I just recently skimmed through the rules and saw that there’s no resource management like in other rpgs. I do certainly want to try running a game but still want to run dungeons.
I want to ask what tips each of you have to making dungeons, so whoever stumbles upon a similar problem might find this and get their answers. So please, share your experiences and advice on making and running dungeons with this system.
1 Like
You should expand on what exactly you mean by dungeons. That can mean a lot of different things to different people, especially as dungeon can just be a general term to describe a location with ‘rooms’ a lot of times, so basically encounter locations.
Honestly you would make them like any other system, so I’m not sure off hand what specific advice you are looking for?
Are you looking for good ways to make encounters? How to connect areas?
If you are talking more about how to make along stay at a location challenging, b/c of the resource comment. There’s several ways you can go about that, though it will depend on the setting to a degree as well.
Have had lots of discussions over on the discord about it. I’ll post a link here there to see if some people can come post a few things.
There are actually a couple of resource management that you can use to make dungeon crawling challenging. Here are some that I have used before :
Time
You could make it so that what you’re looking to accomplish in the dungeon has a time limit. Every combat encounter, every action, every move that the player makes would consume some sort of timer. That way they would be mindful of their actions in the game.
“Short Rest”
Yes, there is no short rest in Open Legend RPG. RAW states that you need 10 minutes after combat to restore your HP. However, I always rule it as 10 minutes of peace. A dungeon is hardly a place of peace, so you can rule that the party need to find a secure place in the dungeon where they can rest and restore HP.
Lethal Damage
Or, you can always make the monsters in the dungeon deal lethal damage. It is a kind of damage that reduces the max HP of a character. It cannot be as easily healed as HP damage. You need a doctor or a healer or somekind to take care of you for some days to heal the lethal damage.
Aside from monsters, you can also have your traps deal lethal damage.
None at all
Or just do none of it, and let the party’s HP heal normally after combat. This is usually the way that I do it. The caveat is that every combat encounter inside the dungeon is deadly, but most of the times, avoidable. So players still feel that vibe of danger, and will be mindful of their action. I guess in a way, the resource that we manage in this way is the players mental state lol.
2 Likes
NotSolidSnakes answer is a really good one.
To speak a little more about rest. Proper rest (as has already been mentioned) is really difficult to get in a dungeon. Even more so if they need to spend the night. Not resting well can result in the fatigued bane or in not recovering any lethal damage the characters have on them. Proper rest can require more than just any ol’ place to lay down. Danger, or even just the threat of danger can keep the party from proper rest. On top of the fact that theyre probably laying on a rock in a damp cave. The ability to create or find a safe and comfortable place to sleep becomes a more valuable skill if thats something that would be fun to your players.
Additionally, depending on how long theyre in the dungeon physical resources like food, water, potions or torches can run out.
If you’re coming from a game like D&D 5e where it is expected that your players will usually get to a boss fight at less than full power as a tool for balance or to raise tension then you absolutely can have your players arrive to the battle already wearied, but its not super necessary.
If the reason is that its the style of game that you and your players enjoy then on top of what has already been mentioned you can also do fun things like bestowing lasting banes when characters reach 0.
Have fun with it! My players tend to like it when I’m brutal on their characters so I’ll throw absolute shenanigans at them. Feel free to make things up whenever you want. If you want to invent a bane or to just bestow one on a character until they can rest or get it cured then do it! Use the stunned or sickened bane to represent fatigue rather than the fatigued bane if the effects feel more appropriate. The openness of OL is intended to empower the GM and players to be able to feel creative in building the kind of game they want to play!
I rambled a bit but theres just a lot of things that you can do depending on what you’re trying to achieve by introducing resource management.
If it was me, I’d try to put something together similar to the wealth system.
You would start needing to spend low because you’d have resources, but as you proceed the cost goes up and your “resource wealth” goes down.
This would maybe lead to something like a combination of levels of disadvantages or being afflicted by banes.
My goal when putting things like this together is always how to get the flavor I’m looking for while keeping it as simple as possible to track.
Best of luck with it!