aawilson / crawlpnp

Crawl: Dungeon Stone Soup: The Pen and Paper Game

crawlpnp

Crawl: Dungeon Stone Soup: The Pen and Paper Game

The Idea

Crawl is a great game. Pen and Paper games are fun. What if we could combine the two?

The idea is to have a roguelike dungeon that is crawled by a team of people, who are opposed by the RNG (a.k.a. Game Master). They need to collect enough runes to find the Orb of Zot, and work together to save the world!

Some bullshit ideas:

• Character death becomes party death--as long as one member of the party is alive, someone is alive. This means there will have to be a way to bring players back into the game. It wouldn't be very roguelike if the old characters were just resurrected--some other mechanic will have to replace that old D&D standby.
• Random generation of maps, loot, etc

crawlpnp's Issues

version the first

(10:32:47 PM) slitherrr: th eversion .1
(10:32:53 PM) slitherrr: should be
(10:32:55 PM) slitherrr: d:1
(10:33:00 PM) slitherrr: 2 players
(10:33:04 PM) slitherrr: a game master
(10:33:06 PM) slitherrr: the RNG
(10:33:12 PM) slitherrr: irc bot
(10:33:15 PM) slitherrr: and
(10:33:27 PM) slitherrr: RNG generates goblins
(10:33:36 PM) slitherrr: and general layout
(10:33:56 PM) slitherrr: and players can attack the goblins, use a couple of abilities against them, and gain some sort of XP
(10:34:25 PM) slitherrr: or kobolds or rats or something

Bullshittin'

(10:18:34 PM) johnstein: Feel like we could take the crawl code
(10:18:57 PM) johnstein: And determine a way to reduce the stats into a form that works for a pnp game
(10:19:20 PM) johnstein: I haven't played a bunch of pnp
(10:19:25 PM) slitherrr: yeah, i think that's a great place to start
(10:19:44 PM) johnstein: So I don't know typically how complex the calculations are allowed to be
(10:19:50 PM) johnstein: But I'm sure we can't use the actual
(10:19:59 PM) slitherrr: so a great place to start is d20pfsrd.com
(10:20:04 PM) johnstein: Subset of items and equip
(10:20:12 PM) slitherrr: yeah totes, unless we make the pnp game program-assisted
(10:20:12 PM) johnstein: Pfsrd?
(10:20:16 PM) slitherrr: pathfinder
(10:20:19 PM) johnstein: Oh
(10:20:31 PM) johnstein: Program assisted is probably reasonable
(10:20:34 PM) slitherrr: which is heavily modified dnd3.5e
(10:20:53 PM) slitherrr: i've always liked the idea of a pnp game where you crunch the numbers with an app rather than rolling dice
(10:21:06 PM) slitherrr: give it the roll you want and the stuff modifying it, and it spits out a number
(10:21:27 PM) slitherrr: the trick is mostly keeping track of all the modifiers
(10:21:42 PM) slitherrr: and in fact that's the biggest frustration with most pnp, especially played online
(10:21:49 PM) slitherrr: is keeping track of what modifies what
(10:21:51 PM) slitherrr: because it's like
(10:21:58 PM) slitherrr: ok, i want to attack that dude
(10:22:13 PM) slitherrr: i want to do it with some power attack, so +2 to damage if i hit, but -2 to the chance to hit
(10:22:39 PM) slitherrr: my teammate has an ability that adds +1 to my attack as long as i'm on solid ground and adjancent to him, so check that... yeah, i am, add it
(10:22:57 PM) slitherrr: oh right my cleric also cast bless, so +1 to my attack and -1 to their AC
(10:23:02 PM) slitherrr: etc etc etc
(10:23:28 PM) johnstein: That's also in line with the crawl philosophy
(10:23:39 PM) johnstein: Streamlining the tedious stuff
(10:23:42 PM) slitherrr: def
(10:23:55 PM) slitherrr: so i guess the version 1 would be
(10:24:38 PM) slitherrr: an app that keeps track of the dungeon state, the characters in that dungeon, and can be queried for results for player actions
(10:24:50 PM) slitherrr: with player actions being defined as a bunch of crawl-appropriate stuff
(10:24:53 PM) johnstein: Crawl:pnp needs to be a series of really interesting encounters and strategizing on how to survive. Which obviously describes almost all games
(10:25:00 PM) slitherrr: ooh yeah
(10:25:01 PM) slitherrr: totes
(10:25:10 PM) slitherrr: so maybe rather than the whole dungeon
(10:25:13 PM) johnstein: Maybe a crawl bot!
(10:25:15 PM) slitherrr: it's more like
(10:25:25 PM) slitherrr: it generates a series of scenarios
(10:25:34 PM) johnstein: Octotrog can @?? An enemy then parse the stats
(10:25:38 PM) slitherrr: hmm don't like the linear sound of that
(10:25:51 PM) slitherrr: because one of the strategic choices is
(10:25:56 PM) slitherrr: "which branch do i go into now
(10:27:24 PM) johnstein: Yea
(10:27:45 PM) johnstein: I bet an irc bot could work
(10:27:55 PM) johnstein: And it just generates a map
(10:28:01 PM) johnstein: HTML or something
(10:28:04 PM) slitherrr: although that can be solidified by "ok, do you keep going down in lair, or do you go to some other place"
(10:28:06 PM) johnstein: And we play in here
(10:28:10 PM) slitherrr: hmm yeah
(10:28:16 PM) slitherrr: so version 1
(10:28:25 PM) slitherrr: irc bot that accepts commands
(10:28:31 PM) slitherrr: keeps track of dungeon and character state
(10:28:40 PM) johnstein: I'm sure neckro can harness node to do this
(10:28:42 PM) johnstein: Ya
(10:28:46 PM) slitherrr: (insert gamemaster involvement here)
(10:29:02 PM) slitherrr: haha maybe version 1 doesn't have a gamemaster
(10:29:34 PM) slitherrr: or maybe it's the gamemaster's job to take the chaos of the players talking with each other and turn it into commands the bot understands
(10:29:36 PM) johnstein: It would be hilarious for OCTOTROG to be the game master sorta
(10:29:43 PM) johnstein: Could be
(10:29:51 PM) johnstein: The bot sets the pace
(10:29:55 PM) johnstein: Handles the random
(10:30:05 PM) johnstein: And the game master fills in the blanks
(10:30:11 PM) johnstein: To keep it coherent
(10:30:26 PM) slitherrr: word