# The Living Dungeon First-playtest rules sheet · scenario: **The Cinder Vault** · revision 1 The Living Dungeon is a cooperative raid for the four D20 Adventurers decks. Four adventurers keep their own cards and take normal turns, but share one life total while they fight a fifth, player-equivalent opponent called the Dungeon. The Dungeon may be operated by a fifth player or by the deterministic automa in `dungeon-master.md`. This is a house mode. It borrows the one-versus-many premise of Archenemy and the shared-life precedent of Archenemy Commander, but its Encounter deck, Rooms, vitality gates, and automa are original rules for this pod. ## What you need - The four exact 60-card D20 Adventurers decks and their normal tokens. - The 30-card Cinder Vault Encounter deck: 12 Monsters, 6 Hazards, and 12 Tactics. Tactics are this mode's castable Scheme equivalents. - The four Rooms, in order: Sundered Gate, Hall of Borrowed Faces, Furnace Span, and Heart of the Vault. - Both phases of Vhal-Kez, the Emberbound. - Depth land token dummies, plus Party Life, Dungeon Vitality, Doom, Heat, Lead, Sealed, Focus, and Reserve markers. - At least five fair d20s. Dungeon rolls use a die distinct from adventurer rolls. - The official Magic dungeon cards for ordinary **venture into the dungeon** effects. Living Dungeon Rooms never replace or advance those cards. ## Setup 1. Seat the adventurers in any order. Randomly choose a Lead and place the initiative cards clockwise from that player as positions one through four. 2. Each deck puts its designated commander cards in the command zone. Wyll and Inspiring Leader are both command-zone cards and keep separate commander-tax histories. 3. Set Party Life to **60**, Dungeon Vitality to **115**, Doom to **0**, and Heat to **0**. Create four tapped colorless Depth land tokens under Dungeon control. Commander damage is not used. 4. Each adventurer draws seven and uses the normal multiplayer London mulligan, including one free mulligan. Every adventurer draws on their first turn. 5. Separate the Encounter cards into four face-down stage chapters. Shuffle each chapter, make stage 1 the Encounter library, and keep stages 2–4 in the Chapter zone. Put the top two stage-1 cards face up in Reserve, left to right and oldest first. When a later stage opens, shuffle that chapter and put it on top of the existing Encounter library. 6. Reveal the Sundered Gate and perform its setup instruction. The Dungeon does not deal setup damage. ## The party The adventurers remain four separate Magic players. Each keeps their own hand, library, graveyard, exile, battlefield, mana, land play, commander tax, and choices. They may discuss all public information, but they do not reveal hands unless a card or table agreement permits it. The four players share Party Life: - Damage or life loss applied to any adventurer reduces Party Life. - Life gained by any adventurer increases Party Life. - An adventurer paying life pays from Party Life. - Party Life has no maximum and may rise above 60. - Damage is still dealt to the focused adventurer. Prevention, protection, lifelink, infect, and damage triggers are evaluated for that player before the shared total changes. - If one effect damages or makes several adventurers lose life, apply every instance. Encounter cards avoid this wording unless the multiplication is intentional. If an adventurer would lose because they cannot draw, the party loses. Poison is shared and the party loses with 15 poison counters. Commander damage and individual alternate-win effects are disabled in this scenario. ## The Dungeon as a Magic opponent The Dungeon is each adventurer's only opponent. Dungeon Vitality is its life total, the Encounter deck is its library, and its face-up Reserve is its hand. It also has a battlefield, graveyard, exile zone, and spells and abilities on the stack. - Combat damage dealt to the Dungeon is combat damage dealt to a player. - “Each opponent” on an adventurer's card affects the Dungeon once. - The Dungeon has no land deck, commander, or mana pool. Its ordinary Depth land tokens exist so land-count and land-entry cards function; the Dungeon never taps them for mana. It casts one Encounter from Reserve without paying its mana cost during each Dungeon turn. It cannot pay optional mana or life costs. It pays mandatory nonmana additional costs if able using the operator protocols; otherwise that Encounter is not castable. - Cards drawn by the Dungeon enter Reserve face up at the right end; the oldest card remains on the left. - A card with a second-turn casting window is not castable during the first Dungeon turn; the Dungeon uses the next oldest castable Reserve card. - A Dungeon-owned card returned to hand enters Reserve. Four is a cleanup limit, not a hard maximum: Reserve may overflow until cleanup. Put multiple cards entering simultaneously on the right in English-name order, then discard from the left until four remain during Dungeon cleanup. - If the Encounter deck is empty, shuffle Dungeon-owned Encounter cards from its graveyard to form a new library. Never shuffle Rooms, boss phases, or tokens into it. - If the Dungeon would lose to poison, mill, commander damage, or an effect other than 0 Vitality, it loses 10 Vitality instead. A vitality gate can still stop that loss. Encounter Monsters are creature cards, Hazards are artifact or enchantment cards, and Tactics are instant or sorcery cards. They use normal Magic zones and can be countered, copied, redirected, destroyed, exiled, bounced, stolen, phased, reanimated, or cast by an adventurer when normal card text permits. Controller-neutral wording on the Encounter cards determines what happens. Rooms, vitality gates, Doom, Heat, Focus, and Sealed are scenario objects. They are not cards or permanents and cannot be targeted, removed, copied, stolen, proliferated, or chosen by ordinary Magic effects. Room abilities use the stack unless marked **scenario action**. ## A round Each round contains four ordinary adventurer turns and two Dungeon turns: 1. Initiative position one takes a turn. 2. Initiative position two takes a turn. 3. The Dungeon takes a turn. 4. Initiative position three takes a turn. 5. Initiative position four takes a turn. 6. The Dungeon takes a turn. 7. Advance Doom by one, then move Lead one seat clockwise and renumber the four initiative positions from that player. Players may respond and help one another with spells and abilities whenever normal timing permits. They cannot spend another adventurer's mana or control another adventurer's cards without an effect allowing it. During Dungeon combat, all Dungeon creatures attack the Focus adventurer. Because the party shares the attack, **any untapped adventurer creature may block**. Each creature's controller makes its blocking choices with the party; otherwise use normal combat rules. Damage that reaches the defending player reduces Party Life. ## A Dungeon turn 1. **Ready.** Untap Dungeon permanents. Resolve “beginning of upkeep” effects. During the first Dungeon turn of each round, create one tapped colorless Depth land token under Dungeon control. It enters without being played. 2. **Open the way.** If Sealed, reveal the next Room or boss phase, perform its setup, shuffle the new stage chapter and put it on top of the Encounter library, update the vitality ceiling, then remove Sealed. 3. **Focus roll.** Roll one Dungeon d20. The natural result selects the Focus adventurer using the current initiative cards: 1–5 first, 6–10 second, 11–15 third, and 16–20 fourth. Resolve the active Room's matching lair band. 4. **Draw.** Put the top Encounter card face up at the right end of Reserve. 5. **Scheme.** Cast the oldest castable Reserve card without paying its mana cost. Use its printed fallback if its primary instruction has no legal object. Adventurers receive priority normally. 6. **Combat.** During the **first** Dungeon turn of a round, skip combat. During the **second**, every ready Dungeon creature attacks the Focus adventurer if able and the party blocks collectively. A creature cast during the first Dungeon turn has been under Dungeon control since the second turn began; a creature cast during the second still needs haste to attack. 7. **Cleanup.** Resolve Room end-step instructions, remove end-of-turn effects, and discard the oldest Reserve cards until four remain. Dungeon rolls are scenario rolls. Wyll, Pixie Guide, Barbarian Class, Brazen Dwarf, Vrondiss, and other adventurer cards neither modify nor trigger from them. ## Vitality gates and Rooms The Dungeon begins at 115 Vitality. The current Room supplies a ceiling and a floor: | Vitality | Stage | Damage needed | | ---: | --- | ---: | | 115–96 | The Sundered Gate | 20 | | 95–71 | Hall of Borrowed Faces | 25 | | 70–41 | The Furnace Span | 30 | | 40–21 | Vhal-Kez, Bound Warden | 20 | | 20–1 | Vhal-Kez, Crown Unbound | 20 | When one damage or life-loss event would cross the current floor: 1. Stop at the floor. Excess from that event does not carry forward. 2. Put the Sealed marker on the Dungeon. While Sealed, its Vitality cannot change. 3. Complete the Room's reward or transition instruction. 4. Put every Dungeon permanent marked **roombound** into its owner's graveyard. The Reserve and other Encounter permanents remain. 5. Finish the current turn. The next Dungeon turn opens the next stage before the Focus roll. After ordinary prevention and replacement effects, damage is dealt in full. Damage triggers and lifelink use those post-prevention amounts; only the resulting change to Dungeon Vitality is clamped at the current floor. Once the Dungeon is Sealed, prevent all further damage to it and ignore further Vitality gain or loss until Open the Way. Dungeon life gain cannot exceed the ceiling of its current stage. Vitality loss can cross at most one gate per event, and a Sealed Dungeon cannot be damaged during the adventurer turn between stages. ## The boss Vhal-Kez is an interactable Dungeon Monster with the printed power, toughness, and abilities of its active phase. It is not in the Encounter deck. **Heartbound** means: Vhal-Kez cannot change controllers or be copied. If it would leave the battlefield, instead tap it and remove all damage marked on it. The first time that replacement happens each expedition round, the Dungeon also loses 8 Vitality; further attempts that round still keep Vhal-Kez on the battlefield but cause no Vitality loss. Destruction by lethal damage counts as an attempt to leave. The loss still respects the current gate and Sealed. Reset the Heartbound-used marker when Lead rotates. Heartbound replaces only the event that would make Vhal-Kez leave. Resolve the rest of the spell or ability normally: Swords to Plowshares still grants life up to the stage ceiling, and token creation, manifest, roll, or reveal text still happens unless it is explicitly conditional on the zone change. At 20 Vitality, seal the Dungeon. When the next Dungeon turn opens the way, set Bound Warden aside as a scenario action; this is not a zone change and Heartbound does not replace it. Remove its counters and marked damage, detach everything attached to it, and put Crown Unbound onto the battlefield untapped as a new object. Normal state-based actions then handle former Auras; Equipment remains on the battlefield. Crown Unbound entered this turn and cannot attack that turn unless it gains haste. At 0 Vitality, the party wins. ## Doom and defeat Advance Doom after the second Dungeon turn of every round. Some Room or Encounter effects may advance it again. The party completes the round in which Doom reaches 10. If the Dungeon still has Vitality when a new round would begin with Doom 10, the vault collapses and the party loses. The party therefore wins by reducing Dungeon Vitality to 0 before collapse. It loses earlier if Party Life reaches 0, the party reaches 15 poison, or an adventurer loses by drawing from an empty library. ## Compatibility rulings for these four decks - **Venture** advances an official Magic dungeon only. It never changes the active Living Dungeon Room or Dungeon Vitality. - **Myriad, melee, and Veteran Soldier** see one opponent: the Dungeon. This is an intentional first-test watch, not a virtual-opponent patch. - **Knight of the White Orchid**, **Deep Gnome Terramancer**, **Archaeomancer's Map**, and the comparison trigger on **Battle Angels of Tyr** see the Dungeon's ordinary Depth land tokens. One enters without being played during the first Dungeon turn of each round. - **Aetherize** returns attacking Monsters to Reserve. Reserve cleanup still applies. - **Wand of Wonder** and **You Find Some Prisoners** use the Encounter deck. Encounter Tactics are instant or sorcery cards and may be cast normally. - **Chaos Warp** and **Wild Magic Surge** use the mixed Encounter deck exactly as written. Tokens disappear if shuffled; continue revealing as instructed. - A Dungeon card cast or controlled by an adventurer remains owned by the Dungeon. It goes to the Dungeon's graveyard, exile, or Reserve as appropriate. - **The Deck of Many Things** may return a Dungeon Monster. If its delayed owner-loss instruction would make the Dungeon lose, use the 10-Vitality replacement above. - Board wipes remove Monsters and Hazards but never Rooms, trackers, gates, or the boss's Heartbound replacement. ## First-playtest promise Do not adjust numbers during the game. Record an ambiguity, apply the most literal safe reading, and continue. Afterward record the gate rounds, ending life and Vitality, dead Encounter reveals, automa ambiguities, each character's meaningful contribution, and whether Wyll's one-opponent cards felt materially behind. Tune the metadata between games, not across the table. Official inspiration references: - -