Dangers
Downcrawl 2E revamps many of the systems from the old edition in both subtle and obvious ways, but always with one key goal: helping you tell better stories. A good example is the Danger system… let’s get into it!
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In OG Downcrawl, certain moves would tell you to Raise the Danger or Lower the Danger. This was a number which you would then add to certain rolls to increase the odds that bad things would happen. For instance, you’d add the danger number when making an Encounter roll, with higher numbers more likely to correspond to difficult encounters.
In Downcrawl 2E, Dangers are significantly more engaging, by being more fundamentally narrative. Instead of a number, Dangers are now a list, each item corresponding to a specific threat that’s looming, stalking, or chasing you on your journey through the Deep, Deep Down. Various move results (such as flubbing a navigation roll while lost) now ask you to Add A Danger, which generates a new randomized threat:
In short, a Danger gives you a random Portent (like “tunnels clogged with webs”), which later might be revealed as an active Threat (“giant spiders”). This is recorded in a list of active Dangers, by default written directly on your map.
You still add the number of dangers to certain rolls (like Encounters), but now, whenever you would roll a Threat, you can instead choose for one of your active Dangers to fully reveal itself, forcing a confrontation. That Danger “walls filled with crypts, some burst open” has now escalated to an angry-looking skeleton with glowing blue eyes and a lichen-daubed crown…
(Why would you choose to confront a Danger? If you can successfully defeat or otherwise deal with it, you can play Remove a Danger to take it off your list. There are also other ways to remove dangers, such as reaching safe places, or spending time to cover your tracks.)
The new Danger economy is more fun, and specifically, it’s more narratively fun. Rather than just an abstract modifier to a die roll, it’s now a concrete list of things to worry about. Bringing a randomly rolled portent to life by adding your own twist when describing it, debating whether it’s time (or absolutely not) for a certain Danger to manifest, and telling the table how you manage to escape or outwit it: these are all new opportunities to keep telling the story, rather than just playing the system.
And a Danger that stays on your list for a long time might become the story hook for a whole new adventure…
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Downcrawl 2E is coming to crowdfunding later this year: sign up to get notified at launch! This will be a great way to get the game and some lovely optional extras together at a great price.
