Militious Treasure Hunt (Keelar)

This game is © 2025 David Hammerle. All Rights Reserved. You are granted permission to download and play for non-commercial, personal use only. No redistribution or commercial exploitation is permitted. For any other use, please contact davehammerlecoder@gmail.com.

Among all the games that I've made, this is the one that got the most play. Throughout most of high school, I played it with a cousin and his friends each time I visited him, and I had a group of friends from school that I played it with every month or so. I started off making 3 character classes for the game, but over the course of the few years that I was playing the game, I ended up making 20 different character classes. This variety was probably the most interesting thing about the game.

However, it had a few major flaws:

1. Free-For-All: It was free-for-all, and the players that didn't attack each other tended to win, while the players that attacked each other, tended to lose. This meant that the game involved too much negotiation, with players divvying up the gold on the board, while avoiding conflict. The game would have been more fun if it centered more around combat than negotiation.
2. Runaway Winning: The game was played in rounds. Each round players would try to gather as much gold on the board before going out the exit. Players would then spend their gold on new items and abilities between rounds, in order to get more powerful. The problem was that whichever players accumulated more money in the first few rounds would get a lot more powerful than the other players, and that lead would grow until one or two players usually divvied up the gold on each board amongst them and the other players were left with almost no money.
3. Lack of Randomness: There were very few sources of randomness in the game. Each player's capabilities were mostly known by all the other players. This could result in analysis paralysis where if players really wanted to win, they would try to calculate out everything that was going to happen ahead of time. That slowed the game down, making it less fun.
4. Linear Character Ability Progression: Each character class didn't tend to provide much variety regarding how they could develop throughout the game. For any given character class, players mostly bought the same things in approximately the same order, each time that class was played. It would have been much more interesting if there had been more different viable paths of ability progression. Although, at least some of the later classes had more interesting ability progression.

For a long time this game was known as simply 'Dave's Game', but after a year or so I decided to give it a real name. I gave it the name 'Keelar', but pronounced like 'Kaylar'. It was mostly just an arbitrary scifi/fantasy-sounding name. More recently, I came up with the name 'Militious Treasure Hunt', because I think it describes the gameplay accurately.

Rules Etc.

•   Militious Treasure Hunt (Keelar) Rules.txt   (the info on this webpage)
•   General Health Levels.txt   (things to buy, accessible by almost all classes)

Classes

•   Mage v1.txt
•   Mage v2.txt
•   Warrior.txt
•   Soldier v1.txt
•   Soldier v2.txt


•   Demon.txt


•   Energy Ghost.txt
•   Robo.txt
•   Chaos Elemental.txt


•   Morphboy.txt


•   Eldere.txt
•   Ugh.txt
•   Elf.txt


•   Rogue.txt
•   Cleric.txt
•   Lilliputian Rolling Fortress.txt


•   Geomancer.txt
•   Vampire v1.txt
•   Vampire v2.txt
•   Ninja.txt
•   Sage v1.txt
•   Sage v2.txt
•   Dragon v1.txt
•   Dragon v2.txt


•   Sorcerer.txt


•   Undead.txt
•   Elementalist.txt

• Before each game, each player chooses a different character class to play as for the entire game, and starts off with 0 gold to spend.
• Feel free to pick any version of a character class, if there are multiple, but generally the later versions are more balanced.
• It is customary to continue playing boards within a game until one character has definitively pulled ahead of all the other characters in terms of total gold spent during the current game.
• Then total gold gathered determines the winner, 2nd place, 3rd place, etc.

Board Setup

• The board should be a square (or rectangle close to a square) grid approximately 10-20 squares times the number of players.
• At the start of each board, the board should be haphazardly scattered with approximately 1/5 the total board size barriers (which have 1 health each) and 1/5 the board size walls.
• No space(s) should be completely seperated from the rest of the board by walls.
• Approximately 3 gold (pennies) per player should be placed about the board haphazardly in approximately 8-20 stacks. The number of gold per player on the board should increase by 1 after each board, but the number of stacks should stay around 8-20.
• Next pick a random location for the exit to be at.
• Then starting places for characters should be chosen randomly, re-rolling collisions with other characters, walls, barriers, gold, or the exit in any order. Also re-roll any starting spaces for characters that are within 2 spaces (0 diagonals) of other characters.

Starting Player

• Shift the starting player for this board to be one to the left (clockwise) of the starting player from the previous board.
• Turns continue clockwise to the left as usual from there.
• At the beginning of the game, you'll need to select a starting player at random.

Residual Effects End at End of Board

• By default, all residual effects end at the end of each board.
• Similarly, all primary and secondary resources are lost.

Spend Gold Before Each Board

Before each board including the first one, each player may spend his/her gold on abilities for his/her character class.

Character Spec Sheets

Each character has a separate spec text file/section describing its abilities and what can be bought for that character with gold.

General Health Levels

By default, HP upgrades can also be purchased by any class from the 'General Health Levels' list, unless the class spec indicates differently.

Can Purchase Multiple of Items

Multiple of each item may be purchased, but only one of each ability or level.

Gold Costs

In those specs, costs in gold are shown at the left side of each ability as a number followed by 'g', like '5g' for something that costs 5 gold.

In-Level and Out-of-Level Inventory

You may purchase and own items that you don't take into a board; they stay in your out-of-level inventory.

Levels

• When purchasing 'Levels' of any type, each level has a prerequisite of the Level before and replaces the Level before when purchased.
• If some 'Levels' indicate an amount of some resource (like MP), that number will be both the starting and max amounts for that resource.

Prerequisites

• You must satisfy a thing's prerequisites in order to buy it. you also must satisfy the prerequisites in order to bring it onto the board and to use it on the board.
• In order bring an item/ability onto the board, you must also bring all prerequisite items/abilities onto the board.

By default, all characters also have these abilities, regardless of class:

1. you may pick up gold at 0 range at any time
2. you may drop gold at 1 range (diagonals) any time on your turn
3. use 1 turn: gain 1 HP, use this ability only when you are downed
4. use 1 turn: if you are downed and have positive HP you are no longer downed

By default, each character starts with 6 starting and max HP and may purchase General Health Levels to increase that number. By default, each character has 2 hands.

Ability Costs

Ability costs are generally indicated like: "pay 2 actions, 3 MP: deal 1 damage", with the part before the ':' being the cost and the part after the ':' being the effect

Actions

• Actions may not be retained between turns, they disappear at the end of the character's turn.
• If a character uses an ability that has a cost of 'use 1 turn', the character loses all actions when using that ability and it may only be used once per turn;
• By default, any character that uses actions gains 1 action per turn at the beginning of each turn.
• By default, any character that uses actions has this ability:
  • Move - pay 1 action: move 1 space

Use 1 Turn

When an ability requires you to 'use 1 turn', that means you must skip getting any primary resources for that turn in order to use the ability.

One-Use

• If something is 'one use', that means it may be consumed only once and then may never be used again, including in later boards in the same game.
• However, often more than one of each one use item may be purchased.

Gather Gold and Get Out the Exit

The objective is to gather as much gold as possible from the game board and then get out the exit with it. As soon as a player character moves onto the exit, it exits the board and may not return (unless a special ability allows it).

Exits

• If a character ever exists on an exit, the character must exit the board, if possible.
• If a non-primary character exists on an exit, it also exits, but it is destroyed as a result of exiting.
• if an exit is destroyed and there is no other exit, a new one teleports onto the board.

Carrying Gold

• By default, only primary characters may carry gold or exit the level with gold in order to spend it later.
• Even if a secondary or tertiary characters may carry gold, it still may not exit the board with gold unless that is also specified.

Damage

• When a characer takes damage, its health points (HP) go down by that amount.
• A character's HP may go below 0.
• If a character's HP is 0 or below and the character is not yet downed, the character becomes downed.
• While downed, a character may occupy the same space as other characters and barriers.
• While downed, a character may not take normal actions on its turn, but may spend its turn to gain 1 health, or, if it has HP above zero, it may get up and no longer be downed (but that consumes the character's full turn).

Friendly Fire

There is friendly fire, so attacks may damage the character's self and also friendly characters.

Being Downed

• Each time a character reaches 0 health, the character is downed.
• When downed, a character must drop all its gold on an adjacent space chosen by the player that downed the character, or by the character itself if not downed by another character.
• By default, downed characters lose all abilities except:
  • use 1 turn: heal self 1 HP;
  • use 1 turn: you are no longer downed, may only be used if you have positive HP;
  • other characters and barriers may occupy the same space as you, but not walls.

Being Killed

• If a character's HP is less than or equal to its negative max HP, it is immediately killed.
• A killed character drops any gold it is carrying and leaves the board.
• Killed characers are resurrected after each board so that they can participate in the next board.

Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Characters

• Primary Characters: the main character that each player uses is considered a 'primary' character.
• Secondary Characters: any additional characters that come with that character that are not summoned are considered 'secondary' characters.
• Tertiary Characters: any characters that are summoned during a board are considered 'tertiary' characters.
• By default, primary characters are downed when their HP is reduced to 0 or less, but secondary and tertiary characters are destroyed instead. You may take the turns of each of the character's you control in any order you want during your player turn, but you must complete one character's turn before starting another character's turn. You may still control secondary and tertiary characters on your turn, even if your primary character loses its turn.

May Not Occupy Same Space

Live characters (not downed), barriers, and walls may not occupy the same spaces.

Range

• If an ability says it deals damage at a range, that means it may reduce the health of a target player or barrier within that range (orthogonally) by the number of damage.
• All ranges are measured delta X + delta Y unless some number of diagonals are allowed indicated by text like "2 range (2 diagonals)".
• Range abilities are blocked by walls, barriers, and other characters, but not by corners of the aforementioned unless both diagonals of the corner are occupied by walls and/or barriers.
• You may not target yourself unless an ability says you can.

Push Back

• If the ability says push back, the target is moved back 1 space for each push back in the closest of the four directions to the direction of the attack or diagonally if the attack is exactly on diagonal.
• Characters and barriers may be pushed back, but not walls.
• If a barrier or character is pushed back into a wall or another character or barrier, both take damage equal to the amount of remaining push back instead of moving.
• When a unit is 'moved with push', it behaves similar to push back, except the push can generally be in any direction
• Self push back is push back on the character using the ability that pushes the character back in one of the opposite directions from the direction the ability is directed in.

May Not Push Walls

By default, walls may not be pushed by pushback or by being moved with push, but barriers and characters may.

At Radius (Explosions)

• If the ability says damage and/or push back at a radius, the ability deals that amount of damage at everywhere up to that distance away (orthogonally) from the target (except the target) directed away from the target (it’s an explosion).
• If an explosion has different amounts of damage and/or push back for different radii, only the smallest effect for the smallest radius the impacted thing impacts it, for example if a character is at 1 range on diagonal and the explosion is described as "2 damage at 2 range, 1 damage at 3 range", the character would take 2 damage, not 3 damage.
• Walls and barriers block explosions, but an explosion will pass through a character, hitting whatever is behind the character in addition to hitting the character.
• If an explosion says "(no blast shadow)", that means that the explosion goes through walls and barriers, and hits everything inside the radius.
• If an attack with radius misses a target (like if it has evasion) but hits the same space, target character takes the same amounts of damage and pushback it would take at 1 radius.
• If an attack of explosive type misses the target character, but still hits the same space as the target character, target character takes the full damage from the direct attack.

Range or Radius with Diagonals

If the radius amount indicates some number of diagonals in parentheses like "3 damage at 3 radius (2 diagonals)", that means that portion of the radius can be on diagonal, which would look like this:

        OXXXXXO
        XXXXXXX
        XXXTXXX
        XXXXXXX
        OXXXXXO

where the explosion hits everything marked with an X, but not spaces marked with an O, and the target is marked with a T.

Teleportation

When teleporting to a random or semi-random space:

• if you land on a primary or secondary character, you must re-roll to pick a different space;
• if you land on a tertiary character, barrier, wall, gold, or exit, it is destroyed, this is known as 'telefragging', if this destroys an exit and there are no other exits, a new exit teleports onto the board.

Measuring Line of Sight

• Almost all abilities and items and such require an uninterrupted line of sight to the target.
• This should be measured from the center of the originating space to the center of the target space or the space the target character is on.
• If this line passes through anything like a character, barrier, or wall, then there is no uninterrupted line of sight.
• By default, each character, barrier, or wall is considered to occupy the entirety of the space it is on.
• If the line passes along the edge of a blocking space, that will block the line of sight.
• If the line passes through the corner of a space, that doesn't block the line of sight unless that corner is between 2 blocking spaces on diagonal from each other.

Burn X: causes 1 damage at the beginning of each of the target's turns, burn lasts until X of the target's turns have passed.

• Any ability with burn is automatically considered to be of fire type.
• Burn ends early if the impacted character/barrier is hit by an ice or water ability.

Stun: Stun causes the impacted character to lose half its primary resources on its next turn.

• Choose randomly each time if the amount should be rounded up or down.
• See above for what is meant by 'primary resources'.
• Stun may stack, causing the impacted character to lose half its primary resources (round up) for 1 turn for each time it is stunned.

Irradiated: Irradiated characters take 1 damage at the beginning of each turn. This doesn't stack.

Weakness: While weak, a character gains 1 weak point at the beginning of each of its turns. If it has 2 or more weak points just before one of its turns, it skips the turn and loses 2 weak points.

Evasion: Evasion 1/X: any attack targetting the character has the given chance of missing the character. Explosive-type attacks and attacks that have a radius are not effected by evasion.

Flying:

While flying:

• you may move over barriers, walls, and other characters;
• you are considered to be levitating;
• you may not be attacked by melee attacks except by other flying characters or characters you attacked during your last turn with a melee attack, you may only stop flying voluntarily on a space you could occupy while not flying,

Falling:

• if you stop flying involuntarily you take max HP/6 damage (round up);
• if you stop flying involuntarily on a normally unoccupiable space you must choose one of the closest occupiable spaces and place your character there, taking max HP/6 (round up) damage for each space away from the original space it was;

Carrying Characters: Some abilities allow one character to carry another (for example, the Dragon class). These are the rules regarding that:

• With your consent, any character may move onto the same space as you to be carried.
• If you are flying, the character must also be flying.
• If you are levitating, the character must also be levitating.
• No more than one character may ride you at a time.

While riding you:

• a character may not use any abilities involving its movement;
• all its self pushback is reduced to zero;
• its location changes with yours;
• if it attacks you with a melee weapon it deals 1 additional damage;
• all pushback dealt from it to you is reduced to zero;
• either of you may pay 1 action to force the character to dismount;
• if the character takes pushback, it is divided by 2 (round down) and you take the pushback instead;

If you're flying:

• the character may not attack other characters with melee attacks unless you allow them to, and if the characer attacks other characters with melee attacks, those characters may attack both of you until the end of each of your next turns;
• if the character dismounts, it stops flying involuntarily unless it is also independently flying itself;

Armor: Each time you are attacked the armor blocks once and the damage from the attack is reduced by the armor's protection number.

• If the armor has specific numbers for specific attack types (like for warrior), then the number for the attack's type is used.
• If an attack has multiple applicable types, use the first type in the armor's list of types.
• If the armor runs out of HP, it doesn't block any more and any other effects from the armor stop working also.

Void Spaces: Some abilities add 'void' to a space so that that space is occupied by void.

• When a space becomes occupied by void, anything on the space is destroyed.
• Spaces with void may not be moved, attacked, or targetted through.
• Abilites that create void may target empty spaces by default.
• Abilities that create void may not target spaces occupied by characters unless they are hidden or invisible.
• If a space occupied by a hidden or invisible character is made void that character is killed.

Chuck Rock Variant: Often, when I played this game with other people, the first round of it would be a round of 'Chuck Rock'.

• Chuck Rock is the precursor to this game.
• I added classes to the Chuck Rock game in order to create this game.
• The board setup for Chuck Rock is pretty much the same as the normal game incl. walls, barriers, and gold.
• However, the barriers are 'rocks' instead of barriers.
• Players may use these abilities in Chuck Rock:
  • spend 1 turn: move a space;
  • spend 1 turn: pick up an adjacent rock (normally is a semi-barrier), each character may hold any number of rocks;
  • spend 1 turn: throw any number X rocks at a target character within infinite range in exactly one orthogonal direction, target character may block the attack by sacrificing X+1 rocks, if target character doesn't block the attack, target character is downed and drops all gold on an adjacent space of the attacker's choice as normal, then target character skips its next turn and spends the turn after that getting back up, after those 2 turns, the character that was downed may start taking normal turns again;

For Both Hiding and Invisibility

• While hidden/invisible the player removes the character's figurine from the board and must track where it is each turn in the player's notes.
• The hidden/invisible character may not be targeted.
• The hidden/invisible character will be seen when:
  • it takes damage
  • an attack passes through it
  • it targets anything (unless the attack doesn't need to be declared)
  • a character that may not occupy the same space as it attempts to pass through it
• If a character attempts to move through them the character moves into them with push.
• If an attack passes through it, the attack hits it instead of the original target.

Hiding

• Hiding abilities come with a range.
• If an enemy is within that range, the character is revealed and is no longer hiding.
• If another character chooses, it may decide not to prevent the character from hiding when it would otherwise have seen the hiding character, if so, it should declare this before potentially seeing the hidden character.

Invisibility

• Invisibility is similar to hiding, but there is no range within which the character may be seen.
• As soon as an invisible character is seen, it loses invisibility.

Blindness

• While blind, a character may not see hidden characters, regardless of the applicable hide range.
• A blind character also may not target anything.

Superblindness

• While a character is superblind, its controller may not look at the board unless its controller has another character to see with.
• The controller may not see or target and may not see where the character is or which direction it is facing.
• Upon the character's becoming superblind, a random orthogonal direction must be chosen for the character to face without telling the controller which direction was chosen.
• When moving, the character must choose directions of backward, forward, left, or right and the character moves with push.
• When the character bumps into something, the controller should be told what the character bumped into.

Hiding Purchases and Inventory

• You are not required to tell other players what you purchased until you actually use it.
• For HP, you need only tell other players how many HP you lost below your max HP, not how many HP you have currently.

Smoke

• A characters in smoke is blind (but not superblind) and may not be targetted.
• If it is using a hiding ability, its hide range is reduced 0 while inside the smoke.

Undeclared Abilities

• Some abilities are allowed to be used without being declared.
• Additionally, those abilities do not cause a hidden or invisible character to be revealed.
• And, any other visible effects of the ability need not be shown until it is almost absolutely necessary.
• For example, if an ability allows a character to steal gold from another character without declaring it, it generally only needs to be declared that that particular gold is not where everyone else thought it was at the end of the board.
• If an item is stolen without it being declared, the character that lost the item probably doesn't need to be told until the character attempts to use the item.
• It should generally be assumed that if something is stolen without it being declared, it was effectively replaced with a fake version of itself, meaning the victim won't notice until trying to use the thing that was stolen.

Sub-Types

• Things are considered to be of the types indicated in their names.
• For example, a yoshimitsu wakazashi is considered to be a wakazashi, and a nuclear gravity bomb is considered to be a gravity bomb and a bomb.

Spells are Magical

By default, all 'Spells' are of type 'magical'.

Weapons, Armor, and Devices are items

Weapons and armor and devices are all items.

Spells are Abilities

Spells are abilities.

Primary Resources

• The rules will sometimes reference things called 'primary resources'.
• Primary resources are the main resources that character use to do things on their turns.
• These are all primary resources:
  • actions
  • hand actions (Ugh)
  • EP (Chaos Elemental)
  • rage (Demon)
  • activation of action squares (Elf)
  • energy (Energy Ghost)
  • Power (Robo)
  • Primary resources are lost at the end of each board.

Secondary Resources

• The rules will sometimes reference things called 'secondary resources'.
• Secondary resources are MP and resources that are similar to MP.
• These are all secondary resources:
  • MP
  • EP (Chaos Elemental)
  • rage (Demon)
  • the amount of heat less than heat max (Robo)
  • cards (Sage)
  • blood (Vampire)
• Some of these also count as primary resources.
• If a Sage must lose some number of secondary resources, it must choose and discard that many cards. Double, triple, and quadruple cards count as 2, 3, or 4 cards for this purpose.
• Secondary resources are lost at the end of each board.

Buying Resources

• Some resources are gained by various means and then spent in order to buy items and abilities between boards, for example, Death Points for the Undead class.
• These resources are not lost at the end of each board.

Play in Teams

I only ever played this game free-for-all, but I would recommend playing it with teams instead, because if it is a zero-sum game then, so there is more of a reason for players to attack each other. Without this, there ends up being a lot of negotiation, rather than combat. You could either always play with the same teams throughout one game, but another option is to change the teams for each new board. You could pick the teams randomly, but make sure not to use any combination of teams that has already been used for a board until all possible combinations have been played. Then start again, randomly choosing teams from any combination.

Seperate Victory Points From Money

I only ever played this game such that each player spends the gold that player gathers on abilities to make the player's character more powerful. But doing it that way, generally whoever does well early on will keep getting a larger and larger portion of the gold on the board each board until no one can catch that player. A better idea would be to have it so that a player still gets full victory points from gold gathered, but only gets half the portion of the gold they would normally get for purchasing things, and then also half the average portion for opposing players from the previous board. This way, gathering more gold on a board would mean buying more things one board earlier, but it shouldn't cause one player to keep getting farther and farther ahead of everyone else. Playing the game this way, it would probably be a good idea to decide a specific number of total boards to play for that game at the beginning of the game. Or, another alternative would be for each player to still get victory points from gold gathered, but get an equal portion of the gold on each board for spending purposes.

Allow Firing at Angles

Originally, the game was played such that abilities with a given range could only be fired in orthogonal directions, not on diagonal or between two orthogonal directions. But the game would probably be better without that limitation. Some existing abilities say 'LOS'. This was meant to mean that those abilities could be fired at an angle (not just orthogonally), so if all abilities are allowed to be fired at an angle, that modifier 'LOS' shouldn't have any meaning any more.

(in case anyone's curious)

• Mage, Warrior, Soldier
• Demon
• Energy Ghost, Robo, Chaos Elemental
• Morphboy,
• Eldere, Ugh, Elf
• Rogue, Cleric, Lilliputian Rolling Fortress
• Geomancer, Vampire, Ninja, Sage, Wyvern
• Sorcerer
• Undead, Elementalist

The Board

• Finding a good board to use for this game can be difficult.
• The board just needs to be a square grid of spaces, but it needs to be big enough.
• A chess/checkers board would work except that 8x8 probably isn't big enough.
• 4 chess/checkers boards in a 2x2 grid could work, although it might be awkward.
• I made a board for myself in shop class in high school for this purpose.
• If you have the board from the old game "Hero Quest", that would probably work, but you'll probably have to use only one square portion of it because the entire board would be too big.

Characters

• You'll need something unique to represent each character.
• I usually use figurines from other board games, mostly Hero Quest, because I owned a copy of it.
• Each player will need to remember which figurine is his/hers.

Barriers and Walls

For the barriers and walls, I tended to use 2 different types of counters (little lumps of plastic), which can probably be acquired most easily at an art supply store.

Pennies and Nickels for Gold

• Pennies could be used to represent gold on the board.
• If the piles started getting pretty big in later boards within a game, it might be necessary to use other coins as 5s or 10s instead of using giant stacks of pennies.

Dice

• There are some things in the game that need to be randomly determined, especially placing things randomly on the board.
• For this, I just used dice.
• If you have a set of one of each of a 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12, and 1d20, you should be all set for that.

Paper for Most Things

• The majority of what happened in this game, each player kept track of themselves on a piece of paper.
• For example, this is generally how we tracked HP, MP, and gold.
• When a character was invisible or hidden, a piece of paper was also used by the associated player to keep track of where the character was on the board.

The Sage's Cards

For the cards that the Sage class uses, you may need to use index cards and just write on them what they are.

Using Normal Playing Cards

• The Demon class uses an 'overflow deck' which is basically just a normal deck of playing cards, so you may need a deck of playing cards for that.
• Similarly, the Morphboy class needs to use a normal deck of playing cards for the 'morph' deck for all the shapes Morphboy can morph into.