How To Host The Magician's Dungeon

Some photos from my second game of How To Host A Dungeon 2nd Edition. I'm not planning a full turn-by-turn breakdown this time, because that makes the game take a lot longer.  (Click here for Index of all my How To Host A Dungeon articles.)

 Image number 1 is from the end of the Primordial Age. The "Sky Gems" was from the Geographical Inspiration table suggesting that some of the gems on my map were meteorites. My Nexus is Leylines, which I drew real large in hopes that it will provide many Bonus Stars to groups in the Age of Monsters.

 Image number 2 is from the Age of Civilization. This was my first time playing the new Magician's Civilization. There were a few parts in the write-up for this Civ that were kind of vague. So be prepared for that, you'll have to make a few judgment calls with the Magician Civ. The vague areas were: Am I meant to have 1 or 2 Magicians at the end of the first turn? If I Build a construction that doesn't use/require a Jinn, should I also build a Vault, or just accept that I may have more than one Jinn at the Standing Stone at various points in this Age? Does the Omphalos prevent me from building an Orrery in a later turn? Will the Omphalos be meaningful (or even be a thing at all) later in the game? None of this vagueness here really breaks the game, but it is confusing and murky, and requires you to rule on how it all works mid-game.

Image number 3 is from the end of the Age of Civilization, after the Diaspora, with the three Epic Treasure Tokens hidden, and the location labels unhidden, to make the map more legible.

The Magician's Civilization was pretty fun. It resulted in a sprawling construction all over the left side of the map.  I could have easily run it over the right, or the top half, or even the bottom of the map. The player has a lot of impact on how this Civ develops, it's not the mostly automated script of the first edition. Part of that is because the Build list has twice as many constructions on it as you'll ever get to use on a single map, and part of it is because 2nd Ed maps have a lot more resources on them. (And a small part of it is because I included more Strata on my map than the rules-as-written would suggest. Strata #7 on this map set-up seemed way too huge, so I split it up into 3 substrata. When I get to the Age of Monsters, I'm also going to us the left- and right- halves of the surface as different Strata, so that when a Surface Dweller spawns, I'll have a system in place that randomly tells me where they start.)

Aside from being kind of vague and unclear at parts, I was also disappointed with one tiny aspect of the Magician Civilization. There are two ways it can end: in Diaspora or in Vengeance. Diaspora has zero instruction, and basically just leaves everything empty on your map. Vengeance does this cool thing where a new layer of dust and debris buries part of your map. That sounds awesome! But as written, this will almost never happen. There are 13 constructions on the Build list for this Civ, and you'll only get to pick 6 or 7 of them on a typical map. The Vengeance only happens if you choose 1 specific combo of 7 specific Buildings with no variation from that path. If you pick any one of the other 6 Buildings at any point during this Civilization, then you'll trigger the Diaspora at least 1 turn before you could possibly trigger the Vengeance. There's a little bit of wiggle room if your Nexus or some other result on the map from the Primordial Era has the ability to kill Magicians, but the game tends to skip over death during the Civ phase, and it's kind of annoying and can be quite limiting to carefully set things up to make that work. In the rules, this Civ seems amazing, but in practice it plays out as "merely" very good, but not quite as amazing as the potential implied. Like I said, it's a minor gripe about what is mostly a tiny thing, and it wouldn't have broken the game if I had decided to just dump that layer of dust on the map like I was tempted to do.

Deals With Devils

The theme of my RPG GMing in recent weeks has been "deals with the devil".

In my Savage Worlds / DramaSystem / Deadlands / Brimstone campaign, the PCs have been interacting a lot with a literal snakeoil salesman. Mr Melchizedek's Traveling Emporium of Miracle Cures, Mystic Artifacts, and Scratch-Built Devices. They met him at a crossroads, and the character wasn't on the screen for more than a minute before the players started making "Something Wicked This Way Comes" references, and trying to get him to take off his hat to check for horns. One of the PCs had an in-character reason to want to learn French, and voiced this in front of him. The next morning, when that PC woke up, he spoke perfect French, but no longer understood English.

In my Gumshoe / Night's Black Agents / Dracula Dossier campaign, one of the PCs has recently learned Goetia, the demon-summoning magic (from the Gumshoe Zoom supplement). The PCs did a mini-op to steel the Munich Manual of Demonology from the state library archives, so he can eventually do a deeper-dive into the demony fringes of the occult. Meanwhile, the PCs have also infiltrated one Vampire's web of conspiracies, and (going undercover) have begun taking missions from that Vampire against Edom and other Vampires. So there's a supernatural war going on, and the PCs are helping one particular Evil get one up on other Evils. They seemed a little too eager to get in bed with this particular darkness, so I've taken every opportunity to remind them that he's just the worst. First there was that whole blood sorcery ritual he involved them in with only the faintest nod towards concent. Then the first mission he gave them was a straight-up assassination. When the PCs asked about pay, he produced actual bars of Nazi gold... which, I should mention, he apparently magically summoned to the negotiation by butchering rats in front of the PCs. There's just nothing good about this situation... but, being PCs, they went ahead and did it anyway.

Man, I just realized that "Deals With Devils" would be a great name for an Everway character.

The Noisy Season

Got together tonight on Roll20 with an old friend from half a continent away. After catching up (we hadn't seen each other since GenCon) we played 1/3 to 1/2 a game of The Quiet Year. If you haven't heard of it, The Quiet Year is a collaborative map-making game. We're building a community in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It's a lot of fun. Here's our map as it stands at the moment:

I like The Quiet Year quite a bit. Enough to buy it on Roll20, despite owning a hardcopy that I suppose I could have just scanned in, or played by drawing cards in meatspace and just reading them into the video chat. It was enjoyable enough we're going to get together next week for the second half. (There's more than half a game left to do, but we spent the first hour mostly gabbing and catching up tonight, so it will probably zip by fast next time.)

The Roll20 implementation is pretty minimalist. It has all the pages of the rulebook as individual handouts, which is great for searching up individual rules, or for splitting up the reading of the rulebook between players. I wasn't completely convinced that Roll20's drawing tools were up to the task, and as you can see our drawings are pretty rough. I gotta say though, it worked well enough and was every bit as fun as in-person play. The Roll20 interface actually sped the game up, because if you had something a little more involved to draw you could fill in details while the other player took their turn. That's not normally a thing you can do when passing one sheet of paper back and forth in the physical game. So in some ways the Roll20 version is better than in-person (speed of play, and being able to play long-distance despite quarantine), and in other ways it is inferior to tabletop (mostly because the drawing tools on Roll20 aren't as easy to use as a box of colored pencils is).

I have always wanted to use The Quiet Year to create a map and history together with a playgroup, and then later set an RPG for the same group in that world we'd created together. It occurs to me that the Roll20 implementation would make it really easy to do that, as well as much easier to tweak that map (or upgrade it with a fancy version) after the start of the campaign. You would, however, then have a few dozen redundant rules-handouts jamming up your journal that you would want to delete or archive.  Even so, that is really cool, and now I really want to try that sometime.

One thing that did disappoint me a little about the Roll20 implementation is the lack of bells and whistles. I had to add the tiny dice as rollable table tokens. For the Contempt Tokens, I had to steal a chip from an old WH40K RPG campaign I ran back in the day. The yellowed paper background was on a single pregenerated page that took a little bit of ingenuity to duplicate to other pages for a second game.

(Addendum: It occured to me a few weeks later that they probably set it up that way intending for you to launch the module as a new campaign each time you want to play, so having multiple pages per campaign wasn't even a thing they considered. I think I prefer to have all the maps from every game of The Quiet Year that I've ever done online all be accessible in the same campaign framework, for ease of reference, and so I can show off old maps when teaching the game to new players. I suppose that preference might change if I do ever get around to starting an RPG campaign with a round of The Quiet Year to make the map for the campaign. You might not want a dozen other maps clogging up your campaign in that situation.) 

All told, it was less than half an hour of work to set up a reusable online version of the game, but if I had just bought it and thought I could start play right away I would have been surprised that I needed to take those extra steps the first time. I don't really know the first thing about how hard it is to build a sellable product on the Roll20 Marketplace, but it seems like it wouldn't be too much to ask for the game to come with a few assets that were selectable from the art library of the marketplace item, such as a set of tiny dice icons (or better yet, a prebuilt rollable token), a themed graphic for Contempt, and the yellow parchment background that you could then drag and drop to start a new page (bonus points if you could use it in other games/campaigns). I wonder if that's possible?

Along those lines, I'm really surprised that the Roll20 interface doesn't really include any generic "glass bead" -style tokens. Maybe they worry that would cut into sales of art assets? It sure seems like it would be useful for any number of gaming applications, but not so cool that people would be willing to pay much for it. But it also doesn't seem like it would take much work for Roll20's staff to make a set of half a dozen colored bead tokens available as a freebie (Edit: Or just one, which the GM could color via the existing token Tint feature), since they already give away for free several dozen virtual miniatures that are way more detailed.

Anyhow, The Quiet Year is elegant, goofy fun, and I highly recommend it, whether in dead-tree or Roll20 version. It's not perfect, but it's definitely worth the modest asking price in either format.

HtHaD2E: This Close To World Domination

This post covers the last 5 turns of my recent game of How To Host A Dungeon 2nd Edition. In the previous posts, we followed the rise and fall of a Dwarven City, and then a series of dungeon expansions in and around those ruins by successive waves or generations of monsters. Eventually, this culminated in an insectoid species -- known as "Antlings" -- accumulating enough Treasure to trigger the Age of Villainy. (Click here for Index of all my How To Host A Dungeon articles.)



Here is the map as it was when we left off:

Other groups on the map at this point include:

• A giant Pike that swallowed an Owlbear whole.
• A small Reclamation Colony of Dwarves, who have built an armory, reignited the old smelters and unearthed an Epic Magical Treasure.
• A high-level adventurer and his Ork henchman have set up camp in an old Dwarven drinking hall.
• An ork tribe that was once prosperous and powerful but is now stretched too thin.
• A warren of sneaky kobold thieves.

Per the rules as written, the Antlings had qualified to start The Empire, which is one of the two main forms of Villainy. Empires Ally and Annex other groups, and build Monuments and Universities. The Antlings are Mindless, so that's not a good match thematically.

Instead, I'll be using the other main form of Villain, which is The Horde. It's a perfect match for a colony of giant ants. (Alternately, I could have just narrated that the Antlings had evolved sentience, possibly a result of the weird fungus they were farming.)

As a Horde Villain, the Antlings will gain some new Actions each turn. Previously, they would Breed and Prepare every turn, and Harvest their Fungus Farm nearly every turn. On turns when they didn't Harvest, they could Explore or Fight. Now they always Scout new territory each turn, in addition to Breeding and Preparing. On turns when they don't Harvest or Explore or Fight, they can now alternately Rout tougher monsters, or sacrifice some of their own to Exterminate groups they outnumber. They always at first at the start of each Round, but at the end of the Round they get a Finishing move of Corrupting the Strata they are in if there's no one there to resist them. If they Corrupt all 7 underground Strata, they conquer the world and win the game.


Age of Villainy Set-Up:
We corrupt the Strata where the majority of the Antling tokens are. Visually, I went for a reddish mycelium growth, as if the Fungus Farm were spreading out of control through the rock.

What follows is mostly a stream-of-consciousness step-by-step playthrough of all 5 turns of the Age of Villainy in my recent game. I will put a summarized list of observations and proposed house-rules in another post later.

Age of Villainy - Turn 1: Antlings Horde, The Experts, Giant Pike, Dwarves, Kobolds, Orkz +Gnolls

Antlings Horde: Breed. Scout action expands their space by roughly 1 room in each direction, which means they fill some but not all of the rooms previously inhabited by the Owlbear, but will not reach the water until next turn. Prepare. Explore the rest of their main corrupted stratum by digging a tunnel towards the Demigod structures.

The Experts: Their monster card compels them to pick a Fight with one of the nearby Denizen groups. They attack the Dwarves, and their Ork henchman dies. So then they Recruit a new henchman from the Orkz, and that's enough of a drain on the Orkz population to eliminate the Orkz.

Giant Pike: Can't leave the water, and the Antlings didn't reach the water, so it just relocates to explore the other part of the subterranean ocean. I mark his original territory with "spawning bed" because I suspect he swims upstream in later turns.

Dwarves: Dwarves are playing a dangerous game. They Exploit the only remaining Ore on the map, which involves reopening passageways very close to the Adventuring Party. So it's in their best interests to Fight the interlopers, which they do, killing the new Ork henchman and leaving just the 1 Adventurer holding the old Drinking Hall.

Kobolds: They are pretty much doomed by their Explore requirement, sweet tooth for treasure, and the extinction of the Orkz. With all those factors, there's no way their mess of tunnels isn't going to hit that Fate Nexus booby trap that's been sitting there since the Primordial Era. Having found their Fate, the Kobolds are wiped out.

Orkz: Were eliminated before they could take their turn.

Gnolls: In the Age of Villainy, new Monsters spawn less frequently. Instead of being automatic each turn, it's based on whether or not any Monster groups were eliminated in the previous turn. Looking at my notes from the last play session, I see that the Owlbear was eaten by the Giant Pike in the previous turn, so I do spawn monsters this turn. It's Gnolls, and they rolled the ocean strata, so I figure the Giant Pike's migration has exposed their seaside home. They fight the Antlings and win, and then they Steal from the Pike. I draw a tunnel to the old Owlbear caves to be the route they use for both Actions. To give the Gnolls just a tiny bit of visual character, I decide all their rooms will have two support columns.

Antling Horde Finishing Move: They haven't yet spread far enough to trigger their finishing move, mostly because I chose to have them tunnel to the Demigod Hall with their Explore action. Next Turn, they'll most likely start corrupting the layers beneath them.



Age of Villainy - Turn 2: Antling Horde, Gnolls, Experts, Giant Pike, +Medusa

Antlings Horde: Breed. Scout in all directions, and drag the treasure they find in the Hall of the Demigod deeper into their nest. It's probably ambrosia or golden apples or something of the sort. They explore further down, penetrating pretty far since the Old Dwarven Loway is open and un-owned.

Gnolls: Fight the Antlings and kill one, cutting off their access to the sea. Breed, since they fought the Antlings last turn. Scout and expand their territory.

Experts: Fight the Dwarves, and with a lucky roll kill them despite the Armory bonus. Then, since it worked with the Orkz, they try to Recruit the survivors. This time it doesn't work, and they just end up giving their last treasure to the Dwarves for no gain.

Dwarves: There's no Ore left anywhere on the map, so they can neither Exploit nor Relocate to better lands. So they pick a Fight. The best odds are against the Antlings, so that's the risk they take, and they win!

Giant Pike: Hunts a Gnoll. Explores a deeper section of the water than was previously obvious.

Medusa: Spawns way down on Stratum 8 where there's no one to Hunt. Prepares. Scouts.

Antling Horde Finishing Move: They corrupt the Stratum directly below the hive, so the Antlings are 2/7ths of the way to world domination.



Age of Villainy: Turn 3 - Antling Horde, Experts, Gnolls, Medusa, Dwarves, Giant Pike,

Antling Horde: Breed. Prepare. Scout. Then they use the Horde-specific Exterminate Action to wipe out the Dwarves. It may seem wasteful or overkill, but the math of it makes sense. That single Dwarf, with his +1 on Fight, had about a 72% chance each turn to kill an Antling. Exterminate is a can't-fail Action that gets to ignore the Dwarves Fortification bonuses.  By wiping him out, the Antlings gain a Fortification of their own, making them much better at dealing with incursions from the Gnolls. Plus, by not Fighting the Gnolls this turn, they prevent the Giant Pike from Hunting them just a little bit longer. This isn't without some peril, as it drops the Antling Population briefly down to 2, before the second half of Exterminate bumps them back up to 3. Their numbers are dwindling, but they've gained a large portion of the map. They are at their most vulnerable for the rest of this turn, but it seems a worthwhile gamble.

The Experts: Fight the Antlings, and almost beat them. The Antlings have to spend their Special Bonus Star (from Preparing) in order to win. They do so, and that's the end of The so-called Experts.

Gnolls: Fight the Antlings, and lose thanks to the Fortification the Antlings have in their territory now. As they also fought last turn, they get to Breed and replace the population they just lost. Scout a little.

Medusa: No one to Hunt. Prepares. Scouts a little bit further up, and reorganizes into the area she scouted.

Dwarves: Dead before their turn comes up.

Giant Pike: Hunt a Gnoll. The Gnolls are in trouble now. If the Pike beats their Initiative next turn, they'll be wiped out.

Troglodytes: Enter in Strata 4. Start exploring a route up towards water. For some reason, I made their tunnels huge and their rooms small. Not sure what I was thinking. I'm pretty I did this part of the turn after midnight sometime last week, so exhaustion or insomnia-dellerium may have been to blame. If I use this map for an RPG adventure, I'll probably claim they worship some giant serpent-god, and this huge winding tunnel is carved in his honor.

Antlings Horde: Finishing Move: Corrupt strata 5 and 6. Now 4/7ths of the way to victory.



Age of Villainy Turn 4: Antlings, Giant Pike, Gnolls, Medusa, Troglodytes, +Starhelm ++Demonic Hordes

Antlings Horde: Breed. Prepare. Scout in all directions, making significant progress in directions where they don't have to tunnel and can just follow existing pathways. They are now approaching the Fate cave from two directions. Before they get there, they Fight the Troglodytes and kill some of them.

Giant Pike: Eats the last Gnoll, and has some Ants for desert.

Gnolls: Have been wiped out before their turn.

Medusa: Kills some Antlings. Then tries to Exploit Nexus, because it's a cool-sounding Action that I do believe is unique to the Medusa. Unfortunately, the Nexus on this map is the very lethal Fate Cave. Exploit uses the exploited resource to create a treasure. The Fate cave must have some reflective surfaces. Perhaps its a crystalline geode cave. She sees her own reflection, and Exploits herself into a statue-shaped treasure.

Troglodytes: There's no ore left on the map to Exploit, and they have a treasure to defend so they don't Relocate. They retaliate with their "Fight a monster that attacked us last turn" against the Antlings, and lose.

Starhelm: Monster groups were wiped out, so I draw a new card to replace them. I get Starhelm, which is a traveling order of Knights who specialize in hunting undead. They spawn in strata four. It's near the end of the game, so I just grab my old Adventurer tokens for them. They're actually more interesting than the other Adventurer groups, and if I wasn't obviously about 1 turn away from the end of the game, I would bother to treat them like a bigger deal. I figure they're too late to really trigger any of the cool things that make Starhelm unique, and it's just easier to use tokens I already have. They will, however, get to trigger their "When spawning" power. They need a foe to defeat, so I have to draw the first Undead monster in the deck and add it to the map. They can't Hunt Undead from their starting location, so they Relocate. They go to the Hall of the Demigod, and Build a Tomb for the fallen Godling. Well, maybe they can actually do a few of their cool Starhelm-exclusive tricks after all. These guys are already way more interesting than The (so-called) Experts.


Demonic Hordes: I was a little surprised to see the "Undead" Keyword on the Demonic Hordes, but in the context of placing an unholy enemy for Starhelm to hunt, it works. I rolled Strata 5, so they burst up from a volcanic rift to another plane. They then immediately relocate to a resource they can Exploit up in the old Gnoll area, blasting lightning-shaped tunnels to get there. In hindsight, maybe they should have gone to the Exploitable water around the Ancient Dwarven Statue, as it's much closer, could be reached mostly by existing tunnels, would slow down the Antling progress, and not run them through such hotly contested territory. However, I didn't think of that until after I'd already carved out the zig-zag tunnels they'd blasted into the landscape, and it was going to be too much work to undo that.


Antlings Horde: Finishing Move: Corrupt strata 7 and 8. Now 6/7ths of the way to victory. In order to extend it into both of the strata, they needed to relocate both of their remaining Population tokens to the frontiers of their expansion. Which is fine and legal, there was nothing requiring them to have a Queen chamber, or keep a Population there. If we want a story justification, perhaps the Queen has a sense that her fate awaits here in stratum 7.


My Villains are now down to just 2 Population, within Scouting range of Fate, and have just one Stratum between them and global domination. One way or another, the game is going to end next turn.



Age of Villainy: Turn 5: Antlings, Giant Pike, Demonic Horde, Troglodytes, Starhelm

Antlings Horde: Breed. Scout into Fate, and meet their doom. They came so close to winning it all, only to doom themselves.

Giant Pike: Eats a Demonic Horde. Explores and discovers a thin river where a surface creek feeds the underground seas.

Demonic Horde: Exploit the water. Breed. Explore - This is taking some minor liberty with the system, but as a sort of combination of their Exploit and Explore, I had them build a big pier or bridge out over the water.

Troglodytes: Just Breed.

Starhelm: Hunt 1 of the Demonic Horde automatically. Then Fight the remaining Demonic Horde and win! The Demonic Horde are wiped out! Which means the Order of Starhelm disbands and leaves the map for quests elsewhere.

Arguably, I should maybe spawn another Monster since there were eliminations this turn, but the game ends at the end of the turn, so it didn't seem worth it.

Antlings Horde Villain: Have been wiped out, so they don't get their Finishing Move... but I just couldn't resist firing off the mycelium corruption affect one more time, at a large scale, centered on the Fate cave.



At that stage, it doesn't look like a very usable map for an RPG, what with all that visual clutter, hardly any monsters, and treasures just piled up everywhere. Surprisingly, it took very little clean-up to get it in a usable state for D&D (or whatever other purpose you might need it for, like the setting of a novel). Once you've cleared the tokens out, all those labels of what used to be in areas become a legend of what is currently there at the start of your D&D campaign. Tweaking the transparency of a few layers, and shifting some a little further down the layer list only took a couple minutes, and let me shift the map into usable territory.

I'm actually really pleased with how this one turned out, there were a few points where I thought I'd ruined it, but layering all those extra greebly details transformed my crappy quick pixel sketches into more than the sum of the parts. Even the crazy coloring I used to designate areas ended up being less garish and awful in the final product that I thought it would.

Sometime soon I will put together a new post with a big summary of all the things that I'd like to house-rule or do differently next time I play. The game was a lot of fun, but the second edition has a few rough edges.

HtHaD 2nd Ed: Age Of Monsters Turns 5 to 11

This is the turn-by-turn summary of my most recent game of How To Host A Dungeon, 2nd Edition. In this post, I'm covering turns 5 to 11 of The Age Of Monsters.

There's less review in this post than the previous two. I'll no doubt do a big summary post of all my praise, criticism, and likely future house-rules after I've completed the Age of Villainy and wrapped up my first full game of the new edition.


As you'll see below, for many turns the Antlings were on the verge of triggering the Age of Villainy. The timing rules of this game are pretty vague. You could actually make an argument that the Age transition should have happened much earlier, at the end of Turn 6, or possibly 7 or 8 if you correct for a few places where the rules were vague, I made a mistake, or I applied a house-rule. While those earlier turns would have been valid and defensible positions, I held off until it was undeniable that the transition had to happen by the rules. I'm glad I did because it made the final map a lot more complex and rich. This map had gotten off to a slow start because it lacked early mining/building denizens due to random chance, so those few extra turns of development really helped enhance the map.

For those new to HtHaD: This is a map-drawing solitaire game, where each turn new monsters are added to the map and preexisting monsters carve new territory and occasionally fight each other. (Click here for Index of all my How To Host A Dungeon articles.)


Turn 5: Ogre, Owlbear, Antlings, The Experts, Adventurers, + Skeletons

Ogre: Relocate closer to food. Explore more mines.

Owlbear: Hunts 1 Antling. Relocates to the island mouth of the new anthill.

Antlings: Breed. Then fight the last Adventurer, and defeat him before he can Relocate on his turn. This means next turn they'll get to Prepare and then Build a Fungus Farm.

The Experts: There's nothing to fight, so they Explore. I had them Relocate rather than Explore, because Explore would have them just sit around in the corner of the map digging a small collection of new tunnels. It seems like Relocate is what the card should say.

Skeletons: The bodies of all those who died ancient Industrial Accident arise from the waters at the foot of the Statue of Edg (the founder of the previous Dwarven City from the first Age of this map), and Scout around.



Turn 6: Antlings, Experts, Owlbear, Ogre, Skeletons, + Demigod

Antlings: Breed first. Then, because they wiped out the Adventurers, they get to Prepare. Lastly, because they gained a Special Bonus Star from Preparing, they may spend it to Build a Fungus Farm. This is a special room that contains a Fungus Biome that they will be able to Harvest on future turns. Note that at this time the Antlings have reached Population 6. So if nothing kills any Antlings this round, the Antlings will usher in the Age of Villainy.

Experts: Relocate.

Owlbear: Hunts an Antling. Then Scouts down the anthill.

Ogre: Relocates back to his favorite Drinking Hall. Explores a bit more of side branches.

Skeletons: Kill the Ogre, despite his defensive Fortification bonus. They retake the Drinking Hall. With the fresh influx of bones, next turn they will get to Breed.

Demigod: He is a Lawful Humanoid divinity, and spawned in Strata 3 so he was either going to be in instant conflict with the Antlings or spawning over by the lava. I went with the later, and gave him some fancy furnishings befitting his status. He Prepares, then Relocates closer to potential worshippers.

The turn ends with the Antlings back down to 5 population, so I'm not sure if the Age of Villainy is triggered or not. I'm going with "not" because otherwise timing doesn't really matter, and I think that makes for a better game if initiative and sequencing matter. There's a part in the rules where the say what to do if 2 species both trigger Villainy in the same turn, so that implies it's not something that happens instantly or interrupts turn order.



Turn 7: Skeletons, Antlings, Experts, Owlbear, Demigod, + Earthdevils

Skeletons: Because they were drawn first this turn, they take no actions. Sucks to be undead. I think this also means they lose out on the opportunity to make an Ogre skeleton, because of the wording on the card.

Antlings: Breed (taking them momentarily back up to 6 Population), Prepare (getting them a Special Bonus Star), Harvest Fungus Biome (creating a new Treasure).

Experts: Relocate

Owlbear: Hunt an Antling, Scout out another nearby cave (this one has a large column in the middle of it for no particular reason).

Again the Antlings end the turn 1 Population short of Villainy. It may look at a glance like they have 6, but one of those is just the Special Bonus Star they got from the Prepare action. If the Owlbear keeps their population check, it will take them another 4 turns of Fungus-Treasure production to achieve the other type of Villainy.

I'm tempted at this point to have the Owlbear dig and accidentally burst through the floor of the underground sea above him, flooding the antlings. There were some optional rules in the 1st Edition that would handle this, but it's a lot of work and I don't have a better reason for it than fearing the Owlbear-Antling stalemate may grow tiresome eventually.

Demigod: Prepares and Relocates again. Rather than restricting him to the same slow pace as some others, I figured a Demigod could perform Herculean tasks. So he digs a longer than normal tunnel, and builds a gleaming staircase to connect it to the old Dwarven LoWay. He also crafts a perfect golden dome above his home temple. I leave him in a position where Initiative order will determine how things play out between him and The Experts.

Earth Devils: I wasn't sure what to make of the Earth Devils, as they don't really have a D&D analog to base them on. The card says "Earth devils live in angular, asymmetrical chambers that are uncomfortable to other races." So I started drawing spiky outlines down in Strata 8, that I planned to turn into some sort of rocky towers until something magical happened. I realized the frameworks I'd started sketching would actually make really neat sort of irregular crystalline spiderweb stabiles. So I dug through the deck of undrawn monsters in a hurry to make sure that there weren't any actual spiders in there (there aren't). Now I had my hook for Earth Devils: they're more like Ore Spiders. I'll use the Earth Devils name and stats/actions, but just make these huge bizarre webs for them. For the first turn, they don't have the requirements for Exploiting or Breeding, so they'll just scout a route into the rest of the dungeon.


Turn 8: Demigod, Owlbear, Earth Devils, Experts, Antlings, Skeletons, + Dwarves

Demigod: Prepares, then Recruits from The Experts. He gives this adventuring party a gift, and then convinces one of their number to leave their band and become his sidekick mortal companion.

Owlbear: Hunts 1 Antling. Scouts a tiny little dead-end cave just off the antpath. Claws the wall of that cavelet to mark his territory.

Earth Devils: Relocate closer to ore, leaving a trail of web behind them. Can't quite make it to the ore in one turn, so they dig a temporary den near the old Purple Worm nest. (I guess it would have made more sense to have them just build a web in the nest. Oh, well, I've already drawn the side room for them to web.)

Experts: Haven't yet explored the old Dwarven Citadel, so they arguably can't fight the tantalizingly close Earth Devils. They then attempt to rout the Demigod, and fail miserably (not even spending their current Special Bonus Star would help them).

Antlings: Breed. Prepare. Fungus Harvest Biome and dig a small room for the new treasure. Three more turns of this and they'll become The Empire of Villainy.

Skeletons: Fight the Earth Devils, and flub the roll. Half the skeletons are wiped out. At this point, the Skeletons could reorganize their treasures up into the Drinking Hall for free, but I decide buried beneath the waves is protected enough.

Dwarves: A team of Dwarves have come to reclaim their ancestral home. They immediately dive into the surface mine, fix up the elevator and light the fires of the smelter.  Then they get to work exploiting every last scrap of ore they get their hands on. They are briefly at 3 Treasure, before detecting the ant-hole in the ruins. To be safe, they invest 2 Treasure in Building an Armory that gives +1 on future Fight rolls.

Turn 9: Experts, Antlings, Dwarves, Earth Devils, Demigod, Owlbear, Skeletons, + Orkz

Experts: The Experts are underperforming the promise of their name. Last turn, I argued that they shouldn't Fight the Earth Devils, because there was a big unexplored castle in the way. Honestly, that was kinda lame on my part. Nothing actually printed on the "The Experts" card suggests they can't just dig tunnels. It is terribly unfair of me to complain about which Actions The Experts have access to (which I did in my previous post) if I'm not giving them a chance to do some of those Actions and see how it plays.

So this turn, I decide to let them figure a winding route through that big castle to attack the Earth Devils, and I decided to let them roll for two such attacks, since they should have had one from the previous turn as well. Both times, the die they rolled scored 1 lower than the die the Earth Devils rolled. The first time this happens, they can spend their Special Bonus Star from having Prepared, so the Earth Devils lose 1 of their 2 population. The second time, not having the Star to spend, The Experts lose 1 of their 2 population. So both groups are down to 1 Population.

The remaining Expert then tries once again, and fails once again, to Rout the Demigod. These "Expert" guys... *shakes head*

They can at least re-organize to place themselves anywhere in their territory, which I guess means they can hide out in the fort, to get +1 in any future Fight. That's something.

Antlings: Breed. Prepare. Harvest. ETA till Villainy: 2 more turns.

Dwarves: Exploit Ore and use it to Build a Hall to attract a new population.

Earth Devils: They dig a new tunnel to the nearby old Dwarven mine, and Exploit every last bit of Ore from it. It was either dig a fairly large chunk of tunnel, or sneak through skeleton territory, or skip their "Always Exploit Ore" directive.

I think before the next time I play this, I may have to come up with a consistent house rule for how far groups are allowed to dig for the Exploit Action (and other Actions that involve movement or tunneling). It may even become a per-species thing that I list on the Monster Cards.

Demigod: Prepares. Attempts to Extort the Treasure back from the lone Adventurer, but he won't give it up.  The Demigod temporarily loses his Special Bonus Star in the attempt. For his third Action, he tries to Steal the Treasure, and this time is successful.

Owlbear: Continues to snack on Antlings, and Scout small caves in the vicinity. In this cave, he stores all the discarded Antling exoskeletons, after he's sucked out the innards and munched the tender tasty sensory organs. Num!

Skeletons: Fight the Earth Devils, and successfully eliminate them. Earth Devils, especially ones I've decided are Spider-like, won't have any bones, so no skeleton reinforcements. They do, however, get the Treasure: I mean, it's ore-based, and some of it was mined from the old Dwarven property, so if there's ever a Treasure to be coveted by the spirits of angry Dwarves, this is it. Weirdly, this now moves the Skeletons into "first place" as far as being one Treasure away from triggering Villainy.

Orkz: Arrive in Stratum 8. Dig some initial caves, with campfires. Orcish society is organized around campfire stories. Explore and annex passages that had been created by the Purple Worm or the Earth Devils. It is theoretically possible the Orcs could defeat the Skeletons and become the Villains as early as next turn. Initiative order will again be critical next Turn.

At this point I figure out I've been using a House Rule without realizing it. A close read of the rules suggests new monster groups should not be taking actions on the turn they spawn. I've been doing that incorrectly since Turn 2 of the game. I had actually suspected my mistake a few turns ago, decided not to correct it, because in theory this would speed up the game a little. Early on I only had Alphas and Adventurers, so anything to get Denizen groups building and breeding a little faster seemed welcome, plus, it would be really hard to reverse all those maps and take new snapshots, so it's not worth the hassle. But now I've hit an ugly ripple effect that I hadn't considered. It might be weird and anticlimactic if a new species popped onto the map and immediately became the Villain without warning. On the other hand, you could rationalize that as they were already the Villain before they arrived, and their first turn is an invasion. So maybe that's not so bad.

Speaking of Invasions, since the new Spawning rules just place Monster Groups to large vague Strata with a lot of wiggle room, it is somewhat unlikely you would ever actually need the Invasion rules (the rules that govern what happens if a new Monster Group spawns inside the territory of another established group). It could happen, but that either means you decided to force it to happen when it wasn't truly necessary, or it means one of your existing Groups has prospered so much the entire Statum is their active territory. In the former case, if you've fudged things to make that happen you've probably already got a good idea of how you want it to play out. In the latter case, it may seem kinda weird if a civilization big enough to fill an entire stratum got driven out completely by the new upstarts they greatly outnumbered, but there's a 50% chance that's what will happen.

Turn 10: Experts, Antlings, Skeletons, Owlbear, Demigod, Dwarves, Orkz, +Kobolds

Experts: Fight the Skeletons, as find them to be easy pickings. The last Skeleton is destroyed, so the Experts gather up all their Treasure. They reorganize to the Drinking Hall because that seems like a fun place. They then use their newfound wealth to recruit some of the Orkz to their cause.

Antlings: Breed. Prepare. Harvest Fungus for Treasure. Next turn, they become the Villain if no one stops them.

Skeletons: Wiped out by Experts.

Owlbear: Hunt 1 Antling. Scout out a little further afield, and find a new room full of stalagmites and stalactites.

Demigod: Prepare. Tries to Extort the Experts. When that fails, he successfully Steals from them instead.

Dwarves: Exploit Ore. Fight The Experts did not go well, and 1 Population of Dwarves died.

Orkz: Fail to Extort the Experts. Successfully Fight the Demigod, killing his recruited Minion. Then, they proceed to Ally with the Demigod! They cannot attack each other next turn at all, and the Orkz gain a rare Special Bonus Star since the Demigod had Prepared. This may be a magical blessing from the Demigod, who was clearly impressed that they were able to kill his sidekick.

Kobolds: Explore. Prepare. Build Tunnels. As Kobolds do, they are digging lots of narrow tunnels. They survive by traps and thievery.

Turn 11: Dwarves, Orkz, Owlbear, Antlings, Kobolds, Experts, Demigod, +Giant Pike

Dwarves: Exploit ore, and find a Holy Relic: The twin axes of Sedg, the original founder of the Ancient Dwarven City of Segun Rokot!

Orkz: What a turn! Extort cash out of the Experts, and then Fight and kill the Demigod! (Oops! It has been pointed out they should have been under the effects of the Ally Action this turn, and shouldn't have been able to betray the Demigod yet. It's too late to fix that now. I guess these particular Orkz are just hyper-violent.) The Orkz then build Defenses (+1 in Fights).

Owlbear: Hunt antlings. Scout a small underwater cave near the island. I didn't realize it at the time, but this would quickly be their undoing once I flipped over the new Monster Card for the turn.

Antlings: Breed. Prepare. Harvest. They are now at 6 Treasures! Villainy begins at the end of this turn!

Kobolds: Explore, and Steal from Orkz. Theft succeeds but costs the bonus star from both Kobolds and Orkz to resolve. Kobolds always Explore, so they'll likely hit the Fate Cave next turn and wipe themselves out.

Experts: Fight Orkz and win despite the Orkz fortifications. Attempt to Ally with Dwarves but fail. Dwarves are pretty upset about the desecration and occupation of their ancestral city.

Demigod: Was wiped out. His treasure is pretty remote on the map, so I decided not to give it to anyone.

Giant Pike: Spawns in the nearest body of water. Clearly it was a bad idea for the Owlbear to explore that flooded cave. Fights the Owlbear, killing it.

The Age Of Monsters Has Ended
That is the end of Turn 11 of the Age of Monsters. The Antlings have collected the necessary 6 Treasures to launch the Age of Villainy, and become The Empire Villain. More on that next time.

Here is my map at the Transition, without Tokens, and with all the areas labeled in case anyone wants to use it as the basis of a D&D adventure or something. If you click on it you should be able to see it in high enough resolution to be read the labels.

HtHaD 2ndEd: The Age of Monsters!

The Second Edition of How To Host A Dungeons features a radically different system for the Age Monsters. As with the Dwarven Civilization, the changes seem to maximize the variability and replayability of the new edition. Monsters are now on a deck of (print and play) cards, and each has their own list of behaviors, rather than falling into broad categories of monster with the same AI. The player also has a lot more control over monster behavior, which is both good and bad. It makes it a better tool for telling a story or creating just the dungeon layout you want, but those improvements come at the cost of being slightly less of a game. (Click here for Index of all my How To Host A Dungeon articles.)

At the start of the Age of Monsters, you shuffle all the monster cards, and deal out three for the first turn. I got two Alpha Monsters: a Worm and an Ogre. My third "monster" is a roaming party of 4 adventurers.

There are zero treasures on my board. None of the monsters I drew on the first turn start with any, and none of the choices I made for the Dwarves created any long-lasting Epic Treasures, either. None of these creatures Exploit ore, either. This means it will take many turns to trigger the Age of Villainy by Empire, and also in the early game a lot of Actions the use or target treasure won't be available.

The new rules really don't keep track of territory and range, and how far a monster can move is left up to your judgment. For this game I'm assuming they can move about the length of 1 finger (as measured in the previous system) if there's a clear, explored path with no intervening dangers. If they have to explore or tunnel, they'll get a lot less distance in a turn. This assumption works well in some situations, and in others it just kind of dragged out the game. Having played most of a game now, I think the rules actually intended there to be no range limitation, with no one ever failing to get where they wanted to go in a single turn. That's implied by the Relocate text, and probably would have made for a more exciting and shorter game. I wish the rules were more overt about that.

I also wish there were more subtypes of "Relocate" because it is used a little too broadly. There are a number of Monster cards that use one of Relocate, Scout or Explore that feel mislabeled. A party of Adventurers probably shouldn't be digging tunnels or really claiming territory at all, so it seems like the game would benefit from them having a movement Action that was different from Explore or Relocate. It's particularly egregious on The Experts, who as written sit in one place and dig new tunnels every turn. This bugged me so much that I ignored the rules as written for both Adventurer groups that showed up in my game.

I also wish there were more subtypes of "Relocate" because it is used a little too broadly. There are a number of Monster cards that use one of Relocate, Scout or Explore that feel mislabeled. A party of Adventurers probably shouldn't be digging tunnels or really claiming territory at all, so it seems like the game would benefit from them having a movement Action that was different from Explore or Relocate. It's particularly egregious on The Experts, who as written sit in one place and dig new tunnels every turn. This bugged me so much that I ignored the rules as written for both Adventurer groups that showed up in my game.

If you're just here for the review and house-rule suggestions, you can 

click here to skip the turn by turn analysis and go straight to my ruminations.

Turn 1: Initiative: Worm, Ogre, Adventurers

Worm: Digs towards the nearest water in search of food and a spot to nest. The lateral route opens up into a big ol' cave of lava from the Primordial era, so I reveal the nearby parts of that cave and then he changes direction. He doesn't get far enough to do any other actions on his list.

Ogre: There's nothing to eat in the old Dwarven drinking hall, so he relocates to a nearby room. He confuses the old bronze "impossible engine" for a big egg, and sets up camp there. He explores a little further down, but returns to the egg. To eat it now, or wait for it to hatch? That's a big think for the ogre.

Adventurers: Looking for adventure, they head down a mine and an old rickety elevator. They don't get far enough to accomplish anything more beneficial, and none of the follow-up actions are applicable.

Turn 2: Ogre, Worm, Adventurers, + Owlbear

Ogre: Gives up chewing on the bronze aeolipile and moves the banks of the small underground lake. Throws rocks at the old dwarf sculpture for a while, but can't figure out how to kill or eat it. Explores a bit of tunnel after he runs out of rocks.

Worm: Heads closer to the water. Because of my not initially understanding that there's intentionally no range limit on Relocate, the Worm didn't get as far as he probably should have.

Adventurers: Relocate to deeper in the dungeon. Again, probably should have moved further.

Owlbears: An Owlbear wanders in from the grasslands of the far left edge of the map, and moves up into the hills. There it finds a cave to use as a den, and scouts by digging to open up access to the nearby underground sea.

Turn 3: Worm, Owlbear, Ogre, Adventurers, + Antlings

Worm: Digs until he finds water, then builds a Nest. Routs the Ogre, driving him back to the Old Dwarven Drinking Hall.

Owlbear: Relocates to an island in the underground sea. Scouts around a bit, subsists on small blind cavefish.

Ogre: Hunts and eats of the four adventurers. Then he scouts out an escape route, since he's trapped between two opposing forces.

Adventurers: Have no good way to deal with the Ogre, so they relocate closer to the surface.

Antlings: Start with 3 Population, and our first Treasure of this Age. The giant ants Breed, then Explore towards the ruins of Segun Rokot.

The addition of the antlings to the map has made it all a lot more interesting. Exactly what happens next turn will matter greatly upon the initiative order in Turn 4.

Turn 4: Adventurers, Owlbear, Worm, Ogre, Antlings, + The Experts

Adventurers: Hear some noise in one of the old Dwarven vaults, and investigate. They pick a Fight with the Antlings, and lose.

Owlbear: Relocates from the island to the far shore. Scouts out some of the smaller caves at this end of the cavern, and discovers an opening to the surface.

Worm: Follows the scent of the Ogre, and short-cuts through the giant bronze tubes of the ruined Dwarven hydrothermal system. Despite bursting up from a floor grate in the Ogre's fortified lair, it fails to rout him a second time.

Ogre: That worm should have left him alone. Most creatures in the game with a Hunt action specify that it can only target Denizens or some other specific category of target. The Ogre's "ravenous hunger" implies the lack of targeting requirements is intentional on this creature. Since he wasn't routed, he turns the tables on the worm and devours it. After a nice meal, he Explores another possible escape route in case anything else ever bursts up from the floor of his home.

Antlings: Breed. They fight the Adventurers, and kill 1 of them. They then Explore, digging a tunnel all the way to that island in the sea.

This is actually something of a mistake on my part. When their Fight action finished, it should have ended their turn. By the time I realized it, I'd already drawn a big ol' tunnel on the page, and didn't want to delete it.

As you'll see in a future post, the existence of this Tunnel is what slows down the Antlings from becoming the Villain, turn after turn, and prolongs my game significantly. Little things can have huge ripple effects in How To Host A Dungeon, and that's kind of cool, even if it was brought to my attention because of what seemed like an innocuous mistake on my part.

The Experts: (These are a type of Adventurers, so I'm using the same color tokens for them, but technically if the two groups somehow meet, they aren't necessarily allied.) The Experts arrive in strata 4, so I have them enter via the old Dwarven Loway. Technically, they Explore this turn... but that seems like it should be some version of Relocate instead, so I'm treating it more like that. It doesn't really make sense for them to sit still unless they lose a fight, or to start building their own dungeon.

That's the end of the Fourth Turn, and we've had our first eliminations of the Age of Monsters. The Purple Worm was devoured by the Ogre. The first Adventurer group was reduced to just 1 Population, so they'll be Relocating off the map at the start of their next Turn.

---

Things I Would Change

This seems like a nice moment for a few observations about the new edition. I love the idea of the "Monster Cards" providing different actions and priorities for each species. I like the way the initiative changes turn by turn and am pleased with how easy the card system makes it to know what part of the turn I'm on if I get interrupted and come back later. That's all pretty great.

However, the actual particulars of the Monster Cards themselves often leave a lot to be desired. They really could have benefited from some serious proofreading and blind playtesting. Here are a few things that seem really weird to me:

The rules for Fortifications and special bonus stars are inconsistently applied in the descriptions of the various Actions, so it's not easy to reference during play, and it can be hard to be certain if they are meant to apply to certain Actions or not. I think the intention is that Stars can be spent on any Conflict, but Fortifications only boost Fights (which are a type of Conflict). It seems strange to me that having Built some sort of fortress does not give you a defensive bonus against Extort, Hunt, or Steal.

Ogres should say "Hunt anything" if that's what is intended. One word (literally "anything") would have made it crystal clear, but without that I'm left wondering if it's really supposed to be able to kill other Alpha Predators or not. Compare that with the Owlbear, who has the same "always Hunt" but no statement about great hunger. Both of them have another way of dealing with Alpha Predators, so if it was intended that they can't eat Alphas, they still have things worth doing when they have an Alpha neighbor. Mechanically, it's going to be rare that they gain more from Ally or Trade with an Alpha than they would if they Hunt them, so it makes me wonder if maybe in some earlier edit of this edition the Hunt Action could only target Denizens.

Antlings should have Scout instead of Explore, or maybe have both options on their list. Scout would create tunnels that look more like an Ant farm, full of side passages and growing in every direction. At the start of this game, it felt like maybe Antlings could Breed too fast.  I eventually learned that their speed-breeding can be held in check by a single Alpha, so it's not game-breaking, but that brings up another question. Why don't Antlings have any way of driving off or killing an Alpha Monster? In the real world, ant colonies regularly swarm and devour creatures larger than themselves. Before my next game, I may give them another option that is a weakened version of the Swarm from the Horde Villain in 2nd Ed. Sacrifice some Population to Hunt or Rout an Alpha. Next time I play, I may make them "Always Scout" and "If we have killed a monster token this turn, Breed and Prepare." Then give them another option on their list of "Pupate: Requires * / Breed". That would keep them from popping up in a quiet corner of the map and triggering Villainy before even meeting their neighbors.

The Experts should have Relocate instead of Explore. As written, they just keep digging and expanding their territory instead of moving. That's so weird I ignored the instructions and made them behave more like Adventurers.

Why do owlbears Trade? It doesn't really break anything, but it doesn't make much sense, either. In general, the Owlbear card just confuses me. I get the Lords of Waterdeep joke, but there's a lot of strangeness on this card, and the particulars match neither D&D lore nor the Waterdeep boardgame. Scout has them drawing new caves nearly every turn: that seems more like what the Antlings should be doing. Trading with Alphas, and Ally with Animals don't really seem in-character for this species.

The system in the 1st Edition (all printings) had you start the Age of Monsters with 1 Delving Group, 1 Breeding Group, 1 Alpha Predator, and 1 Surface Kingdom. 2nd Edition does nothing to guarantee such a starting mix, and it suffers for it. I may have gotten a fluke in my opening draw, but having a Dungeon with 2 Alphas and some Adventurers makes a weird dynamic. Things started slowly, and many potential Actions were pointless or impossible for the first few turns. I also really miss the Surface Kingdoms. Next time I play, I may change the set-up for the Age of Monsters to call for specific types the way that 1st Edition did.

The next post will cover turns 5 to 11.

The Lifespan of a Dwarven Civilization

Here's a turn-by-turn recap of my second session of my first map of the second edition of How To Host A Dungeon. That was a mouthful. (Click here for Index of all my How To Host A Dungeon articles.)

Below is the tale of the growth of a tiny Dwarven settlement into a sprawling underground city with hydroelectric plants, elevators and a fortress keep.

My previous post covered the world set up, geological strata, and Primordial Age.

When I've finished this map, I'll share the final version in a post of its own, and a brief review of 2nd Ed or summation of the changes between editions. The post below is a pretty rough stream of consciousness of the second fifth of a game.

The founding of the settlement of Segun Edg

The dwarves start off with an entrance from one side of the map to the nearest ore. I almost screwed that up, because in 1st Edition the dig a shaft down from above the ore. I could have started my digging from the far side, and put the core of the colony in the middle of the map.



 The brown circles with a "D" are Dwarven population. The white circles are Treasures.

Year 1 - or, I guess it's just Turn 1 in the second edition. A new dwarf population token shows up, then the dwarves immediately mine the nearby ore deposit, netting a treasure token. I know from 1st Edition, that I should be building new rooms to house these. Which is good, because it took some hunting for me to find any indication of that in the rules. (It's on page 7, by the way. All the dwarf-specific instructions are page 14 and 15.) Hard for me to be certain if that's actually confusing for new players or not, but since the "build" section under dwarves doesn't mention it, I think there's at least a small chance this will bewilder the noobs. In first edition it was spelled out clearly on the page about the Dwarf civilization.

I draw in a mine, a dormitory and a vault. Then I get to the build section. Based on my 3 population, I can now build either a tomb or a workshop. That's new. In 1st Ed, Dwarf settlements followed a single scripted path, and were really only different based on the shape and placement of other features on the map. As discussed in my previous installment, the 2nd Ed map has twice as many features, so even if it was the same formula 2nd Ed would probably get slightly more variety. To my distinct pleasure, I see that every turn of Dwarf civilization I'll have a meaningful choice to make about what they create with their Build action! Right there, that's a huge advantage in the favor of the 2nd Ed. So I extend a tunnel up a level and draw in three little workshops in a row.

Turn 2 - You know what, I'm probably just going to call them years. Year 2. I liked that they were years in the previous edition. New Dwarves go into new dorms directly above the workshops. There's another ore vein right next to the workshops, so they Exploit that. I copied over my little mine doodle from the other space, and tweak it a little to better fit the shape of the second ore patch. And then I just kept doodling and put a little elevator in the tall shaft. It's not anything official from the game, but it seemed like a fun little detail to scribble in. I come around to build, and now have a choice between four different buildings that I qualify for. This is definitely more interesting than the first edition approach to this stage.

I chose a fortified Drinking Hall. The Dwarven lore on page 15 explain it is fortified to seal in drunken belligerent dwarves until they've vented their anger on each other. Nice touch. This counts as a fortification that will have mechanical impact in later eras, which the main reason why I chose it. The rules instruct us to mark the fortification with a chevron, so I put one on a banner between the crossed axes and coat of arms on the walls of the drinking hall, just below the giant kegs of booze.

Year 3 - The new dormitory is directly attached to the Drinking Hall, perhaps it's the barkeeper's apartment. Rather than build another generic vault, I decided that there's no reason why I can't just store the new treasure in one of the giant kegs in the hall. Perhaps their treasure is fine Dwarven spirits.

Population is at 5, so I've got a lot of options for the Build phase, and it's possible my choice here might unlock additional buildings for later turns. 2nd Ed is pretty great. I am feeling far more engaged right now than I ever would have been at this point in the old system. I choose the Power Plant, because it unlocks some fun stuff for later, and because this gives me a justification to go in an unexpected direction, nadir to the underground lake. Waterwheel and archimedes' screw, coming right up! The main conduit runs straight to the drinking hall, because that's the obvious heart of the colony.

Year 4 - Put the new dorm half way to the new mine, and added a shortcut direct to the Drinking Hall. Seemed like such a crossroad would be a good place for a house. A second Treasure went in the Drinking Hall since it's clearly doing good business. With 6 Population and a Power Plant, I had unlocked the option to Build the Underground Highway. At first I sketched it out as just a straight cut all at one elevation, and it was both boring and hard to accept as the output of one year (or other arbitrary time unit that corresponds to the time needed to build some workshops or a drinking hall). So I figured they'd probably save construction effort (at the cost of travelers having to go up a lot of stairs) by cutting along the banks of the lake, and using the pre-existing primordial tunnel for a long leg of the highway. This necessitated increasing the elevator from a few turns ago, so the dwarves would have access to their new road.

Year 5 - New mine where you'd expect it. Dormitory down by the power plant for staff. For the optional build choice we get a fortified citadel. I put it on the highway, so that it defends the civilization from anything that might come up from the caves. Like the drinking hall, this gives bonuses in combat, which are definitely not going to happen before this civilization dooms itself. But, again, this is establishing details that will improve the second half of the game.

Year 6 - The dormitory this time goes over near the citadel, as a barracks for reserve troops. I decide the next nearest ore is just barely within range for the Exploit action, and place a new mine. First edition was a lot more precise about how far they could tunnel, and that's one area I preferred in the old system. Second ed is less precise, and while it's great that leaves a lot of creative control in the player's hands, it also makes it less of a game.

During this Build phase, they officially become a City, and so I get to place some big landmark. I go for a huge statue of one of the founding fathers of the colony, partially submerged in the lake to show the superiority of Dwarven engineers and their ability to rise above the water. I expand the name to make it sound more impressive. Deciding Rokot is some Dwarven word for city or fortress, and relabel this end of the map The Dwarven City of Segun Edg Rokot. I also change the font to white, because that's the color of treasure and these industrious little dwarves have earned it.

Year 7 - They get to exploit the last ore, opening up a surface pit mine, and building nearby barracks. This year's treasure is stored in the great citadel fortress, representing a concentration of wealth to the military as access to the surface raises tensions.

They Build the Impossible Engine, which I make look like an enormous aeoliopile, The special effect of the Engine is that it gives them an immediate free build. For that I create a Furnace that will allow them to Exploit all those trees they're cutting down on the surface. This also helps decentralize the city a bit more, which will make its ruins matter more in later eras.

At this time, I realize I'm starting to really like this map, and I feel bad about "Segun Edg" being such an obvious "Second Age" / "Second Edition" riff. Like, if I wanted to use this as a D&D World, my players would probably make fun of the name, or it might undermine immersion. I'd already added "Rokot" to the end, so I just drop the "Edg" part and relabel it The Dwarven City of Rokot. It's a work in progress, okay?

Year 8 - This is guaranteed to be the final turn of the Dwarves. More about that in a moment, but first I have new dormitory to place, which I put on the upper west road between (but not too close to) the various mines. There's no major ore deposits left, but thanks to the Furnace, they can burn the forest biome for treasure. So I add another treasure vault near there as well, just off the elevator. Here's a picture of it with all the various tokens in place.







Now on to the end of civilization as we know it.

In the 1st Edition of the game, the Dwarven civilization almost always ended with the Dwarves "They Delve Too Deep" action, which has them dig a hole straight down off the bottom of the map. Since we have a Fate cave, they might alternately tunnel into it and die off early, but this was really rare, and only happened if your Fate cave's random position was really close to an ore source or you fudged the results a little to make it happen. It was also technically possible to run out of ore and have a slow population collapse, but I don't think I've ever actually seen that happen.



Dwarves are no longer as linear and predictable. In 1st Ed, especially the first printing, you could predict the entire map, course and end state of the Dwarven Civilization by just roughly measuring how far they were from a couple of features (like the bottom of the map). I actually had built a spreadsheet to calculate it so I could me skip the first few years, because it was far less interesting once you'd done that part once or twice. It would always end with Delving Too Deep, but there was never a Balrog payoff. *sigh*

In 2nd Ed, Delving Too Deep or hitting a Fate cave are still possible. But there are also two new options. If you built a powerplant, you can unlock the Industrial Accident event, and if you built a Smelter you can unlock The Dwarf War event.

We built a powerplant, so I figured I would try out the Industrial Accident. It says "Draw destruction and waste. Wreck stuff." So I did. The aeoliopile has broken free and fallen in it's chamber. The power wheel is blown off and sunk beneath the lake. There's some tunnel areas blasted open because of some high-pressure explosion, and the old east elevator is destroyed. I erased most of the ore from the mines as well, showing that they were mostly depleted by the dwarves, and possibly looted a bit as society crumbled.

I probably could have made the disaster more widespread and messed up the map worse. Next time, I guess.

So that's the Age of Dwarves for 2nd Edition How To Host A Dungeon. Here's a quick recap of what I thought about the new material.

Things I really liked about (this part of) the second edition:

• The Primordial Age has about twice as many interesting things on a typical map in the new edition.
• The geographical inspirations page has some neat stuff on it, and I wish I'd noticed it in time to incorporate it more.
• Dwarves are no longer as linear and predictable. The Dwarves had been the most tedious part of the game before, and now they're much more fun. It's probably impossible to get every room type on the map at the same time, so I think the Dwarven replayability is higher.
• I felt a lot more invested in this colony, and towards the end started actually making my little scribbled rooms a lot more interesting instead of just rushing through them.
• The new ways the Dwarves can collapse are fun. An industrial accident has the potential to really change your drawing. My devastation was on the small side, I probably could have justified much larger craters.
• Even though my colony started way over on the side, it impacted more of the map than is typical for 1st edition. The Dwarves changed the surface, and built a huge underground road that will be useful in later Ages of this map.
• The ability to theme your colony to fortifications or epic treasures is pretty cool, and may have subtle impact in later stages.

Things I liked better in first edition:

• Calling the turns Years, and further subdividing them into seasons where seasonally-themed things happened. That part felt a little more immersive in 1st ed.
• Exploring and tunneling distances were spelled out more precisely, and easy to find on the page about Dwarves. This appealed to me on a gamist level, as well as appreciating the clarity. HTHAD already had a lot of fudge factor, and now that's amplified in 2nd Ed. There were two turns where I dug a really long tunnel to get to the ore, and while that seems to be allowed in this edition, it's a little vague and felt cheap. More often than not, I'd rather there be a random die on the scale than my thumb on the scale.
• There used to be a short "The Great Disaster" phase immediately after the collapse of a Civilization. While it didn't always line up thematically with the Civilization-specific endings (which as noted above are much better in this edition), it was a nice unpredictable way to shake up the map between Eras. I miss that already, and may house-rule it back in next time. If I had noticed it was absent from this edition, I may have made my Industrial Accident have larger effects on the map.

Things I would have liked to see change, but didn't:

• In general, I would like to see more conflict in this early stage. The Dwarves built fortifications, and could have built a tomb, but Primordial Beasts are so rare that it's almost guaranteed these buildings won't use their special mechanics until after the Dwarves have left the map. That's a shame.
• It's a small thing, but I still really wish the "Delve Too Deep" event would put a Balrog (or other Alpha Predator) on the map.