If you’re walking in on the middle of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeons series, there’s an index here.

Looking at the many environmental interaction subsystems (swimming, climbing, running, difficult terrain, sailing, and flying at a glance) in Second Edition, there are a few themes that keep recurring:

• Nonbinary success
• Speed is important
• Dual tasking
• Character skills impact outcomes

From this I infer that you’re expected to be {climbing, swimming, riding, sailing} under pressure, either being chased, trying to get somewhere urgently, or while being attacked. And so, degree of success is meaningful, and as is training in {challenge}under pressure. This draws from a bunch of rules already written:

An environmental challenge has clock. If a PC has proficiency in their approach to the challenge (for example, Swimming or Climbing proficiency) they know how many ticks the clock requires, otherwise they do not.

To tick a section of the clock, describe what you do (your approach) and roll an appropriate check. On a failure, choose a failure condition. On a success, tick the clock and choose a success condition. On a partial success, tick the clock but suffer a consequence. Continue until the GM tells you that you have completed all steps, or until you cannot continue any longer.

Approaches include abilities, proficiencies, special gear, assistance, or magical effects, If an approach is strong against a challenge grant an additional tick if it succeeds. Approaches that are weak against a challenge have disadvantage or have no effect. You cannot repeat the same approach for a single challenge.

Success and fail conditions vary according to challenge, but include: change of speed, opportunity for a second task (dodge, spell, attack, device), advantage on next approach, increase or loss of a capability, injury, healing.

If there is a competitor in the challenge, the GM may choose to grant them a clock as well, for you to race against, or may choose to incorporate their success into your failure.

This solution has dual tasking, speed, skill, and non-binary success. Not sure if that should be GM chosen success conditions, but I like putting it in the hands of PCs. This is flexible and rewards use of varied approaches. One rule to rule them all, rather than the dozen in second edition. It feels too modern, though, and I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, or why.

This has been a part of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeon Series! Let me know your thoughts on Advanced Fantasy Dungeons so far, if there are questions left unanswered, whether I’ve overlooked anything glaring, or anything of the sort!

Idle Cartulary

3rd May 2022