Down the Stair

Someone broke the seal before you got here. They levered the capstone out of true and left it that way, and they did not come back up.

You go down forty-one steps. That is the whole of your preparation.

What a run is

A run is one character, three floors, and however many rooms you survive. There is no camp, no town, no returning to sell what you found. You go down until you come out the bottom of the third floor, or the last room reaches you first.

Before any of it you are asked to name the descent, in one word. That word decides which three floors of @Missing file you are given and in what order, so no two names put the same way down in front of you.

The dungeon is square. Every room is a square chamber with a door in the middle of one wall or two, and the doors are the only thing that connects anything. There are no corridors. You step from room to room like a token moving on a board, because that is exactly what you are doing.

The loop

Four steps, in this order, every time:

1. Arrive. The room is described in two sentences. You are told the exits and nothing else.
2. Survive it. Traps fire on entry. Monsters attack before you get to look at anything.
3. Take what is there. Treasure and fountains only after the room is safe.
4. Choose a door. Then do it again.

You can always go back the way you came. Backtracking costs nothing and no one pursues you between rooms. What it will not do is refill a room you emptied — nothing in the Vaults respawns.

What you start with

You pick a delver first. There are three who go down regularly, and you may also roll your own and take whatever the dice hand you — that is its own chapter.

Whichever you take, you go down with a weapon, a piece of armour, and two rolls of @Missing file. That is not a slow start. That is the whole kit. The Vaults do not hand out much, and every floor down there has nine rooms in it.

What you are not told

Every floor was decided in full long before you took a step. Every room, every monster, every trap, the whole shape of it — surveyed, written down, and closed. Nothing is invented to punish you mid-run and nothing is softened because you are doing badly.

You will not be told what is behind a door. Not hinted at, not foreshadowed, not warned about with a change of tone. A door is a direction and nothing more until you walk through it.

This cuts both ways, and it is the point. The dungeon was fair before you arrived.

Dying

At zero hit points you are dead and the run is over. Not captured, not dragged to safety, not left at one hit point because it would be a better story. Dead.

Start another run. Name it something else and the floors will be different.