So let’s talk about the different options that I am considering. I think that there are a few interesting ways that you can improve or change as a game goes on.

Possible Campaign Elements

Character Progression

The first one is character progression. I think that is fairly important if you have characters in your game. I don’t find it a major knock against Paper Dungeons because it’s so loosely a campaign. But you start with your heroes as level one in every game and level them up as you go.

For my idea, I want to have a separate character sheet, much like in an RPG, that you level up your stats. You get bonuses based off of how many bubbles you fill in, in a row. And you fill in a certain number, always, at the end of the a scenario.

If this is a competitive game, the person who wins gets a bonus. But if it is cooperative, there might be a bonus if you do the best in a scenario, like first pick of gear. For cooperative, though, you’d not see as much character development and splitting off.

Skill Tree

Building off of that character progression, skill progression is a great way to cause differences to happen. But the idea of a tree is that you can split off what you are doing. If you are a Gunslinger class, or something like that, you might unlock your first ability at level 1, but then at level two, you have three options. The one that you pick will limit what you can do further down.

Now, while I like this idea, it really causes things to become different and gives progression, I am worried that it’d make the game a bit more complex. I think a lot of the abilities would just need to be things that bump up health or statistics.

Items and Gear

Items and Gear would likely be one time use things, or maybe something like a pack mule to eventually being able to get up to a wagon. Something that can carry more items. Maybe skills are going to be more abilities that’d be used in every game since you are unlocked.

So things like health potions (or alcohol), magic scrolls, dynamite, things that you’d use once. Or maybe some gear like “armor” whatever that might look like. Basically wearable items or weapons. I don’t think I would ever add in ammo because I don’t want to track that type of thing. Plus I like giving more things versus losing things in a campaign game.

Story Progression

Finally, story is going to be an important element to the game. Right now that is what makes Paper Dungeons a campaign game. A tiny bit of story that you read in between games. And while I do enjoy that, I wish there was more. Or more so, I wish the story felt like it mattered a bit more.

I can pull out any card, read the story and play, and it doesn’t matter. I’d love to add in more story to the game. Maybe even give it some choices. Like, make a decision and that unlocks certain items, gives a stats bump, or maybe causes you to lose some money. But all based off of choices that players make. I even, at least once, maybe twice, would want to change up what the players interact with on a map because of a decision that they make.

That makes it feel more like a fun experience to me. The decisions that we make, for example, in Roll Player Adventures or Tainted Grail, change up what can happen in the game later. And that is very cool to have as part of the experience. It takes it from being told a story to character story.

How Much Should Their Be?

That is the question that I’m asking myself, because with enough campaign elements and campaign progression elements, the game can get large. Part of the fun of a roll and write, even Paper Dungeons which has a lot to look at on the sheet, is that it is a sheet.

I want there to be enough decisions that it makes the game feel cool. On the flip side, I don’t want there to be so many decisions that it makes the game hard to play. Looking, again, at Paper Dungeons, now that I’ve played it a few times, I know what to do every time I come back to it. I looked up one rule last time, but I mainly know what I need to do.

A campaign is going to be bigger. It is going to offer more challenges of remembering how to play. But with a nice little sheet of what to do on the turn, or even printing on the sheet the round actions, I hope to make it simple enough that it’s a fast refresher. Which means, things like skills, those are a bit harder to implement, potentially. But that comes down to being clever with how I design the game and work with that idea.

What campaign element would you want most?

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I want to design one now, so let’s get started.

The Campaign Roll and Write Theme

So now I want to design a roll and write campaign game. I thought about just doing another fantasy/dungeon crawler roll and write. But there are several of them out there, Deadly Doodles, Paper Dungeons, Doodle Dungeon, and Drawn to Adventure all fit that fantasy theme. Instead, I thought of two options. I could go Sci-Fi, likely a direction that we’ll start seeing more and more roll and write games go. Or, I could do wyrd west. Think Wild Wild West with Will Smith.

Why that theme, one it is kind of fantasy adjacent. You end up with crazy monsters or creatures that you can play as. But it isn’t going to be your standard fantasy. Pull out your pistol, load up your pack mule, and get ready to adventure in the Wyrd West.

Why Theme First?

Honestly, theme can be where you start, but I doubt it is standard for most designers. Or if it is, it is something that is held onto loosely. In this case, since I thought about it in the context of what Paper Dungeons is doing, I wondered what else might work theme wise for a campaign. It is more specific at a campaign level.

It is also important for me, while I own roll and writes and other games where the theme isn’t there, for me theme is important. If you hook me with a theme from the beginning, I am more likely to buy a game. And Wyrd West, Fantasy, or Sci-Fi all hook me when I think about.

So when I design or start to design an idea, theme is going to be important for me. And I want what I design in the game to make sense in the theme. If I put something into the game that doesn’t make sense, it firstly makes the game harder to teach. But it also breaks the immersion in the theme and in the game.

Why Wyrd West?

So any setting is going to give some level of ability to create a story. Wyrd West is just not one that I see used all that often. To go along with that, it lends itself to a fair number of the fantasy story tropes, but giving you a different setting for them.

Plus, then you are still able to create some of those leveling and story progression items. What character do you pick to start, are you the crafty outlaw, the robot sheriff, the damsel working at the bar with a dead eye shot? There is a lot of story there, and ways that you can build upon those characters.

Wyrd West also allows you to explore a lot of different things for monsters. Zombies, Vampires, Lizardfolk, other dimensions, all of them are fair game. I can even lean into Steampunk if I want, again harkening back to Wild Wild West and their giant mechanical spider.

Campaign Roll and Write Next Steps?

So what is the next thing I need to think through. The mechanics of the game, really, though some of those, being a roll and write, are going to be somewhat in place. But I want to think about missions, what do they look like, how the campaign progresses, and how characters level up or gain new abilities.

That is the one thing I really miss from the Paper Dungeons campaign is progression. I want to take something I got last game, or in between games to make what I do grow. Your standard campaign has character progression, so I want to figure out what that’ll look like in my game.

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