DungeonZ! the modular dungeon tiles system

[Maike05]

Hello guys, it's been a while I'm working on DungeonZ! the modular system and I recently decided I'll create a whole bunch of special rooms to easily set up a dungeon.

The DungeonZ! system basically uses small rooms (4x4), double rooms (4x8) and huge rooms (8x6). The particularity of this system is that rooms are aligned in parallel with unique-shaped corridors (straight) as it is in advanced heroquest. This system allows you to always align every room. See this working example :


I'm creating a whole bunch of special rooms, including special overlay tiles such as stairs, barrels, crates, traps, treasure chest, etc.
In the end, I'd like to create every possible themed rooms such as :
-The library
-The knight tomb
-The alchemist laboratory
-the throne room
-....

The system is color coded : corridor and room have their own special color : yellow and blue. This way you can easily see the general layout of a dungeon and it also enable me to create special overlays compatible with every room or corridor.

Here is what I created so far...

The library


The prison


The casting room


The hall of the Obscure Cult


The guard's room


The magical fountain


The knight's tomb

More coming soon!

[Ethica]

These look really good, the slabs look very stoney. I like the magical fountain and the casting room especially.

But why do you have the tomb shown on the tile, don't you have the item of furniture?

[Sjeng]

I guess this game is standalone. So if you don't own HQ, you can still play it with whatever miniatures you have. You can always place it on the tile if you own the tomb.

It looks really great! I'm curious about the rules
Post it on the blog when it's finished!

[Maike05]

Hello guys, this no standalone game, it still is HeroQuest, but with a modular dungeon system. The idea behind the special rooms is to easily set up a dungeon with themed rooms. If you look closer in the Quest book, you'll find them, they already exists but you may not have noticed them.

For example : in the Trial, there is an alchemist laboratory near the entrance of the dungeon, a library where those two chaos warriors are, a torture room, a weapon's room, a common room with a fireplace, a guard's room where those two little goblins are, a sorcerer room and finally a tomb.

you can easily recreate Heroquest quests with my DungeonZ! tiles. That is my intention and, as Sjeng said, you can always put the furniture on top of the tiles because it meant to be like that

I'm still thinking how to enable a random dungeon generation with a system of cards like warhammer Quest.

[Ethica]

I think it's important that rooms have a purpose/theme and the dungeon has some sort of logical layout, like you're in a barrow and there's a torture room, or some non sensical thing. Like I don't think you should mix monster types (undead, greenskins, chaos) unless there's a reason why they're both in there together. That's one reason why a random dungeon generation system doesn't work for me.

[Maike05]

I totally agree with you, you shouldn't mix monster type nor theme.

Here is a sketch of what the random dungeon generation system might be:

# of the card
Title of the room/corridor
[image of the room is optional]
[a small Description of the room content is optional]
special rules applying to that area, maybe referring to a separate rules page.
random table using a D6, for example:
1- 1d3 weak monsters
2- 2 weak monsters
3- 1 common monster
4- 1 champion
5- nothing
6- Event! (using another deck of Events cards)
(weak, common and champion all refer to the quest bestiary in the Quest's notes).

I think that using card numbers and a separate bestiary in the Quest's note enables you to pick up a theme for monsters and let you select which room you want or don't want to be included into the dungeon.

For example, you may want to include 6 rooms and 3 corridors in your dungeon. Then you may select which rooms are best fitting the theme of the dungeon, then you'll decide what weak, common and champion monsters will be.

[Patroclus]

I think it's important that rooms have a purpose/theme and the dungeon has some sort of logical layout, like you're in a barrow and there's a torture room, or some non sensical thing. Like I don't think you should mix monster types (undead, greenskins, chaos) unless there's a reason why they're both in there together. That's one reason why a random dungeon generation system doesn't work for me.

Me too, I believe that the best gameplay needs a GM, a good premade map with a logical layout, two or more ways to win the game, some puzzles, etc. But don’t forget that there are two (or more…) games out there which are great and have random generated dungeons (advanced heroquest and warhammer the boardgame). The first has an exploration table and you are rolling a 12-sided dice(with 11 and 12 you meet the quest room), and the second has a room deck, and you shuffle the cards by putting the final rooms somewhere at the end of the deck. in my opinion, these systems are not as good as heroquest but they are still great. After some rounds you forget that all is random and you feel that there is a hand of god that places everything wisely.

If I had to say a bad thing about these systems is that it feels more like a survival with endless combat, when the heroquest has a taste of ad&d (for example, when you walk a lonely corridor and the rooms are empty you are sure that something is wrong…).

I could play a system like this only if I was solo, except if there was a deck of 100 event rooms and a lot of interesting quests. I don’t say about a lot of skills or spells because I don’t like the reading.

[torilen]

love the tiles. Will you put them all together in a pdf or zip file or something? If so, where...I want them.

[knightkrawler]

I really like the looks of this.
Easy on the eyes and a realistic as well as a clear look.
Superb color choice, so that even the icons look good on the tiles.
Great work so far, keep it up.

[Maike05]

Thanks for the support guys

Torilen, the tiles + many more are already available on my blog : http://free-dungeon-tiles-to-print.blogspot.com/ It's meant to be a growing database of free dungeon tiles

Patroclus, I also agree with you : nothing is better than a premade dungeon with logical connection and puzzle in it ! The reason I'd like to create a random dungeon generation system is to be able to play HeroQuest in cooperation, that's to say players control monsters.

The fact is that I don't have a group players, so when I introduce someone to HeroQuest, I'll have to play almost all the time Zargon, which I hate to so... I'd like to play regular heroes with me friend and explore the dungeon myself with a deck of cards.

When I encounter monsters, my friend plays them. When it's him, I'll kick his ass with monsters. This way, the game is enjoyable with only two players and no one has to play zargon.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the system will at least exist !