A Dungeon Crawler With A Standard Deck Of Cards, A LOTR MMO & Continuing My Game

Sleepdrifter's Newsletter #20📜 Finding Peace With Some Cool Games

Welcome to Sleepdrifter’s newsletter, now coming to you every other Friday.
Deep forests, giant mountains & weird dungeons.
I speak about TTRPGs, video games, music and what I like.

Nothing much this last weeks, unfortunately.
I have a special job and these last 2 months were intense with a lot of work and little mental space for playing and creating. I don’t know when I’ll be more available, as it depends on natural phenomena.
That’s why there was a missing newsletter two weeks ago.

1. 🃏Scoundrel: A Solo Dungeon Crawler Played With A Standard Deck Of Cards

2. 🧝Lord Of The Rings Online: The First MMORPG I Played And Loved, And I Hate MMOs

3. 🧙🏼‍♂️What I’m Up To: Continuing My Game (Sound Design!) And Played A TTRPG

🃏Scoundrel: A Solo Dungeon Crawler Played With A Standard Deck Of Cards

A while ago, I stumbled upon a Youtube video by Rulies talking about Scoundrel, a Dungeon Crawler game entirely played with a standard deck of 52 cards.

The rules are fairly simple (you can find the original ones here):
You start with 20 HP. Note it on a paper, or use a d20 to count what you got. You can’t go above 20. At 0 HP or less, you die.

Take a deck of 52 cards, remove all the jokers, red face cards, and red aces, you won’t need them.
Shuffle the rest of the deck and put it face down on your left (or right, it doesn’t matter).
This is the dungeon.

Draw 4 cards and place them in front of you. This is a room.
To pass a room, and continue to delve into the dungeon, you have to “defeat” 3 cards out of the 4, in no particular order. Each card is resolved one at a time.

You can stumble upon 3 different types of cards: clubs and spades (the black suits) are enemies. Hearts are potions and diamonds are weapons.
These cards have a value, from 2 to 14, face cards and aces are counted like this: Jack is 11, Queen is 12, King is 13 and Ace is 14.

You can drink only one potion per room. So if you choose two different heart cards, the second one will be discarded without adding any HP.
Drink a potion, and regain as many HP as the card’s value (without going further than 20).

If you take a diamond card, you get a new weapon and automatically equip it. Discard the previous one.
You can choose to use it or not during each combat.

Fights are fairly simple.
Each monster’s value is its strength.
You can either fight without any weapon (bare-hand) or with a weapon.
If you fight bare-handed, you subtract the monster’s strength from your HP.
If you choose to use your weapon and if your weapon’s value equals or passes the monster’s strength, you get no damage. If the monster is stronger than your weapon, subtract the weapon’s value from the monster’s strength. You take what’s left as damage.
As an example, if you have a weapon with a value of 5, against an enemy with a value of 10, you will take 5 damage (Enemy’s value (10) - weapon’s value (5) = 5).

But there’s a twist with the weapon system: a weapon always defeats a weaker enemy than the previous one.
So, when a monster is killed, put it over your weapon, to see your weapon value, and the value of the previously defeated monster. From now on, with this weapon, you can’t fight a monster that has a bigger or equal value.
As an example, if you got a fresh weapon with a value of 5, that has defeated no foes, and you fight a monster with a value of 11 (a Jack). Take 6 damage, then put the Jack on the weapon. Now this weapon can be used only with monsters under the value of 11 (so only from 2 to 10).

Each room you come across is skippable. If you choose to skip a room, just take the 4 cards, and put them right at the end of the deck. You’ll encounter those later. Note that you can skip as many rooms as you want, but never twice in a row. You need to defeat the next one after you skip one.

Now that you know everything, you can delve into the dungeon until there’s no room. Note that a room is always 4 cards, so if you don’t have enough cards to make a room in the deck, you win!

I find the game pretty enjoyable and mind-twisting. Sometimes, the randomness will make you cry though.
I also like playing my own way. I’ve modified one rule (because I didn’t read it properly the first time): instead of choosing any 3 cards in each room, I need to defeat them in order. Either from right to left, or left to right (with one card skippable in each room). That makes the whole game even harder and more strategic.

Go ahead and try it!

🧝Lord Of The Rings Online: The First MMORPG I Played And Loved, And I Hate MMOs

North Ithilien. Screenshot by massivelyop.com

Even though I have had little free time these past weeks, I needed something to relax.
I’m currently reading Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers and I desperately wanted a game where you can walk and explore the whole Middle Earth. I didn’t want to be just one companion of the Fellowship, as it is often the case, but I wanted to be one random person.
And here is the twist, there’s no Elder Scrolls-like game in the LOTR setting, no Elden Ring, no huge open-world…
Except for two games.

Helm’s Deep in Ardacraft. Screenshot by them.

The first is a Minecraft mod called Ardacraft that looks stunning. Unfortunately, I bought Minecraft before Microsoft bought it and now my account doesn’t work anymore. And worst: my computer isn’t powerful enough to run all the shaders and assets needed in the Ardacraft mod.

Lord Of The Rings Online Splashscreen

But, something was already there for a long time. A game I weirdly didn’t hear about: Lord Of The Rings Online.
Yes, a full open-world MMORPG.
Cool, I hate MMOs. I love solo games, and I didn’t want any interaction with people whatsoever when I play games from the comfort of my desk.
And you know what ?
The game is heavily solo friendly! AND FREE TO PLAY! And there’s a lot of codes to unlock free huge stuffs because it’s the end of the year! (Try the code EXPLOREOURWORLD before the 7th of december, wink wink)

Okay, nice!
I downloaded it. The beast took about 5 hours to download, despite my fairly good internet speed. I didn’t know why but be aware of that if you plan to test it (I heard it’s because I use a HHD)
And after that, I played it. And it was fun, like really. And yes, this is very solo friendly.
I’m at level 28 now, I’ve been playing it for an hour or two almost every evening, or sometimes more (and sometimes less) and I never encountered something that was too hard for a solo player. The game knows that a lot of people like to play it that way, so they make it solo and multi compatible.

Lotro’s map. I spent 10 hours on the castle at the top of the “Ered Luin” ’s E. It’s huge!

LOTRO is big. Like really big. For the almost 10 first hours of the game, I played in a zone, at the very west of The Shire, near Thorin’s Gate. When I opened the map and saw that this was only a small zone in a bigger area, itself in a bigger area, itself in a way bigger area I was stunned!
You can really cross the whole Middle Earth, to go from the very West to Mordor.
And I was shocked by the amount of details and the quality of the level design this game has to offer.
It’s like playing a 2008 Elden Ring. There’s something everywhere, with mountains and ruins afar.

I would love the world to be more “alive”, with NPCs walking and doing their own stuff, but I’m probably too used to solo RPGs. The same with monsters, who spawn all the time and always at the same place.
In the same way, the combat system is not my cup of tea, as I prefer CRPG or ARPG ones. Here, they are cool but probably too easy. As an Elf Hunter (So…Legolas basically) I feel like a human machine gun.
But nonetheless, It’s still fun to play!

There’s a lot to do and a HUGE amount of quests to finish. They are basic and grindy, like kill X creatures, but they always come with great text and with the nicest touch of lore.
The game loves the original books by Tolkien and tries to be as accurate as it can.
There’s also a main campaign that you can follow when you want, like the one in Elder Scrolls. They are called “Epic Quest” and add a lot to the game.
You are someone doing things to help the progression of the whole Fellowship. So you often go to known locations like Rivendell, Moria, Bree etc during those quests, encountering famous people like Aragorn or Gandalf but without being during events told in the book.
As an example, you’ll go to Bree, speaking to Aragorn, but before the Hobbits arrive in Bree. And while you’re away doing all the chores, the Hobbits arrive in Bree and meet Aragorn.
This way, you feel like a part of the whole “destroy the ring” quest without being one of the heroes, more like in the “Resistance” against Sauron’s plans.

I’m still at the beginning of it, but it is starting to be a “comfort game” for me. Wandering around Middle Earth, while looking at those beautiful landscapes soothes me, and this is probably something I needed as my other hobbies can be quite mentally exhausting.

If you want to give it a try, I suggest you download it directly on their website, not Steam (I heard the Steam version can have some bugs the standard version doesn’t have).

See you in Middle-Earth!

🧙🏼‍♂️What I’m Up To: Continuing My Game (Sound Design!) And Played A TTRPG

Last time, I spoke about the early creation of my video game. I still continue it and that’s a good sign!
As I was professionally and personally way too busy, I haven’t had the time to work on big stuff. That’s why I started to work on sound design.

I had fun making the pistol gunshot sound, using various real gunshots from freesound.org. I added the mechanism sound from an old airsoft to get that organic sound, and a bass kick for the depth. Of course, I had to put some light reverb, compression to make it good. I’m not 100% happy with it, but it was my first time trying to make this kind of sound.
I also created various empty shell-casing sounds that fall on the floor (you can see them stumbling everywhere while playing) and I started working on the various samples I need for the reloading sound. I also added a sprite for the magazine that is thrown on the ground whenyou start reloading. It gives a nice touch to the whole thing.

Finally, I’ve added the prototype placement system: to be able to place some construction on the ground (explosive mine, turrets etc) and add an explosive mine to try this.
I have a lot more to do to make it better, but it already adds a lot.

Four Against Darkness (4AD) book cover

Even though I’m not playing TTRPGs or creating anything for the hobby these last weeks (or months?) I still want to. I often have a lot of trouble concentrating, and picking a game and sitting down because my mind is going everywhere.

I often suffer from severe anxiety attacks in general, and these days are often making me fight against those demons.
As I was seeking an exit, I remember Chaoclypse speaking about Four Against Darkness, and how it’s a good stress relief game for him. So, I took it from my TTRPG shelf and played it for an hour or two.
It was definitely more fun than the last time I played it, probably because I had more time and a better knowledge of the whole hobby.

I’m only at the very start of my playthrough, as I had to read all the rules before playing, but I will definitely continue my game.
I played it with the core book only. I know there’s a lot of awesome addons for Four Against Darkness, maybe I’ll try them one day.

That’s it for the week!
Let me know if you enjoyed this article, if you played/read/watch any of the stuff I mentioned here 😀

See you!

Cheers !
Sleepdrifter

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