Depthcrawls

“The concept of the depthcrawl was created by Emmy “Cavegirl” Allen for The Gardens of Ynn and The Stygian Library”

“a method for procedurally generating exploration-oriented pointcrawls with a strong sense of progression into a vast, unknowable domain.”

“To create a depthcrawl generator, you need to prep:

• Locations • Details • Events • Encounters”

“LOCATIONS are the core element of each point in your pointcrawl.”

“DETAILS either add to or somehow twist the nature of locations.”

“EVENTS are active elements that are either taking place in the location when the PCs arrive or which will happen while they are there.”

“ENCOUNTERS are a standard check and table for wandering monsters.”

“The core concept of the depthcrawl is that the rolls on these random tables are affected by depth, with the results of the checks sliding across the table based on how far the PCs have progressed into the depthcrawl.”

“Depth itself is an abstract concept, representing how far the PCs are from where they started (the entrance of a labyrinth, the interplanar gate, their base camp, the silver skein that lies on the border of the afterlife, etc.)”

“You’ll also want to think about the cap value”

“you can either set a maximum effective depth”

“or you can have some sort of endgame result”

“You can also see how the group’s current depth creates a strata.”

“Each change in depth changes the range of possible results, creating a “definition” of that strata that obviously overlaps with other depths”

“The other value you can play with is depth increment”

“to more rapidly shift the group through the distinct strata of the depthcrawl”

“Another technique you might consider is a depth pool”

“you could instead roll a number of dice equal to the depth”

“When it comes to running the scenario, you can think of a depthcrawl as a kind of “cap system” for a pointcrawl: The core scenario structure is the pointcrawl itself. The depthcrawl is mostly added on top of that procedure in order to generate the pointcrawl map through play”