I've been looking at Giffyglyph's mod for D&D called "Darker Dungeons". It's partly inspired by the CRPG "Darkest Dungeon", and intentionally adds more difficulty to the game. Resting takes longer, characters have to worry about thirst, starvation, and stress. Combat can result in lingering wounds, spells have a chance to cause burnout.

Most telling of all, though, is character creation. It is entirely random. You get a random race, class, background, basically anything that would normally give you a choice is instead rolled. (Stats are rolled in order, but you're allowed to make a single reroll, and a single swap, to better improve your chances of being at least somewhat competent.)

The idea is that you take what fate hands you, and try to survive in spite of any shortcomings.

But what if character-creation isn't all that's random? There's a site called Donjon that is crammed full of random generators -- it can even whip out random world maps and calendars, in addition to NPCs, towns, taverns, dungeons, stuff like that.

So the idea would be to create a whole world from random elements, as they are needed. Start with the world map and the calendar, then pick one of the cities on the map and make a random close-in map. Add random taverns and shops as they come up, stock them with random NPCs. And when the group finds out about another tomb or ruin or other dungeon, see what the RNG makes with it.

Inevitably, PCs will die. Especially when the rules are as unforgiving as this one. But a new PC is simply one click away in the random generator.

Nobody would know what is down the road -- even the DM -- until the PCs get there. And fairness would require the DM to take what comes up, on the first go, no matter what.

I'd definitely be interested in this project.

I'll admit, I have 100% considered doing almost exactly this. Using Azgaar's Map Generator for the world, Watabou's City Generator for settlements, the numerous generators you mention on Donjon... there's enough out there to make virtually everything you'd need.

It'd be interesting if, like a roguelike, progression was 'account based' rather than 'character based' - the players earn XP and magic item and carry them over from PC to PC.

Yes. Yes!

Sounds like good sport.  But if you are planning to make characters completely random you probably want to start it at 3rd level or above, as that is where the classes start to become balanced with each other.

If you do have players earn XP, have it be the players, replacement characters keep the same xp and item count (not necessarily the same items).

Well, there are a few ways to do that:

1. Hardcore Old-School: Don't. New PCs are 1st level, with 0 XP. They might inherit better gear to help them survive, but it's up to the party to keep the newcomer alive until they get their feet under them.
   
2. Random Lagging: New PCs are a random number of levels (including zero) behind the party. The amount would be based on tier; higher-level groups can afford to have someone be farther behind for a bit.
   
3. Inheritance: PCs can 'bank' XP during down-time; if they die, their next PC can start with XP drawn from that pool.

Gear and magic items can always migrate over, assuming the dead PC didn't have something buried with them. That's why you write up a will, so everyone knows what to do with your stuff.

Oh, and:

I don't think so. See, the thing about this particular mod -- "Darker Dungeons" -- is that it intentionally throws balance out the window. You start with what you're handed, and try to play smart with what you have. You survive in spite of it, not because of it.

For instance, you don't gain any special equipment or abilities from Backgrounds in this system. Skills, proficiencies, yeah, but not features. Also, feats aren't used in it. Characters simply improve stats when they gain an ASI level.
This message was last edited by the user at 06:35, Tue 08 Jan 2019.

I dunno, it sounds to me like this DD mod and Randomworld are two different ideas. The former is a dubious attempt to make 5e into a grim and gritty system, something that's a log ways away from its default state, and the other an exercise in aleatoricism. It might be worth considering them separately.

I'd be interested in this.

This does sound very intriguing.

This sounds like a very interesting idea. I really enjoy playing Darkest Dungeons and I like how easy it is to die in the game if you made just one wrong move. I'd love to play & see how this game pans out if you do decide to run it.

Throwing my hat in the ring as well. Darkest Dungeon has been fascinating, so this could be an interesting experiment.

Sounds interesting. Would like to participate or at least watch what happens.

I would be willing to play a character or help with the system. I've pondered this idea myself, but declined to run it because it seemed like too much work.
What sort of atmosphere did you have in mind? Darkest Dungeon is heavily inspired by horror fantasy, especially Lovecraft. I feel that choosing an atmosphere is one way to add character to this game. Would you be interested in randomly generating that as well?

I'd like to see these house-ruled back in. In my opinion these are one of the ways to have character individuality in 5e, and I don't think it would take away from the randomness of the idea... heck, leave them in and roll for them!

I'm considering the background features. But one of the core conceits of this particular mod is not using feats except maybe as rewards.

As for the atmosphere, I'm not going to go heavy on aberrations or the like. It's likely to be a regular mix of threat types, just with the caveat that the heroes aren't "Big Damn Heroes". I'm looking for heroic, not foolhardy.

'Course, if the RNG decides to throw me an aboleth lord corrupting a city, then by all means we're gonna have us some weirdness going on.

Another idea would be to have each player maintain a set of three characters, only one of which can be active at a time, all of which are rolled randomly.  So when one dies they can either swap in one of the other two or the new one they roll up to replace the now vacant third slot.

Or when one character needs a long recovery but everyone else is good to go...

Y'know, that might work. But each character would have to earn XP on their own, I wouldn't want any of them gaining levels for being benched. It could also give the group a way to handle more low-level work.

But there's a drawback to that. It could slow things down while everyone debates back and forth on which of their characters to take on a delve. Also, that's more characters to keep track of, and there are already a bunch of moving parts being added that aren't normally part of the game.

Anyway. Here's a link to the game, we can iron out the details there.

link to another game

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 09:01, Wed 09 Jan 2019.