pat
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2015
- Messages
- 46
The Red Prison is a roguelike adaption of the Basic Rules for the 5th Edition of D&D that I've been working on since about October of last year. The game is, and always will be, free. I've been posting about it in a couple of places on the Codex and it was suggested that maybe it was worth making a thread for it, so here we are. I didn't know much at all about 5th Edition before starting this game and grew up reading the guidebooks for mostly 2nd Edition stuff, but the game's broad concept is to be the dream roguelike that I imagined as a kid where the computer would effectively DM for you.
It's available for download via steam or itch.io for those who don't want the overhead of steam. It's also open source and the (horrible) code is included with the game for anyone to do with as they want.
http://patjw.itch.io/theredprison
http://store.steampowered.com/app/1074040/The_Red_Prison/
The game features an auto-explore, detailed character creation and party selection. All classes and races are complete enough to be playable, although some are more developed than others. The user interface isn't the most friendly although a lot better than some of the older traditional roguelikes. The game is played exclusively by way of keyboard and a help menu with the full list of keybindings is available in-game by pressing '?'.
Current classes are: fighter, wizard, rogue, cleric and druid. I plan on adding barbarians and warlocks in the near future. Current races are: human, wood elf, high elf, mountain dwarf, hill dwarf, lightfoot halfing, stoutheart halfling, half-elf, half-orc, tiefling, aasimar, kobold and bugbear.
There is a real focus on party mechanics and you and your allies can be revived by others after being knocked unconscious if your team manage to win the battle before you die. These allies are really henchmen rather than player characters in their own right so they don't advance in level but you can order them to equip weapons and armour that you find throughout the dungeon and make use of magic items that your player character can't normally use in that way. That aspect of the game is still a work-in-progress and they can't adapt to using ranged weapons or consumables just yet, although that won't be far off.
You can meet and recruit other NPCs in the dungeon and there are a few different types with different skill sets to explore, particularly mages and priests who can be pretty effective support characters. These NPCs also follow the rules as written pretty closely with only a couple of exceptions - one important one is that guards have the protection fighting style, and because of that they are often a handy addition to any party at a pretty cheap cost. You can also run into organised groups of monsters with their own mages, priests and archers who can pose some really tough challenges for any party.
Another feature is a detailed lighting system combined with some races having darkvision and others going without. You will need to decide whether you use an offhand equipment slot for a torch or whether you explore in the dark and take advantage of the element of surprise or ask your allies to light their torches for you.
The game initially followed the rules as closely as possible so the Basic Rules double as a quasi-manual. All of the various statistics about weapons, armour, monsters and spells are faithfully created in-game from those rules. They’re included with the game but available here for download: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules. I've expanded a bit beyond those rules by including other races and classes from the SRD and the Basic Rules also omit some things like feats. There's also a limitation with the SRD as to what archetypes are available, so that means that every fighter is a champion, every wizard is an evoker, etc.
Some features of 5e D&D don’t translate well to roguelikes, such as initiative, bonus actions, reactions and some other things but hopefully players will find that the game aims to be as accurate a conversion as possible. Wizards work differently because I didn't think it would be all that fun to strictly follow the rules when it comes to spell memorisation and there is no differentiation between long rests and short rests. The way that works is that you need food to rest and don't heal (outside of magic or potions) otherwise, and food is a relatively scarce resource. There is no hunger mechanic as per traditional roguelikes.
The general development goals from here are to keep adding the more complicated features, such as a more complicated speed system which will allow for longer actions to be specified (such as casting or shooting or moving stealthily), along with more spells, more items, more monsters, more detailed party interactions and a much more sophisticated encounter system where monster distribution makes more sense than just random placement of enemies in a random dungeon with the eventual implementation of a firm endgame to work towards. There's broader plans for the creation of an overworld, towns and multiple dungeons to explore, but that's in the distant future.
Keep in mind that because it's pretty early in the development cycle and an everchanging codebase, there are bound to be rough edges and bugs. I try and fix these as quickly as I find out about them and release new versions regularly to do so, but there is a very realistic chance of crashes. There's also a lack of in-game documentation, but that's a deliberate decision to not tackle that side of things yet until I get the bulk of the content done. Those not familiar with D&D will probably be lost, although if you have a fair idea of the rules, hopefully things are understandable.