Adventure Game Type

Reference for the adventure game type — designer configuration and player rules.

For platform-level configuration shared across all game types, see Shared Game Configuration.

Game Parameter

Designer Configuration

How the World Fits Together

Game
  ├── Locations (the places characters can be)
  │     ├── Item placements (items initially found here)
  │     ├── Creature placements (creatures initially here)
  │     ├── Wandering monster spawn point (periodic random spawning)
  │     └── Location objects (interactive scenery)
  │             ├── Object states (e.g. locked, open, broken)
  │             └── Object effects (what happens when players act on the object)
  ├── Location links (paths between locations)
  │     └── Link requirements (conditions to see or use a path)
  ├── Items (things characters can carry)
  │     └── Item effects (what happens when players act on an item)
  ├── Creatures (monsters and NPCs)
  └── Wandering monster tables (reusable weighted creature lists)
        └── Entries (creature + weight)

Location

Named places in the adventure world. The world is built by connecting locations with links.

Requirement: at least one location must exist and at least one must be marked as the starting location before a run can be created.

A unique background image can be uploaded for each location to display on that location's turn sheets.

Location Link

Directed connections between locations (exits / paths). A link from A to B does not automatically create a link from B to A — both directions must be added separately for two-way movement.

Writing conventions: Use neutral third-person for Name and Description — avoid player-relative direction words such as back, return, retreat, or again, since the player may never have visited the destination before. Name the exit by what it is or where it leads (e.g. "The Cemetery Gate", "Toward the Open Graves"), not by travel history (e.g. "Back to the Gate"). Traversal descriptions describe the act of moving; you may name the destination the player just chose.

Location Link Requirement

Conditions that control whether a link is visible to players or can be traversed. Multiple requirements on the same link and purpose all apply — every condition must be met.

Item-based conditions:

Creature-based conditions:

Skill-based conditions:

> Example: A crumbled staircase link uses character_has_skill with the Climb skill. Characters without Climb cannot traverse the link; it appears locked (or hidden if purpose is visible) on their Location sheet.

Effect on the turn sheet: if a visibility requirement is not met, the link is hidden entirely. If a traversal requirement is not met, the link is shown but marked as locked, displaying the locked description.

Location Object

Interactive scenery at a location. Objects can have discrete states and trigger effects when players perform actions on them.

Location Object State

Discrete named states for a location object (e.g. "intact", "open", "broken", "activated"). States form a state machine — effects transition objects from one state to another.

Validation: the game validator checks for unreachable states, dead-end states, and objects whose initial state does not match any defined state.

Location Object Effect

Rules that define what happens when a player performs an action on an object. Multiple effects for the same action on the same object state all fire together.

Action types:

Effect types:

Item

Item definitions. Items can be carried in inventory, equipped, and used. Items marked as starting items are given to every new character when a run starts.

Equipment slot values:

A weapon or armour piece may also carry a required strength (required_strength). It is a hard equip gate: a character or creature whose effective STR is below the item's required strength cannot equip or attack with it (see Combat Model).

Effects (unified model)

All mechanical outcomes — weapon damage, armour mitigation, healing, buffs, status effects, and narrative outcomes — are authored as rows in the single adventure_game_effect table. An effect row is attached to an owner (item, object, set bonus, creature attack, or skill), and the same vocabulary is shared across all owners.

Combat effect types:

Narrative effect types (folded in from the retired item / object effect tables):

info, nothing, teleport, open_link, close_link, give_item, remove_item, summon_creature, change_state, change_object_state, reveal_object, hide_object, remove_object, place_item, advance_clock.

Item-action triggers (the action that fires an on_use item effect): use, equip, unequip, inspect, drop, pickup.

Notes:

• Weapon damage and armour mitigation are typed — each deal_damage and mitigate_damage effect names a damage type. There is no longer an "untyped physical" fallback.
• DoT / HoT with value (max) = 0 are permanent while equipped and are cleared when the item is unequipped.
• Passive equip effects from individual items and from active set bonuses are resolved together at the start of each combat turn.

Item Sets

Item sets let the designer group equippable items into thematic collections that grant tiered bonuses when multiple pieces are worn simultaneously.

Item Set fields

Set Bonus fields

Bonus type vocabulary — set bonuses are stored as adventure_game_effect rows with owner_type = set_bonus, so they use the same effect types as items. The combat-live grants (grant_max_health, grant_damage_reflection, grant_lifesteal, grant_party_buff) and mitigate_damage are the most common; narrative effect types describe text-only bonuses.

How sets work

1. Assigning items to a set — each equippable item can belong to at most one set (optional field in the item form).
2. Tier activation — at the start of every combat turn the engine counts how many pieces from each set the character has equipped. Every tier at or below that count activates simultaneously (e.g., 2-piece and 4-piece bonuses both apply when 4 pieces are equipped).
3. Resolution — active set bonuses are summed together with individual item passive effects and applied as a combined stat block.

Turn sheet rendering

• Set item names appear in gold/amber wherever they appear on turn sheets so players can recognise them at a glance.
• When a player picks up a set piece, the turn sheet includes discovery narration:

> You find Warden's Iron Helm — part of the Crypt Warden set. Equip 2 pieces for: +2 physical mitigation. Equip 4 pieces for: +10 max health.

• When a set tier is active during a combat encounter, the turn sheet shows a gold-coloured summary bar listing active bonuses.

Item Placement

Defines where items are initially found in the world when a run starts.

Creature

Creature definitions — monsters and NPCs. Includes combat stats, behaviour, territorial range, and how the creature is handled after death.

Creatures use the same combat mechanics as characters: STR/DEX/INT stats, typed attacks, typed mitigation, weapon proficiency and skills (see Combat Model). A creature's damaging attacks are authored as adventure_game_effect rows with owner_type = creature_attack; its innate mitigation and any stat modifiers are authored the same way. There are no scalar attack-damage / defense / attack-hit-bonus columns.

A creature with no authored damaging attack falls back to a default unarmed attack of 5 crushing damage.

Disposition values:

Attack method values (narrative only — no mechanical effect):

claws, bite, sting, weapon, spell, slam, touch, breath, gaze

A portrait image can be uploaded for each creature.

Creature Placement

Defines where creatures initially appear in the world when a run starts.

Wandering Monster Table

A reusable list of creatures that can randomly spawn from a spawn point. Tables are game-level resources and can be assigned to multiple spawn points across different locations.

Each table contains one or more entries:

Example: a table with three entries — Skeleton (weight 3), Ghoul (weight 2), Wight (weight 1) — will produce Skeletons roughly 50% of the time, Ghouls 33%, and Wights 17%.

Wandering Monster Spawn Point

Configures a location as a source of wandering monsters. Each spawn point references a Wandering Monster Table and controls the timing, probability, and movement of the creatures it produces.

Disabling guard: the spawn point configuration panel is disabled if no Wandering Monster Tables have been created for the game.

Wandering Monster Lifecycle

1. Spawn attempt: every spawn_interval_turns turns the engine rolls a d100. If the roll ≤ spawn_chance and the number of live wandering creatures from this spawn point is below the cap, a creature is created from the table using weighted random selection. It appears at the spawn point's home location.
2. Wander phase: after creature initiative each turn, every live wandering creature without an active grudge rolls a d100. If the roll ≤ move_chance and a random adjacent location is within wander_range hops of the home location, the creature moves there. Characters at the destination see the creature's movement description (or the default "A {name} wanders in.").
3. Grudge priority: if the creature has any active grudge (e.g. from a combat encounter), standard pursuit rules take over entirely — wandering movement is skipped that turn.
4. Death: when a wandering creature is killed it is not added to the respawn queue. The spawn point's next periodic check is the sole mechanism for re-entry.

Turn Sheets

Each turn a character receives a set of turn sheets to fill out. Sheets are presented to the player in a specific order, and processed by the game engine in a different order.

Turn Sheet Background Images

When uploading a background image for an adventure game, select the sheet type the image should apply to.

Player Rules

Character Stats

Core stats (STR / DEX / INT)

Every character and creature has three core stats:

Allocation at first join: a character distributes exactly 32 points across STR/DEX/INT on the join sheet. Each stat must be between 6 and 16 at creation. Stats may later be raised through progression up to a lifetime ceiling of 20.

Location Sheet

Players choose where to move or interact with an object at their current location. Moving and interacting with an object are mutually exclusive — only one can be submitted per turn.

Speech

When a game instance has more than one alive character, each character receives a Speech sheet (web-submit only in v1). Players compose up to three utterances per turn from platform-curated phrase templates with typed slots filled only from in-game nouns offered on the sheet.

Speech resolves in a global phase before movement, using turn-start positions so co-location is deterministic. Received speech appears as turn events on the next turn's recap and play-sheet sidebars. Negatable templates offer a distinct negative phrasing per locale (not a mechanical "Do not" prefix). Social exclamations (Hello, Yes, Thanks, Goodbye, and similar) are fixed phrases in the catalog — not a separate greeting word slot. Party phrases (help requests, together/alone coordination) are grouped separately from Social greetings. Coordination questions (Should I go to {location}?, Should I attack the {creature}?, and similar) appear in the same category as their related statements (Movement, Objects, Warnings). Warning phrases include attack coordination (Attack the {creature}! / Do not attack the {creature}!) for telling other players which monster to fight or avoid — distinct from the mechanical attack action on the Actions sheet.

Movement rules:

• The player selects one of the exits shown on their sheet
• Available exits are pre-filtered by link visibility and traversal requirements
• The character moves to the chosen location
• If a traversal description is set on the link, it is shown in the turn narrative

Flee penalty:

• If the character moves away from a location where aggressive creatures or grudge-holding creatures are alive, each such creature makes a free flee attack — provided it still has actions remaining in its turn budget
• Each flee attack rolls 3d6 against the creature's adjusted DEX (it can miss); on a hit, damage = the creature's typed attack packets reduced by the character's typed mitigation
• Indifferent creatures without a grudge do not deal flee damage

Object interaction:

• Players can choose to act on a visible object at their location instead of moving
• Available actions are determined by the object's current state and the effects defined on that state
• If an effect requires a specific item, the player must have that item in their inventory (unused)
• All matching effects for the chosen action fire at the same time

Combat Model

Combat uses a single typed, TFT-style resolver shared by characters and creatures.

To-hit — 3d6 roll-under adjusted DEX. Every attack rolls dice and hits when the total is ≤ the attacker's adjusted DEX.

• Adjusted DEX = base DEX + stat modifiers (temporary buffs/curses and passive armour encumbrance) − status penalties (stunned/dazed/hit-chance penalty) + accuracy bonuses (weapon-mastery II / enchanted gear).
• Dice count: 3d6 by default; +1 die if untrained with the weapon (no matching weapon-mastery skill, except natural/unarmed attacks which are always proficient); +1 die if the target is actively defending. Extra dice stack.
• Critical hit: a natural total of 3 on 3d6 (only possible at 3 dice, so untrained/defended attacks cannot crit). A crit doubles each damage packet before mitigation.
• Automatic miss: the natural maximum (numDice × 6) always misses, regardless of DEX.

Typed damage and mitigation. An attack produces one or more typed damage packets. Each packet is reduced by the defender's flat "hits stopped" mitigation of that damage type:

final = max(0, rolled[×2 if crit] − Σ hits_stopped matching the packet's damage type)

Same-type mitigation stacks additively with no cap. Negative hits-stopped represents vulnerability (extra damage taken). Mitigation comes from worn armour (mitigate_damage), innate creature mitigation, and active mitigation_buff statuses (e.g. Shield/Ward spells).

Damage types:

Equip gate. A weapon or armour piece with a required_strength cannot be equipped or used by an actor whose effective STR is below it.

Encumbrance. Armour DEX penalties are authored as passive stat_modifier effects (negative DEX), folded into adjusted DEX like any other modifier.

Status kinds (timed statuses applied by apply_status / DoT / HoT effects):

Actions Sheet

Players submit combat actions for creatures present at their location. This sheet is omitted if no creatures (alive or recently dead) are present.

Players submit up to 3 combat actions per turn. Each action is either do nothing or attack, with a choice of target creature.

Sheet display:

• Alive creatures are always listed
• Dead creatures remain visible for the number of turns set by the creature's body decay turns setting
• If only corpses are present the sheet is read-only
• Up to 3 combat actions are available when the sheet is interactive
• The creature card and player bar show STR/DEX/INT, the to-hit target, the typed attack, and typed mitigation

Combat forfeiture: if the player picks up, drops, equips, or unequips items on their inventory sheet that turn, all combat is skipped and the encounter sheet explains why.

Attack resolution (processed in order per action, using the Combat Model above):

1. Hit check: roll 3d6 (+1 die if untrained) against the attacker's adjusted DEX. On a miss, a miss event is emitted; no damage is dealt, no grudge is acquired, and no retaliation occurs.
2. Damage: on a hit, each typed weapon packet (doubled on a natural-3 crit) is reduced by the creature's matching typed mitigation; the remainder is dealt. Any damage_over_time / apply_status effects on the weapon are applied to the target.
3. Grudge: non-aggressive creatures acquire a grudge against the attacker on the first successful hit (see Grudge Aggression below).
4. If the creature's health reaches 0: the creature is killed; any items it was carrying drop to the player's current location; all of its grudges are cleared.
5. If the creature survives: it retaliates if aggressive or if it holds a grudge against this character.

• Creature hit check: the creature rolls 3d6 against its own adjusted DEX. A miss emits a miss event and consumes 1 action from the creature's budget; no damage is dealt.
• Retaliation damage: the creature's typed attack packets reduced by the character's typed mitigation.
• Each retaliation (hit or miss) consumes 1 action from the creature's 3-action budget for the turn.

> Note: every attack — player actions, creature retaliation, creature initiative, and flee attacks — rolls 3d6 against the attacker's adjusted DEX and can miss.

Character death:

• If character health reaches 0 the character is moved to the starting location
• Health is restored to the respawn health (50)
• All creature grudges targeting the dead character are cleared
• A narrative event is generated

Inventory Sheet

Players manage their carried items — picking up items from the floor, dropping items, equipping and unequipping gear, using consumables, and giving items to other characters at the same location.

Players select items to pick up, drop, equip, unequip, use, or give.

Processing order within a single turn: unequip → drop → give → pick up → equip → use

Key rules:

• No ground items when aggressive creatures are present: if alive aggressive creatures are at the location, ground items are not shown and pickup is not offered
• No give targets when aggressive creatures are present: the give recipient list is also hidden when aggressive creatures are at the location; trading is blocked during combat
• Auto-pickup on equip: if a player equips an item that is on the ground at their current location, it is automatically picked up first
• Give auto-unequips: if a player gives an item that is currently equipped, it is automatically unequipped before transfer
• Co-location required: a give only succeeds if giver and recipient are at the same location when the turn is processed; if the recipient has moved away the give fails with a warning narrative event
• Capacity check: if the recipient's inventory is full the give fails silently with a warning narrative event; the item stays with the giver
• Dead recipients: if the recipient is dead when the turn is processed the give fails with a warning narrative event
• Multiple gives per turn: a player may give different items to different recipients in a single turn; each give action is independent
• No chain gives: a character can only give items they held when the sheet was generated; items received from other players during the same turn processing cannot be re-given that turn

Grudge Aggression

Creatures remember who attacked them and become persistently hostile toward those characters for a limited number of turns.

How grudges work:

• When a character attacks a creature (regardless of disposition), the creature acquires a grudge against that character
• A grudge lasts for 3 turns after the last hit; attacking again refreshes the expiry
• While a grudge is active the creature behaves as aggressive toward that specific character — it retaliates on their encounter sheet and may pursue them across locations
• Grudges are cleared when the creature dies or when the target character dies
• A narrative event is emitted on the encounter sheet when a creature with an active grudge is present

Creature Initiative and Action Budget

Each creature has an action budget of 3 actions per turn. Actions are consumed during encounter processing and post-turn phases.

Action budget usage:

• Retaliation during a creature encounter consumes 1 action
• A flee attack against a fleeing character consumes 1 action
• An initiative attack (see below) consumes 1 action

Initiative attacks happen after all player turn sheets have been processed for the turn:

• Any creature with actions remaining that has alive characters at its location will spend those actions attacking them
• Aggressive creatures attack any character; grudge-holding creatures prioritise the characters they hold grudges against
• Each initiative attack rolls 3d6 against the creature's adjusted DEX (it can miss); on a hit, damage = the creature's typed attack packets reduced by the character's typed mitigation
• If a character's health reaches 0 from an initiative attack they are moved to the starting location, their health is restored to respawn health (50), and all creature grudges against them are cleared

Creature Pursuit and Territorial Range

Grudge-holding creatures with a pursuit_range > 0 will actively follow their highest-damage attacker across location boundaries.

Pursuit rules:

• After all turn sheets are processed, a grudge-holding creature identifies the character that dealt the most damage to it that turn
• If that character has moved to a different location and the creature's pursuit_range would permit reaching them, the creature moves one hop toward them along the shortest path
• A creature will never enter the starting location (the safe zone) in pursuit
• Pursuit is limited by pursuit_range: a creature cannot move to a location more hops away from its home location than its range allows
• A creature's home location is the location it was placed at (or spawned at) when the run started

Return-home behaviour:

• After pursuit is resolved, any creature that is away from its home location and has no living targets at its current location moves one hop back toward home
• If a creature is back at its home location and has no targets, it stays put

Respawn:

• When a creature respawns it returns to its home location, its grudge list is cleared, and its action budget is reset

Objectives are designer-authored goals that the engine evaluates each turn. They can be hidden until prerequisites are met, chain together through unlock rewards, grant in-world effects on completion or failure, and end the run when a terminal objective resolves.

Objective Fields

Condition Phases

Each objective has three condition sets. All conditions in a set must be true simultaneously for the phase to trigger.

Condition Types

Shared (available for all game types):

Adventure-specific:

Reward Types

Rewards fire when an objective transitions to a new phase. Multiple rewards can be attached; they fire in sort order. Reward target determines who receives the reward.

Shared (available for all game types):

Adventure-specific:

Ending a Run

A run ends when any of the following occur:

• An objective with is_terminal_success = true is completed
• An objective with is_terminal_failure = true is failed
• A complete_game_instance or fail_game_instance reward fires (attached to an objective or a clock threshold)
• A clock threshold effect of type complete_game_instance or fail_game_instance fires (see Clocks below)

Clocks

Clocks are designer-authored pressure timers that advance automatically each turn and/or when objective rewards fire. When a clock crosses a designer-set threshold, it fires a message and one or more effects. Clocks count up from initial_value toward max_value.

Clock Fields

Thresholds

Each clock can have multiple thresholds. When the clock's current value reaches or passes a threshold value for the first time, the threshold fires:

1. Its message (if set) is appended to all players' turn event log
2. Its effects are applied in sort order

Threshold Effect Types

Shared:

Adventure-specific:

Clock Turn Event Delivery

append_turn_event clock effect narrative is stored in game_clock_threshold_turn_event, not in game_clock_threshold_effect.value_json.

If ambient_hear_hops > 0, ambient_message is required. If ambient_hear_hops = 0, leave ambient_message empty. This keeps local narrative local: a graveyard event should not appear on the turn sheet of a character deep in the cellar.

Character Progression

Characters earn experience points (XP) through exploration and combat. Accumulated XP drives level-ups, which award skill points that can be spent on new skills.

XP Sources

Level Table

Characters start at level 1 with 2 skill points already available.

Level-up events are announced on the turn recap sheet. Only one level can be gained per turn.

Skill Training Sheet

When a character has skill_points_available > 0 at the start of a turn, a Skill Training turn sheet is issued. The player checks one or more skills they wish to learn. Each skill costs its skill tier in points (a tier-1 skill costs 1 point, a tier-2 skill costs 2, and so on); skill tier is the sole authority for skill cost.

• The sheet lists only skills that are available in the game (enabled by the designer) and that the character does not already know.
• Prerequisite chains are validated at submission time.
• Unspent skill points carry over to future turns.

Skills Reference

The following skills are implemented in the first deliverable. All skills are defined by the platform and are read-only for designers; designers choose which subset to enable per game.

Physical Skills

Mental Skills

_(No skills in the first deliverable.)_

Passive Defense

Spells (Spiritual / Arcane)

Spells are skills with skill_type = spell; they appear as an action on the Actions sheet when known, off cooldown, and affordable. Magnitudes scale gently with the caster's primary stat.

Weapon / Armor Mastery

> Mastery skills match a weapon/armour item by its exact weapon_type / armor_type string; the proficiency die bonus is the live mechanical effect under the typed combat model.

Item Types

Assigning a type to an item enables skill mastery bonuses to apply.

Creature Properties

Assigning properties to a creature enables skills that target specific creature types.

Creatures may have multiple properties.

Link Requirement: character\_has\_skill

A location link can require that a character knows a specific skill in order to traverse (or even see) the link.

> Example: A crumbled staircase link requires the Climb skill. Characters without Climb cannot attempt the link; it is filtered from their Location sheet.

Spell Casting

Spells are skills with skill_type = spell. They appear as an additional action on the Actions sheet when the character knows at least one combat spell and has sufficient HP to pay the cost.

Heal (the first deliverable spell):

• Restores 20 HP to the caster (capped at max HP)
• Costs 5 HP
• Instant (no duration)
• No cooldown — can be cast multiple times per turn within the 3-action budget
• Context: combat

Deferred Features

The following progression features are documented in todos/adventure_game_progression_system.md and will be delivered incrementally:

• Active-defence die bonus — wiring a Parry/Dodge action that forces an attacker to roll +1 die (the resolver supports TargetDefending; no action currently sets it)
• Passive-defence and armor-mastery numeric bonuses — Dodge and Armor Mastery currently act as gates/flavour; their typed mitigation contribution is pending
• AoE and multi-target spells
• Category investment bonus (+2% per skill in a category)
• Consumable type gating (Literacy, Herbalism, Alchemy, Traps)
• Knowledge skills (Appraise)
• Objective award_xp reward type