I was going to repost my game design thread from Twitter on here but there is so much that would be pointless to transfer over, let's consolidate it all! I'm working on a dominoes based solo rpg board game called Styx and Bones. It features a bunny for the player and uses some dice for encounter tables. It won't be ready for release for awhile, but it's been making good progress. I'll be posting updates in a thread here as well, so be sure to keep up!

One of the good things to transfer over is this, today's poll! I'm thinking about making an "easy" dungeon for Styx and Bones available, aka a preset layout, but then that ruins the point of the randomness of it... but it would make progression doable for new players.... Should I or should I keep it 100% random?

Here in a bit I'll be working on giving the rest of my monsters' stats and setting up a Tutorial Dungeon. This is going to be a fun day. Need to remember to photograph it when I have the dungeon finalized so I can do the layout on my laptop later.

Let's get to work. I'll need to work on the item economy after today, but when that's done, it'll be ready for play testing!

Trying to decide if the tutorial dungeon should be full size or half size for teaching the ins and outs. Either way, you still won't encounter every monster, there's 59 monsters and 58 rooms.

Final decision made, only one boss chamber in the tutorial!

While testing this layout, I found I either need to boost the player stats or weaken the monsters as you can barely make it to the first full heal area without really lucky rolls. Also found that speed is broken in favor of the player more often than not, but keeping that.

I'm torn on something: Should I just work on balancing out the difficulty to try to make it tough but fair... or should I make it completely breakable while also making it easier for everyone overall? I've made it not even halfway through the tutorial dungeon in my test play and am working on the balancing issues.

For clarification, if I make it easier, it'll just be a couple of stat boosts on the Player as well as making the equipment far more powerful than minor increases allowing you to just wail on things in the dungeon.

I'm having fun with the stats, despite getting a headache looking at a long list of numbers. Take these two. The base goblin is an early encounter, while the Goblin King is meant for late game. More health, but no attack, speed, or reward. They're lazy, they don't do much.

I started the monster stats in April. I finished the rough draft today. That means I just need to start testing and balancing and making the items to boost where necessary and I'll be ready for open testing :D