The Dungeon Runs on Markdown

How plain-text scenarios become light, sound, and game logic.

A miniature lands on a tile.

Under the plastic floor, a magnetic reed switch closes. The ESP32 sees the event. The game engine checks the current chapter, the actor state, the room layout, the active rules, the audio lock, the turn flow. The LEDs decide what to show next. The speaker starts talking.

From the player’s side of the table, it looks simple.

The board noticed.

The room answered.

That simplicity is the point. Tiny Expeditions is not a screen hidden under miniatures. It is not a phone app pretending to be a dungeon master. It is a physical tile with a computer inside it, running the game locally, listening to the board, and turning a Markdown scenario into light, sound, and consequences.

This post is about that layer: the engine under the dungeon.