If I wanted a run a mindless dungeon crawl, would D&D Miniatures game work?

I asked this over at RPGnet and thought I'd throw it out here as well.

It occurs to me that I would love to run a dungeon crawl that is essentially mindless combat. Would the D&D Miniatures game work? The players would pick a party of certain "point power" or whatever (I don't know much about the minis game) and I, as DM, would pick monsters that would match the same point power. I would whip up a dungeon from dungeon tiles, and VOILA!

Tell me if this would work.

D&D miniatures is designed to be an adversarial game (PVP). There may be some online supplements that expanded on the random dungeon bit presented in the miniatures handbook. It was a method for using the prepacked cards to sort of make random dungeons.

But in all fairness you can run a mindless dungeon crawl in any edition of any game. I am not sure of what your idea of "mindless" is. But there are some great "Megadungeon" types of products available for 2e and 3e D&D. (I am not sure, but I do not believe I have seen the mega dungeon resurface into the published realm in 4e). You could also grab standalone modules. But if modules are not your idea of fun there are other options.

Another option that my group does every once in a while when no one has anything prepared to run, is we get out the Dragon Compendium (the 3.x one, but you could easily use the charts to generate dungeons for any edition, or even any fantasy really) and use the random dungeon generation rules in it to make a random dungeon as we play it (we even take turns "rolling" up the rooms sometimes). Sometimes we end up with deathtraps, sometimes we end up with dead end dungeons, and every once in a while it churns out something really neat. But it is never the same dungeon, and it takes absolutley zero prep, and its fun for my group.

I am not sure what type of rule set you are looking for. But pretty much all flavors of D&D-ish games have some sort of random encounter generation. It can be as easy as grabbing some random map off of the internet (or making one on some graph paper, and filling up the rooms with random encounters. You could even chuck in a trap or two for good measure.

But the level of story elements you include are up to you.

I know this will sound like a bash (but in this case it is not), but if youa re just looking for good quick action, and the volume turned down on everything else, I reccomend D&D 4e. Most other rulesets have heavy leanings towards non-combat types of play (which makes it easy for a player to nerf their character during creation, if they select a lot of those abilities for a combat only game), or more simulationist types of play (which require more mastery). 4e on the other hand is largely invested in combat, is easy to pick up, and does not require very much mastery at all to get started (on either the part of the DM or the players). And the combat is fairly tactical, so it makes for a good "romp" system.

Another thing you may consider if you are looking for a pure combat experience, is a board game. There are some FABULOUS dungeon crawl boardgames out there. Hell, there are countless mods and downloadable scenarios for games like Heroquest, Descent, and even the old D&D boardgames. My group rocks those once every couple of months, and they are always fun, and typically have nothing to do with story (mostly about smashing monsters and living to do it again in the next room).

I hope you find what you are looking for.

love,

malkav

DDM is fun, but its not D&D. All damage is rounded to multiples of 5. Powers & defenses are simplified. Units need to be "activated" before they can act, etc. None of the new sets even come with DDM stats anymore, but I think the DDM Guild is working on that.

Another option is to use 4E's random dungeon rules (DMG, p190.) to make a map, then the random encounter rules (DMG, p193) to populate it.

I wonder if you could use the Companion Characters from DMG2 to make streamlined simplified PCs, but still use the regular 4e combat engine.

Verys: I'm actually doing just that for a generic dungeon crawl game I'm building to play with my son. Since he picks characters according to the rule of cool, I have to be able to deal with a party that consists of ninjas, jedi and little green army men.

Sure it'd work fine.

All you have to do to keep it basically fair is to balance each encounter vs the point value/level of the PC party. So say your party is 50 pts worth of characters, then make it a series of 50 pt opponents. (keep an eye on the level too and don't range too far.)

Essentially, your dungeon crawl is a series of small skirmishes, and just try and figure out a way to reset after each encounter by putting in heal potions etc that must be found.

I always had fun with this, primarliy with the kids, but it's work with adults too in an unpretentious, beer and pretzels kind of way

And no, its not D&D, but its a fun way to kill a couple of hours.

Descent: Journey in the Dark from FFG

It's not D&D but it could be exactly what you are looking for:

Descent is a boardgame where one person play the monsters in the dungeon while the rest play the adventurers.

It's made by FFG Fantasy Flight Games [Descent: Journeys in the Dark] - Leading publisher of board, card, and roleplaying games. so it's a big box and not cheap...could be the downside here...

It uses it's own combat system with special dice. Pre-gen char only with the basic rules, but there is a web supplement to create you own.

I would recommend checking the rules in their download section if you think this could be your cup of tea.

Well, if you reset the player characters after every fight, it should work, I suppose.

In 4E D&D, the equivalent of mindless dungeon crawl would probably be a Dungeon Delve. One of the advantages D&D has it that there are established ways for the characters to recover after each battle, but these ways also cost some resources. This facilitates a certain operational/strategic gameplay, and challenges like "Beat this dungeon within 3 days" are possible.
D&D 3E and 4E allow the player characters to engage enemies beyond the parties level i they spend limited resources - consumables, daily powers or spells. I

In a dungeon delve, the challenge seems to be to get as far as possible. You don't get to rest or restock, so you have to use all your daily resources or consumables wisely. I think that is part of the fun of an otherwise mindless hack & slash game.

The D&D miniatures game seems to eschew this aspect by allowing you to run bigger battles with more creatures on all sides.

if you use DDM, you have less flexibility here, at least not without adding rules that describe a more nuanced recovery process than "don't recover anything" or "recovery everything, including lost party members".

lud said:

It's not D&D but it could be exactly what you are looking for:

Descent is a boardgame where one person play the monsters in the dungeon while the rest play the adventurers.

It's made by FFG Fantasy Flight Games [Descent: Journeys in the Dark] - Leading publisher of board, card, and roleplaying games. so it's a big box and not cheap...could be the downside here...

It uses it's own combat system with special dice. Pre-gen char only with the basic rules, but there is a web supplement to create you own.

I would recommend checking the rules in their download section if you think this could be your cup of tea.

Click to expand...

Descent was going to be my suggestion so... seconded.

Mustrum_Ridcully said:

Well, if you reset the player characters after every fight, it should work, I suppose.

In 4E D&D, the equivalent of mindless dungeon crawl would probably be a Dungeon Delve. One of the advantages D&D has it that there are established ways for the characters to recover after each battle, but these ways also cost some resources. This facilitates a certain operational/strategic gameplay, and challenges like "Beat this dungeon within 3 days" are possible.
D&D 3E and 4E allow the player characters to engage enemies beyond the parties level i they spend limited resources - consumables, daily powers or spells. I

In a dungeon delve, the challenge seems to be to get as far as possible. You don't get to rest or restock, so you have to use all your daily resources or consumables wisely. I think that is part of the fun of an otherwise mindless hack & slash game.

Click to expand...

True - to a point.

Players know (and, in my opinion, SHOULD know, in a delve-like situation) that there are three combat encounters to the delve. And that they will generally increase in size. What his means is, if you have players that know they're in a delve, they'll spend minimal dailies on the first fight, one or two on the second, and blow all of them in the third.

I really think, if you're going to run a "mindless" game, that you should inform the players of the encounter duration - Delve encounters are tough, and they're built with the idea that they are complete mini-adventures. Meaning, if players go into encounter #3 with no dailies expended, and don't expend any until late in the fight, they're really gonna get hurt.

That being said, expanding a delve is pretty easy, and can actually make them worthwhile adventures. I expanded a delve for my last adventure, and it turned out really well. I don't think my players would have known it was a delve if it wasn't for the fact that I outright told them.

I should write a thing about using delves that way. It turned out great.