Cinder Stair: A Solo Roll-and-Write Dungeon Delve

One torch. Three depths. A wyrm made of cinders. Under the town of Brackenford is a stair that goes down further than any map. Something at the bottom keeps the whole place warm: the Cinder Wyrm , curled around the last fire in the world. Cinder Stair is a solo roll-and-write dungeon crawl. You draw the dungeon as you explore it, room by room, while two six-sided dice decide what waits behind each door. And the whole time, your torch is burning down. Print it, grab two d6 and a pencil, and go down. A run takes 30-45 minutes. How it plays Draw the map as you go. Each Depth is a 6×6 grid. Roll for exits, sketch doors, choose your path. Dead ends cost you precious light. Your torch is your clock. Every room burns one box. Resting heals you but burns more. When the torch dies you fight in Darkness, and the Deep starts eating you. Doubles are the way down. Any roll of doubles reveals the stairs. Go down now, weak and poor, or keep exploring for loot while the light lasts? Fast, tense combat. One roll per round: 2d6 + Might against the monster's Target. Hit, or get hit. Face the Cinder Wyrm. On Depth III, doubles reveal its lair. Slay it to win, then score your gold, torch and HP. What's inside (16 pages, US Letter and A4) Complete rules with a step-by-step example of play 6 hero backgrounds (Sellsword, Cutpurse, Hedge-Witch, Pilgrim, Grave-Robber, Lamplighter) Bestiary: 18 monsters across three Depths, plus the boss d66 Loot table, Trap and Feature tables, and 36 room descriptions for atmosphere Reusable Hero Sheet, three Depth map sheets, and a Chronicle to log all your delvers One-page Quick Reference Variants: Apprentice, Veteran, Nightmare, The Long Delve and a Roguelike Legacy rule Playtested by numbers Every table was balanced with tens of thousands of simulated delves. A sensible hero beats the Wyrm about two runs in five : enough to win, rarely enough to feel it. Want it easier or crueler? The variants move it from roughly 47% down to about 22%. Printer-friendly Black line art on white, with no big dark areas, so it's easy on your ink. Print the rules once, then reprint the sheets whenever you like, or slip them into a sheet protector and use a dry-erase marker. What you need The PDF (print at 100% / "actual size") Two six-sided dice A pencil and an eraser Art is vector line work drawn in code; no image-generation models were used. Rules text was written with AI assistance (see the AI disclosure on this page). Fonts: Pirata One, IM Fell English and Crimson Text, used under the SIL Open Font License. Print as many copies as you like for personal use.