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.