Welcome back. This latest tangential game feature of mine hasn't been the most engaging to build unsurprisingly, but it's no less necessary for the kind of experience I'm aiming for. A PC's Level/EXP and Team Ranking would preferably be less so an allowance from the GM, and more so an attainable reward rooted in player decisions, from delving into dungeons to choosing what quests to take on, for the sake of a rewarding sense of progression. That's the idea anyway. But make no mistake, I have no real idea what I'm doing. The Explorers games have given me a clear framework along with its Team and Mission Difficulty Rankings. But what I have in store might only be a crude attempt at imitating its inner workings. But let's give it a go anyway!

Player Leveling & EXP
Very quickly I found that EXP "by the enemy" was out of the question, mostly because of how annoying it would be to tally. Instead I scaled everything back to make it as manageable and simple as possible. Have I gone too far in that direction? Probably. Yet it's the process of trial and error (me learning things the hard way) that appeals to me so much. Anyway, here's the plan.

• Current level determines the EXP required to level up (lvl 1 needs 1 EXP, lvl 2 needs 2 EXP and so on)
• EXP is earned by each PC through certain actions (especially completing dungeon runs)
• Every dungeon will be assigned to a Team Rank, which will determine the amount of EXP received upon a successful run
  (Example: Normal Rank = 1 EXP, Bronze Rank = 2 EXP, etc.)

Team Ranking & Mission Difficulty
Naturally, my first instinct is to run with all the unique Team Ranks (Normal to Guildmaster) and the Mission Difficulty Rankings (E to ★9) from the Explorers games. They aren't in contention, but everything else I got is pretty up in the air. See for yourself.

• A range of levels is recommended under each Team Ranking, for where members ought to be at that point
  (Example: Normal Rank = Levels 1 - 10, Bronze Rank = Levels 11 - 20, etc.)
• Team Ranking also determines what Mission Difficulty Ranks will be available to choose from among jobs
  (Example: Normal Rank = E - D, Bronze = D - B)^{(As of now)}
• The amount of Rank Points (RP) a team earns is based on mission difficulty
  (Example: D.Rank E = 1 RP, D.Rank D = 2 RP, etc.)

That's where my mind is right now. As you can imagine, the exact total amount of RP a team needs to reach the next rank cannot be set in stone for now. The Explorers games seemed to have always set Bronze Rank with 100 pts, but I might only follow suit as a tentative mark as I see how quickly players progress towards it within that first in-game year. I'm sure I've made mistakes somewhere in here, but regardless, some of it will be ironed out with testing. Anyway, I'll be back eventually with more on dungeons sometime later. Take care until then.

Hello! First off, not dead. Secondly, I'm back after a while to post my progress after what time I had to work with. There was some finagling here and there over how a dungeon's details should be laid out, especially considering how certain elements like the number of loot items and enemies can vary significantly over the course of the campaign. Now of course, I've never made anything like this before, but I believe I have something approaching a functional template, which I arrived at by piecing together what significant bits came to mind for that first lowest rank dungeon, and then stripping it all out, leaving just the formatting behind. Have a look!

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I thought about showing you all the full version for the first dungeon, but I kinda thought to keep it a secret for just a little longer. In it, I've taken to using plenty of abbreviated text for the finer details. Perhaps more annoying still, I very much intend to see all tables forcibly extended horizontally for accommodate everything included in later dungeons. The online references (bulbiedia and such) I used had additional things recorded, but I hope I've zeroed in on the most relevant. There may be changes in the future.

And of course, since I imagine an eyebrow or two has been raised because of the last of that checklist, I'll say that it's by no means a new concept when it comes to dungeon crawling, but I liked the idea enough to feature it in the future, with a decent idea of how to implement it. It isn't that I'm looking to push players to go through dungeons faster, merely that I like the tension that it brings. Needless to say, this info is for the DM's eyes only, you understand. Anyway, that'll be all for now. Sorry again for the delay. Till next time.

Hey guys! With life sorta settling down for a bit, I wanted to get some small updates to mechanics out of the way before I get on to recording the comprehensive (hopefully) guide for dungeons. Depending on how "involved" these somewhat related features are, additional guides of sorts may also be in order, but I'll decide on that later.

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Times of Day
This is an inevitable consideration if I really want to make everything feel a bit more like a simulation, if that's the best way to put it. We've already taken a major step in that direction with the calendar, and I intend for any given day to be further divided, though I may be a tad iffy on exactly how to go about it. The simple answer would be the straight up clock (hours:minutes) approach.

But I feel like just a general division into phases might do the trick instead. I'm referring to "Morning - Afternoon - Evening - Night", with further specifics like "Early, Mid, and Late" to encompass all parts of the day. This will surely keep it simple for all of us, especially when it comes to our post headers. And all 12 subdivisions at 2 hours each still add up to a 24 hour day anyway. With that, it becomes a matter of determining how long certain actions take, some likely to be preset by me while players can have a say on others.

Food and Hunger
This connects with that "resource management" thing I mentioned in that earlier dungeon update. As early as the classic food items, I knew hunger was going to factor in when traversing a dungeon; it was the "how exactly" that I left on the table until now. And when it comes down to it, "hunger checks" for every party member after a predictable number of turns feels like the way to go, the working number I have in mind for now being 10. By moving a space on the map or completing a round of combat, a turn will have passed, and after 10, all members will have to either eat food or be marked down to a lower status condition, with "starving" being the lowest you can go before overall health is affected.

Now where things get really experimental is that I also want hunger to continue being a thing outside of dungeons too. It may be just a matter of setting the "hunger checks" at the right times, likely in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Food will be a resource, and every pokémon (PCs or otherwise) will need enough food to make it through the day smoothly.

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That all might be a decent summary of it all for now. This all started as an idea for a PMD game that makes the player into the guildmaster or town mayor, a town/guild management layer that ties it all together. At this point, I reckon this project may be destined for the tabletop section out of all of them once development wraps up, certainly a first for me if no one else. Anyway, thanks again for catching this update. I'm sure you're reading this out of simple curiosity by this point, but I appreciate it nonetheless. I'll push myself to get the next update, likely the dungeon guide, out sooner than this one. See you next time.