MKD Adventure is an easy to play variant of Mage Knight Dungeons, which allows both solo play, and co-operative play among multiple players, without the need for a dungeon master. Adventures can range in length from short, stand-alone 15 minute dungeons, to 3 hour multi-floor dungeons, to epic, month-spanning campaigns, all the while providing plenty of variety and surprises during play. Every attempt has been made to ensure that the basic feel of MKD remains intact, complete with WMTs, Heroic teams, Artifacts, and basic MK gameplay, ensuring countless hours of good old-fashioned dungeon crawling alone or with friends.

Note: A solid understanding of regular Mage Knight Dungeons play is required for MKD Adventure play. Unless stated otherwise, assume regular MKD rules are in effect to resolve any gameplay issues you may come across.

Setup

Create Heroic teams.

Each player creates a Heroic team composed of one or more Heroes. The higher the value of the Heroes, the greater the difficulty of the Monsters that will be found in the dungeon. 2 Hero teams, each under 50 points, are ideal for a speedy game experience, but the point value can be increased to create larger scale adventures.

Heroes begin the game at level 1, but optionally, Heroes with a lvl 1 value of over 30 (Shayle, Priestess Wylune, etc.), can start the game damaged one click, effectively becoming level “0” Heroes. This defines the spot on the dial that they heal to until they gain a level, at which point they’ll be level 1 and act as normal. If this option is taken, the affected Hero’s starting value is 20 points.

Build Dungeon

Dungeon tiles are added to the game in sets of 5, with at least 1 hallway and 3 chambers per set – favor hallways over chambers for easier play. Provide at least one set of tiles to create the dungeon. Add additional sets to increase the length and complexity of the game. For a quick game (15 minutes or so), 1 set is ideal; for an average length two player game, 2 sets will do nicely.

Create a “Dungeon Stack” by randomizing the tiles order, rotation, and facing. Ensure the bottom tile is a hallway.

Place the top tile from the Stack anywhere on the play surface.

Determine the number of possible entryways to the N, S, E, and W of all outer edge tiles of the entire dungeon as it currently exists, and assign a sequential number to each. Roll 1d6 (or 2d6/3d6/etc if there are more than 6/12/18/etc. exits) to determine which exit to place the next tile on. Re-roll until you get a number matching an exit with a number assigned. Note: for the purposes of this step, an “entryway” to a tile is considered to be a square (or a set of adjacent squares) on any edge of the tile that (1) does not already connect to another tile, and (2) is not so close to the edge of the playing surface that placement of an adjacent tile on that side would not fit.

Place the top tile as it appears on the Stack adjacent to the randomly chosen exit. Attempt to have tiles align centrally to each other if possible. If the tile can’t line up in such a way as to create a traversable connection, rotate it clockwise until it does. If it still doesn't fit, flip it over and repeat. If it still can't fit, re-roll for another exit to place the tile on and repeat this step.

Repeat steps 4 and 5 until the final tile (a hallway) is placed. This is the dungeon entrance. If this hallway tile has more than one entryway, randomly choose which is the entrance (roll 1d6).

Determine the chamber that requires the largest number of tiles to be traveled through to reach from the dungeon entrance. This is the Central Chamber. If there is more than one tile equidistant from the entrance, roll a 1d6 to decide.

Confirm that there is at least one passable path from the entrance to the Central Chamber. If crossing a crevice is absolutely required to make it through the dungeon, rotate and/or flip the offending tile as in step 5 above to rectify the problem.

(Optional) Check the map for aesthetics. If need be, shift any tile one square in any direction to create a more “aligned” map arrangement, and shift adjacent tiles to match. I.E. due to the use of 3x5 tiles, you may find that some of the tiles don’t line up as well as they might, and if you were to shift a row N, S, E, or W one square, the dungeon would make a bit more “sense”.

(Optional) For every tile, roll a 1d6 and subtract 2 from the total. Place this many hindering terrain markers and/or water markers randomly in the tile.

At this point, the dungeon is complete, and any entryways other than the dungeon entrance are considered to be dead ends. Players must also agree which direction is North at this point.

Setup Treasure Chests

Build a Chest Pool by providing at least one chest for every chamber tile added to the Stack during the dungeon building phase. Note: use the difficulty level of the chests to help define the difficulty of the game.

Pick one chest randomly from the Chest Pool. Place it in the Central Chamber in the square farthest away from entrance tile, and facing towards the entrance tile (if there’s more than one square equidistant from the entrance, roll 1d6 to decide). Move/rotate the chest as necessary to ensure legal chest placement. This is the Quest Chest.

Keep the remainder of the Chest Pool available for potential discovery during play.

Create Dungeon Accessories Pool

Provide at least 1 door and 1 terrain marker for every hallway added to the Stack during the dungeon building phase, and (optionally) 1 artifact or dressing set (a collection of chairs, tables, and columns at that will be placed in a chamber in a pre-determined fashion) for every chamber.

For each terrain marker, decide now which side (obstacle or special) is the intended use for the square piece.

This is the Dungeon Accessory Pool. Keep it available for potential discovery during play.

Place WMTs

Provide 6 WMTs (Wandering Monster Tokens) for each tile set added to the Stack. Combine these tokens and randomize them to create the WMT Pool. The specific color of the WMTs the players provide is based on the total value of the Heroic team(s). Specifically:

Total Hero Value	WMT Pool Result
50 and under	6 yellow, 0 blue, 0 red
51-100	3 yellow, 2 blue, 1 red
101-150	1 yellow, 2 blue, 3 red
151-200	0 yellow, 2 blue, 4 red
201-250	0 yellow, 1 blue, 5 red
251-300	0 yellow, 0 blue, 6 red
301-350	6 red, +1 to all WMT reveals
351-400	6 red, +2 to all WMT reveals
401-450	6 red, +3 to all WMT reveals
451-500	6 red, +4 to all WMT reveals
501-550	6 red, +5 to all WMT reveals
551-600	6 red, +6 to all WMT reveals
601-650	6 red, +7 to all WMT reveals
651-700	6 red, +8 to all WMT reveals
701-750	6 red, +9 to all WMT reveals
751 and up	6 red, +10 to all WMT reveals

Choose the highest level WMT token from the WMT Pool (if there’s more than one of the highest color, choose randomly from one of these) and place it in a square within the front arc of the Quest Chest. This is the Guardian WMT.

Place one randomly chosen WMT from the pool in the center square of every chamber in the dungeon (including the Central Chamber, which means this tile will have 2 WMTs in it – the random WMT and the Guardian WMT). If the center square of a chamber is occupied, place it in the nearest square adjacent to the center square (roll 1d6 is necessary to randomly choose between multiple squares adjacent to the center square).

Keep the remainder of the WMT Pool available for potential discovery during play.

Create Monster Pool

Follow the same rules as regular MKD for creating the Monster Pool. If you have the resources, be creative. You could create an undead horde to swamp the Heroes, with a single Gate Lord as their master, or a set of various level Heroes to make the dungeon a villain hideout, etc.

Play

Turn Based Activations

Basic play is very similar to regular MKD play. The overriding difference comes from the fact that players only control their Heroic teams. Monsters or WMTs are controlled by chaos (i.e. a set of rules driven by random chance from die rolls). The basic structure of gameplay is defined by the order of turns. On each turn, activations are made and the game is played. The order of turns is:

Heroic team(s) – Before the Heroes enter the dungeon, determine the order of player turns (i.e. my heroes go first, then Bob’s, then Betty’s). During play, the second player may not activate any of his Heroes until the first player has completed his Hero activations, and player turns are set in stone at the beginning of the game (Heroes with Command can alter the order of player turns, however). During a Player’s turn, he gets exactly one activation for each of his Heroes that are in the dungeon during that turn, although he can choose to forgo any number of these activations. Move on to WMT activations once each Hero in the dungeon has gotten the opportunity of an activation.