so many years ago I got the D&D board game and enjoyed it way way way too much for what it was

but

I keep thinking back to it sometimes, and the limitations of board games at the time

SOOOOOOO

I realized one of the big limitations of any tabletop RPG is that people inherently don't wanna GM. They want the GM to favor them, sure, but they don't WANT to GM.

It looks 'too hard'.

Well, I'm kind of an expert at breaking 'too hard' shit I can do into pieces. ^_^

SOOOOOOO

I had this idea for a game of at least two (but possibly more, details later) players

where everybody's GMing, effectively

the way it works is that adventurers in a distant land are trying to climb the Tower Of Towers, a vast construction with hundreds of winding passages leading up to the Treasury at the top of the Tower.

All the passages lead up there -- in theory.

In practice, the question is who can survive what enemies and what traps.

Now, the ToT has claimed hundreds and hundreds of adventurers over the years. The ones first to the Treasury may well go down in history not as a name, but as a legend -- as The Bard, The Warrior, The Rogue.

So they don't have names.

You pick your character for your tower run. Your opponent does as well.

Floor cards are dealt out -- each has a 5x5 space. Four of them make a 20x20 maze.

Each of you builds -- behind a shield -- a small floor map.

And then each of you puts your hero into the entrance (a Stairway card is outside the 4x4 grid of cards, allowing them passage into the Tower's first floor).

And then, with a structured subset of classic traps and schemes and tricks, and with dice rolls, you each play referee for the other one's passage through the Tower's floor.

Every turn it's a switch-off. It's a race to a treasure while training someone in fundamental GM basics.

Now, the basics all fit together, at least in my head.

I did say "or more" earlier, and to clarify, this is what I meant:

If you have three players, EACH builds a tower floor.

And EACH tower gets one adventurer per not-GM-ing player.

This would be a problem after about, say, four people, I think. (It might be uncomfortable after three, depending on how big the floor decks are, too. Logistics, sigh.)

But! I think it could be lovely. ^_^

@sydneyfalk i'm into this :o

@catterfly

Awww, thanks. ^_^ Maybe I should codify this stuff more and actually look at the missing parts.

It'd take some art effort I probably should not do myself, but I could do placeholders and write the stuff. Need to playtest, but I could probably do that in Tabletop Simulator if I really had to, hm.

Well -- I'll figure something out eventually. I always do. ^_^

@sydneyfalk i can do art 👀