On Exploration

A lot of the dungeon crawlers I play go like this: you choose or progress to the scenario you want to play, you go to the setup page, and you set up a map. You put down enemies, one by one. Maybe you put them behind closed doors, too, or maybe you have instructions to read more setup text when you open a door (but…you know you’re going to be placing more enemies). Then you put down various tokens, usually traps and terrain and some treasures you can try to get if the enemies give you a chance. This is a tried-and-true system, and I love a lot of the games that make use of it. If I’m not pressed for time, the ritual of setting up a scenario or mission or instance is part of the fun.

But just because I love these games doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes want more from them. These scenarios tend to revolve around combat—kill all the enemies, or get the MacGuffin before all the enemies kill you, or survive until the transport comes, etc. That’s fine! Combat is one of the most consistently fun ways to put pressure on players in a cooperative game, and Empty Earth: Brockton has plenty of it. But sometimes those combat scenarios can start to feel more like puzzles than adventures: what’s the optimal set of moves I can make to kill these enemies and pick up that treasure? I often have an itch to explore in my games—to run into every room of every building and investigate every clock. Games like Arkham Horror 2e, Seventh Continent, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, Mage Knight, and Hexplore It scratch that itch for me, but not always with the pleasurable crunch of dungeon-crawling action. A big part of starting work on Brockton was an effort to merge the sense of free (if pressured) roaming those games supply with the closeup clashes of gems like Folklore: The Affliction, Descent, Imperial Assault, Middara: Unintentional Malum, and, of course, Gloomhaven (games which, in their own right, have varying degrees of roaming). In other words, I wanted to make the perfect game for me (and hopefully you, too!).

To that end, I decided early in design to try to prioritize discovery, to distribute setup and narrative into digestible bites driven by player choices. A Scenario begins on a base Area map, which may include 3 or 4 tokens to place for setup and, occasionally, some enemies. From there, players pursue their goals by venturing into modular, card-based Locations, revealing maps, points of interest, and threats as they go. Areas are big and recurring. You’re unlikely to find everything one has to offer in a single visit, as your primary objectives, the passage of time, and, yes, an encroaching tide of enemies will often draw your attention away from too much wandering. But you’ll also pass plenty of turns with no enemies in play, just you and whatever doors you choose to open. As time passes in the world of the game, what you find behind those doors is likely to change, but it’s usually worth your while—a gun some doomed soul packed into a car as the Emptying began; a scrapbook of articles about the old coal roads in the south woods; a scribbled note that unlocks a new Area map; a military depot that unlocks a series of Projects for the Farm and provokes a new enemy; a smiling, singing woman you wish you’d left in the dark..

I’m aiming to launch Empty Earth: Brockton in Q2 of 2027. If you want to explore, join the mailing list! If you want to test it, try the tutorial on TTS or Tabletopia (coming soon!). If you want to see examples from Brockton of how I try to design dynamic Scenarios that include just the kinds of discovery I’m talking about, check out this (coming soon) dissection of the tutorial Scenario.