I love "The Darkest Dungeon"

My 14 year old picked up this game on Steam a couple of weeks ago, "The Darkest Dungeon".  I watched him play a few minutes and didn't think it was great - it has this low tech 2-D graphics and combat techniques out of something like 4E or an MMO, full of buffs and de-buffs.  But then I watched the trailer to the game…  "Ruin has come to our family. You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor…"  It's a theme straight out of HP Lovecraft, about a decadent ancestor that dabbles in forbidden lore and awakens an eldritch horror deep beneath the ruined mansion.  In the game, you take your squad of four stalwart warriors through dungeons filled with cultists, fish-men, undead, and horrible Lovecraftian bosses like the Inchoate Flesh, the Collector, and the Shambler (which looks a lot like a Shoggoth).  The art is reminiscent of Mignola's work with Dark Horse comics, full of stark shadows.

What drives the Lovecraft theme home are the stress and afflictions suffered by your party.  The party takes on stress damage in many ways - any time the dungeon gets too dark (and you let the torches go dim), any time you run out of food or the right equipment, whenever a monster scores a critical, and many monsters do psychic damage to the characters.  Stressed out characters develop afflictions, like paranoia or abusiveness or fearfulness, and stop responding to your inputs - they may not let the party healer fix them, or pass their turn when you need them to attack.  Characters also develop quirks (both positive and negative), like addictions to material things, or a thirst for strong drink.  Whenever you return to town, it's common to check most of the survivors into various institutions in the hamlet for stress relief - the tavern, gambling hall, brothel, prayer or meditation, for instance.  There are doctors to cure diseases and a sanitarium to remove quirks.  There's always new adventurers arriving on the stagecoach, because it's common to need new guys (or abandon mentally unstable characters that pick up too many bad quirks).  You end up managing a troupe of 20+ characters - it's awesome.

Of course, the game-play itself is really about resource management - maintaining the health and sanity of your party, making sure they have the right skills for combat and camping, managing your money, buying the right gear for the dungeon delves.  Actually, gear is very important, as there are lots of things in the dungeon that react positively if you use the right equipment on it - like getting a benefit from the unholy fountain if a character pours holy water on it.  You're constantly outfitting parties and planning a wide range of delves.

Naturally, the mind wanders to consider how the game play in The Darkest Dungeon could be adapted to the table top.  I like the stress mechanic, since it gives the referee a nice in-game reason to drain money in-between game sessions when players spend time at the tavern or chapel, or getting their various grotty diseases cured.  Quirks and afflictions are a little harder in the OSR space, as blogger theorists get really upset at any mechanic that threatens player agency.  For instance, you may come across some nasty barrel of rot gut in the dungeon, and that one guy who is addicted to alcohol will run forward and take a drink before you can do anything during the game, picking up a disease.  That type of mechanic doesn't port as well to the table top, but there might be a way - D&D is full of charm monsters, for instance.

Anyway, I've been in India a couple of weeks, away from the states and away from the gaming computer.  Writing about The Darkest Dungeon is going to help me with my own withdrawal symptoms.  It's worth checking out if you'd enjoy what's essentially a squad-based tactical game with a theme and monsters heavily influenced by the Cthulhu Mythos.  It'd make a fantastic setting for LOTFP.

Here are some links to check out on YouTube:

The Darkest Dungeon Trailer
Intro to the Game (to get a sense of the story)

Dwimmer-Game 14 - To Slay the Eld

Cast of Characters:

Bud, a level 3 dwarven cleric

Marthanes the Summoner, (level 4 Mage)

Tancrede, a level 3 cleric of Typhon (henchman)

Wulfengard,a level 4 dwarf fighter

Drev, a level 4 bard

Bart, a level 4 fighter

Mumford, a level 2 fighter

Malthena, a level 1 thief (henchman)

Akmed, a mook

Collothus, the Thulian (mage 1)

We ended last game in the dungeon.  The players had met and engaged the Eld, and once the Eld made hostile gestures to seize Marthanes, battle was declared.

I may have mentioned before - laying out the battle map, and giving the players chits and tiles to represent players and monsters, is a sure fire way to signal a battle is difficult and requires tactical care.  The battle against the Eld was in a large circular room, 60 or 80 feet across; the Eld were on a raised platform occupying the center of the room, guarding the portal, while the bugbear muscle (6 bugbears) was along the perimeter.

What was awesome about this setup was that the 6 Eld, all spell casters, stood back while the bugbears charged into combat; the players sent up their own fighters, while their casters and archers fell back as well, to shoot at the Eld.  This formation would end up dominating the evening, taking two and a half hours to complete as a table top battle.  It was intricate, tactical, and quite a lot of fun, bringing a bit of war game tactics to our table.  The sides were like two offensive lines crashing into each other, to borrow a term from American football, with various 'quarterbacks' behind the lines lobbing passes. (Go Broncos).

In the case of the Eld, those passes getting lobbed over the bugbears were Sleep spells, Burning Hands, Choking Grip, and Charms.  Winning initiative was key, because any time an archer tagged an Eld early, it spoiled a spell attempt.  Meanwhile, Marthanes summoned his Hero and a squad of berserkers to reinforce the player's front line.  Drev (the Squindian bard) and Malthena were the primary archers - although Malthena and Collothus were frequently getting knocked asleep by magic and required wake ups.

It was a fun and intense battle.  Wulfengard, the Dwarf fighter, was one of the player MVP's, climbing the platform and taking the fight directly to the Eld.  But the actual turning point was when Mumford quaffed the speed potion and chopped a hole through the line by taking out a bugbear, and then used his super speed to bum rush the Eld leader.  He got out his mace and clubbed the Eld leader senseless.

No one died on the player's side, though Akmed was choked unconscious by Choking Grip, and Collothus spent most of the night asleep.  The Eld had unusual weapons and armor, including a laser pistol.  Bards in ACKS can do 'arcane dabbling' to learn how to use items, so Drev was able to learn how to use the pistol.  Now he has a turban, a scimitar, and a laser pistol tucked into his sash.  I'm not exaggerating when I say he becomes even more awesome after finding a bona fide 'flying carpet' in the near future.

Luckily, the  actual portal to Aeron was closed. The players trussed their Eld prisoner and decided to make their way out of the dungeon.  There was an interesting debate between returning with the Eld to Volmar, their new allies, or trying to smuggle the Eld into Muntburg where he could be interrogated at their leisure.  They chose Muntburg.

We ended this one once the players got out of the dungeon, giving them some time in between games to figure out how they would smuggle an angry Eld prisoner past the guards and over to their house…

Dwimmer-Game 13 - Return of the Eld

Cast of Characters:

Marthanes the Summoner, (level 4 Mage)

Tancrede, a level 3 cleric of Typhon (henchman)

Wulfengard,a level 4 dwarf fighter

Bart, a level 4 fighter

Mumford, a level 2 fighter

Jay and Akmed, 2 mooks, plus Owenheim

Malthena, a level 1 thief (henchman)

Game 13 began with the party entering the Palace of Sempiternal Wisdom in the hot, desert city of Volmar, via a portal from dungeon level 3A.  They were accompanied by Opilio, a cleric of Mavors, and a squad of Volmarian soldiers.  The characters were guests and allies of Opilio, so they were escorted through the palace and given an audience with the Emperor and his advisors, as there was great interest in far Dwimmermount among the court.

Volmar is only introduced in the campaign book as a far off remnant of the old empire.  In advance of the game, I decided Volmar was this world's Byzantium, a fragment of the Thulian Empire that clung to the old ways in the far south east, on the edge of a vast desert - beyond which are the desert nomads, dangerous raiders that would threaten the City-States if Volmar didn't block their advances.  Politically, the Imperial advisors are split between those that believe all attention must go to the south, and those that want to reconquer the north; there's a minor faction that suggests an alliance with the City-States is in order.  The Emperor, sitting on the purple throne, sides with defense against the south, but hopes that Dwimmermount holds powerful magic and secrets that will allow Volmar to reconquer the north.  The patron of Volmar, is Mavors Invictus, the war god of the Thulian pantheon.

After the kids got some exposure to Imperial Volmar, I gave the kids some license to add additional color to the threadbare continent maps and setting.  What I got, was a vivid description of a statue like Iwo Jima, showing Mavors helping the first Volmarians conquer the city and raising the Imperial banner on a hill (the banner is purple, and features a scorpion, I discovered).  Also, there is a large island off the coast called Squindia - the people of Squindia are pirates, and they wear turbans like Sinbad, and their symbol is the Squid.  I think they just compressed the words for Squid and India.  The players immediately retconned that Drev, their pirate bard, is a Squindian, and must forever be described as wearing a turban and using a scimitar.  It was convenient that Drev's player wasn't present.

Because Dwimmermount belonged to Thule at the time it fell, and Volmar is the successor state to Termaxian Thule, the Emperor laid claim to everything in the dungeon.  It all belongs to him.  He doesn't need to pay the characters because letting them keep his treasure when they explore his dungeon is payment enough.  At this time he agreed to let them keep everything they found, as long as they made him aware of permanent fixtures, like the Pool of Life.

They were given an escort to go the markets and buy stuff, and then the kids were chomping to get back to the dungeon.  We established they spent about a week in Volmar, leveling up where appropriate.  Collothus came with them (he was the guy freed from a stasis tube last game), but Arethusa, his 3rd level mentor, wanted to stay in Volmar longer and learn more about the modern world.  The players also hired a pair of mercenaries, Jay and Akmed.

A big chunk of the session time went to Volmar, but the players made great time motoring through the dungeon.  They worked their way north (and eventually east) from the gate to Volmar.

There was a fight with some gnolls, and one of the mercenaries was killed in that battle.  A pile of rubble in another room concealed a nest of giant boring beetles, and they were nasty - 5HD terrors!  Owenheim, another mercenary, died in that battle, leaving just Akmed as a mook.  One of the guys found a potion of speed in the rubble when the beetles were all gone.

The night ended with the players discovering a large circular room with a large upright portal.  On guard in the room was a squad of tall, gaunt, elves, with reddish skin and black hair. The Eld!  There were also a half dozen burly bugbears with them.

Marthanes immediately started talking to them in ancient Thulian, praising the Eld for their scientific genius and pointing out why they should be natural allies to retake Dwimmermount.  However, once he mentioned that he had taken over the Pool of Life and was eager to build an army worthy of the Eld, the commander's reaction soured.  'Take this hairless monkey into custody so we can dissect his brain…'

We had run right up to time on a school night, and since the gang agreed to regroup on the weekend, we stopped in the dungeon, ready to go for next time.  Boss fight!

Dwimmer-Game 12 - My Orc is Binky

Cast of Characters:
Bud, a level 2 dwarven cleric
Mumford, a level 2 fighter
Utor, the elf enchanter (level 2 Mage)
Jarvis, a level 2 fighter
Bart, a level 2 fighter
Marthanes the Summoner (level 3 Mage)
Tancrede, a level 3 cleric of Typhon
Wulfengard, a level 3 dwarf fighter

The players started game 12 back in Muntburg.  It had been a while since the group was going to spend time in the castle, and I wanted to make sure they saw that the world around them was being changed by the incursions into Dwimmermount.  The castellan of Muntburg, Legate Verodart, invited them to a moot with the other adventuring parties to get a view on what was happening in the dungeon.  A few of the interested characters went to the war council while the others trained or went to the bar.

In game, this was more of a  Q&A, but you readers are getting this like an info-dump.  The players learned that the Delvers and Fists of Typhon had discovered the Temple of Law; a number of the fighters in the Delvers had prayed in the temple and converted to paladins, and the two parties were working together to open a pilgrim's path to the temple.

The Seekers had cleared a bunch of slimes and oozes from the elevator shaft to level 4, had dropped ropes, and begun exploring level 4.  They encountered minotaurs, and a succubus.  After an encounter with a dark altar, Marguerine (one of their mages) had gone 'goth' and the Seekers were worried about her mental health and allegiance.

Meanwhile, rumors were pouring in from around the countryside.  The Necromancers of Ythelrom were organizing an adventuring party to come to Dwimmermount.  The Despot of Retep was supposedly mobilizing an army to march on Dwimmermount in the spring, concerned that the Despot of Adamas would gain too much power if he controlled Dwimmermount on his own.  Retep was far away, so it wasn't clear if this rumor was true.  It's currently "October" on the game calendar, so the players figured they had 5-6 months before the spring.  The last rumor was that the High Priest of Typhon in Adamas would appoint a special Inquisitor to come into Muntburg, to keep an eye on encroachment of Chaos - and also make sure adventurers weren't succumbing to the dark powers, or sympathizing with Volmar.

Anyway, a few of the guys really like to think about the larger world, whereas the kids are more interested in getting back to the dungeon.  They were glad when the war council was over.  The party quickly returned to the sub-level on 3A so Marthanes could figure out how to activate the Pool of Life.

Like last time, it took many hours to figure it out.  There were wandering monster encounters with a Gelatinous Cube, and a couple of Gray Oozes.  This time the party was a little more diligent about posting guards and watching for monsters.

When Marthanes finally figured out the controls, they decided to make some orcs.  I described the scene like something from Isengard in the Lord of the Rings, with muscular snarling orc warriors rising out of the pool to see who called them forth.  Utor, the uber-charismatic Elf, waited near the Pool with a Thulian War Mask (which gives command bonuses over Beastmen) and his glamour that makes him seem commanding.  Utor name the orcs as they rose out of the pool… Binky, Pinky, and Pork.  Although Pork was quickly renamed Travis the Orc.  "Thank you for our names, Master.  Is it true that Binky is a fierce warrior name?  I want to be fierce."

Binky, Pinky, and Travis accompanied the players for a few rooms, but Binky and Pinky were destroyed by some gnolls before the end of the session  - their reign of awesome was short-lived.  Travis ran off into the darkness, to sharpen knives in some dungeon corner.  Maybe he's still somewhere on level 2A?

Bart and Wulfengard got blown up in a room full of upright stasis tubes.  Most of the tubes were empty, but a few of them had vague inhabitants upright in them… and Bart and Wulf started smashing the side of the tube with a hammer, which exploded outwards and brought them both to near death (3-18 damage). The wisely used their Rod of Opening to safely open the other tube.

Inside the tubes were 2 Thulian survivors from 200 years ago, Arethusa and Collothus, who survived the fall of Dwimmermount by escaping into stasis.  Marthanes, the party scholar, was quick to befriend them and hire them - while offering to get them 'up to speed' on the state of the modern world.  Collothus was a good follower for a few sessions, but died versus some mummies a game or two ago, but Arethusa is still a henchman as of game 17.  The players debriefed them in between sessions and learned a ton of secret history about the Termaxians.  They realized that Dwimmermount, in its hey-day under the Termaxians, was full of science and machinery.  Arethusa and Collothus were bureaucrat-mages that knew how a bunch of machines worked (magical engineering).

It was inevitable the kids thought about becoming monsters, living in the dungeon all the time, and building an army of gnolls.  But they realized that higher level adventurers would come after them, and they decided to defer building their gnoll army until they were ready to march it out of Dwimmermount.  They did befriend a bunch of wild gnolls elsewhere in the dungeon, and Marthanes took on the mantle of "Master Soap", heir to Varaxes, and set them to guarding the Pool of Life on his behalf.  It is interesting that the kids usually try to talk to the humanoid monsters (and have the charisma and magic masks to pull it off).

The final piece of this session involved getting to level 3A.  Arethusa had a Locate Object spell and helped the party find the stairs down.  In one of the first rooms they encountered on level 3A, they met a squad of soldiers and a war-priest from the Empire of Volmar.  (The Volmarians are half a continent away from Dwimmermount).  There was an active portal between Volmar and the dungeon.  The players knew that Volmarian agents were getting into the dungeon somehow, but didn't realize it was from within the dungeon itself!

The players suggested an alliance with the Empire of Volmar, and Opilio, the war-priest of Mavors, invited them back to Volmar to meet the emperor in person.  This game ended with the players stepping through a portal on level 3 of the dungeon into the sweltering heat and opulence of the Imperial Palace of Volmar.

Next game:  To Volmar!  Dwimmermount continues to show why it's such a fantastic campaign setting.

Dwimmer Game 11 - Discovering the Pool of Life

Cast of Characters:
Bud, a level 2 dwarven cleric
Mumford, a level 1 fighter
Utor, the elf enchanter (level 2 Mage)
Jarvis, a level 2 fighter
Bart, a level 2 fighter
Marthanes the Summoner, (level 3 Mage)
Tancrede, a level 3 cleric of Typhon
Wulfengard, a level 3 dwarf fighter

Once again, I'll remind the readers that I've let myself get quite a few game sessions behind the current date.  Assuming we get to play Tuesday night, it will be game 16 and the players are trying to pick up the pieces after a near TPK and loss of numerous characters on a side quest that went horribly wrong.  I've been lackadaisical about writing the reports!

Game 11 saw the cast of characters make their way back down to level 2A, the Eld sub-level of "The Laboratory".  Marthanes read about a 'Pool of Life' in some old Thulian Archives they had found over on level 2B.  "…the Emperors looked to the remnants of the monstrous armies left on Telluria by the Eld as a means to maintain Imperial authority.  Exceptional beastmen were recruited, cloned through the use of the Essence Machine and Pool of Life… in time, the now-familiar races of humanoid beastmen began to emerge from the Chaos of the Eldritch troops."

In the early games, the players befriended orcs on level 1.  The orcs had rebelled against a new master, Varaxes (Varazes in the text, but I prefer the sound of Varaxes), who birthed the orcs from a pool on the Laboratory level.  Piecing together the backstory of the orcs, with the information gleaned from the archives, was enough for Marthanes to develop delusions of grandeur, with visions of his very own beastman army.  Everybody needs a dream.  At least his plan is a little more ambitious then "I Bart the door and open the boxes before anyone else can see", like most of the kids.  It's going to be interesting to introduce these guys to the ACKS mid-game and see which ones develop an interest in non-dungeon stuff, if any.  At least they bought a house.

They were already close to finding the Pool of Life when the game started.  On the way, they freed an alchemical cat from a stasis flask, Mr Fluffles, who was adopted by handsome Utor as a pet.  They fought a bunch of injured gnolls in a room (the gnolls were injured because Marthanes sent some berserksers screaming ahead with orders to kill anything), and Utor charmed the largest gnoll and called him Leaderor (which is apparently the name of a character on a cartoon called 'Gravity Falls' the kids watch).  They used their Rod of Opening on the secret door pointed out by the sapient rats last session, and discovered a 200 year old Thulian fallout shelter with various survival gear items tucked away behind the door.

The highlight of the night was finding the Pool of Life, a sprawling room with a sunken pool of white viscous liquid, various essence vats in niches around the room, and a large control panel.  We treated this like a boss fight, vinyl map board and miniatures and all, as the players took on Varaxes and his large squad of gnolls.  Varaxes was from Volmar, like Marthanes, and decried him as a traitor.  Regarding the battle map, I've determined that the kids do a little better with tactics when they can gather around a large map and plan tactics visually, like forming a wall with their fighters, and letting the ranged guys take shots from behind the line.

Wulfengard quaffed a potion of invisibility before the fight, so he snuck around to assassinate Varaxes.  Unfortunately, he missed on his attack roll, the magic was broken, and he got 'dog-piled' by a pair of gnoll bodyguards.  But Wulfengard is consistently the fighter MVP of the group, and can usually hack his way out of any bad situation.  You know how some players always seem to roll 6's on initiative and 20's on their attack rolls?  That's Wulfengard - clearly on friendly terms with lady luck.

The fight devolved into a front-line skirmish between fighters and gnolls, whacking at each other, while Varaxes hurled spells at the players from his position behind his gnolls.  Weak characters in the back fell asleep, but Varaxes rolled too low to sleep more than a few guys.  Marthanes began targeting Varaxes with the wand of magic missiles, winning a few initiative rolls and disrupting the enemy spells by zapping Varaxes first.  Actually it was a pretty cool battle from that perspective, two casters facing off from behind their lines of fighters and tossing magic.  It only took a few shots to kill Varaxes, and once he was dead, the players cleaned up the rest quickly.  Marthanes exhausted the wand of magic missiles, but Varaxes had his own wand in the loot (a wand of fear, it would turn out).

Marthanes began to investigate the workings of the Pool of Life with manic glee.  He has both magical engineering and a high intelligence, but he needed to clear three successes - and he only got to roll once per hour.  His dice were ice cold.  The players waited and waited, dealing with one wandering encounter after another, while Marthanes repeatedly failed his engineering rolls.  Attrition set in.

The last straw was when the party saw large spindly legs coming around the corner at the end of a nearby hall - a trio of giant black widow spiders walking along the ceiling!  Those things are terrifying - instant death via the poisonous bite.  The players were still using the battle map, so they formed defensive positions and shot at the spiders with missiles for as long as they could.  Leaderor, their charmed gnoll commpanion, was sent down the hall to engage the spiders in melee.  He died.  Marthanes also summoned his 4th level hero to charge down the hall and keep the spiders from advancing; he died too.  But the overall tactics were sound, and the kids survived without meaningful casualties.

They forced Marthanes to desist messing with the pool ("because you suck, Marthanes, anyone can roll better than you"), and they headed back to Muntburg to heal and recover.  Next game sees a return visit to the Pool of Life, success from the mage, and the creation of Binky, Pinky, and Travis, the short-lived orcs created by the players.

Dwimmer-Game 10 - I Splash through the Puddle. Oops, Green Slime!

Cast of Characters:
Utor, the elf enchanter (level 2 Mage)
Jarvis, a level 2 fighter
Bud, a level 2 dwarven cleric
Bart, a level 2 fighter
Marthanes the Summoner, (level 3 Mage)
Tancrede, a level 3 cleric of Typhon
Wulfengard, a level 3 dwarf fighter
Mumford, a level 1 fighter (former henchman, now a new player)

Game 10 was another school-night game where my kids petitioned me to run a short pick-up game for their friends on a night when my wife was out doing her theater stuff.  The players returned to the Eld sub-level of dungeon 2A in search of the Pool of Life.

I'm going to breeze over this game session since the exciting stuff starts to happen in games 11 and beyond.  I need to hurry up and get the games caught up to the present.  When the reports are current, I’ll be able to start asking meaningful questions from the readers on what should happen next.

The players returned to the Eld sublevel and began exploring.  They found a machine where a carcass scavenger lived behind it, entered a room with archer bushes, and another room with vampire rose bushes, killing everything they met without incident, other than grumbling about no treasure.  They helped out some sapient rats in a desperate fight against a throgrim (thoul), and the rats repaid them by scrawling on the player map where there was a secret door up ahead.

It wouldn't be a D&D game with kids without at least one signature knuckle-head moment.  After waving goodbye to the sapient rats, the players noticed a greenish wet area on the floor, and a discarded weapon nearby.  A green slime had fallen on a gnoll and eaten it.  But of course these guys aren't very experienced with old time D&D stuff, so Bart decided to splash through the puddle.  He screamed in agony on the other side as the green slime quickly destroyed his boots!

The players tossed torches across to Bart so he could burn it off his feet and boots, while the players started pouring oil on the slime to destroy it.  While Bart was stranded across the burning oil puddle, a Gray Ooze came along too, and he needed to kill it with minimal help.  He was horrified to learn that Gray Ooze can melt magic weapons, and quickly started switching to disposable weapons to survive the ooze attack.

It was a short night due to school, so after retrieving Bart, they headed back to Muntburg.  Coming next time, the Pool of Life…