For those who aren't familiar, Four Against Darkness is a solo pen-and-paper dungeon crawler. You control four characters of various classes at a time. You roll dice, a table shows you which dungeon room or corridor to draw, then you roll again for its contents, etc. In the base game, all combat and all actions are resolved with a simple d6.

Normally, I would balk at this. A d6 simply doesn't permit sufficient resolution. It leaves little room for depth of mechanics. And to be fair, the base game isn't really all that interesting (to me) because of its lack of depth.

But - and here's the thing - there's so much extra content you can get for this game. Adventures, new classes, new mechanics (some of which involves other dice than the d6 although the base mechanic of the game is always based on the d6 as far as I'm aware), etc. For example, the excellent Treacheries of the Troublesome Towns supplement (which comes in two books) adds the ability to enter towns where you will meet all sorts of characters. There are even options for romance, having children, buying a house, and becoming the mayor of the town - there's so much that can happen. And that's just one of the (around 50, I think?) supplements that are out there.

So, in summary, I find myself fascinated by this game despite its lack of complex mechanics, simply because there is so much content for it. If you want, you could think of it as not very deep (read: simple mechanics), but very wide (read: lots of available content).

What are your thoughts on games like this?

I'm making a fantasy-based TTRPG, and I'm pondering whether or not I could make foraging interesting.

I have a hexcrawl system with rules for what happens when the players traverses a hexmap using random tables. One of the things that can happen (besides random encounters, finding locations, etc) is that they can come across "resources", which for now is only different types of food (mushrooms, edible roots, etc). But I wonder if I could extend this system in a meaningful way, to make foraging fun? As in, can I make a system where players think going out to forage for herbs or spell components in the wild is more attractive than simply buying them in a local magic shop?

The most simple and obvious solution is to extend what I already have in the same way that it already works. That is, one of the things that can happen as players traverse hexes on the map is that they can come across resources in the form of "herbs" or "spell components", etc. When that happens, there could simply be a random table (different for each type of hex terrain) that you roll on, to see what and how much you found. This system would work, but I'm not sure it would be very interesting.

I mean, sure, as you're walking around in the wilderness, the other things that can happen (possibly hostile random encounters, and finding random locations, etc) will probably help keep the process of wandering in the wilderness as a whole interesting, but I wonder if the "you found resources/herbs" event itself could somehow be turned into a mini-game or something, to make it more interesting.

Anyone have any suggestions about this?

In order to reduce the amount of times you have to update your number of torches (etc), and also to introduce some random uncertainty, some people suggested an alternative method. Instead of putting "10" in the number of torches you have left on your character sheet, you could put "1d8". This means that every time you need a new torch, you roll 1d8.

If the result is anything other than a 1, then you don't have to update your character sheet at all. But if you do roll a 1, you change it from 1d8 to 1d6. And if you roll a 1 on the d6 in the future, it goes to 1d4. And once you roll a 1 on the 1d4, you're out of torches.

Again, the point of this is to reduce the amount of times you have to change the number of torches you have on your character sheet. Also, it introduces tension - you're several levels into the dungeon, and you only have 1d4 torches left; will it be enough?

This is all fine. I like this system. But it does have a small problem, I think.

Let's say you have 1d4 torches left, and you buy 2 "units" of torches to go from 1d4 through 1d6 up to 1d8. Each "unit" (read: die) you buy costs the same. But, and here's the (slight) problem: going from 1d10 to 1d12 is more valuable than going from 1d4 to 1d6, because the 1d12 only has a 1 in 12 chance of depleting (which is good), but the 1d6 has a 1 in 6 chance of depleting (which is worse).

In other words, it always makes sense to buy as many torches as you can (if you ignore encumbrance, I guess), because the last "unit" you buy will be more valuable than the first (read: have a smaller chance of being depleted).

So, one way of changing this would be to flip it around: Having 1d4 torches is the MOST amount of torches, and when you roll a 1, you switch "upwards" to 1d6 instead. Then, when you finally get to 1d12 roll a 1 on that, then you're out of torches.

This doesn't solve the problem of each "unit" of torches you buy is valued differently, but at least then the least valuable ones you buy are the ones you buy last, instead of the ones you buy first. This introduces diminishing returns on buying loads and loads of torches, which has some positive effects. But the problem with this approach is that it's less intuitive ("What? Having 1d12 torches means I have LESS than 1d4? That makes no sense!").

So, what do you think? Personally, I feel like I'm overthinking this and that I should just go with 1d4 being the lowest amount which is more intuitive, and the problem with that which I'm describing above is so small as to be insignificant.

Additionally, I want to abstract this further and say that instead of "torches" in your inventory, it should just say "supplies" which includes torches, arrows, and other similar resources. The point of this would be to reduce clutter on your character sheet.

Going to start play testing some parts of my game, and I am going to need to gather feedback. Anybody for a good feedback system I can look at? Documents offer forms? Thanks.

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