Dungeon crawler musigs pt2 - Base system

One other thing that I forgot last time around was:

Journeys and between adventure elements in the original Warhammer Quest and Shadows of Brimstone are great fun, especially where some of the characters start having unique problems occur in settlements. I'd hate to lose this, but it is something that can be bolted on to any system by pretty much lifting/shifting said solutions into a new system.

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Looking over the requirements that I outlined last time around, it seems that I'm looking for an rpg-like system that already deals with character classes and experience gain as well as monsters that can be upgraded in a similar manner.

The question here is, is a full rpg system overkill and what the heck do you do for some of the areas that usually require a GM to sort out? If the events are all randomly generated, then they need to be things that can't cause a complete roadblock if you don't, for example, have a highly intelligent or socially enabled character to smart your way through a problem... but by removing these types of situations you remove some of the more interesting challenges that can crop up.

By trying to limit or remove these sections, you also unbalance any rpg system that you use as characters have no reason to invest in a lot of advancement options that are available to characters, making them all combat or healing monsters much faster than they may have done previously.

On the list of things to try out is to take Pathfinder and WFRP 2 out for spins to see how well they cope with some basic preset dungeons. I suspect that WFRP will end in total annihilation of the starting adventurers when they come across their first half starved goblin as it is a bit like that. Pathfinder may be a better option due to the more combat focussed nature of the target audience. Later this year, or early next, there is supposed to be an Age of Sigmar version of WFRP that is intended to be more about running towards combat, rather than running away from a snotling. That may be more appropriate, but as I have v2 at hand, we'll start with that and see as I've not really used either system before.

Dungeon crawler musings

Over the years I've played many different types of dungeon crawlers and am still on the hunt for that perfect game system to use that allows for GM run games, or randomly generated solo hackathons. I got part way through writing a history of all the crawlers that I've tried and discarded, but you probably don't care about that plotted history of gaming... so what is the point of this post I hear you say?

The point is for some random musings on what I'm looking for in a game to try and solidify things in my mind as the hunt continues. I really don't want to write my own from the ground up as that would require balancing so many things... I've tried in the past and could never get my head around the best approach to some of these things.

1) Solo play/randomness
I don't get to play with a group too often, so one of the important things for me is randomly generated adventures. Not just the layout, but events throughout the story and an actual end goal. The original Warhammer Quest did this well, as does Silver Tower, Shadows of Brimstone and, to some extent, Advanced Heroquest. This part is straight forward to fit into a system. I've been playing with the theory of ripping apart Hammerhal and seeing if the mission levels still work as random layouts and event triggers. More details on this when I finish putting together the figures.

2) Character selection and evolution
I really want the characters (and potentially key villains) to evolve over time in a structured way that makes sense, rather than some of the slightly suspect, abstracted methods used in things like Silver Tower or Hammerhal where characters forget skills between levels... because magic. Random or fixed stat/skill allocations are also a weird thing to imagine. Why, for example, would you suddenly know an archery skill if you're a close combat specialist?

3) Tough, varied adversaries
I like to theme dungeon crawls with adversaries that provide a suitable challenge to the adventurers. Warhammer Quest is really good at this. Others less so as they assume some sort of GM control. Shadows of Brimstone has some level options for the monsters, but can still end up under/over powered quite easily

I've tried to write some bits for points 2 and 3, but I don't really have the time or brainpower to deal with the creation of a whole ruleset. At present I'm trying to work out the best options to investigate further, so any suggestions would be gratefully accepted.