Dungeons

A dungeon is a place under a landmark, played through the same turns as everywhere else, by the character you already have: your health, your pack, your powers, your companions. You walk it on a map, the fog lifts as you go, and when something is in the way you say what you do, in your own words.

The line between the two sides is sharper here than anywhere else in Worldtable. Everything about the place is decided before you arrive and kept by the engine. The storyteller's job is to judge what you try and to tell it well.

• Under a landmark. A builder can dig a dungeon under any landmark on their map. On the world map its marker gets a small “steps down” badge, and its card says There is a way down here, with how many levels deep. Going there and going in puts you at its entrance. Engine
• Where the story leads. If the world allows it, the storyteller can open a new dungeon when play goes underground: a sinkhole, a cellar under a ruin you found. The dungeon becomes a place of its own below the one it was found under, named after the dungeon, and you go in when you head down. It only does this under a wild place the story made, never a town, a building or a builder's landmark, and code limits how many there are and how often each character finds one. Engine

A dungeon nobody has drawn yet is drawn the first time someone heads there. That takes about two minutes. If you arrive first, the place stays the landmark meanwhile, and the stage says The way down is still being drawn. with what it's doing. The writing (room names, what you see from a doorway) is done once, before you reach each level, and then never changes.

Inside, the storyteller keeps to the dungeon. Your quests, the threads the world is weaving around you and anything on its way to find you wait outside until you climb back out. Engine

Click anywhere on the map and you walk there, without a turn and without waiting for the storyteller. Empty passages and rooms you've already dealt with cost nothing. The walk stops on its own: Engine

• at the doorway of a new room with people, a trap, a hazard or something to take;
• at a locked, sealed or barred door, and at a room that still blocks the way;
• wherever a patrol is, and at the doorway of any new room once the level is roused;
• and it tells you why, in a note on the map where you clicked.

Where it stops, a card shows what you can see from the doorway. Looking in lifts the fog on that room and brings whoever is visible in it into the scene. The buttons are ways in, each a whole turn's words in your own voice: tap one to send it. Something else hands you the action box. Two of the ways are written for your character from your sheet, your powers and your companions, and see only what you can see. Storyteller

A room says how it works. The undead hound in a kennel hears living heartbeats and feels warmth through stone; fire and runes hurt it. A guard watches for one thing and listens for another. A floor is rotten, a rope is fraying, a draugr can't cross running water. You never see these words; the storyteller does, and judges your idea against them, whatever your idea is. Storyteller

• If what you do really gets around what matters (unseen by things that look, silent past things that listen, fire on what burns), it goes clean, even if no one wrote that option down.
• If it only partly does (unseen, but the hound feels your warmth), it's costly.
• If it ignores how the room works, it's botched.
• A power does only what your sheet backs. An idea you learned upstairs (the words that open a seal) counts: knowing the answer makes it clean.

What each outcome costs was set when the room was made, and code applies it, not the prose. Typical prices: Engine

In the example above, holding a bare hand over the warden's torch to show she was facing someone living and warm settled the door clean. Thawing a frozen winch with a torch and hauling it with a hook went costly: it worked, the chain rattled through the stones, and the level heard it.

Down here people don't stand still on their squares.

Idle life

Bystanders drift a square or two, guards pace a short beat, beasts shift and settle. It's the same for everyone watching, it never blocks a doorway or your square, and it stops during a scene or a fight. It's only for the eye: their real square doesn't change. Engine

When the story sends someone somewhere

Throw something burning into the kindling and a hound that hunts by sight may bolt for it. A frightened captive runs for an alcove; a guard goes to check the noise next door. The storyteller says who goes and where (a room, a thing in the room like “the cookfire”, “away” or “to me”), and code finds the way over open doors, moves them and plays it on the map. Someone who has left a room no longer blocks it. Engine

Hunters

When Noticed fills, hunters from the dungeon's own hostile people set out from a far room and close in along the real route: four squares for each thing you do, more if it took long. You hear them before you see them. In rooms you've seen they show as a dim red glimmer; still in the dark, as a ripple on the nearest ground you know, so the fog never gives away a square you haven't found. When they reach you, it's a fight. Engine

Patrols

A patrolled room's people walk a fixed round through the rooms nearby, two squares a minute, one square at a time, so they never skip past you. You meet them wherever they are: a free walk stops short of them, and dealing with them comes first. Got past them cleanly, they walk on. Engine

What stands between you and the rest of a dungeon is one of a small set of things the checker understands: Engine

Lock and key

Someone carries the key, or it lies somewhere you can reach first. Keys are items: take, steal or loot them.

Seal and answer

The answer is written or learned somewhere before the seal. What you learn is kept under What you've learned.

Lever

A winch, sluice or lever in one room opens a way somewhere else, even on another level. You see SOMEWHERE, A WAY OPENS.

Tokens

A core that wants every wing's token, or some of them.

Guarded pass

A person is the gate: talk, pay, sneak or fight.

Hazard

A chasm, flood or fire that costs something to cross. Always crossable.

Secret way

A hidden door with a tell in the room that hides it. Searching finds it.

One way

A drop, a slide, a door that shuts behind you. The checker proves there's still a way on.

Shortcut

A door that only opens from the far side, to save the walk back.

Every dungeon has one goal. The panel shows it, and marks it Done. when it is: Engine

A dungeon's designer can set things to happen: take the idol and the level is roused, free the captive and the warden wakes, pull the lever and the flood drains. Clocks run on their own: water rising, a search party, a rite with three bells. Code fires them, they play on the map where they happen (OPENS, SLAMS SHUT, FLOODING, CAVE-IN, AWAKE, THE LEVEL STIRS, THEY ARE COMING), and the camera goes to look when it's out of view. Engine

When it comes to blows, the fight is an ordinary one on the battle map, drawn from the dungeon level itself, with the room's real occupants on their squares (and any hunters who found you). Everything in Fighting applies. Winning clears the room for good. Engine

• Treasure is named. No loot tables: what lies in a room, or in someone's pack, was decided when the dungeon was made, and taking it gives you exactly that. Engine
• Rest. Some rooms are somewhere to rest. It heals some wounds, and time passes for the things that live there. Engine
• Bargains. A shrine offers something and names its price before you agree: a safe way through the level, for the warmth of your hands. Accept or refuse. Engine
• Companions come with you. Anyone following your character walks beside you, gets a word in at doorways, can scout ahead, and can be the one who pays a cost. Engine

• Walk out through the entrance to be back at the landmark on the world map. Stairs take you between levels.
• Your run is your own and is kept: come back and it's as you left it. A room you cleared stays cleared. Engine
• If the builder redraws or edits the dungeon, a run started on the old version starts over on your next visit, with a line saying the place has changed. Engine
• Undo last turn is off inside a dungeon, for now. Engine
• The world's usual rules on falling and death apply. See World rules.

Open it shows the whole dungeon: each level's map in GM view (every room, foe, lock and the goal), and beside it, in words, everything it's made of. Click a room on the map to edit it.

• The story: name, a line, what happened here, the goal as players are told it.
• Who's down here: peoples (look, how they sense things, what they want and fear, whether they talk) and named persons (what they carry, where they are).
• Rooms: what kind, what it is and how it works, who's in it and how dangerous, what's lying there, a trap or puzzle and its answer.
• Ways through: each way between rooms as a sentence, and what stands in it: a lock, a seal, a lever, hidden, one way.
• Triggers and clocks: their words, as players will read them.

The checker and the layout run in your browser after every change. Problems are listed in names and marked on their room; Save waits until there are none. A structural change (a new room, a removed way) lays the level out again. Saving starts over anyone who was inside. Engine

Room kinds

Writing how a room works

This is the field that matters most. The storyteller judges every idea against it, so write what a clever player could use: what the occupants notice and what they don't, what they want, what they fear, what's fragile, flammable, rotten or loose. “Sleeps through noise but wakes to light” makes a different room from “feels warmth through stone”. A people's senses apply to all of them, everywhere in the dungeon.

Hob, the Studio's helper, can dig a dungeon under a landmark, have it drawn, read it, and change it from a description: “add a drowned chapel off the beacon ring, with a priest who keeps the store key”. It edits rooms, ways, people, items, clues and trigger words. Every edit goes through the checker; one that would make the dungeon unfinishable, or cut a room off, is refused, and Hob tells you why in names. Engine

The Rules tab has The story finds dungeons of its own: Never, only mine, Rarely, Now and then or Often. Beyond the dungeons you dig, the storyteller may then open one when play leads underground, under a wild place the story made. Code holds the pace: a few per region at most, and a while between finds for each character. Such a dungeon is designed and kept exactly like yours. Engine