BASILISK!
A downloadable abomination
A print and play dungeon scrawler, inspired by Dark Fort, 12 Years, and Dungeonquest/Drakborgen.
Now available in a physical edition from Max Moon games!
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The Seventh Misery is at hand, yet there may be salvation for some…
As the skies darkened and the sun burned out, people whispered of the Mandates of Nechrubel: documents sealed by that great and dismal deity guaranteeing passage on the wings of the great Two-Headed Basilisk. Passage from the Dying World to the Undying Hereafter.
Five copies of the Mandate have been recovered. You have lied, betrayed, tricked, and murdered and now hold one in your grimy fist. Now you must descend into the catacombs beneath Bergen Chrypt and present your Mandate to the head of Verhu…
NOW INCLUDES THE TUNNELS OF NECHRUBEL SUPPLEMENT! Explore the chaotic passages beneath Verhu's catacombs... occult relics and terrifying creatures lurk therein!
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BASILISK! is an independent production by 1d10+5 and is not affiliated with Ockult Örtmästare Games or Stockholm Kartell. It is published under the MÖRK BORG Third Party License.
MÖRK BORG is copyright Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell.
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Development log
- Physical Edition!May 09, 2023
- Map sheet updateJul 26, 2022
- Tunnels of Nechrubel - A BASILISK! supplementJul 16, 2022
- Minor updateJul 12, 2022
- Final ruleset, two player rules and future supplement...!Jul 05, 2022
- Revision 3!Jul 03, 2022
- A few small tweaksJul 02, 2022
Comments
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Hey! Love the game, especially collab with Max Moon. A question- how does the merchant work? Can i give them any one item (be it weapon, starting treasure etc) for two random treaures?
Can crossbows be used only to attack monsters in adjacent squares?
Quick question, it's my first time playing something like this. Are the exits in relation to where you entered the room (i.e. left of the entrance door) or up and down left and right on the grid? In my first game I've run into the issue where I can't think of anyway to get closer to the lair, including secret doors. Did I play this wrong or is this considered a loss?
Yes, exits are relative to the direction you enter from.
Have you exhausted all possibilities? Remember the top and bottom of the map wrap round. You could also return to the entrances on the left and explore s other path. Rooms can also be searched, with a 1 in 4 chance of finding a secret door. Teleport Traps and backslide spells can also move you to undiscovered squares.
However, if all those avenues have been exhausted, I guess it is a loss, unless you have any other characters with backside, or a grappling hook if the way has been blocked by a chasm etc. I have never had a game which ended in dead ends, but I guess it is still a small possibility despite the ways around mentioned above!
Thanks for clarifying, that makes more sense to me now. I'm loving the game, thankyou!
Hope you don’t mind a question: would the Push power be effective on the Arch-Cultist to get him out of the Lair allowing a PC to roll on the Verhu table? Thanks!
Why not! :D I hope you pushed them!
Olmstead is a pariah and a nudist. He has two monkeys and a dog. I see him as a gibbering druid, running through the Bergen Chyrpt. I had to pause my game because I know I'll be sad when he eventually dies.
Played for the first time just now, two characters met an untimely(?) death by two different Grotesques! Will continue tomorrow, love this, brings back memories of Drakborgen through a grim filter!
When reading the rules for "The tunnels..." I found that you reference "Events" in the top left box, but in every other box it's "Encounters". At least that's what I thought it was meant to be.
Anyways, thank you very much for this game!
(So many typos in my original post)
I'm not sure what you mean, but maybe this helps:
In Tunnels of Nechrubel you replace BASILISK!'s Special Rooms and Encounter tables with the new ones. When you find an entrance to the Tunnels of Nechrubel you decide on a direction of travel and move 'under' the board in a single direction, rolling on the 'Tunnel Events' table and moving your counter one space in your direction of travel until you have an opportunity to emerge.
And thank you - I am very glad you are enjoying it. It was sooo much fun to write!
My thought was that the following instruction should have the word Encounters instead of Events:
"Use of the Extended Tables
When rolling Special Rooms or
EventsEncunters, use the Extended Tables on the right of this page."But I didn't write that and I can see why you didn't understand what I meant. 🙃
ah, damn, there is always one typo! Thanks for poin6that out. I will fix it soon!
played my first game tonight and loved it. One question I had was when a character is killed by a monster, does the monsters HP reset for the next character or do they stay at the same HP?
I’m playing through this right now and I’m confused on how escaping works; if part of my party escapes, then the monster follows the other half to the next room where there’s another monster, how does that work? Does combat start from the top again? I’m new to this so sorry if this sounds like a newb question!
There is no party. You choose one character at a time to enter, explore, and likely die. Once they are dead, put a cross through the and choose another character to enter. Perhaps they will seek a new path - or perhaps they might defeat whatever killed the last character and loot their corpse...
I was finishing up playing for the night a few minutes ago and just re-read the rules and realized I missed that, lol. It makes a lot more sense now, thank you! Loving the game!
After the Arch Cultist slipped two of my hapless scvm a poison blade, and a third was hit with neurotoxin, blinded, and then caught in a Whisperbird deathloop, wily Finnegan Celery decided to take his time, looting and stepping over the corpses of his comrades before heading down into the Tunnels of Nechrubel. After snatching a Vampyric Charme from the jaws of a Wyvern Kin, and going back above belowground, he used the power of the his new treasure to conjure a backup Mandate, and then spent a lazy afternoon kicking walls, unleashing weak monsters instead of finding secret doors. With a bomb and flail he descended into the lair, killed the cultist, and managed to earn Verhu's favour with the crumpled wad of paper in his back pocket.
What a blast this was to play! The care given this design instantly convinced me to buy the Solitary Defilement boxset in the recent reprint.
Thank you so much for the amazing map and session report. Glad you enjoyed it. Hope to publish a prequel game next year once things calm down here! :D
Is there any possibility that both Basilisk and Tunnels of Nechrubel could be released as single sheets for easy printing (as opposed to spreads)? Many thanks for all the games that you have provided us with and also for the incredible Sölitary Defilement KS. I do hope that you will work on more solo resources for MB.
It has not exits - only the way you came in.Every time you enter it, the whole room rotates clockwise. This could also mean it traps you in some circumstances!
Hope that makes sense!
Only the left and right edges of the dungeon act as walls. The top and bottom 'wrap' around, so you can use an arrow to move from a space in the bottom row to a space in the top one, or go from the top to the bottom.
Oh, wow, I hadn't understood that in the rules... Ok, I think I have it all pretty clear now. Just one more question and I think that I will have finished with the doubts. Is there a penalty for going through previously explored rooms?... In Dark Fort, there are roaming enemies lurking if you undo your steps but I don't think I've read anything about it in this game.
No. The game was too difficult with such penalties, and I also felt it slowed it down. The only time you might get such penalties is when searching.
Always roll for exits on a special room, unless it specifies a number of exits in the description.
Glad you are enjoying the game!
P
Ah!... ok, I understand now. Thanks for your attention!!...
Pd: More expansions please! jajaja
Small question, due to my non-native English comprehension. What do you mean by "Traps remain on the map until triggered." Do they disappear after someone stumbles on them or are they permanent features of the map?
Congratulations on such a good one page wholesome dungeon delve. Very good and soon enough I will start to drop session reports on my blog Browsing Games. :)
Hi Alex!
Thank you! Yes Traps disappear on r someone stumbles into them! :)
P
Loving this game. LOVING IT. Came to a hair's breadth from the lair but dead end! Then I got hounded by inquisitors to death. My first character died in round 1 of combat 1 in room 1 tho so I'm gonna say I only had 4 proper characters lol.
I do wanna know if multiple pets stack damage? Like two dogs or dog and monkey etc?
Thanks so much for this! And, yes - additional pets stack damage!!
Odd question: can I get a look at some of the playtest versions of the game? I've read the design notes and would love to see the game in its early stages and see how it changed and why! I do wanna sink my teeth into this neat little gem.
Very excited for Tunnels of Nechrubel. Printing it now with a fresh stack of "page 5"s. This is easily my favorite solo game. I have burned through so many runs and have never actually won. I've brought the mandate to Verhu ONCE and it was FAKE!
Yeah, I think after about 15 plays I have only won once... but i have enjoyed every attempt immensely! I would say maybe 70% of the time I do at least make it to the Arch Cultist, though!
Cool game! Video on the dungeon dive coming this week. If I'm not mistaken though, there are no rules included for stat checks / challenges. I'm assuming it's D20 + stat mod, right?
You are right, and thanks for pointing out that oversight! I will check the rules! :O
Right on. A couple of other things. The stat block for the monkey is missing "dam" on its damage roll, and one of the D4 charts has 1, 2, 4, 4.
Fixed! :)
Coming from someone that loves both Drakborgen and Mörk borg, this is f-ing genius!
Thanks, hope you enjoy playing... just had my second win put of around eight plays, and quite enjoying the choices it occasionally foists on the player. There are a few minor tweaks for the next revision, but I think the rule set is almost there...
Thinking of adding an addendum with two player rules, too...
I won my first game :D
So far it's awesome!
It would be good to have an example of play here. I've done mine on PC.
I'm already considering just using the dungeon oracles from Solitary, for flavor, but as far as a mapping square crawl go, this is cool.
If you want, please consider the following suggestions:
- I may have missed rules considering backtracking, but that might be cool too. I'm worried that one might explore most of the dungeon too quickly, and that doesn't leave much to do for the others.
Might be cool to consider a special bonus for mapping out the entire dungeon, if possible.
So far, it's really cool, I like it, definitely something I can see myself messing around with on the go.
:O This is so awesome, I LOVE IT! Thank you - do you mind if I share this on Twitter?
Thank you for all the feedback - really helpful. I'll be putting out some revisions early next week!
Not at all :D
Share it by all means , my tag is @dm3_inks
Hi! I'm playing the game, and There's something I'd like co clarify :
When getting better, do I spend 10 pts on ALL of the below, or a single thing?
I'll post the results soon when all my scvm's dead :D
Only a single thing. I will edit the text for clarity on that later!
Thanks :)
I think just doing those grey and white boxes to separate them visually as individual options will do just fine.