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Nearly a year ago, Greywulf posted RPG Solitaire Challenge: 3 Dice, a simple solitaire game of dungeon exploration. In his game, you roll 3 dice for your adventurer’s stats, then for each room in the dungeon, roll 1 die to determine the room’s type, 1 die for a monster, and 1 die for a treasure.

I played the game a couple of times, and while I had fun, I found two major issues:

1. The game is very swingy. I played several games where I died within two encounters, and others where I could’ve continued playing forever.
2. There’s nothing to do except trade blows with monsters.

There’s a tantalizing possibility resting in the rooms, though. So, let’s add some design and map the dungeon as you go!

3 Dice Dungeon

3 Dice Dungeon is an expansion of the rules in  RPG Solitaire Challenge: 3 Dice.

You create a character by rolling three six-sided dice (re-rolling if your total is 10 or lower). One die roll represents your BODY, another your MIND, and a third your SPIRIT (or magic). These represent both your current and maximum points in these attributes. You’re now ready to adventure!

Create each location by rolling 3 dice (one for each column) and consulting the table below.

Mapping: Draw this location on a piece of paper. Each location takes up about the same space on the overall map, and can have exits to the north, east, south, and west. You must mark the exits logically (an exit cannot lead to a room with no entrance on that side), but otherwise exits can be wherever you want.

How Many Exits Is That? The number of exits in each room includes the one that you entered from, so each room may be a dead end.

Combat

Attacking: If the room contains a monster, you must attack it! Pick an attribute and roll a die. If you roll less than the attribute, you hit! Turn the monster’s die so that it shows one point lower. When you hit a monster that’s at 1, it is defeated. If you roll equal to or greater than the attribute, the monster hits you; decrease the attribute chosen for this attack by 1.

Bleeding Out: If an attribute is reduced to 0, you take -1 on all attack rolls. If all three attributes are reduced to 0, you’re dead.

Crits: When attacking, a 1 always hits and a 6 always misses.

Training Wheels: In your first location, if you roll 4 or 5 for the monster, re-roll (multiple times if necessary). In your second location, re-roll any 5’s for the monster.

Treasure

Once a location’s monster is defeated, you get the location’s treasure.

• Map fragment — When you’re in a vault, you may use up a map fragment to unearth a powerful ancient artifact (see below).
• Healing Potion — Increase one attribute by 2 points, or two attributes by 1 point each, up to their respective maximums.
• Magic Sword — +1 on all BODY rolls. This is cumulative, so if you have two Magic Swords, you add +2 on all BODY rolls.
• Tome of Enlightenment — +1 on all MIND rolls. This is also cumulative.
• Spell Scroll — Use this scroll for a +3 on one SPIRIT roll. The scroll disappears once used.

XP

When you defeat a monster (or if there is no monster in the room), total the value of all three dice rolled for the location (room, monster, and treasure). Add this to your XP total.

Leveling Up: For every 50 XP you earn, increase the maximum of one attribute, and return all your attributes to their maximum values.

Moving Around The Map

Returning to Danger: When you return to a room you’ve already visited, you run the risk of encountering a low-level monster who’s sneaked into the room. Roll a die for a roving monster. If you roll 3–6, there’s no monster.

Temple Teleportation: From a temple, you can teleport to any other temple already on the map. When you do, roll for a roving monster. You may only teleport after defeating any monsters in the room.

Descending To The Next Level: You may only descend to the next level of the dungeon from a Great Hall, and only after you have collected one artifact on this level.

Artifacts

Roll a die to find an artifact:

Multiple Players

To play with others, each player rolls their own stats. In each location, roll one monster die per player. The highest monster die determines the type of the monsters in the room; sum all the monster dice rolled for the monster’s hit points.

Each player earns the XP total for each location (so, if a location provides 10 XP, each player gets 10 XP).

Note that playing with multiple players is harder, because you’ll have to share the rewards.

The Undead Level

Finally, just for the fun of it, here’s an undead-themed level:

Crypts? A crypt acts just like a vault.

The Undead Are Weak Against Magic: A SPIRIT attack against undead does not automatically fail on a 6.

That’s it. If you play 3 Dice Dungeon, please let me know in the comments!

I ran a game of Searchers of the Unknown, a simplified and free original D&D rule set, at RyvenCon a while ago. \’Twas fun, and the system worked well, but we agreed that it could use one little tweak.

This way, madness lies. It\’s so tempting to house-rule a system because it\’s \”not perfect.\” Soon, a rules-light system grows into a rules-moderate system.

Well, this is a minor issue, but a significant one. There are four kinds of weapons in Searchers:

• Ranged weapons, worth 1d6 damage
• Small melee weapons, like daggers, worth 1d4 damage
• Medium melee weapons, like swords, worth 1d8 damage
• Large melee weapons, like polearms and two-handed swords, worth 1d10 damage.

(The actual terms are a little different, but these are more clear for my purposes.)

Those are all of the stats for weapons. Thus, there\’s no mechanical reason to wield a dagger instead of a polearm.

There\’s a good reason for this: space. Searchers of the Unknown is supposed to fit on one page. Complicated weapon rules would take up space and, well, complicate the system.

However, Ryven came up with an ingenious rock-paper-scissors solution: what if medium weapons give you +1 on your attack roll against enemies carrying small weapons, large weapons give you +1 against enemies carrying medium weapons, and small weapons give you a +1 against enemies carrying large weapons (simulating the ability to duck around the large weapon)?

It\’s an elegant solution, and though it does introduce a slightly more complicated attack roll, I think it\’s worth the tweak to balance out the game.

Hope this helps!