Steampunk "dungeon crawl" tentatively named "London Underground."

Thanks for the feedback.

I do think that, if you tend to avoid dungeon crawlers, then this might not appeal to you. However, since you say that you particularly like steampunk, what are you looking for in a game that really says 'steampunk' to you?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you say that the Darkness thing sounds like a level cap. I don't know if I've described it poorly or if I don't understand what you mean by a level cap, but I don't think it is the same at all.

The Darkness doesn't affect the players at all (which is what I think of as a level cap). It determines which encounters and rewards will be used for a particular room.

Here's how I see the mechanic coming into play from the player's point of view, which I'll describe with an example game with a reasonably experienced player guiding.

Ok, we only have an hour to play, so let's choose the Mad Scientist quest, which says 45-60 minutes. His traits are Electric and Magnetic, so we expect to see more of those types of encounters. His appearance criteria is (d6 + Turn Number) > 16 so we're safe until turn 10, but we'd better be into the darker sections of the underground by turn 7 or we'll never get the gear we need to beat him.

With Magnetic ability, he probably has some serious mind control. The sheet on this boss suggests that you include either the Grenadier or the Master of Electricity in the party -- that's because the Grenadier has a sonic bomb that doesn't do much damage but does snap people out of mind control, and the Master of Electricity has a shock ability that has the same effect, but better controlled. Bob wants to play a Mesmerist, he'll be using his own mind control effects, so the sonic bombs will hurt us as much as help us. I'll take the Master of Electricity and I'll be in charge of breaking any mind control on us.

I also have a lightning rod ability that will help protect us all from electric damage. However, most of my offense is lightning-based, which won't affect electrical creatures at all. So, Anne, do you want to take something that can just flat out deal damage? How about a Big Game Hunter or a Musketeer?

For a basic strategy, we should try to stay around 8 Darkness until we gear up enough to handle the tougher encounters. We'll need, at the least, some better electric protection and some more damage output. Around turn 7 or 8 we need to head as dark as we can, and hope to get lucky. We'll need to pick up some top tier gear before he shows up on turn 12 or so.

I agree that this game has less steampunk feel to it than I would like. I've made many of the gear be improvements to current gear, rather than just replacements, but that is really window dressing. Any suggestions for improvement would be very welcome.

I do plan for this not to be a "dungeon" so much as a buried city, but that's just artwork. I used the phrase 'dungeon crawl' as a shortcut for people here to understand the basic play style, but I wouldn't use it generally. I totally agree that, for this to succeed, the artwork has to be really great.

I've considered changing the "Darkenss" term to something else, but nothing else that I've thought of really works. I do think it is a little more than artificial scaling, because the players have some amount of control over it. But other than that minor quibble, I agree with your issue. That mechanic idea was the original impetus to designing this game, that the game board is built from tiles, but the players' choice of where to go actually matters.

Thanks for the tip about Assault on Doomrock. It looks like it has a similar feel. I'll have to see if I can borrow a copy somewhere.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your thoughtful feedback. It's really great, even (especially, perhaps) if some of it is discouraging.

Thanks! I have been working on it, slowly but steadily. While the starting point is still http://zag.wikidot.com/dungeon-crawl, most of the work I've done on it is in the spreadsheet, which is not publicly shared.
(It is a spreadsheet to prepare for Nandeck, an awesome tool for making cards. I'm almost ready to start that step.)

If you would like to see it, I'll be glad to give access -- send me a private message with an email that Google Drive recognizes.

I (actually, mostly my son) has added a new concept recently, which is reflected in the spreadsheet. As a nod to the whole steampunk concept, all weapons are highly gadgetizable. For example, the Musketeer starts with a basic long arm firearm. It has three components, all standard in his initial weapon, but possibly swapped out with things he find: The stock, the trigger mechanism, and the barrel. He might find an auto-loader trigger mechanism, making his musket a much faster weapon. He might find a Lightning-enhanced barrel, which still fires the bullet but also releases an electric charge. etc.

Similarly, the melee weapons are gadgetizable. The knight templar has a great sword, made up a hilt, blade, tip, and guard. He might replace the basic blade with a chainsaw blade, the hilt with a Holy hilt, etc.