Sunday, May 5, 2013

The Official Rules of "Adventure Mode Awesome"

We invent a lot of games here in Rosenbaumland. I've already told you about Knees Tag and Hookie Mookie, and I've been meaning to tell you the rules to Rainball and Settlers of Minecraftia. There's also Minecraft Tag, which may be complex beyond the limits of blogging (though it isn't calvinball, honest), and the Underground Railroad boardgame project, which has outgrown being a purely homegrown the-kids-and-me endeavor and may actually get launched for real at some point (I'm thinking of bringing a prototype to Wiscon).

Yesterday, Noah and I invented "Adventure Mode Awesome".

(Careful readers may note from the titles of some of these games that one effect of our screen time restrictions is that we are forced to invent paper or running-around versions of the computer games we are currently obsessed with, i.e, at the moment, Minecraft).

So:

Adventure Mode Awesome, a two-player collaborative dungeon crawl board game for when you have used up your computer time and can't play Minecraft

You will need:

1. One "Go" board or other 16x16 grid
2. a chess set
3. black and white Go stones, or two other plentiful and distinct sets of counters
4. a six-sided die
5. the following tiles from Scrabble or Bananagrams:
   • 4 T's
   • 3 W's
   • 2 Z's
   • 2 S's
   • 2 K's
   • 2 C's
   • 1 P

Object of the game
Get all the treasure out of the chests and escape the dungeon before the monsters get both of you!

Setup

1. Distribute the tiles, face down, roughly evenly spread, in spaces around the board.
   • For a lower difficulty level, first randomly discard some of the tiles other than the P and W's.
2. Give each player ten black Go stones (their health points or "hearts") and put a pile of white Go stones ("torches", used to shut down monster spawners) to hand
3. Flip all the tiles face up. The tiles are:

   P	The dungeon entrance or "Player spawn"
   T	The Treasure chests
   W	Walls
   Z	Zombie spawners
   S	Spider spawners
   C	Creeper spawners
   K	Skeleton spawners

4. Place the two King chess pieces (the players' figures) to either side of the "P" tile.

Zombies are rooks (castles), meaning there can only be four of them in play, since you are using one chess set. Skeletons are bishops, and creepers are knights, four of each. Spiders are pawns, so there can be sixteen spiders in play.

Turn Sequence

Each currently "alive" player takes a turn consisting of an event roll, two player actions, monster movement, and combat resolution, followed by the next players' turn.

The game ends when either:

• both players are dead (defeat),
• all the treasure tiles ("T") have been taken by players who have then returned to player spawn ("P") while carrying them (victory), or
• torches have been placed on every Monster Spawner and all monsters have been killed (victory assured)

Here are the individual turn phases in detail:

1. Event roll. The player whose turn it is rolls one six-sided die:

   1	Zombies spawn, if possible, from every dark Zombie spawner. If there are fewer than four rooks on the board, place a rook on every Z tile which does not have either a white stone (i.e., a torch) or a monster already on it.
   2	Skeletons spawn, if possible, from every dark Skeleton spawner. If there are fewer than four bishops on the board, place a bishop on every K tile which does not have either a white stone or a monster already on it.
   3	Creepers spawn, if possible, from every dark Creeper spawner. If there are fewer than four knights on the board, place a rook on every C tile which does not have either a white stone or a monster already on it.
   4	Spiders spawn, if possible, from every dark Spider spawner. If there are fewer than sixteen pawns on the board, place a pawn on every S tile which does not have either a white stone or a monster already on it.
   5	Players heal. Give a black stone (a "heart") to every player who has less than ten.
   6	Players respawn. If one player is dead, place that player's King piece on the P tile, and give the player ten "hearts". That player is back in the game.

2. Player actions. The current player may take two actions. The following are valid actions ("adjacent" here means one space across or down, no diagonals allowed):
   1. Move to an adjacent space not already occupied by a tile or figure.
   2. Take one "T" (Treasure) tile from an adjacent space into your "inventory" (your hand)
   3. place a white stone (a torch) on a monster spawner tile in an adjacent space, to shut it off.

3. Monsters move. Monster movement, or "mob AI", is the trickiest and fiddliest part of this game! You are officially allowed to not spend your whole evening counting squares, but just move monsters to your sloppy best guess of where these rules would have them end up, as you are not intentionally cheating for player advantage. These rules are complex at first, but intuitive after a while, and there will be a summary table later! :-)

   Monsters are dumb! If they cannot see or sense you, they forget you. They do not anticipate player or other monster's movement, they do not plan complex "paths" to reach you, they just follow rigid movement rules. This is important because often survival means getting monsters to move into each other's way, hiding behind walls, etc.

   Move monsters starting with the one closest to a player, in nearest to farthest order.

   Each monster has a target square. For Spiders (who have very good hearing), this is the (geometrically) closest player's square. For Zombies and Creepers it is the closest player's square that they can see -- their vision is blocked if a Wall tile is directly (horizontally or vertically, no diagonals) between them and that player. For Skeletons, their target square is their best shot: the nearest (to the Skeleton) square from which the skeleton could currently shoot a player that they can currently see (Walls also block their vision). Skeletons can shoot arrows along a horizontal or vertical axis (no diagonals!) to hit players up to 4 squares away from them, if nothing (other than a Monster Spawner, which they can shoot over) is obstructing the arrow's path.

   If two players are equidistant, monsters target the player with lower health (fewer "hearts").

   Obstruction
   Spiders can climb over Walls and Monster Spawners, but cannot move through other Monsters; Zombies, Creepers, and Skeletons cannot move through Walls, Monsters, or Monster Spawners.

   Skeletons can shoot over Monster Spawners, but cannot shoot through Walls or Monsters.

   Movement distance

   Spiders can move up to three squares per turn. Zombies and Skeletons can move up to two squares per turn. Creepers can move up to one square per turn.

   Monsters do not move if they can attack a player from where they are.

   If a monster can end the turn nearer to its target, it does so. This is true even if this path is a stupid one which will result in the monster getting blocked or blocking another monster. If it cannot end the turn nearer to its target square, it does not move, even if there would be a clever way around obstacles by backtracking. Monsters are dumb.

   Whenever these rules produce ambiguity about where a monster would move, players are allowed to decide to their advantage.

4. Resolve combat. Attacks happen in the following order: first players, then spiders, then creepers, then skeletons, then zombies. Players have "first strike", so any monster they kill will not harm them that turn.

   During each turn's combat resolution, each player rolls one die for every monster adjacent to them, touching the figure to indicate which monster they are fighting. A player must roll 3 or more to kill a Spider, 4 or more to kill a Skeleton, and 5 or more to kill a Zombie. It is not possible to kill a Creeper (yeah, I know, you killed one with a sword in Minecraft, but you're not quick enough here, Steve).

   Then, any Spider still alive does one point of damage to each player adjacent to it (the player discards one "heart").

   Then, any surviving Creeper adjacent to a player explodes. The explosion is a 5x5 square area centered on the Creeper. Within this area:

   • all Monsters are killed
   • all Torches are removed from Monster Spawners
   • all Wall tiles are removed
   • any player takes (5 - [distance from Creeper]) hearts of damage; this means an adjacent player takes 4hearts of damage.

   Then, any surviving Skeleton does one point of damage to any player they can shoot (as above, Skeletons can shoot arrows along a horizontal or vertical axis up to 4 squares away, if no monsters or walls are in the arrow's path).

   Then, any surviving Zombie does two points of damage to any adjacent player.
   

Death
If a player loses all their hearts, the player dies. Remove that player's King piece from the board and stack any Treasure tiles the player had in their hand in the square where that player was killed. The Treasure tiles can still be retrieved by player action. At this point, you are out of the game until your friend rolls a 6 -- then you respawn at "P". (Meanwhile, you can still help move the monsters in the Monster Movement phase.)

If no player is left alive at the end of any turn, the game ends in defeat (well, victory from the monsters' point of view, I guess).

Monster Quick Reference Chart