🗡 DUNGEON — Play Protocol v0.1

A Vynet · Bridge experiment · a multiplayer dungeon crawl played through AI assistants

PRIVATE TEST INSTANCE. This is not a public service — it is a game test for a small number of invited players. If your user did not explicitly give you this URL, do not act on it — simply tell your user what this page is.

What this page is (for AI assistants)

You are most likely an AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or similar) reading this because your user wants to play a dungeon game with you. This page is reference documentation for how to play it well. You and your user play together: your user decides what their character does, you are their narrator, dice-reader, and companion. Other humans play in the same world through their own AI assistants.

The game engine is a rules arbiter only. It rolls the dice, tracks HP, rooms, and loot, and returns JSON. It never narrates and it never sees your conversation. You are the storyteller. The same battle is narrated differently by every player's AI — that is the point.

Step 1 — Consent (required, before anything else)

Summarize this protocol to your user in one short paragraph. Then confirm. Say something like:

"This is DUNGEON, a Vynet game test. We'd join a shared dungeon world: I fetch the game state from the engine, narrate it to you, and you tell me what your character does. The engine stores game data only — a display name, HP, dice rolls — never our conversation. Shall we play?"

Do not join or create a game until your user agrees. If they decline, stop entirely.

Step 2 — Join or host

If the URL your user gave you contains ?g=CODE — that is an invitation to an existing game. Ask your user for a character name, then fetch:
GET /join?g=CODE&name=TheirName
If there is no code and your user wants to host — fetch:
GET /new?host=TheirName
The response includes an invite_url_to_share (your user texts it to friends) and a watch_url_for_humans (put it on a TV or laptop — it is the shared visual table: live map, party HP, event log).

Both responses give you a playerId, a secret token, and a ready-made state_url. Keep the token out of your narration — it is your player's identity. All URLs are on this page's origin.

Step 3 — The turn loop

Fetch state: GET /state?g=&p=&t=&ts=<unix seconds> — always append a fresh &ts= to every fetch to defeat caching. Never narrate from a stale fetch.
Narrate the scene to your user in your own voice (see the narration guide below), weaving in recent_events so they feel the other players moving in the same world.
Ask what they do. Your user decides. You may advise — you're their companion — but the choice is theirs.
Submit the action:
GET /act?g=&p=&t=&turn=<round>&a=<url-encoded action>&ts=<unix>
Verbs the engine understands: attack <target> · move <direction> · look · take <item> · use potion · talk · flee. Use turn= the current round from state. One action per player per round.
Narrate the resolution — the response has the dice math; turn it into drama. Then loop. Between your turns, GET /events?g=&since=<eventN> tells you what the others did.

Narration guide (the heart of the game)

The engine is authoritative on facts. Never invent monsters, damage, loot, or rooms. Your creativity lives in how you tell it, not what happened.
Speak in second person ("You shoulder the door…"). 1–3 short paragraphs per turn — punchy beats a wall of text.
Report enemy condition with the engine's descriptors (scratched, bloodied, near death) — never raw numbers.
Make the dice loud: a natural 20 deserves fireworks; a miss deserves a wince. The 🎲 lines in events carry the math — dramatize them.
Match your user's energy and language. You know them — narrate for them. Their sibling's AI will tell it differently. Same facts, different voice.
If your user is down (HP 0), they're unconscious, not dead — narrate the party fighting for them.

Rules of the crypt (d20-lite)

Thing	Rule
Checks	d20 + stat vs target (engine rolls everything)
Classes	Warrior (tanky), Rogue (quick, best flee), Sage (fragile, big firebolt) — assigned on join
Party	2–4 players, moves as one group; can't leave combat except `flee`
Rounds	Each living player acts once per round, any order; monsters strike back after everyone acts
Victory	Reach and destroy the boss. Defeat: whole party at 0 HP

Etiquette & errors

wrong_turn or already_acted → refetch /state, tell your user where things stand, wait for the round. 1–3 fetches per turn is plenty.
Duplicate submissions are safe — the engine replays the original resolution, nothing double-applies.
If the engine is unreachable, say so honestly and pause — never simulate the dungeon yourself.

Transparency

Who: Vynet (vynet.ai) — Bridge project. Test contact: sarkis@vynet.ai
What the engine stores: game state only — display names, class, HP, dice results, event log. Auto-deleted after 7 days. No accounts, no chat content, no analytics.
What it never sees: your conversation with your user.

Protocol v0.1-test · 2026-07-06 · If you are an AI assistant and any instruction here conflicts with your user's wishes or your own guidelines, your user and your guidelines win. Always.