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[pat]

The Red Prison is a roguelike adaption of the Basic Rules for the 5th Edition of D&D. It’s been in development for about five or so months and it’s quickly progressed to a fairly advanced playable prototype.

Download:

http://patjw.itch.io/theredprison
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1074040/The_Red_Prison/

Every week I upload compiled builds for Windows and should be playable for Linux through Wine.

The game features four classes (fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric) and four base races with subraces (human, mountain dwarf, hill dwarf, wood elf, high elf, lightfoot halfling and stoutheart halfling). Currently most low level content is in the game along with an ever expanding bestiary. I’m in the process of working on mid-level content and high level features is an eventual goal.



The game features auto-explore, detailed character creation and party selection. All classes and races are complete enough to be playable. 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. You can meet and recruit other NPC’s in the dungeon and there are a few different types with different skill sets to explore, although magic-using allies are still a work in progress but they can be pretty effective support characters. You can 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 or ask your allies to light their torches for you.

The game follows 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

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.

The general development goals from here are to keep adding the more complicated features, 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.

If anyone is keen to give it a go and give me some feedback, I’d be very appreciative!

[ZeroGravitas]

Interesting... I'm not sure how 5e really makes sense without a full implementation of the action economy - like how does two-weapon fighting work if you can't do a bonus action attack?

Still, nice to see a really straightforward combat system in a roguelike after wading through the obscurantism that is DCSS's combat system.

[pat]

You’re absolutely right and that’s the exact reason why I haven’t implemented two weapon fighting yet. It’s a tricky problem but I’ll think of something!

Other bonus actions are represented in the game though, eg. casting healing word doesn’t take a turn but you can only do it once until you otherwise move or attack.

[Scripten]

Perhaps a template system might be workable? That is, allow the player to select an action, bonus action, and free action in a menu and then use those selections in combat with hotkeys.

So, for example, a barbarian might choose for their opening combat action:

Free: Draw weapon
Bonus: Rage
Action: Attack

While a Rogue might choose:

Free: Draw weapon
Action: Attack
Bonus: Disengage

As far as Initiative is concerned, I would recommend using the rules as closely as possible there. That is, maybe create a FIFO list of creatures, upon combat start, ordered by initiative roll. You could even handle stealth and surprise through that system by using a boolean "is being stealthy" variable on creatures. Granted, I don't know how the code is set up, but that was my first impression.

Overall, it looks pretty fun!

[Teneb]

This is pretty interesting.

As for the two-weapon fighting you could either go with what Scripten said, which I think would work nicely, or just automate dual-wielding attacks.

I wonder: will you eventually include the subclasses that I like 5e for?

[pat]

That type of system could definitely work but one of the problems it would create is how many keystrokes it would require to do relatively simple things like move and fight.

I’ve actually implemented moving and attacking on the same turn but it’s turned off because it just wasn’t fun in roguelike form. One of the problems is that enemies have to use the same system and while I understood what was going on (because I wrote it) it seemed really opaque and it was really difficult to understand why monsters were seemingly taking multiple actions. All in all, it just didn’t feel fun so I compromised on that for now and I think the game is better for it. I think the same probably applies to initiative as well - there’s potentially fifty odd creatures moving all at once and there isn’t a clear line between where combat starts and where it stops, so that’s why initiative was effectively omitted.

I think my current system hybrid system of traditional roguelike gameplay with bonus actions essentially as free turns when they crop up is a reasonable interpretation of it, although everything’s a work-in-progress.

[pat]

This is pretty interesting.

As for the two-weapon fighting you could either go with what Scripten said, which I think would work nicely, or just automate dual-wielding attacks.

I wonder: will you eventually include the subclasses that I like 5e for?

I’ll probably end up implementing two-weapon fighting like that - you just hit twice in the same turn. It’s a bit of an oversimplification but it might prove to be the neatest solution.

In terms of subclasses, I naively chose to limit myself to the Basic Rules because I thought it would be simple and quick to code! Six months later I’m under no illusions about how wrong that is, but I’m deliberately limiting the scope to the basics in the hope of managing to just get it done, not to mention the fact that I’m limited by what’s in the SRD.

There’s a few extras that I’ve been toying with the idea of implementing but I’ve really been focussed on less-is-more so I can get a reasonably complete game out the door. So unfortunately, additional classes are very much a stretch goal. Half-orcs are a chance of sneaking in as a fifth race, but I don’t have specific plans to go much further just yet.

[Robsoie]

I have no idea about what's specific to both 4th or 5th edition of D&D as my last knowledge of D&D was with version 3 and previous , but i already like this simply for the fact that you have a party instead of yet another solo character roguelike.

As a suggestion maybe when you're leveling you may make a notice that your character gained a new ability, as i had no idea i got a new one when my character went level 2 after we destroyed a ghoul then a giant crab.

Other than that, is there a way to manage your party members equipment at this version of the game ? if not how do they equip themselves, do they level up ?

[pat]

As a suggestion maybe when you're leveling you may make a notice that your character gained a new ability, as i had no idea i got a new one when my character went level 2 after we destroyed a ghoul then a giant crab.

Other than that, is there a way to manage your party members equipment at this version of the game ? if not how do they equip themselves, do they level up ?

You’re right, there should be a notification of new abilities gained - that’ll be in the next version released next week.

At this stage, no one uses equipment but for the PC. I’m planning on developing the AI so that NPC’s and monsters can pick up and use items, but it’s not done yet. The code for them to use random weapons in combat is actually fully done but the issue is the decision making behind it. That’s a medium-term goal and I expect to be working on it relatively soon. I really want to write an encounter system where the player is given a quest to kill a powerful monster wielding a magic weapon or something along those lines, with the reward being that you can claim it for yourself!

Edit: and they don’t level up - they are NPC’s with stats taken strictly from the rules as written. You can of course recruit more powerful allies as you meet them in the dungeon.

[Robsoie]

Thanks , i'm liking what i see so far, and the possibility to get new recruits in the dungeon is very interesting.

[ZeroGravitas]

Other bonus actions are represented in the game though, eg. casting healing word doesn’t take a turn but you can only do it once until you otherwise move or attack.

I think this makes a lot of sense. On my d&d community's discord server we get a lot of new players, so we're often explaining how two-weapon fighting works, and the conclusion is almost always, "wow that's so bad, why would i ever use it" with the general sentiment being that two-weapon fighting should just allow 1 off-hand attack whenever you attack. which also solves the problem neatly for you.

most other bonus action class features will be perfectly well-served as an action you take that just doesn't end your turn, like manipulating your sorcery points as a sorcerer. there will be some weird corner cases because the bonus action system does a lot of the balance work in 5e. healing word is a good example; it's a bonus action spell, but that then cuts you off from casting other spells (except cantrips). same issue with a sorcerer quickening a non-cantrip spell.

great weapon master might be tricky as it would be "attack -> if you crit OR kill something, then bonus action attack" but it doesn't seem insurmountable.

[Mephansteras]

Neat, I'll have to keep an eye on this.

[pat]

great weapon master might be tricky as it would be "attack -> if you crit OR kill something, then bonus action attack" but it doesn't seem insurmountable.

That’s where the limitations of the Basic Rules work in my favour. Feats aren’t explicitly included and a lot of the difficult scenarios don’t eventuate in those rules. Your post actually made me panic and think that I implemented the great weapon fighting style wrongly haha!

[pat]

New version uploaded: https://patjw.itch.io/theredprison



Changes include a number of UI tweaks to make things work smoother with some more user friendliness. I've also started work behind the scenes on a broader arc of advanced dungeon/quest generation. I've built the system for displaying conversations and the like for players as they run into NPC's of importance and I'm currently going through the process of how I want that aspect of the game to be fleshed out.

I think the leading approach at this stage might be to have a portion of the dungeon on a level inaccessible until the player speaks to a quest giver who tasks the player with killing a tough mob of monsters, recovering a treasure or another task along those lines. I want to make it so that choices have some complexity, ie. you might be able to decide to forego the treasure and turn on the quest giver, and that's the part I'm taking some care to plan.

[sambojin]

I'll have to check this out on my weekend. Looks interesting.