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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7387263" data-attributes="member: 97077">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.</blockquote>

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