The Cellar

Peg has a problem

There's a door in the tavern that goes down, and something has moved in below it.

The cellar is a game of its own: a turn-based crawl under the tavern, three floors deep, seen from above, played one step at a time. Your tavern character is who goes down, and what happens down there follows them back up.

Anybody can go. Press the cellar door on the floor and the stairs open. The only thing the door asks is that whoever's going has a class, because Peg won't send a stranger with no trade down there. If your character hasn't picked one yet, you're offered the choice at the top of the stairs, and it's theirs for good.

Peg is the one with the key and the job. Ask her about the cellar at the bar and she'll tell you what she heard down there, and what she'll pay to have it dealt with. You don't need her key to go down, but taking it is how her errand starts, and her errand is how you get paid.

What she pays

• A silver for every floor you clear. Cleared means nothing is left alive on it. Walking straight through pays nothing, and a floor left crawling can be gone back for another time.
• Fifty coppers more for the brood mother's head. It goes in your bag as proof, and Peg wants to see it.
• Once per character. Each floor and the head are paid the first time that character manages them, so the cellar is a job and not a well. Your other characters can each earn it in their turn.

She leaves it on the bar for you when you come up.

Who goes down

There are six classes: fighter, rogue, wizard, cleric, ranger and bard. Each has its own weapon, five abilities and a pool of its own to spend: momentum, stealth, mana, arrows or refrain. The fighter is heavy, the rogue and the ranger fight from behind or at range, and the cleric, the wizard and the bard are light on their feet and heavy on spells.

Levels are kept on the character, not the run. Experience comes off what you kill, and a level brings health, a better chance to hit, a bit more of the class's pool, and three points for the six scores. It survives a death.

You can take a party. Two or three of your own characters can go down together, with you moving all of them. Outside a fight the rest follow the leader; in one, everybody rolls for the order. A hero who drops is down, not dead, and a friend beside them can get them back up. It's only over when nobody is standing. They share a purse, and each keeps their own bag, belt and gear.

What you take with you

What you wear matters down there. Each character carries a weapon, armour and a charm, and each piece leans one number (to hit, damage, defence or health) and has a trait. Kit wears with use: sound, then worn, then battered, then broken. A battered piece loses its trait and a broken one gives nothing. It stays the way the cellar left it until you have it mended at the forge in town.

None of that reaches a real die. Your dice and your rolls are never touched by anything you own; this is the one place in the building where what's on your back changes a number, and it only changes numbers in the cellar.

The belt holds four kinds of thing within easy reach, and it's loaded at the chest in your room. Left alone it carries healing potions, mana for the casters, rations and lamp oil. The Mercer and the forge sell the rest: stronger draughts, smelling salts, antivenom, a web knife, nets, flash powder, holy water, fire, caltrops and more. Whatever isn't on the belt rides in your pack.

Locks are a rogue's business. Some of what you find comes in a lockbox. A rogue opens their own. Anybody else asks a rogue in the room to pick it, and pays them only if it opens. A rogue's picks wear out too.

Your own dice can roll for you. Press the 🎲 line in the bar above the game and pick what comes down: a master key (every size at once), one of your sets, or one die of each size. Every roll your hero makes then comes off those dice: to hit, damage, your class's own dice, the checks, and luck turning one of them over. The monsters still roll the house's. While it rolls, your die shows its photo and its name in the roll window. What you picked comes down again every trip until you change it or leave it to the house. Your phone can do it too: Tap a die or a master key and tap it with the RNGESUS app open. It's the same odds as the house's. They're just your dice. For now this is in the browser; the cellar inside the iPhone app still rolls the house's.

Coming back up

Walk up the stairs and everything comes with you: the coppers off the bodies, the odds and ends that monsters are made of (a rat's tail, a bat's wing, a beetle's shell), and anything rarer you turned up. The Mercer buys finds, and the forge buys back arms and armour.

If something's after you, the way out reads Flee up the stairs. You keep your life and your kit, and whatever was chasing you is still down there.

If you die, you lose the coppers and finds you were carrying, everything you're wearing breaks, and the cellar forgets what you'd done to it: fallen walls stand again, and taken things are back where they were. You keep your experience. Death down there is expensive, not permanent, which is about as kind as a cellar gets.

Where it runs

• In a browser, at the cellar door in the tavern. It's a proper game, so give it a moment to load the first time.
• On a phone's browser, turn the phone on its side. Tap to walk and fight, hold for a closer look, drag to look around, pinch to zoom. If the screen won't turn, the rotation lock is on.
• In the iPhone app, the cellar door opens the same stairs and the app carries the game itself.

If it won't open, two things are worth knowing. The cellar needs WebAssembly, and if the browser won't allow it the page says so. And if the stairs give way while it loads, try the door again in a moment. If neither of those helps, When Something Breaks is the next stop.