Vladar's Blog

ItDR design guidelines

Here's a collection of guidelines I try to follow while designing Into the Dungeon: Revived materials, asides from those already presented in the ruleset.

The Golden Rule

The rules should be as intuitive as possible.

When the Referee does not have a specific rule or does not remember one, the first guess should be correct most of the time.

Hit Points

HP range (both for characters and monsters) is 1-30 (1d6 - 5d6), corresponding to the characters' progression from first to fifth level.

Armour

Armour is capped at 3 for creatures (usually 1-2 from Armour, and +1 from another source) to give d4 attacks a chance of inflicting some damage.

Features

If possible, Features should not add any new expendable "resources" for the player to track on the character sheet.

Damage

No +/-X Damage modifiers except Ganging Up and Large Battles rules.

Dice Rolls

Lower roll results are usually better or more successful for the one who is rolling.

Persistent Spells

Persistent spells are rare. Generally, the spell should be persistent only if it will become effectively useless otherwise.

Elemental Damage

Additionally, Elemental Damage causes obvious unmentioned effects:

Creative spell usage should be rewarded.

Healing

Healing should be scarce:


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