Using Roguelikes to Create a TableTop Role-Playing Game (Part one)

 According to Wikipedia: 

“Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character.”

Roguelikes are a great genre of games that were originally made to emulate Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), more specifically the dungeon crawling aspect of them, so that the developers of these Roguelikes could play their own game without being spoilt to their solution, and since the dungeons were procedurally generated, this was perfect. I want to do the opposite of what roguelikes tried to do and make a TableTop Role-Playing Game (TTRPG) using roguelike concepts.

So, to begin; to effectively emulate a roguelike, the TTRPG needs to have these key elements:

• A dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels

• Turn-based gameplay

• Grid-based movement

• Permanent death of the player character

These elements are already kind of incorporated into common TTRPGs, because D&D was based off of a grid-based, miniature wargame called Chainmail, which included these elements of turn-based gameplay and grid-based movement.

So, miniature wargames have a few similarities with roguelikes, which in turn, we can incorporate into the TTRPG. With two elements out of the way, there are only dungeon crawls through procedurally generated levels and Permanent death of the player character, also known as permadeath. Now, dungeon crawls have been a staple of TTRPGs since their creation, hence D&D’s name; Dungeons & Dragons. Procedural generation of dungeons are a bit tricky, but D&D does have system for random dungeon generation, where dice are rolled on a table and you draw the result, I’ve always been fascinated by this, and spent hours on my own rolling a dungeon from scratch, so incorporating a similar system into the TTRPG is a must. That leaves just permadeath, which has also been a staple of TTRPGs since the beginning. When a character dies in D&D, they are dead unless resurrected or revived by other means. This brings the main difference between TTRPGs and Roguelikes, which is that TTRPGs are often party-based games, a collection of players collectively co-operating, while roguelikes are often single-player games, where a single player embarks on a dungeon crawl. For the TTRPG, I’ll try to accommodate both party and single play.

In part two, I’ll go into dice and random dungeon generation in the TTRPG.