How to randomize?

Those tiles look cool!

Instead of a die roll, what about a card draw? If the tiles are in a display, or just laid out in a pattern (say 4 rows of 5), the cards could highlight 2 or 3 spaces in the grid pattern, and you pick from those. I don't know how many you want to allow players to choose, but the cards could narrow down which are available.

You could consider those cards as a type of "spell", built out of the tiles that it highlights.

we do similar with a card draw for one of our games where there is a chance to select from larger, more fragile components. Works well.

Otherwise you could split out the variable components from the core pretty tile and have them as "things that sit next to the fragile pretty thing"

Also, if you have cards that select from a certain area of your grid, which you keep "full" by shifting tiles after each draw, you could have some cool items that allow you to swap tiles, to move tiles you want into the more optimal section of the grid, to have a better chance of drawing them.

Room Tiles = 5 x 5 = 25 rooms correct?

Lay the tiles face down with red felt up.

On the red felt ( tile cushion ) , write in black perminate marker 1 - 25 on each single tile.

So it should look like this :

1,2,3,4,5,
6,7,8,9,10,
11,12,13,14,15,
16,17,18, 19, 20,
21, 22, 23, 24, 25.

Roll 1d20 and 1d6 at the same time. These two dice are corresponding to the room. Add both numbers. Flip the tile corresponding to the number (s).

If the number 26 comes up, make it two option.
1: Room tile does not exist.
2: Room is a bonus room or pick from the draw pile or choose a wild card?

25 rooms with 20 rolls on the d20 will give you 500 different room combinations to start. Multiply the 1d6 with the 500 and this still gives you 1,100 different room combination starts. So the players never know where the game starts or entering a dungeon only after rolling the
dice.

So in turn, your tiles are rarely disturbed only after the action phase is completed.

Stormyknight1976

Oh, and those tiles do look fantastic. But to state the obvious, if you want to randomise the draw of a square item, it's hard to go past making them as cards.

Shane

I love the idea! The system sounds a lot more simple, not as complex as the earlier system.

It sounds amazing!

That's all.

-Super

The 5x5 grid is a great idea, and I can see two ways of picking tiles from the edges of it.

The first one uses that custom d6 with 1-5 and wildcard, and a second d6 with four colors/directions/elements/etc (depending on theme) and two wildcard sides. For now I'll call the four north, south, east and west. The wildcards could be "choose any" or a north/south and an east/west.

The basic mechanic here is to have markers for lanes 1-5 on all four sides of the grid... the color/direction says which side to use and the number which lane. If that lane is completely empty, all of the tiles in the occupied "cross-lane" furthest from the chosen side are shifted just enough to bring a tile into the target lane. This method will work until there are no tiles at all.

A more random version would be to replace the lane markers with 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, and 16-20, then use a d20 (perhaps with custom coloring to match the sides of the grid). It uses the same sliding mechanism as above, but removes any decision from the player.

I'd probably prefer the former, but if a turn is already frightfully complicated then the d20 can simplify a bit.

In either case, note that corner tiles are more likely to be picked. You could expand the grid to 6x6 and still only have 5 lanes eligible for choosing to even out the probabilities, but it's probably not worth the effort.