Gear Grids: The System that More Games Should Use

I'm working on a few videos in the background (Literally working on the next episode of A Choice Cut right now) and while writing up the details for the armor video, I realised that while I often cover various cookie cutter builds and analyse gear, I don't think I've written about the system as a whole. The Gear Grid system and its associated mechanic of Affinity could be debated as one of the two most important mechanics in Kingdom Death (KDM) alongside the twin AI and HL decks used for the monsters (third place I think goes to Survival Actions for me at the moment). When we look at adoption and iteration upon systems in the growing Boss Battling genre and its parent genre of dungeon crawlers we've see decks of cards to determine monster behaviour become widely adopted; as it should be, because it is way more interesting than preset behaviours or rolling a dice while also being far simpler to operate than Middara's flowchart AI.

However, no-one seems to seek to innovate and improve upon the Gear Grid system and the honest truth is I think that should change, not only should other Boss Battling games look to do something that iterates upon this beautiful system, but also I think that dungeon crawlers should get into using this as well. In order to explain why, I'll go through the entire system here in this post, partially to ensure that all my reasoning behind this broad claim can be backed up and partially to demonstrate why the Gear Grid is the single most important equipment system design we have had in not just years but decades.

How Does It Work?

The Gear Grid is half of the information that makes up a survivor unit; like the Monsters in Kingdom Death are constructed from two types of cards held on their monster dashboard, survivors mirror that by having a marriage between their individual survivor sheet (holding their stats, disorders, abilities, fighting arts, knowledges etc) and the gear grid. This grid has two parts to it, the left side includes references for common survival actions in the game along with a printed copy of the base survivor weapon 'Fist & Tooth' while the right hand portion (the part we're most interested in) is a three by three grid of square spaces where gear cards can be placed.

Just before departure, players will select their chosen survivors and construct the gear grids from the various 50.8mm x 50.8mm square gear cards that they have available in their settlement. These cards can be gained as rewards for defeating monsters, through random occurrences during the various phases, from story events and a myriad of other options. The most common way these gear cards are gained though is via crafting, which is the expenditure of resources, converting one or more resource cards into a single gear card. These gear cards come in three keyword categories; weapons, armor and items. Weapons are the cards utilised by the survivors to attack (and sometimes defend from) the monster, armor is the protection that the survivor is wearing on their journey through the hunt and the showdown phases, and items are a catch all category that covers anything which isn't a part of the first two groups.

Armor is probably the single most important gear card type and that is because of how its systems interact with the gear grid, most armor sets take up five slots on a gear grid; meaning that for most survivors the vast majority of their gear tableau (as I call the collection of cards on a survivor's gear grid) is armor cards and when that is not the case we get to some very exciting and unique builds. Armor is the game's main source of protection however, and because of its Armor Set Bonus system, which is where a complete set of matching armor cards will generate a sixth card that sits outside of the gear grid and provides additional bonuses. Collecting and completing of armor sets is a major task in Kingdom Death, while the new generic 'Clothed & Satiated' Arc Survivor “set” bonus has helped reduce the power of the complete set of armour a little, we're still in a world where armor sets (or their absence) dominates how we focus our game builds.

Another aspect of armor that is important is the 'slots' that it has, there is a limit to the amount of armor of each slot that you can wear, with the slots not being present on the gear grid, but instead printed on the individual gear cards and the survivor hit location dice. You can't have two helmets if they're both armor for example. This is an interesting place where the survivor has logical slots for armor; but they do not translate to specific fixed points on the gear grid. You don't have a head slot in the middle top of your gear grid where you must put your helmet, it can be in the bottom right or middle left instead if you want.

Weapons are quite different, most survivors want at least one weapon, though access to Fist & Tooth - a generic weapon that is kept relevant all campaign by the inclusion of the excellent decision to give it the Deadly ability – means that's not a hard rule. However most survivor gear grids will run between 1 and 2 weapons, what weapons exactly depends on the survivor's playstyle, the dominant types though are a single weapon, a weapon and shield or two paired weapons. One of the more awkward parts of the Gear Grid system is the 'hands' system or to be more accurate, the lack of a hands system beyond the two-handed weapon vs. dismembered arm interaction.

Players who come from other similar games like dungeon crawlers are used to their units having two hand slots, one for the left and one for the right hand and that is the maximum number of weapons they can carry (others sometimes being stored in a backpack which requires effort to access). This is not the case in KDM, if you wanted to run a gear grid of nine weapons, you absolutely can and the survivor can access each and every single one at all times. Even if you have nine shields in your gear grid, all of them are active, strapped to the survivor like a turtle shell one would presume. This does cause confusion, I still get the occasional person asking why I have a two-handed weapon and a shield in the same gear grid and as such I think I do have to concede that it is the largest issue with this system, though it isn't impossible to solve that issue in other systems. One could easily utilise a hands system printed onto weapons in the same spot as the armor icon is and it displays one or two hands. That is not how KDM works, though the armor system and experience from other adjacent games does cause confusion.

By itself though, this system of nine slots to put your gear in would be uninteresting in the way that it is in other games. A typical dungeon crawler will have their own slots; say head, hand, hand, body, belt, necklace, boots, ring, ring and three slots for potions on the belt. As long as you're following the numbers correctly, you don't need a grid in that situation. For example here's the excellent Rollinmats' Arkham Horror Investigator player mats demonstrating how it might look in other dungeon crawlers (yes, Arkham Horror LCG is a dungeon crawler at its heart and playing it has made me a better Kingdom Death player).

I have the older version of these mats and I really cannot recommend Rollin' mat's Arkham Horror player mats enough for those of you who are in the EU like myself.

Instead of having those fixed place and number slots KDM went in a different direction, it introduced the affinity system which is for myself the single most important and engaging part of the gear system, but before we get into that I'd like to briefly highlight a very interesting gear grid variant which reached my gaming table while I was writing this.

I am not sure how many of you are familiar with the recently released game Arydia: The Paths We Dare to Tread a “green legacy” game (which is what they've named a resettable-”legacy” game). The name is one heck of an unfortunate mouthful, especially the world/setting name of Arydia, I've misspelt it multiple times in just the two attempts at writing it you see here and I've resorted to CTL+Pasting the word for the rest of this section. Arydia is a more traditional style of dungeon crawler, taking an approach that is more complex than most recent dungeon crawlers, but providing a more traditional 'mobs and occasional bosses' format in a variety of settings. In many way it feels like a board game translation of a roleplaying game, especially the computer roleplaying game variety and I'm absolutely going to dedicate one article this year to writing about it because I'm really impressed with this game's design on a number of fronts.

Photo by César García Bravo (from here)

The equipment system is what I want to cover here, it has a 10 square grid with set locations that translate to the traditional character slots. Here's an image of a grid with some starter gear that came from the tutorial. You place your equipment onto the grid and it provides protection to those locations. There's a lot more going on beyond this, but I wanted to showcase how this system uses a board to dedicate slots while also having that potential for refinement further into an engaging puzzle of a grid.

The system isn't as varied and interesting as Kingdom Death's, because there is no affinity system and also you're far more limited in how you can layout your options, but the real interesting part of this entire system is how the enemy attacks work. They use coloured dice which have a series of markings that relate to the gear grid directly, you roll the matching die or dice as listed on the monster card and you can see where you've been hit.

Honestly, this is a way more exciting system than I've experienced in other dungeon crawlers and boss battlers; the dice colours have different faces which means they hit different areas more often, for example we discovered that rats were designed to hit lower portions more than ones further up (which makes sense, they're big rats) and that is just one facet of how these dice are employed.

I don't know if Arydia's designer Cody Miller has played Kingdom Death or is aware of the gear grid system, but regardless it is very exciting to see someone innovating in this space the way that Adam and Anna did and I wanted to gush a little bit about it here, because before this happened I've been a bit disappointed with how much other games have been shy of giving players such a powerful and engaging experience.

Time to return to Kingdom Death and its playground of puzzling potential.

Each card can have one of three different coloured half squares on its cardinal point sides (top, bottom, left, right) these half squares do not do anything by themselves, but if they are matched up to another half square of the same colour then they complete and become a full affinity square. By themselves these affinities do nothing other than please my eyes, they're decorative. At least they would be, but significantly other mechanics can call upon these affinities, checking how many are in the gear grid and giving bonuses (or sometimes penalties) as a consequence.

Without the affinity system, the Gear Grid would not be as exciting or engaging as it is. A blue affinity on its own doesn't mean much, but if you consider the Lucky Charm, which gives +1 Luck when you have two complete blue affinities anywhere in your gear grid, suddenly it means a lot. It's 50% of the way towards unlocking a powerful stat boost your survivor can utilise.

Not only do we get affinity abilities that care about 'anywhere in the gear grid' but we also have puzzle affinity abilities, these want specific affinities that are on their gear card to be connected and completed. The little puzzle piece icon used to signify this is excellent user interface design, it is immediately understood by anyone who is familiar with jigsaw puzzles and it is distinct enough from the generic square version that it is impossible to get them mixed up.

This affinity system is the glue that binds the entire gear, gear grid, survivor and gear cards together. Suddenly not only do the cards matter for their individual gains, they also matter for what powerful abilities they can unlock on other cards in the same gear grid. A gear card with a situational ability that rarely is useful can be welcomed into a gear grid because it is activating other gear cards thanks to the affinities it brings. This is such an incredible boon for the game, though it does require some care in design; armor sets that need too many puzzle affinities to unlock key abilities can become less desirable, the White Lion armor set, which cannot activate its best ability (+1 movement) without an additional up facing red affinity, is one such example. Phoenix Armor, which needs two additional gear cards, one with a right facing green and the other with a left facing red is another such example and a third one would be the Gorment Mask which needs a down blue and an up green. This can effectively turn your armor set into a six or even seven slot armor set if you're forced to use marginal gear cards because of a lack of affinity options. It can also create interesting decisions when the directions of the puzzle affinities are well designed.

My personal favourite example pair of puzzle affinities is on the Dragon Armor set, as you can see in the image above, this armor set desires a single gear card with a left blue and an up blue. That's a very rare combination in this game, with one of the main candidates being a substandard Dragon King weapon. However, because the waist slot ability is so marginal and the chest ability is so powerful, usually the decision made is to connect the chest blue and not worry about the waist if you can't manage it. I find that situation fascinating, because every time we get a new left and up blue non-armor gear card we can consider if it is bringing something to the Dragon Armor set. That provides potential for discovery of new synergies and combos, something that makes players feel smart and engaged. Lightbulb moments where a player looks at say, Bird Bread and notices that not only is it a phoenix gear card, but it also has that right facing green affinity that the Plackart desires, are a joy not only to experience, but to see other players click with as well.

All of that is just the system as it stands, there's so many variables you can play with, we've seen Team Death start to explore this with gear cards stored outside the gear grid (Quiver & Sun String) and an entirely new, smaller gear grid with the Scout and its special rule that Scout keyword cards can only be placed in the Scout gear grid. When it comes to gear grid ideas, I'm bubbling over with thoughts on how this system can be expanded and iterated upon; it's such a delightful system to play with because it is simultaneously a wide open sand box, but also a really tight, rigid space with only nine slots to fill.

I'm putting this post out to become available for all; because while I doubt there are many game designers who read my writing, I do think it's important that we spread this excellent concept out to as many eyes and ears as possible. I don't want to see dungeon crawlers with the old roleplaying head slot system, I want to see ones which hand players a blank canvas of slots and say 'Fit your equipment onto this' with mechanics like affinity or the orientation arrows which force players to build in a certain manner in order to gain powerful bonus effects. This system is really special and I want to see it propagate out into the wider game world because it's a puzzle that never stops being thrilling to interact with. It reminds me so much of tableau building games where individual cards become stronger through combinations with other cards, or competitive team building games like Pokemon, where dozens of different variables come together to support each other. It's a super exciting aspect of Kingdom Death and when I play another boss battler or dungeon crawler without this system I always miss it, more than I miss even the Hit Location deck (which gets excluded from most boss battlers for some reason).

I would love to take all the bubbling ideas I have surrounding this system and turn them into a functional game, however organising such a project is beyond my personal skill set, I get overwhelmed easily when trying to get started, but perhaps this year in 2025 I'll try and put together a prototype because it seems that no-one else wants to iterate and develop upon the mechanics of this incredible design that Adam and Anna forged.