Spawning

Could you devise a system where the monsters spawn relative to the players' characters? In computer game terms: Monsters spawn in the fog of war.

If your board is contiguous, one way to do this would be to number the grid along each board edge. Randomly select one of the 4 board edges. Say you select the north edge of the board, which has columns numbered 1-20. So roll 1d20 to select the column. Scan southward down the selected column until you reach a square that is visible to the players; place the monster one square back from there. If the first valid square in that column is visible to the players, no monster spawns. If you don't find a valid square that is visible to the players by the time you reach half-way down the map, place it at the center row.

The idea of this method is to allow the players to spread out to try to cover their butts/flanks, because if they can get sight of the edge of the map they are effectively protected from monsters spawning from that direction. Beware the danger if your rear-guard is eliminated, however, as you will suddenly find monsters pouring in from behind.

Another, simpler method using fog of war is just to roll 1d20 for the row and 1d20 for the column, and spawn a monster at that square. However, if the target square is visible to the players then nothing spawns. Thus, the players have incentive to spread out to cover more of the map to reduce the monster spawn rate, at the risk of becoming isolated.

If your board consists of "rooms" that can be rearranged between games, then just number the rooms. Roll to pick a room, and spawn the monster in that room placing it as close as possible to the nearest player while still being out of line-of-sight. If every square in the room is in line-of-sight then no monster spawns.

All these fog-of-war based spawning systems are particularly nasty (read: fun) if you have some kind of trigger/spell/weapon that creates darkness or temporarily blinds the players. It also makes light sources valuable items.

Regards,
kos

I know of several games that have spawning in them. And they solv it a litle difrently becaus the games play a litle diferently from eachother.

Last night on earth, the zombie game. Have spawning zombies. They spawn from certal locations on the boards. These are placed randomly, ,what tile is determind by a dice roal) and then the zombie player/players decide where on that tile they spawn ( I thinc there is som rules they have to folow). Also events may trigger new spawning locations.

Then there is Claustrophobia wich solve this by having each tile be part of a corridor (in a dungeon). And players move from tile to tile. The monters can only spawn out of line of sight from th heroes. So the heroes can se along a straight corridor. But all turns and intersections is out if sight. Also the monsters have to come from unexplored parts, they can not pop up if you turn around a corner they will not come running the next turn.

And lastly there is decent. Where monster also spwns out of line of sight. But here you move on a grid patern on each tile so line of sight is a litle bit trickier. Also monsters can spawn behind pillars, even if you where there just recently and there was nothing there.

Now to my two cents. It depends on what components you have in the game, and what type of game it so (the feel you want to have in it). I am guessing it is a dungeon crawler from what litle info I read. If you have eventcards in teh game you can add a litle symbol to each card. Thees symbols can be found on the board (on each tile). Depending on how many monsters you want you can have them spawn on every symbol or just on a particular tile. You can also limit the sybols on the tiles. This way the player draws a monstercard and eventcard to se where they spawn. This way you also ad a second (or more if there are other) purpus to your eventcard.

Betrayal at House on the Hill has a similar mechanic for card drawing if not monster spawning. You might want to check it out.