Getting Rid of Dungeons

 i'm going to take a look at the GLOG and see what happens when the dungeon is removed from it!

this is a question i'm having because i've been seeing a lot of non-fantasy non-dungeon crawling glogs flying around lately, and i'm curious.

the goal is to come out of it with a set of general guidelines when taking the dungeon out of the glog, hopefully applicable to games outside the glog as well.

that said, here are the general guidelines.

1.  most importantly this is the big tl;dr point of my post: Dungeon Delving is a specific gameplay loop based on wagering resources. See this diagram from this blog post.

you will need to replace this loop with a different loop.

2. The fundamental systems of dungeon delving games are all Resources--specifically in dungeon and out of dungeon.

3. in dungeon resources: inventory space, light, time (minutes), hp, supplies, secondary resources (MD, ammunition)

this also includes mechanics like random encounters which turn time into a resource.

4. out of dungeon resources: time (weeks), gold, XP (characters)

5. for each of these systems (and the specific mechanics that comprise them), consider whether you need it in your game. Some things, like light (as a resource), really only make sense in dungeon contexts. Some things, like HP, will likely be tweaked rather than thrown out entirely.

Still, really consider them! some things that seem easy choices may not be--gold for example. I'm of the opinion that a cyberpunk game with a currency and a price list is worse for it--but that's just me. Or XP, which, divorced from the mechanic of gold as XP, probably shouldn't be tracked as a granular number!

the glog folks' Delta templates (by squigboss) are an alternative XP mechanic that i would guess has risen up as an answer to games that are deemphasizing dungeon play. tell me if i'm wrong though, i'm still a newcomer.

6. What's left?
core conflict resolution mechanics (dice, stats, rolls)
combat + harm
Characters.

more importantly, nothing else--what's left is barely a game. You could play it, but it just turns into a shittier version of what D&D 5E does, with all the onus to guide players to what they should be doing at any given moment placed on the "adventure" and the skill of the GM. ripping out dungeons has ripped out the game from the game.

Take a good look at your dungeon-less game, whether it's a gloghack or one pager or whatever. Does it have a strong, clear, gameplay loop? if not, it probably needs one.

*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~

and here's me running through a glog and thinking things out. (which i did before writing the above)

 i'm using Skerple's Many Rats on Sticks.

just going through it in order:

1. Core Rules

    these are pretty foundational. No reliance on dungeons here, though you'll probably want to change up those derived stats depending on what your goals are.

2. Combat.

    There's quite a bit of stuff that is fantasy, but nothing that explicitly requires a dungeon. We see our first hints of dungeon-based design with the list of things you can do on your turn--keeping strict track of movespeed down to the foot is way less important outside of the cramped corridors of dungeons. quick draw slots are more general, but still assume you really care about inventory shenanigans.

    healing is interesting. healing itself isn't a dungeon only thing, but the way its been done is. that it requires resources--both actual rations and time is one system that slots into the gameplay loops dungeon crawling creates.

    there's also the types of healing, specifically short and small vs long and complete, though this is less dungeon specific.

3. Death and Dismemberment

    not really tied to dungeons. moving on.

4. Inventory and Items (+light sources and hirelings)

    inventory management is one of the crucial, foundational systems to the dungeon gameplay loop. You cannot bring everything you could possibly need into the dungeon. You may not be able to bring everything you want out. It does a lot of things, such as making multiple trips a common requirement (along with limited hp pools). Same with light as a resource, which interacts more with time (though in practice, i've never really had a moment outside of extreme circumstances where light was an issue).

    games without dungeons will probably not need to track inventories so meticulously, and will probably use more abstracted systems, if they have a system at all.

5. Dungeon and Wilderness Procedures

    as for dungeon procedures, nuff said. Most of this section is devoted to time, one of the fundamental resources in the dungeon.

    Wilderness is interesting. Why do we have wilderness in dungeoncrawling games? all the land in these kinds of games can be roughly divided into dungeon, town, wilderness. what purpose does putting obstacles in between the dungeon and the town serve?

    you could just say "to represent the distance between things in real life," but that doesn't really satisfy me. if that were true, we'd just have a system to convert distance into time/resources spent traveling and mark it off.

    The inclusion of wilderness rules (what a hex is, traversing hexes, populating hexes) indicates a sandbox style of play. That's their purpose. Notice a game like troika, which really deemphasizes the sandbox, does not come with wilderness or travel rules.

    forgive me, i've never read AFF so troika was my go to pull.

6. introduction for new players

    OSR stuff, not dependent on dungeons.

7. Characters!

    now we get some meat. First up, gold for XP. this is very strongly tied to the dungeon delving loop. XP is gold is a resource that is *spent,* else splitting gold/xp would not be a thing! XP is not a tracker or a measure of progression. In dungeon delving games, it is a resource. This is why retirement mechanics are a thing! any XP being spent on a character past level four is not as "effective" as it would be on a character under level four.

    the social class systems are for medieval stuff, moving on.

    Not gonna get into every little ability but here are some highlights.

    ancestries--some ancestry abilities are very dungeon-y (can eat rotten food as rations) some are not (can track a creature by smell)

    Notches assumes and is balanced around the fact that you are delving into meat grinder regularly. beware when adapting it to systems with other assumptions.

    anything with omens, for obvious reasons. random encounters are often the only time pressure the game is bearing on the players.

    magic dice, as a secondary resource to be managed in the dungeon gameplay loop. (plus spells as reward)

8. Tables and stuff

    The thing to note here is the price list. What purpose does tracking the actual cost of things serve, as opposed to a more abstract system such as wealth levels?

    honestly its probably just that it slots nicely into the gold treasure thing. in exchange for the large mental burden of keeping track of gold down to the copper piece, you get a single measure for quantifying the expense of both small basics like rations and torches, reoccuring costs like hirelings and projects, as well as large purchases like castles or boats.

    trying to simplify the system on one end makes it incompatible with the other. Even abstracting copper and silver out causes issues.

and that's that!