Ostensible Cat

I finally finished stating out the critters for Delve! and am now working on the treasures. Like the monsters, I wanted to add a bit of variety over the treasure in Dungeon! Also unlike Dungeon, instead of each class having different treasure levels they need to attain before they achieve victory, I'm going to set the treasure level for all five of the current classes at the same level (I'm thinking at the 30,000 gold level). The mechanic will be 2d10 instead of 2d6 (or the 1d20 I had originally thought about). The reason for this is I want a 2-20 number spread to allow for more levels and different challenges. Also, 2d10 allows to do percentages easier. Certain creatures will have the capability to be bribed. This is a percentage chance. The player will have to give up a treasure for safe passage. Also, I'm including more magical treasure in the game (for instance, more magic weapons usable by various characters). Each character will have special abilities. The

I didn't get as far this week as I'd hoped on my mapping for the Basalt Keep. I do think I've got the rough outlines for the above ground levels. There are essentially five levels to the keep and six or so for a tower that sits atop the keep. I'm pretty jazzed about the whole idea and it keeps flowing nicely as far as the mapping goes. Once that is done, I'll go back and flesh out the keyed areas. The intent is to have this place populated with entirely new critters. The Basalt Keep is a temporal/dimensional hopping location, so the whole will be populated not just by strange critters, but by strange and in some cases horrific locations, items, and events. Viscount Wilven D'Ava is essentially a hedonist/libertine with a character in the Alister Crowley/Marquis de Sade vein. Add to that the inhabitants that the keep and the island that it sits upon from the multidimensonal wandering that has gone on and you'll get the idea. As far as my work on Delve!

Happy 12/11/10! I've been listening to some Minutemen and Richard Hell, drinking a Heineken (Heineken, f*** that s***, PABST BLUE RIBBON!!) - sorry, flashback to a different time - and have been scribbling away at my Delve! rules. I think I've got my initial character set AND monster list for the initial Delve! playtest. For the playtest I'll be using the original Dungeon! board game board and testing the rules out through level six. Once I think it's working, I'll expand to levels seven and eight. Here's the character list so far: Mage Knight Warrior Princess Thief Cleric I'm leaving the Elf and Dwarf out of the initial playtest (mostly because they will combine elements of the listed classes anyway). The monster list is as follows: Level 1 Beserker Giant Fire Ant Giant Rats Giant Bats Goblin Orc Skeleton Zombie Level 2 Beserker Bugbear Ghoul Giant Lizard Giant Spider Giant Frog Pit Trap Zombie Level 3 Dire Wolf Gargoyle Giant Snake Giant Scorpion Har

OK, so I'm starting in on trying to figure out the monster list. I've come up with the following for the classes: mage, knight, warrior princess, cleric, dwarf, elf. The spell list is as follows: electric zap, cold blast, flame burst, web, and haste. I'll work out the details at playtest time. Anyway, back to monsters. I'm trying to decide what would have a good old school feel and give the feel of Dungeon! without being a direct clone. For first level, I want to keep the skeleton and giant rat and goblin. I'll do away with giant lizard at level one and introduce zombie, giant bat, giant ant. The way the cards are laid out, there are fifteen cards to a sheet. I'd like to have thirty monster cards per level to add some variety so I've got quite a bit of room to play around here. I'll go through the monster manual and try and come up with some more old school beasties that scream old school dungeon delve (like giant beetle, carnivorous ape, etc

And here's the mock up art for the Delve cards with a different font and border. My wife likes this one better. I'm not quite so sure, but do think I need to get on with it and stop obsessing about things like this ;). Next, on to the monsters and traps!

Ok, so here's my first mock up at the Delve! card art. I wanted to very much keep it in the vein of Dungeon! monster cards. They will be the same size 1"x2" so that I can mix them into the deck. As I said earlier today, I intend to borrow from Dungeon and then ultimately replace the underlying mechanic so that while remaining true to the spirit of the original game, it will be a new game in and of itself to include a new board. I'm pretty excited about this project. I haven't attempted a board game for quite some time. Even though it borrows ideas pretty heavy, it is still quite a bit of work!

I’m still working on my reimagining of the Dungeon! Board game. I had a whole slew of classes and other things, but I think ultimately I want to trim it down. Here’s a list of possible classes: Warrior Princess, Dwarf, Elf, Knight, Wizard, Thief, Cleric. I threw the warrior princess class in there for my daughter so it’d be a good hook to interest her at some point (she’s all about the princesses right now). But seeing as she’s only three, it’ll be a couple of years before I get her going. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m going to replace the Dungeon! 2d6 mechanic with a 1d20. That is because I’d like to ultimately have eight levels instead of six with more monster variations and feel the d20 will better enable that. Initially, I’ll be play testing on the actual Dungeon! Board, but I do want to come up with my own board at some point. The plan is to have all of this fleshed out and a complete new game by May in time for my son’s seventh birthday. I’m going through the m

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and that the Merry Gobbler brought everyone everything they wanted...wait, what? Anyway, it's late here in Italy and I'm too tired to make this much of a post. I did work on my revamp of the Dungeon! boardgame today. It went well. I'm mostly working on the monster and treasure cards right now. At some point I'm thinking of completely redoing the board and adding more levels as well as using a d20 mechanic instead of 2d12. This will of course be pretty much a completely new game but very much in the spirit of the original Dungeon! game. I've decided to not get too carried away with the classes, so I'll probably scale back the 12 classes I originally planned (maybe make that an advanced option). Since I have a daughter and I want to make this an inclusive family game (for my family at any rate), I'm going to add a female warrior princess class to the lineup. I've also decided to name my project DELVE! It&#

I haven't had time to tweak the rule sets more as I've been working on a site based encounter (more on that later). At any rate, I just got a newer Dungeon! game off of eBay and it arrived yesterday. I'm thinking of springing it on my son for Christmas. However, Ive been thinking about the rules a bit more. I'll probably still plow ahead with the "advanced" rules with multiple classes, but I think for now, I'm going to rework the classic rules to keep them simple. I hink I'll tweak the existing characters a bit and perhaps add a thief and cleric. I need to draft up some new monster cards and print them out. Ultimately, that will entail printing out a whole new set as I think it best that the cards be uniform. More to follow...