This is the second and final part of the Spider Mines delve run to test the Total Party Kill rules, started here. Being more used to the rules, play flowed smoother and in a more relaxed way.

• Same Players, roles and characters
  • Adrian - Scholar - Aldon the arcanist
  • Olja - Cartographer - Lofwyra the troubairitz
  • Olivier - Quartermaster - Billy the scoundrel
  • Alex - Leader - Druna the huntress
• Total play time ~120 minutes
• 2 new sections explored
• 100% delve completion

After a quick recap of the previous session and a brief refresher of the recent rules updates, we jumped into action.

A big improvement came from the introduction of a card in front of each Player that they could flip front/back to signal whether they had spent their Move for the round.

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Round 1

Delve Phase -

Having a bit of calm and quiet, the party tries to take care of the dwarf miners they just rescued. Aldon checks them out (Investigate) and determines that while three are passed because of a light mushroom spores intoxication, the fourth (the one he previously knocked up with an extra dose of mushrooms in the face) is in more serious danger and needs help.

We then resolve to split the party. Aldon and Druna will use the last of our water and medical salves to refresh the sick dwarves and try to stabilize the poisoned one (Be Crafty) while Lofwyra and Billy take the chain-elevator to go back up a couple of levels, to the “fridge room” (Backtrack), in order to scavenge for resources (Forage). Turns out that there is plenty of ice, but it’s very hard to mine out of the walls and it’s also full of impurities, meaning that they manage to get a bit of it (adding it to the inventory as an Uncommon Supply) but not enough to replenish our reserves (the Rations score does not increase).

Ref Phase - 

Our spent Rations go down to zero.

No threats are around to take action.

Peril is tested and nothing happens.

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Round 2

Delve Phase -

Billy and Lofwyra take a cursory look around the fridge room, then the scoundrel focuses on the entrance door  (Investigate) which appears frozen shut. Lofwyra then uses sound waves from her combined harp and voice to damage the ice (Face the Odds) and succeeds, weakening the hard but brittle substance. This is all pretty loud, though...

In the meantime Druna tries to wake up one of the unconscious miners (not a problem, not a move) without him going berserk like the one they were forced to poison (Face the Odds), but because of the loud noise from the fridge room above all three dwarves wake up and, albeit not immediately violent, that are definitely adversarial. Aldon has had enough of aggressive dwarves fighting their rescuers, so the elf just storms away from the scene, leaving Druna alone to calm down the agitated miners. (This time Adrian genuinely renounces his move).

Ref Phase -

No Supplies have been used.

No threats are present.

Peril is tested and nothing happens.

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Round 3

Back in the fridge room, Billy cautiously opens the entrance door and scouts the section beyond it (Explore). Turns out it’s a passage looping back to the storage room where the delve began.

[~1h of active play has passed]

Meanwhile, back in the fridge room, Lofwyra is still trying to gather Rations (Forage) but the ice turns out to be too dirty to just collect and use for water. It’s now easily collectible, but it would take more time, effort and ingenuity to turn it into something drinkable. By the same token, some hanging sacks hold frozen mushrooms. Again, not immediately edible. She collects some dirty ice and moves on to rejoin her dwarf and elf companions.

Druna is dealing with the adversarial dwarves and, through diplomacy, coaxing, female whiles and good old dwarf-to-dwarf camaraderie, tries to calm them down and explain their predicament (Be Crafty). It works, and a brief chat reveals some details about the situation and the general direction towards the mine exit, which Aldon leverages to try and get a better grasp of the local topography and to decide where exactly to go next (Orientate).

Ref Phase - 

No Supplies have been used.

No threats are present.

Since Billy is now in a segment (storage room) that is close to a segment where threats had been previously described threats (a passage with sounds of spiders crawling around) Ref Reaction 2:3 happens: the storage room appears to have been trashed by beasts with vicious talons or claws or something.

Peril is tested and it rises by +1.

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Round 4

The party helps the miners to reach the initial storage room (Backtrack) where Billy awaits them. Billy then goes on to carefully scout the leftover unexplored opening (Explore). This turns out to be a passage also ruined by vicious spider vandalism, but alas it also offers a clear way out of the mine!

The group debates on what to do:

• stay in the mines to further explore them, maybe find more stranded dwarves (and treasures! and kill spiders that are not gargantuan!)
• take the exit and end the current delve, cashing-in the XP rewards accrued this far
• or split the party, with some PCs taking the exit (and becoming full time Refs) while others keep risking their necks for further riches and glory

They all agree to get out now and maybe come back another time, as their Supplies are all but depleted and two PCs are actually injured.

The Players then perform the End of Delve procedure, accruing eXperience Points for their actions.

• All gain the Perfect achievement, as no one died during this delve.
• Alex is awarded the Guide and Storyteller achievements.
• Olivier is awarded the Enemy Mine achievement.
• All gain the Glory ending, as they both escaped the delve and achieved the quest.
• The lump of rocks and crystals they found and kept for themselves is identified as having great value, worth 1 Treasure. It randomly gets “split” in favor of Olja.

All in all Adrian got 4 XP, Olja and Olivier 5, and Alex 6. If they play well and keep on surviving, at the end of their next delve they will probably get to 10 XP and be able to Level Up.

[~2h of active play have passed]

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Final Thoughts

The test was quite successful 😀

Play produced a nice map organically and effortlessly, which Players kept using as a real tool and reference for planning, describing and orienting 📜

The delve had an exploration-first feeling, with moments of wonder, beauty, puzzlement and dread. We all felt like dwelling in a “dangerous area” even though we seldom faced immediate danger. This was in part due to very lucky rolls (we often rolled an ever growing pool of Peril without triggering Ref Reactions) and in part it was the fruit of careful play: checking passages, being stealthy, taking our time to do things. And when we did face a big scary challenge (the giant spider in the stone-bridges room) we... chose life, and avoided it completely 🤣

Overall the core game seems to run fine, with only a few awkward moments requiring Players to briefly pause and reason how to mechanically handle a certain situation, or how to describe a given prompt or outcome. For this reason I keep tinkering with move-texts, refining them to help Players create their own answers in as frictionless a way as possible.

Everyone had fun, everyone had their time in the spotlight and felt like a useful part of the adventuring team. This happened mainly because of how the “one move per phase” limit turned out to be very influential for the flow of the game, sometimes jarringly so, but in the end to good effect. What became apparent is how, if left to simply follow the natural flow of actions and outcomes, some PCs would be assumed to “do nothing” most of the time, waiting for the occasion where their unique specialty would shine, while others would be the sole focus of play until they had to somewhat retreat in the background.

For example, at the very beginning of this test the Scoundrel seemed to be expected to do almost everything during exploration-focused times: check doors for traps, pick them open, scout ahead. Meanwhile everyone else basically thought they would just follow Billy patiently, waiting for the “right situation” to do “their thing”. The one-move rule prevented this. Or, more precisely, allowed for this to happen at the cost of precious time (thus increased danger). PCs had to either renounce their move for the phase, waiting for the Scoundrel to do everything, one move at a time, across multiple rounds... or they could be active, find something useful to do, engage with the environment, maybe risk having a “not expert” character attempt something because the “proper expert” was already busy with something else. This, for me, was a great positive.

We never bothered with strictly managing Supplies... until they ran out and we needed to restock them somehow. And mostly failed in doing so 😛 But rather than a flaw in the game balance (which might probably still use some fine-tuning) it played out as a genuine learning experience: watch your supplies or suffer the consequences! This also had a great impact on our final choice to exit the delve sooner rather than later, as we realized we were down to our last torch, with no water, food or medicines, and no spare ammunition and gear 😱

The dark mines did not feel particularly dark, to me. We used our Light as needed, pulling out torches, gathering glowing mushrooms, and ensuring we always had one source of illumination for the party. Or two, when it briefly split, during the second session. But the nature of the Explore move makes it difficult to say something like “you only see 3m ahead, the rest of the corridor fading into darkness” ... which would be nice to have, but probably not strictly needed.