Lost in the Dungeon: A Collaborative Solo Dungeon Game (Part 1)

23 Jul, 2026

This is an outline of a solo dungeon game (game, not necessarily TTRPG) inspired by this Tumblr post by Carlos, a.k.a. imsobadatnicknames about turning the Escape from Terminus creepypasta into an actual, (theoretically) playable TTRPG. I wanted to noodle around with this idea a bit myself, though I ended up going in a very different direction from him.

For me, the thing that is most interesting about Escape from Terminus is the idea of a solo dungeoncrawling game which passes from person to person, each player contributing to an overall map of the dungeon and noting where they left messages, dropped items, or died, a bit like an analog version of the Soulsborne games' multiplayer functionality. In order to do that, the game actually has to be playable, and not merely in a theoretical sense. So while I think Carlos is attempting something closer to the text of the original creepypasta, I will be taking somewhat looser inspiration.

One of my favorite wilderness generation procedures is from Zzarchov Kowalski's Lost in the Wilderness for Neoclassical Geek Revival. Lost in the Wilderness is 25 pages long, consisting of one-page writeups for 21 different biomes such as "Farm country," "The undermountain," and "The land that time forgot." Each biome has a d4, d6, and d8 table which produces a three-dimensional set of outcomes, plus additional wrinkles from rolling triples or doubles (i.e. 111, 66), runs (i.e. 123), or all maxes (864).

Brainstorming

For my game, which I'm calling Lost in the Dungeon, I want to do something similar but a little more maximalist. At this time, I'm thinking:

• Roll a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20. Each die will describe a different exit from the room you find yourself in (hearkening back to Escape from Terminus's rooms all being hexes). I imagine you roll these dice physically, arrange them into a hexagon, and swap out the one representing the room you just came from (which will keep its result from before).
• The sum (55 distinct results between 6 and 60, with an average of 33)* will determine room features.
• "Conjunctions" (if you roll two 4's, three 5's, etc.) of different numbers will determine additional features.
• Exit features, room features, and conjunctions might have modifiers which can adjust the results of different dice (i.e. if you hear water behind a door, that door should have a greater chance of putting you in a room with water in it).

Math

One of my favorite things about coming up with weird dice procedures is thinking through how the math will affect the results:

With a normal set of polyhedral dice, you will roll lower results more than higher results, especially considering 13-20 will only be possible on the d20. If we were to say, for instance, that the north exit is the d4, this would mean the north exit would be limited to exit types 1-4. If we roll and then randomly arrange the dice into a hexagon, this isn't an issue.

Swapping the entrance you came through also has a strange effect, because it isn't necessarily the same die size being swapped, so you could have a 20 replacing a d4 (bringing the maximum sum up to 76), though a 1 from a d4 replacing a d20 would merely drag the average down. This also means you can strategize, as lower-number doors will tend to yield lower-sum rooms, while higher-number doors will yield higher-sum rooms.

Conjunctions and sums relate to each other in unique ways, so a conjunction of six 1's (the minimum result) will always coincide with a sum of 6, while the maximum result, 60, will have no conjunctions (4,6,8,10,12,20). Higher conjunctions will tend to coincide with higher sums, and lower conjunctions with lower sums. So if there is a conjunction of two 12's, we know the sum will always be 27+ (since the other three* dice must roll at least a 1 each).

Lost in the Wilderness does something a bit similar: some triples and runs are possible on any dice while others are limited to specific ones. For example, in "The jungle" biome, a run of 123 is "Quicksand!". This can be arrived at with six different rolls, so Kowalski had to take care to ensure that "Quicksand!" was compatible with any of those six different encounters. On the other hand, a double of 55 will always be an encounter with "a python" in "dense undergrowth," and the result for that double¹ presumes that.

Another neat idea from Escape from Terminus is that getting closer to the exit hex causes bad things to happen more. One way we could implement this in Lost in the Dungeon is to have the minimum sum (6, a raw 1-in-460,800 chance) be the exit. Then, we can have conjunctions of smaller numbers be hazards like traps or monsters. Conversely, larger sums and conjunctions of high numbers should yield treasures or useful items.

Conjunctions

There are 40 possible conjunctions under normal circumstances:

• two of each number 1-12 (12)
• three of each number 1-10 (10)
• four of each number 1-8 (8)
• five of each number 1-6 (6)
• six of each number 1-4 (4)

Swapping out the exit you came from allows each number (except for 1-4) to show up again, giving us a total of 56 conjunctions.

Some conjunctions can also cooccur, so for instance you could have two 6's and two 3's within the same roll.

One way to simplify these forty "encounters," so to speak, is to organize by number, so have 4's be traps, for instance, with two 4's being the most common kind and six being a really exceptional trap. Then 3's could be obstacles, like locked doors or blocked passages. 2's could be fatigue or equipment damage, and maybe 1 could be some kind of puzzle or riddle?

5's and 6's should be challenges that can provide rewards if overcome, and 7's and up should be useful items.

Rooms & Exits

Since room contents or encounters are mostly covered by the conjunctions, the sums themselves should describe the "set dressing." We know that higher-numbered doors lead to more treasure-filled rooms, while lower-numbered doors lead to more dangerous areas that are closer to the exit. I imagine that this dungeon is some kind of burial complex, where the traps are all near the entrance to catch tomb robbers while the good stuff is buried deep within. So the higher rooms (and doors) should be more ornate, sacred-looking, and carefully crafted, while the lower rooms (and doors) should be crumbling and ruined.

Mechanics

The description of Escape from Terminus as baroque and overly difficult reminds me of early interactive fiction games (like Zork or the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy video game), as well as Choose Your Own Adventure Games. I think the mechanics should be very simple, like a three-stat, d6+Stat resolution system where failing usually means your character dies.

Items

The Escape from Terminus creepypasta mentions "starvation," which suggests that hunger is a mechanic in the dungeon. Managing light sources like torches is also a characteristic feature of dungeon games. We can brainstorm several other categories of item:

• Rations, which keep your character from starving
• Torches, which allow your character to see
• Weapons, which make it easier for you to fight monsters
• Armor, which allows you to take hits without dying
• Maps, which give you some control over the dungeon generation process
• Tools, which allow you to bypass obstacles (like lockpicks or crowbars for locked doors)
• Scrolls/Potions/Quest Items, which allow you to bypass certain challenges

Passing It On

The beauty of our simple exit system is that each room is defined by 6 numbers: you don't even need to know which die produced each number. So if you have a hex map, you can take a hex to be a room and number the edges with the exits you generated for that hex. Then, if someone else looks at that map, they can just analyze the numbers to get the same room description.

In addition to this, players should annotate places where they changed the pregenerated hex, by removing items or slaying monsters produced by conjunctions, by leaving messages, or by dying and leaving behind their stuff. With a physical map, a group of players could use different color pens to indicate which hexes on the map have been changed, and keep a log which explains what they added to or took from the hex.

I think that this is a cool idea I haven't seen explored before, but I would love to hear anything similar others have already done.

Footnotes

#lost in the dungeon