dNoPE: 1x03 - DELVE

Join Olivia as she takes charge of a Dwarven Hold. Exploring deep underground in search of the Void Crystal as she takes on Delve. A solo by BlackwellWriter, part of a trilogy of exploration games, alongside Rise and Umbra from the same team. 

Will the River of Magma prevent her from carrying out the Under-King's request? How do you make an Owl look under and just how awesome would an underground Forest be? 

Part actual play and part review, this episode should give you some useful pointers if you decide to start digging yourself. 

Thanks for listening to dNoPE! To learn more about who we are and what we're doing, join our Discord and follow our social media by using the links below. Have questions, comments, or ideas? Shoot us an email!

Join our Discord: http://discord.gg/dNoDice
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok (@dNoDice)
Email us at: social@magicave.io

Transcript

Olivia Serio

Hi Everyone. Welcome to dNoPe, the podcast expansion for the dNo Universe. I’m Olivia Serio, the community manager for dNo and host of the show. Today we’re going to be talking about Delve. A solo map drawing game created by Anna Blackwell, and part of a series of other map drawing games. 

Now these are what are called Solo TTRPGs. You don’t need anyone else to play. All you need is, in this case, a piece of paper and a deck of cards. This was my first foray into solo TTRPGS and while it was incredibly fun. It is also a little bit of an anomaly in the space. A lot of other solo TTRPGs are journalling focused. Whereas this is very drawing heavy. You can add this journalling role-play element to it but it is a little bit more of a creation style game. 

If you are interesting in exploring the series of games. The other sister games are called ‘Rise’ and ‘Umbra’, and while they all stand alone. You can combine them together to create an expansive world of maps and adventure. So before we get started on my review and kind of overview of the game play, and how I found the game. I do want to mention this is not sponsored in any way. I saw this. I’ve come across this game a couple of times. It’s been recommended to me by some friends and in thinking about what I wanted to talk about in our early episodes for dNoPe. I wanted to do some exploration of solo TTRPgs and this just felt like a great way to get started. 

So I’m going to read a little bit of the introduction, and talk about some of the basic mechanics. And then, I’m going to have….I’ve done a full actual play that will be available on your YouTube and so you can watch me play the game and see how I fare. And then I will give some of my thoughts. 

So the basic structure for this episode is going to be an overview, some actual play clips. Not the full thing, I think the whole thing is like three hours long. And I didn’t even finish my dungeon. And then my thoughts on the game.

So yeah. Let’s get started. 

The premise of Delve is that you are building a Dwarven hold and exploring the vast world beneath the ground. So you’re the Overseer and your goal. The overall goal of the game is to find Void Crystal. A mysterious gemstone that the Underking has tasked you with retrieving. So your whole point is to go and try and find the Void Crystal. But, honestly, once I started getting going, that goal kinda felt more like a driving factor, rather than the main focus. 

All you need to get started is a pencil, an eraser, grid paper. Though you can use blank paper if you want, a notepad, a deck of playing cards and if, tokens, to help keep track of stuff. I ended up using an iPad and a deck of cards, because I wanted to record my process and it also felt like a neat and tidy way to keep things together. Personally, I would find this game very difficult to do without grid paper. It was a great way to keep track of things. But if you wanted to use blank paper, I would definitely recommend using a notepad. 

The game starts by drawing your entrance, and then you create a section for your resources and trade goods and then you just get going. You pull out a couple of cards at the start and draw every turn. And a lot of times you are drawing multiple cards per turn. There is the option to use a d4 and a d2. You can just use the cards. There are mechanics for that with different suites standing for different numbers, and red and black standing for the head and tails, or the 1 and 2 of a d2. But because I have a d4 and a d2, I ended up including that in my elements of things I used to play. 

To get started, you draw a card and then reference the tables included in the PDF packet, and figure out what you go from there. If you need to resolve combat, that’s when you do that. You can trade, build new features and then recruit. So one of the things I found when I was first playing, was that I went too deep, too quickly. And it kind of made my game finish a lot quicker than it really felt like I had a handle on it. So the actual play that I’m going to be referencing in just a couple of minutes is my second take at the game. And that is something I will say, with not only this, but with a handful of TTRPGs that I found. Is that your first pass is very much about getting to know what’ s going on. Getting to kind of get a handle on things, learning enough of the rules that you don’t have to constantly reference and slow yourself down and are able to actually have fun with it. 

So enjoy this little sample of me playing ‘Delve’.

So one thing I did last time was I shuffled the decks. I shuffled the deck of cards after every time I drew and that really slowed down the game. Especially if you’re not a very good shuffler. If you are using an online card draw. I think that might be a great way to do things but for now I’m not going to shuffle as frequently. I’m going to shuffle every five or six turns as opposed to every turn. 

Ok. 

So the first thing we have to do is to decide where we are going to explore. One thing I think I did a little bit too quickly last time, was I delved too deep, too quickly. Just like the Dwarfs in Lord of the Rings. And it made the game very short. So if you only want like, a short sort of dungeon. Then I would say, feel free to go big or go home. Or go deep and go fast. But I’m going to spread out a little bit more in this run. 

This is going to be a library. Actually, I think I’m going to do the library below the barracks. I think I’m going to do down one level which, I know, is a little bit dangerous. But what can I say, I like to live my life on the edge. 

Interesting. Burrowing Beast. So digs a tunnel straight up from this space. When it reaches one of my rooms, combat starts and it moves normally towards the entrance. It can be tamed and it does not burrow. So we have to decide what the burrowing beast is. So in order to do that, I’m going to roll a d4. I rolled a 3. Ooooh, an Undead Owl. So it goes straight upward and it is moving towards the entrance. 

The discovery that triggers combat gives you the strength. It progresses in rounds. Each round every unit troop will move one grid space and then attack. All enemies move first. I choose the order in which units and troops will move but I have to resolve both the move and the attack for each before moving to the next. Enemies will, unless otherwise stated, move one grid space per round, taking the shortest possible route. Every unit, or enemies, move that causes it to enter the same grid space as an opponent, it triggers an attack. Both deal their strength damage at the same time. Weakening or defeating each other at the end of the round. 

So I choose. So basically, I’m going to have a little Owl. It has 25, it will clean out these soldiers but will be defeated because I have these 4 soldiers too. So I’m going to reduce but I also have an empty kennel which means that I can tame it. So creatures that have just been defeated can be revived in an empty kennel. They have their fun strength and are under my control. So my hold strength…I no longer have this troop of soldiers but I do now have an undead Owl, which is pretty cool, I think. So we’re going to put. Let’s see, how do I draw an Owl? Let’s see, let’s give it a little perch, that’s a good perch. Draw a little body and a head. I don’t know how I feel about the wings. Here we go. How do I, how do I make it look undead? Maybe big black eyes and a smaller beak, maybe. I feel like that can be an undead Owl. Maybe I’ll draw it just like a little floating skull buddy for it. I feel like that looks like a parrot. Maybe if I give it some wings, maybe a little highlight in its eyes. It can have little anchor marks. There we go, that’s my little undead owl, who has 25 strength. 

Continue going this way. That doesn’t do anything. 10 of Diamonds, hell yes! That’s going to be 11 which means that I have enough to build the hospital. So I’m going to erase that. Like I’m just going to build the hospital in that empty space. I think that feels like a smart thing to do, so let’s see. I’m going to do that. That’s pretty crooked lines there. That’s going to be the hospital. Now the hospital is cool because it means that a troop of my choice, defeated while on the same row as the hospital is revived at full strength after combat. So if does mean that if I get some more soldiers, I can go in and defeat the Basilisk, revive my troop and keep going left. Which I’m kinda interested in. 

Let me do a little search to see what magma does. It flows like liquid but any rooms it floods are damaged and cost 20 natural resources to drain. Cool. So we’re going to make a little magma flow, that’s lovely. 

And get 8 trade goods - wassup! That puts us up to 12. 12 and 12, now what do I do now? Let’s go to the right of..no, let’s go to the left of where we found the little, our little undead owl, sweet. That’s going to be 8, 9, 10, we’ve got 22 resources, we are getting places people. I think that means we can build another room. I think I’m going to build another room. I think I’m going to build something small. I think, I’m going to be cheeky and build another library maybe? I don’t know, what does it cost to recruit a Mage? Oh 7, that’s not, that’s not great. Erm, why is everything so expensive? Oh, OK, rooms. What kind of rooms can we do? Let’s do an Overseer’s Office maybe? Nah, I’m so indecisive. Interesting, I could build a drawbridge. Or I could do tracks. Let’s start building tracks. Tracks instantly move units along the length of the tracks and they can be placed through other rooms. So why don’t we subtract 5, which brings us down to 17 and let’s build tracks. 

Let’s go. Right there. Ah! 6, which is a 6 natural formation? Tell me it’s good. It is! It is! It’s a crystal cavern! A crystal cavern is one d2 grid spaces in size. Let’s flip our d2. We’re going to say heads is 1 and tails is 2. 

Tails is 2! Crystal cavern. Let’s do this crystal cavern into this empty cavern that we’ve already done. Let’s see, let’s do like a little. I”m feeling like a little purple, little purple crystals. Can you draw crystals Olivia? That’s more like how you draw crystals. Right, well, little random lines. Those are some pretty fun crystals I think. Let’s see, think, just like some, some pretty crystals. Drawing some crystal caves, crystal caves filled with magic and loveliness. There we go, almost done. Have to add those last little ones, make sure that the cave is all the way across. There we go, look at that pretty crystal cave.

At the start of each turn I get to draw a card before exploring and I gain resources equal to its value, plus the caverns depth. If the ace of diamonds is drawn, the cavern is destroyed. It can not be built it but it can be passed. 

The hospital is working again, alrighty! Let’s go under the hospital. So their first thing we do is gain trade goods. We get 10, that’s so nice and then we explore. And when we explore we draw a 4 of Clubs, another natural formation. It’s an underground river. So it’s the same thing in the same space but this time it doesn’t destroy a room and it is, instead, a river. So let’s throw that little baby on there and, yeah, there we go. 

Alrighty. Let’s use some of our resources to hire 2 more soldiers, which means that our hospital is up and running that we can use our soldiers to attack the basilisk. They move to attack the basilisk, they defeat the basilisk and the troop is revived due to the hospital. And the basilisk is dead. I think they leave its skeleton there just to scare off enemies. So we’ll just make it a dead basilisk. 

Draw some of these trees in the background. Also, how cool would an underground forest be? Like, I want to see an underground forest. I’ll change the green a little bit, bit more and make a dark green tree. Change it to this cool tree, throw some of these down here. Maybe there’s a couple up there. Then obviously we need to have brown, just. Underground forest, hell yeah. And make a little note that we get 2 hearts per turn.

We’re going to go down. The further we go down, the more dangerous it gets. Ok, the first crystal cave is going to give us 10. Our second crystal cave is going to give us 5. That’s 15, and our third crystal cave is going to give us 13. So that’s going to be 28 in total. 28 plus 38 is going to be 66. Ok, I’m going to trade 10 to bring that up to..no, I can’t. No wait, yes I can, because that means I’ve added 50. Can I 50 plus…I’m just going to say that I built another stockpile because I forgot how math works. 

Then I can build a room and the room I can to build is, in fact, an inventor’s lab. The Inventor’s Lab is going to be over here, under the library. What else do you have in the lab? We should have little shelves with things on them, curly wire flask right. Maybe some books, because you need a library to build this. That is going to wipe out a lot resources and quite a few trade goods. And you know what? Just for fun, I’m going to spend 10. I’m going to do a d2 and to end out this little session. We’re going to see some good magic or bad magic. 

And that was, the Wishing Well. I said that heads was 1 and tails was 2 so we got a heads. Which means we consult good magic and a Jack, Valkeriya. Ethereal Dwarves wander the halls attending to the sick and dying. Hospital rooms no longer need adjacency but are limited to one troop per combat. That’s really cool, it means that the hospital, it doesn’t matter what level they’re one, a hospital will still mean that I can heal one troop per combat. So going to note up here that we have Valkeriya. This is already a lot more interesting of a cave than my last one was. 

I definitely think giving it a go the first time to figure out the rules is a great way to start but that the second time you play is going to be a lot more fun. It’s, you’re going to understand the game a little better. You are going to know what to do. For example, the not shuffling every turn does help to keep the game flowing and I’m really excited to see where this map continues to go. 

So at the end of the day, what did I think about Delve? Well for one thing, the way this game really, really excels is in its variety and re-playability. While there are a lot of options to keep track of, which can be feel daunting when you are first starting at, and might slow down the first couple times you play it. There is this sense of, just like most systems, once you start to understand how it works, it becomes a lot more intuitive. You know where to send your troops, where to dig, what kind of decisions to make, what kind of rooms to build. And hopefully, by listening to this podcast and if you end up listening to the actual play. Some of that learning will be able to be done for you. You can use me as the test case. But, it has this intense replayability that is heightened by the fact that if the game does start to ever feel a bit stale, a bit easy. Things like that. There are challenges within the booklet that you can use to make a little harder for yourself or use certain goals to drive the way you are playing. So it does have this great replayability and variety, just due to the nature of the number of variables it has. Where it does kind of fall away from traditional TTRPGs, is that there is not an intuitive, lean into role play. So as you’re playing, which the decisions you’re making, and things like that aren’t, they can have some element of roleplaying to them. That’s not, it doesn’t always feel like that’s where it is telling you to go. If you want to make it more role-play heavy. If you want to really flesh out your dwarf community, the publisher does provide resources for you to do that, but it’s not intrinsic to the game. The other thing that does differ from traditional TTRPG system is combat is not chance based. You know going into an encounter, for the most part, that your troops are going to win or lose. If you wanted to, I think there is the ability to modify that with some encounters. If you wanted to throw some dice rolls in there, but for the most part. If’s not the most important part. The decision where to dig and what to build, and things like that, are more of the important parts. And by creating combat that is not chance based, it does keep the game moving and create predictable risk. I also really like Delve as an alternative for solo TTRPGs. It felt like a new experience, that was adjacent and familiar but still new. 

So would I play again? Absolutely. I mean, while it’s not your traditional TTRPG there is an element of this that does scratch that exploration itch, that a lot of systems have in them and I like the ability that I could just play myself. All I needed was a piece of paper and a rule system, and I’m excited to go back to the dungeon I was exploring before or start a new one. I’m also really excited to try our Rise and Umbra. These sister games to Delve. Rise is very, very similar, except that you start from the bottom and you work your way up towards the surface. As opposed to the surface down and Umbra is, I believe like, space themed. So if you end up playing Delve or any of its sister games, please let us know. We’d love to know how you found playing the game and whether or not you agree or disagree with my take on it. Again this is not sponsored. This is just a game I found that I wanted to play and tell you about. If you have any game recommendations or games that you love playing, and want to hear us play here on the show. Please just shoot us an email, we would love to hear from you and get recommends that aren’t just me scrolling through Itch.IO and DriveThruRPG. Which are great by they way, they are wonderful, but always better to crowdsource. 

Thank you so much for listening to our review today and hope you have a lovely rest of your day. 

Thank you so much for listening to dNope, the podcast expansion for the dNo Universe. If you want to learn more about who we are and what we’re doing. Go follow our social media at @dNoDice. That’s d-n-o d-i-c-e on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. For the latest updates and to join in on the community we’re building, you can also join our Discord. By going to discord.gg/dNoDice or following the link in our episode description. Thanks again for listening and we hope to see you around soon.