Darkest Dungeon-like campaign.

[Uller]

If you haven't played it, check it out: http://www.darkestdungeon.com

When my current canpaign ends I'd like to start a new one that is a bit more grim and where the players play the role of quest givers as well as adventurers.

The idea being that adventurers come cheap (especially low level ones) and die or are disabled often.

A few thoughts to achieve this:

1) my players' former PCs will be the quest givers. They will be building/occupying a stronghold of sorts and the burden of governing will prevent them from adventuring.

2) The setting will be a static local around the retured PCs' stronghold. Adventures will become available and the PCs will rarely have to travel (far).

3) Available races, classes and gear will be severely limited at first. Successful adventuring can "unlock" those portions of the game. For example...for Mountain Dwarves to become available as a PC race, the players must complete some quest(s) that open up trade routes to an isolated dwarven kingdom. For cetain armor to become available, the PCs must complete a quest that attracts an armor smith to the stronghold or fork over loot to attract one.

4) institute insanity and permanent injury rules so that adventurers become broken. Wealth, down time and other resources are required to allow recovery.

5) Some PCs will become so broken (mentally or physically) that they are no longer viable...so ways to attract new PCs to the stronghold will have to be available. Using aqcuired wealth and influence will allow replacement PCs to be advanced enough to keep up with the other PCs

6) Unlike Darkest Dungeon, I wouldn't wany to spend a lot of time retracing lower level adventures.

7) different sources of quests will develop and sometimes those sources will surpass the skill of available adventurers, forcing the quest givers to develop other avenues and bide their time.

Right now it's just an idea that needs a lot more fleshing out...it would require players to be a lot less attached to individual PCs.

 

[iserith]

Two campaigns ago, I ran something I called "The Delve." It was on the heels of me playing many hours of Darkest Dungeon and wanting to take the simple dungeon experience the game provides and make a D&D equivalent. I ended up abandoning the insanity part. I didn't really like the existing rules and didn't want to come up with my own system. I didn't use lingering injuries either, but I did use the rules for 8 hours short-rests and 24-hour long rests. But here's what I came up with and executed into a very solid campaign:

There was a town, Grimdark. Each session would be a self-contained foray into a dungeon called locally "The Delve." Each delve could only take place in a 24-hour period (in-game) when the dungeon would appear in the world from this netherworld called The Shade. There was a player pool of 8 to 10 players who each had a primary character and a backup character. Four characters could participate in any given session, first come first served.

The play loop was:

(1) Resolve downtime activities in Grimdark, basically, "What have the PCs being doing while resting for the last week?" I had set tasks with specific rolls, costs, results that offered benefits for the upcoming delve.
(2) Travel to the Delve via the dark forest whose name escapes me at the moment. Pace, travel tasks, and weather would determine time to get to the dungeon which impacted how much time they had to explore and short rest. Potential random encounter along the way.
(3) Delve the Delve. Get as much done as you can before the dungeon shifts back to The Shade - and don't get caught inside when it does or you go insane and your PC becomes an NPC villain.
(4) Return to Grimdark. Basically the same as #2.
(5) End of Session Review. Get any XP that wasn't already assigned, plus answer some questions as a group for bonus XP.

During the delve, the PCs might short rest. In order to do so, they had to leave the dungeon and make a camp in the forest for 8 hours. There was another potential random encounter here, the chance of which was mitigated by how well the PCs set up their camp.

That same loop played out every session for 20 sessions with different players, characters, and goals each time. The Delve itself was about 12 different levels with a shadow dragon as the ultimate villain at the end. It was a very successful campaign and we had a lot of fun with it. The simple procedure I set up initially worked perfectly and produced good play experiences each time. And only about 10% of the characters died ultimately. I'll try harder in my next dungeon-delving campaign.
[MENTION=6801813]Valmarius[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6801219]Lanliss[/MENTION] both played in this and might have more to share.

 

[Valmarius]

[MENTION=6801813]Valmarius[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6801219]Lanliss[/MENTION] both played in this and might have more to share.

One thing not mentioned already. Towards the end of the campaign Iserith revealed that each level of the Delve was a roughly equal to the CR of encounters found there. Each level also had at least one higher CR encounter tucked away, tempting great reward but with its danger telegraphed VERY clearly.

I had two characters run through. The first, Kelthael the ranger, died when he got his foot stuck to a Chest Mimic that was sitting atop a trapped altar. Two inescapable lightning bolts later, he was ash.
The second, Valgus the Tempest Cleric, perished on the 9th (?) floor to a necrotic breath weapon. He was later turned into a revenant by the rest of the party who had the bright idea to throw him on a flesh-golem animation machine.

The Town -> Travel -> Dungeon(rest) -> Travel -> Wrap up framing worked really well and was fit into the narrative. An hour before our scheduled end of session, Iserith would trigger a sound effect for the "Thrice-Damned Horn" and we would know it was time to escape, or lose that character. Because of this, the group of players got VERY good at playing and making decisions quickly and towards the end of the campaign we could get through 4-5 encounters in 4 hours (as well as covering downtime, two instances of travel, and a short rest).

 

[MNblockhead]

Misread the title and though this you were going to run a campaign based off of the Jack Chick pamphlet or the movie based off of it (http://www.darkdungeonsthemovie.com/)

But, the good news is that I now have new game for the Nintendo Switch.

 

[iserith]

One thing not mentioned already. Towards the end of the campaign Iserith revealed that each level of the Delve was a roughly equal to the CR of encounters found there. Each level also had at least one higher CR encounter tucked away, tempting great reward but with its danger telegraphed VERY clearly.

I had two characters run through. The first, Kelthael the ranger, died when he got his foot stuck to a Chest Mimic that was sitting atop a trapped altar. Two inescapable lightning bolts later, he was ash.
The second, Valgus the Tempest Cleric, perished on the 9th (?) floor to a necrotic breath weapon. He was later turned into a revenant by the rest of the party who had the bright idea to throw him on a flesh-golem animation machine.

The Town -> Travel -> Dungeon(rest) -> Travel -> Wrap up framing worked really well and was fit into the narrative. An hour before our scheduled end of session, Iserith would trigger a sound effect for the "Thrice-Damned Horn" and we would know it was time to escape, or lose that character. Because of this, the group of players got VERY good at playing and making decisions quickly and towards the end of the campaign we could get through 4-5 encounters in 4 hours (as well as covering downtime, two instances of travel, and a short rest).

My favorite was Ssssteve, the yuan-ti snake cult recruiter, who you guys murdered when he was giving some new supplicants a tour of their lair during an onsite interview.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Misread the title and though this you were going to run a campaign based off of the Jack Chick pamphlet or the movie based off of it (http://www.darkdungeonsthemovie.com/)

I thought the same thing. I was wondering who in the world would try to turn that into a game, and how they would do it.

 

[Uller]

I thought the same thing. I was wondering who in the world would try to turn that into a game, and how they would do it.

Well...i guess if anything I have a career in generating click bait.

 

[iserith]

I thought the same thing. I was wondering who in the world would try to turn that into a game, and how they would do it.

You know what... I haven't done a short-form scenario on enworld in a while.

*cue iserith design montage*

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

A question for those who tried it: do you think this would be a good fit for group of players that dont care much about setting lore and character development? I have some players who have a hard time investing themselves in fantasy scenarios without trying to murder every NPC after 5 minutes, and maybe those kind of basic scenario ala Darkest Dungeon or Diablo 1 where you delve an ever evolving perilous dungeon could be great for them, just testing their skills against enemies, looting, level-upping rince and repeat. I just started to use Donjon.bin dungeon randomizer; I could create the ''dungeon level of the week'' in minutes instead of investing large amount of time for nothing in scenarios they wont care about.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Two campaigns ago, I ran something I called "The Delve." It was on the heels of me playing many hours of Darkest Dungeon and wanting to take the simple dungeon experience the game provides and make a D&D equivalent.

I was planning to do a "simple dungeon experience" for my first 5E campaign. Slightly different setup: ruined but partially inhabited old imperial city a la medieval Rome, can't pick up a stone without finding a dungeon underneath. But the party ran afoul of the wrong NPCs and decided to skip town roundabout the fourth or fifth session, and haven't been back in the four years since. :/