I’m considering an extension to the Melee/Wizard module for the Death Test Microgame. In Death Test, characters move through a dungeon, and each room they enter is a variant of the main Melee board. The basic rules and dynamics of the game are the same. That’s why an extension would be good.
A variant to the board is mostly in terms of terrain. For example, there is a “Green Room” that is a variant of the basic Melee map, but with extra walls or pits or markers (e.g., where monsters start out) in pre-defined hexes. It would be convenient if players didn’t have to set these up each time they enter/exit a room.
So far, I think I can do this with “wall”, “pit”, “marker”, etc. pieces (for the varying terrain) that are defined under a map board’s At-start stack trait (I got that info from the FAQ). This is pretty straightforward.
However, I would like to have variants of the maps (i.e., each room), using the same Map Board if possible (again doing just an extension). At first, layers seemed like a way to do it.
I could define a “Terrain X” layer for each room X (Red, Green, Indigo, etc.) and then allow a menu for the players to choose the room layout (which activates the level for the proper terrain layer and deactivates the others).
The trouble I foresee is that there are 7 rooms, so it looks like a lot of work to define these things.
Not only that, but the layers of a map are in the properties of Game Piece Layers, and that doesn’t seem to be something I can change in an extension (unless I add a new Map Window, which is really not extending the module in my opinion).
So, I thought I’d ask the experts for advice. How to do this extension without using layers?