On Depthcrawls + The Hundred Hands Depthcrawl

Part 1: The Depthcrawl

Depthcrawls are a new way to track space in RPGs, pioneered by Cavegirl's Gardens of Ynn. They are presented as a table, rolled on with an increasing bonus (the Depth), until a goal is reached.

Each of these rolls gives you a location. Each time the players pass through one of these locations, their Depth increases by one. This leads to them to the higher end of the table, and stranger environments.

For example, your players have just entered a depthcrawl, so you roll, and get a 13, which the table says is an abandoned tower. They are currently at Depth 0, because they just arrived. When they leave the tower and keep going, they would reach Depth 1, and you would roll on the table with a +1 bonus.

As well as locations, depthcrawls will usually have extra tables - Gardens of Ynn has an encounter table (rolled after the PCs spend time in a location) and a detail table. These tables are unaffected by Depth.

Players can also move backwards (returning to a location and decreasing Depth) or sideways (rolling a new location and not changing Depth).

Depthcrawls are very situational - generally, they're best used in environments that are either fluid (alternate planes like the Gardens of Ynn) or large enough to have wandering around seem sensible (an abandoned city).

Recently, depthcrawls have become more common, with blogs like I Don't Remember That Move creating new ones. After a discussion on Discord, Morgan (of no blog, sadly) and I created a framework to use for depthcrawl generation.

Part 2: The Template  

an epiphany

The template is made of three steps: the Aesthetic, the Threat, and the Goal.

The Aesthetic is the location of the crawl itself - the Gardens of Ynn are Alice in Wonderland-like, the Stygian Library is an endless repository of books, and Seraphim's Gate is a distorted assembly of cathedrals.

The Threat is something specific to this location - not just monsters in general, but something particular. In the Garden, the Threat is environmental, in the form of the Idea of Thorns. It could also be a particularly dominating group, like the Stygian Library's orders of librarians.

Finally, the Goal is the thing at the center, all the way at the highest depth. The Library's all-knowing computer, or Araquiel, the angel at the center of Seraphim's Gate. This should be something other than "a load of money" - it should be unattainable anywhere outside of the depthcrawl.

Template Example

We're going to use this as our example setting.

Our Aesthetic is winding tunnels of stone hands, interspersed with clusters of different stone organs - a room of eyes, one of stomachs, and so on.

Our Threat is the embodied sins. While you fight them as monsters, they are also influences, slowly affecting your mind as you spend time in the maze.

Obviously, our Goal is the ascended's brain, which shows you how to follow that long-forgotten person into the Final Heaven.

Part 3: Filling the Frame

Now that we have an outline, we can start to fill it in.

First, you want to determine how long you want the depthcrawl to be - this will decide how large of an environment table you need.

For short depthcrawls, make an 8-entry Environment table, and roll a d4. This gives you a minimum of 5 locations, and a maximum of 8.

Medium-size depthcrawls can use a 15-entry Environment table, rolling a d6. This gives you a minimum of 10 locations, and a maximum of 15.

Large depthcrawls should be of comparable size to the Gardens of Ynn - a 35-entry table with a d20 roll. This gives you a minimum of 15 locations, and a maximum of 35.

The last result of any of these is X+ - so for a short depthcrawl, the last result on the table is 8+, not just 8.

Now, you fill the table, with more mundane entries on the lower end, and stranger ones at the higher end. The Hundred Hands is going to be small depthcrawl (because I'm lazy and it's just an example), so this is my table.

1. A cavernous, empty room made of hands all grasping each other.
2. A bone of the ascended, full of holes. The wind slowly plays it like a flute, frightening spirits. Every turn you spend here decreases your Sinfulness by one.
3. The ascended's lungs, slowly expanding and filling with lightly hallucinogenic incenses.
4. One of the ascended's eyes, focusing any light in the room into a web of burning beams.
5. The stomach, which is half-filled with acid. Stone sculptures of food float over the acid, unharmed.
6. Petrification is slow. This room of hands still lives. They grasp blindly at anything touching them.
7. The heart, the size of a house. It is crossed with rivers of pure, cold water, and rains constantly. These rivers cannot be forded without equipment. The rain makes the stone slippery - when under stress, characters must make a DEX check or slip.
8. The brain, sitting on a stone pedestal. If you have a Sinfulness of more than 5, it prevents you from touching it. 

Aside: Sinfulness

Sinfulness is being used to track the PC's ability to ascend. At 2 Sinfulness, they must make a Wisdom save each hour or act according to their dominant sin (whichever one has dealt the most Sinfulness to them). On a failed save, they will still act, but they will act in accordance to their sin (someone dominantly Slothful will still set up a bridge over a chasm, they'll just be really lazy about it). At 4 Sinfulness, the PC must make a Wisdom save each hour or completely follow the dominant sin (someone dominantly Slothful will lie around and complain that they have to do any work). Past 5 Sinfulness, you are unable to ascend.

After you finish your main table, you should create an encounter table. This one is unaffected by Depth, but should be about the size of your environment table - you can expect to roll on both of them the same amount of times.

In this case, (because I'm lazy) each of the 8 monsters are a different Sin. Some are embodied, taking forms of hard stone. They can be treated as Golems, with an extra attack that provokes Wisdom saves or increases Sinfulness. Others are disembodied, floating invisibly through the air to whisper in your ears. They can be treated as Ghosts, except instead of level drain they inflict Sinfulness.

1. Sloth (embodied) - an enormously fat, cheerful statue. Obstinately blocks your path, has a job it wants you to do for it - 1. move this heavy rock 2. find my lost ring 3.  4. nothing, it's just not moving.
2. Pride (embodied) - a glorious marble sculpture. Automatically hostile unless praised.
3. Wrath (embodied) - acts like a professional wrestler. Wants a challenge - it doesn't have to be you.
4. Envy (disembodied) - wants the prettiest/most magic/otherwise superlative item you have. Can be tricked.
5. Greed (disembodied) - will just start stealing your stuff. Runs if attacked.
6. Gluttony (disembodied) - clamps on to the highest CON character and starts to drain them (1 CON per round).
7. Lust (disembodied) - wants to go on a date. Candles, nice food, the whole thing.

Part 4: Depthcrawl Variations

One of the biggest problems with depthcrawls is a lack of player choice - they just go, continuing forwards until they hit the point where the game is done.

Morgan has made many complex variations on the depthcrawl in order to solve this (along with other problems, like the amount of time it takes to generate areas with detail tables). They're all great, and you should definitely take a look at them. 

Along with those, I have a simple variant of my own - a branching pointcrawl. To add more choice in the players' exploration, roll 1d4 locations each time, showing the players each one. When they move to one, then roll details and encounters for that particular location.