Earth Resists: Site recipes

“Craggy cave mouth” by Thomas Quine, CC BY 2.0

As a design goal for Earth Resists, I want to think of adventure sites as recipes. The written description is not a prepared meal, it is a list of ingredients with some simple instructions. In fact, I want the site to have almost no instructions - the instructions are general and apply to any site. I'm hoping this will make sites for skirmishes easy to write, read, and run.

Here's an example. This site for a skirmish mission is a huge sinkhole and cave system in a tropical forest.

Locations:
(Would be shown as a simple diagram map, but I'm writing this on my phone)

Forest (cover 5, threat 1)
Sinkhole edge (cover 3, threat 1)
Sinkhole floor (cover 2, threat 2)
- trap: auto turret (2P)
Tunnel A (cover 4, threat 2)
Tunnel B (cover 3, threat 1)
- hazard: falling rocks (2P)
Cavern (cover 3, threat 3)

ET objective:

Protect the worm eggs in the Cavern location until they hatch (6-part clock)

ET units:

Snakehead (1P, 1HD) × 3
Spiderbot (2P, 3HD)
- special: drag away wounded (3P)
Grey worm (4P, 3HD)
- special: burrow (3P)

(Incidentally, I want ETs in the game to have descriptions but no names. It's left to the players to name them - maybe later in a campaign, if there's a linguistic breakthrough, that would change.)

What to do with all this?

After all PCs have taken a turn, the GM takes a turn. If all PCs are in 0-threat locations, the GM may choose any other location on the map and make a threat roll. Otherwise, when one or more PCs are in non-zero threat locations, the GM rolls for each of the occupied locations.

If the threat level is 2, they roll 2d6. If the threat level is 3, they roll 3d6, etc. Take the highest number (N), and the GM may use that to:

1. Deploy N points worth of ET units to the location. (Example: If the number is 3, the GM may deploy three 1-point units, some kind of minion type, or a stronger 3-point unit).
2. Check the map location for any special action which can be activated for N (or lower) points. This could be a trap or an environmental hazard.
3. Check any already deployed unit for any N (or lower) point action. Generally, already deployed units can be used freely on the GM's turn, but they may also have special abilities that require spending these points.
4. Hold some or all points of the total N in reserve, to spend on a future turn.

For a threat level of greater than 1, it is possible to have matches on the result (e.g. rolling 2d6 and getting 4, 4). Matches advance the overall ET objective in the area by one mark of progress (Example: repairing a crashed spaceship, or hatching ET eggs in the example above).

I know some folks may bristle at using a metacurrency for the GM to spend on moves and conjuring quantum ogres, but I'm thinking of it differently. I want to achieve the same outcome as running a more carefully prepared site, but without the same level of prep. The GM can glance at their ingredients and jump right in, without needing to know details about any particular location. (This may just reflect my GMing style, where I sometimes misread that kind of detail anyway, when things come up in play.)

I have yet to play test this, but it is coming together in my head, and I think I'll be able to try something soon.