I’m prepping some location-based adventures for Unconventional GMs at the moment, including a game of the excellent His Majesty The Worm, and one of the many interesting bits of game design it has in it is a different approach to exploring dungeons.

It made me think of other interesting ways games structure exploring locations, and how we can rig together similar systems for other games. 

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

The Crawl Phase (His Majesty The Worm)

In the Crawl Phase, where PCs are exploring (there’s a Camp Phase and a City Phase for resting and recuperating, and a Challenge Phase for combat), there’s a few twists to how games traditionally do it. For one thing, the players have a map. They can describe where they’re going on the map, and set up procedures for how they explore the site. Alongside some excellent dungeon-design guidance for GMs, there’s a great ticking-clock element to it as well, which is what I’m more interested in here, called the Meatgrinder.

Every time the party enters a new room, or spends time taking things slowly, or has a Camp or a Challenge Phase, the GM flips a card. This produces a result on the Meatgrinder table, which is unique to each dungeon. These can be random encounters, travel events, curiosities that provide a clue to the dungeon’s secrets – or just erode resources. The crucial difference between this and an old-school random encounter deck is that something always happens. This makes the dungeon feel like a dangerous, lived-in place, and adds an element of countdown to the game that makes resources like torches and lanterns important.

To adapt it to another game, consider a 1d20 table that gets rolled often in the dungeon – maybe there are 5 wandering monster vignettes, 5 clues or items, 5 signs of monsters or NPCs, and 5 markers of time passing – such as removing rations or clocks. After you’ve rolled an event, cross it out and reroll if you get it again (ah, the advantages of cards!).

The Set Model (Trophy Gold)

In Trophy Gold’s exploration model, each section of a dungeon is denoted a “set” – which will probably include multiple rooms, encounters, and potential enemies. The PCs explore and interact with the set, with the aim of getting out of it and proceeding to the next Set. No maps are used. Crucially, as well as having narrative conditions to progress (e.g. if they find the secret staircase leading to the underdungeon), they can also amass Tokens as they explore – spend 3 Tokens and they can progress anyway, with the GM and players narrating how they solved the problem.

This is great in that it covers a big problem with some dungeon designs – what if they never find the secret staircase? What if the eye-beam statue trap is just too deadly? By having a way to earn Tokens (these come from Risk Rolls, to be clear, so there’s always something at stake to acquire them) you give players a route forward, and also an opportunity to control the pace of the game.

To adapt to another game, consider some in-game triggers that give Tokens that allow progress – and don’t worry too much about the narrative linking of that. If you want to really hand it over, allow players to bid skill checks that might give them clues to allow them to progress – with failure always coming with consequences.

Exploration Moves (Perilous Wilds / Dungeon World)

In Perilous Wilds, a supplement for Dungeon World, there’s a procedure for exploration that can be used when exploring anywhere underground – players make checks  to transition between areas, and results indicate the outcomes of those areas. There’s a bit more to it than that – there’s several interlocking Moves that fit together so the whole party’s involved – but that’s the basic system. It allows for effective exploration with an elegant travel system that makes expertise in areas important.

To adapt to another game, you could have players make skill checks to transition between rooms or areas of the dungeon – either skills you’ve decided yourself in advance, or allow players to bid based on how they describe their exploration. On a failure, kick in a wandering monster, an emergent trap, or a bad omen – success, and they might catch the opponents of the next room unawares or happen or even find them already defeated. If this sounds too loosey goosey to you, all you’re doing is abstracting the listen at doors – pick locks – creep carefully round sequence of old-school dungeoneering into a dice roll.

So, three different ways to explore dungeons – have you used anything like this in your games? How did it go? And keep an eye out for His Majesty The Worm – and other games – coming to Unconventional GMs soon!