage tile to another you draw a Dungeon Card which shows you the new room to place. It also tells you what other cards to now draw. # Doors, # Environment, # Encounters ... it also shows a # Hazards that can be triggered and how many times the room can be searched (sort of Shadows of Brimstone scavenging style).
Door Deck: When you draw a dungeon card it may tell you to draw a number of door cards, which maybe things like 'A Wooden Door' 'An Iron Door' 'No Door' 'A locked Wooden Door' etc. This is probably one of those decks that may get the axe.
Environment Deck: A dungeon card may also say to draw a number of these cards. These are for randomly determining Heroquest style furniture to be placed in the room such as treasure chests, book shelves, tables, cupboards, etc (A card can than be discarded so you don't run out of furniture) ... mixed in are more 'ambient' cards like 'this room is very dark, -1 to hit' 'this room is flooded, -1 to move'.
EVENT DECKS
Encounter Deck: Usually entering a new room will have you also draw an encounter card as told indicated by the dungeon card. These will typically have you place monsters on the new room tile to fight, although you may get occasional 'flock of bats is startled and flies about in your face' or 'You come upon a chained prisoner'.
Hazard Deck: As before a dungeon card also has a number of hazards, if a character rolls a 1 to move in that room marked with 1 or more hazards draws a hazard card and resolves it. Other events may trigger hazards too.
Treasure Deck: One of the results of searching is treasure, which is a reward for the players ... giving them a useful item or gold (I considered having hazards rolled into the treasure like heroquest originally did, as it provides the punishing the greedy mechanic).
PLAYER DECKS
Generally the player starts off with a few of these, than the rest of the decks are 'put away' so to speak.
Magic Decks (Air, Earth, Fire, Water): Four decks of spells for magic using characters, they choose an element to begin with and take so many cards from a deck (Alternatively there is just ONE generic magic deck to draw from).
Skill Decks (Combat, Strength, Agility, Knowledge, ?): More for advanced games. As the players win more games they can add skill cards to their character, which are basically the physical equivalent of the spell cards (It is either one single deck, with cards marked as being of a particular skill type, in brackets above, or each type has its own deck).
Starter Gear Deck: As well as the players getting specific starting gear for their character, they often also draw a few extra generic starting items to begin a game with (Could be torches, rope, provisions, etc). Some items are generic items are still character specific and players may trade with each other cards they cannot use for ones they can.
OTHER DECKS
Equipment Deck: Used in advanced 'campaign' games, characters can use gold gained from treasure cards to spend on new equipment cards that enhance the player's character(Supposedly something like the North American version of Heroquest can be implemented where you have a simple purchase board/page in the rule book).
Artifact Deck: Like equipment but cannot be purchased, none, one or maybe at the rare outset TWO will be drawn over a game as major rewards for beating a game.
Chest Deck: Sort of a experimental idea deck I had. As mentioned in environment deck, treasure chests maybe placed on the board, when opened you'd flip a chest card which may tell you how many treasure cards to draw, that its booby-trapped, locked or even just empty. This was mainly because I imagined the traps on chests working different to normal hazards, but it might just be complicating things.
Alright.
The Door deck is mainly for some roleplay complexity, it could probably be dropped and doors can just appear on the Dungeon Card's room diagram.
Environment deck ... maybe it can be axed, with furniture just being part of the room like above ... this kind of makes things a bit generic, a particular room will always have X in. Although looking again at someones playthrough of Shadows of Brimstone, some of the ambience type cards could be rolled into the Encounter Deck, you 'encounter' a treasure chest maybe?
Treasure and Hazards maybe able to be rolled into one, still debating it, there is instances where I want a player to DEFINITELY draw treasure and others where they DEFINITELY draw a hazard.
I think Magic and Skill decks can stay, mainly because I (and I think my particular audience) likes to have those at hand and they aren't to much more intrusive on play (well, no more intrusive than having to look up a reference sheet or page in the rulebook?). But they may still get compacted in single decks each, especially Skill cards.
Equipment could probably go and be turned into a chart. Starting Gear is just an idea so far, so it might go as well. Artifact cards I think I will have remain, as they are even less intrusive, and I like the idea of player being able to 'physically' take a reward.
So between 6 to 10 decks now.
I suppose I could have some of them as sort of kickstarter (if I get that far)extra: Equipment, Door and Chest Decks, with expansion rules on adding them to the core game.