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~2-10 |
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5 min |
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cue-deck × 0 inspire-deck × 0 dice × 0 pen and paper, screen, game piece |
Change aspects of your improvisation to navigate through Dungeon Master's maze.
Preparation
You will need a pen and a piece of paper for the Dungeon Master. Depending on your playing environment, you might need also a screen (e.g. cardboard) for Dungeon Master, because his paper should not be watched by other players. If your piece of paper will lay horizontally, you may find useful a single game piece (or any small object) to be moved over that piece of paper.
Set up
A percussive player is chosen as a Dungeon Master (the rest of the players should be with melodic instruments). He will play with a piece of paper that will not be seen by other players. When all players are seated, Dungeon Master proceeds with the setup:
On a piece of paper draw a rectangle that represents 3x3 grid of locations in a dungeon. In this dungeon mark the starting point of players (for first games let it be the middle square) and a place of treasure. Then add three walls in such a way that a one wall divides two small squares on a grid by their side and no place in the labirynth is locked out from all others.
Establish the dimensional aspects (it's helpful to write them down on your piece of paper). Players might end up wander blindly through the dungeon, but you will need to know 100% where they are at any time. For first games it's best to play with density and pitch. Here, density grows from South to North (bottom-up) and pitch grows from West to East (left to right).
Gameplay instructions
Players start to improvise freely but with some rhythm involved and with narrowed pitch range for each player.
The game proceeds in steps:
1) Dungeon Master points to the player that will direct the team in this turn. Dungeon Master is obliged to point to different players during the game and try to let everyone play, but otherwise he can arrange the music freely.
2) Chosen player changes his or her pitch/density to indicate the direction of movement in the dungeon.
3) Dungeon Master signals if the team went through (soft percussive sounds) or bumped into the wall (sharp sounds).
Game end
Game usually ends when players reach the treasure (which is signalled by triumphant sounds from Dungeon Master, e.g. hand clapping). But two type of losses are possible - when Dungeon Master loses track of players or players give up in searching for the treasure.
Example
Here is a solo run, where adventurer was quite lucky and hit just one wall although happened to visit quite a lot of squares (7 of 9).
Designer-composer
Game is in beta and is being developed by DrZdrowie and odolany. But everyone is welcome to contribute!
