This is my favourite BrikWars game mode so far. I played and refined the rules of this game mode about half a dozen times already, and every time it was quite fun.
2-6 players explore a dungeon together, either in teams or everyone for himself. Each player only has one unique hero and 1-2 henchmen. The goal is to loot the most gold. You get gold by killing monsters, by collecting special items and by carrying treasure chests to your starting location. (What did you think the henchmen were for?)
The game mode is competitive but not necessarily PVP, as the players may help or stab each other's back according to their benefit.
Preparation
Apart from the hero+minifigs for each player, you need at least...
- gangs of monsters and boss monsters. Giant spiders, zombies, skeleton knights, dragons, weird constructs, orks, space ninjas, time bandits, etc. I recommend to make statcards for each gang/boss so that you can add some fitting or interesting special abilities.
- Think of fitting special abilities your hero should have. Players have only this one hero (and expendable henchmen), so it doesn't hurt to put some thought into it. For heroes in particular I recommend to create a statcard.
Core Rules
Starting Location
Every team starts at opposite edges of the dungeon, which is also their respawn point. Whenever a henchman or a hero dies, he will respawn next round at the starting location. However, only one minifig can respawn per round and respawning your hero costs 2 gold. Did I mention that henchmen are expendable?
Getting gold
You get gold by:
- Killing a monster: 1 gold
- Killing a boss monster: 2 gold
- Carrying a treasure chest back to your starting location: 5 gold
Intially, the gaming table is empty, save for the starting locations of the players. The dungeon is subsequently put together, like a puzzle as the players explore it.
The dungeon is conceptionally divided into rooms which are revealed as the players enter it. They do not actually have to be rooms, i.e. they could be small clearings if your dungeon is actually a dark forest. Revealing rooms works according to the following rules:
- When a player enters a room, he rolls a d4 to determine to which rooms this room is actually connected, including the room where he just came from. So, if it is i.e. a one, it is a dead-end.
- Then, it is determined by random what awaits him in this room. If you have statcards for encounters, you draw a random card from the deck, otherwise you need to conceive of another way how to randomly select an encounter (like reaching into the box-o-encounters blindfolded or rolling dice on a table)
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As the players start at the outside edges of the dungeon, the players will likely meet (latest) in the center room of the dungeon. The center room accomodates the final boss.
Direction of the doors in the revealed room
Doors in just revealed rooms spawn in a fixed pattern: Always facing away from the center of the dungeon first. So, the chance that the path into the heart of the dungeon is straight is quite low. You have to search your way to the center.
As an example, when revealing a room on the outer circle of the dungeon, you will only get a door that leads into the inner circle if you roll a 3 at least. In the inner circle, you only get a door to the boss room if you roll a 4.
Encounters
Normal monsters spawn usually in gangs of 2-3. Boss monsters are sometimes accompanied by minor monsters. The monsters spawn in the player's turn, so he can go right on attacking them.
Other than monsters, you can prepare trap rooms with field hazards or other special rooms like portal rooms, (trapped) treasure rooms, etc.
The difference between normal monsters and boss monsters is, that they drop a spell that can be used once any time. See below in "Players". Also, some boss monsters have a treasure chest. (You can decide this by a die roll or define that certain boss monsters have one, others don't)
Final boss
The final boss and 2-3 treasure chests spawns as soon as the first player enters the boss room. There is also a one-way portal that leads to each player's own starting location. This means, that you can carry any treasure chests through this portal to get the gold.
The treasure chests and the convenient portal make this room into the goal of a race towards the center room.
If you want to ensue for hilarious treachery at the end, make the final boss strong enough that players need to team up to defeat him. The game mechanic works well without the boss, though.
Dead ends
A player can skip his turn reroll the d4 with which he determined the number of exits from this room. If the roll is higher than the number of doors there are now, the player finds a hidden trap door.
Players
If there are more than 4 players, each player only has one henchman and the players should form permanent teams to speed up the game.
You can play this either with a dungeon master or with no dungeon master at all.
With dungeon master
He controls all the monsters, reveals and constructs all the rooms and writes the spells ad-hoc whenever a boss monster is killed. The spells should be helpful mostly only to harass other players directly or "helping" the DM to harass the players.
Examples for spells:
- Open a door remotely anywhere on the map (and spawn the monsters)
- Spawn any monster you defeated before anywhere on the map under the control of the DM
- Spawn a door anywhere on the map
- Create a permanent portal that connect two locations at which your minifigs stand currently
- Make any monster turn on another player of your choice
- Displace any two minifigs on the map with each other
- etc...
Without dungeon master
Each player's turn consists of two parts:
- move all monsters that spawned for the previous player
- move your own troops
You either need to prepare all spells beforehand or let all players write up a couple of spells at the beginning of the game. I recommend not leaving them out, they add quite some interaction to the game.
Some photos of the game
