Anyone else excited for Dungeon Delve?

[Doug McCrae]

Looking forward to this. I'm a big fan of mini-adventures, partly because the larger a dungeon is, the more implausible it seems to become. Needs to be more thematically, environmentally and tactically interesting than 5 orcs in a cave though. I can come up with 5 orcs and a cave pretty easily myself.

 

[Gotham Gamemaster]

Actually, I think this book may be a hit for me. I find the 4e combats fun but crafting the encounters isn't partcularly enjoyable for me. Since this will take care of the nuts and bolts and leave the fluff to me---I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Looking forward to this. I'm a big fan of mini-adventures, partly because the larger a dungeon is, the more implausible it seems to become.

This is a tangent, but I think there are two kinds of dungeons: lairs and campaign dungeons. Lairs have a specific purpose, are generally smaller, and obey all the "normal" natural laws of the campaign world (e.g. a cave system where humanoid tribes have taken up residence). Campaign dungeons, on the other hand, are huge (perhaps endless/infinite), often mysterious in purpose, and have a mystic or mythic underworld aspect to them. They may *not* obey all the "normal" natural laws, because they are a step removed from the natural world, but they nevertheless (should) have a certain internal consistency of their own.

Anyway, I think huge "underworld megadungeons" work very well (i.e. without destroying verisimilitude) and are a huge amount of fun; they just expect a different set of assumptions, going in.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Needs to be more thematically, environmentally and tactically interesting than 5 orcs in a cave though.

Depends on how many pies they have.

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

I am very interested in this product.

Right now I have a regular campaign group, but I also know a group of DMs (including the owner of the FLGS) who don't really have time for campaign prep and who can't always show up to a second game.

This might be perfect for round robin DMing and groups with a transient player population.

My only real concern is character generation for each new delve, but I'm planning on developing a huge folder of pre-gens anyway, so this gives that project more impetus.

 

[Joshua Randall]

So, other than the nature of the "win," (which is not particularly relevant), how was I wrong?

[...]

If you have more information about the product (as opposed to the Delve format used in tournaments/conventions, which obviously cannot be applied to home games - unless the intention is for players to gain tokens which they could use in regular RPG games?), please provide it.

I think you have fixated on the word "delve" and ignored the product description:

Dungeon Delve
A D&D Adventure by David Noonan and Bill Slavicsek
Dungeon Delve provides the DM withan array of small, easy-to-run dungeons each especially designed for a night of gaming.
This book is designed for groups looking for an exciting night of monster-slaying without the prep time. It contains dozens of self-contained easy-to-run mini-dungeons, or "delves," each one crafted for a few hours of game-play.

The book includes delves for 1st- to 3oth-level characters, and features dozens of iconic monsters for the heroes to battle. Dungeon Masters can run these delves as one-shot adventures or weave them into their campaign.

Key Selling Points

* This book has encounters for all levels of characters, from 1st to 30th.
* DMs can drop each of the mini-dungeons into their games at a moment's notice.
* Based on the extremely popular "Delve" events held at gaming conventions.
* Every delve is designed to use existing D&D Dungeon Tiles and D&D Miniatures.

It's a series of mini-dungeons, and the concept was based on the Delve events.

I seriously, seriously doubt that the product is going to introduce some kind of competitive aspect, either among the PCs (compete to see who can last the longest / get the most kills / treasure) or between DM and PCs (compete to see how many PCs the DM can kill).

 

[SlyFlourish]

It needs pregens

It needs a big stack of pregen characters to be really useful. I love the idea but I want to run it with some ready-made characters. Hopefully by then we will have some.

 

[am181d]

It needs a big stack of pregen characters to be really useful. I love the idea but I want to run it with some ready-made characters. Hopefully by then we will have some.

I believe the point is "adventures you can plug into your regular game." I'm not sure why they would waste space on pre-gens...

 

[Set]

I will agree that our delves are not designed to be RP events. You have 30 minutes (20 in the past but we moved it up some for 4h edition to start as people get used to the rules) to complete something.

20 minutes! Luxury! At Origins, we got 15, and three encounters in that time.

Rumor has it the head RPGA guy was also a fiend. His assistant DMs called him Drusipher.