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frasersimons's review
The back of the book says the design was influenced by the games of Luke Crane, Thor Olavsrud, Vincent Baker, Adam Koebel, John Harper, and Tom Moldvay. The Deep Dark wears its influences on its sleeve, which is a good thing. For people who have played Torchbearer, Dungeon World or World of Dungeons, Mouse Guard, and Torchbearer; you'll find an arrangement of mechanics that seem like they would replicate a table experience that is similar in the granularity of dungeon delving as Torchbearer. The narrative control passing similar to Dungeon World. Combat feels Mouse Guard-y because there are captains for the party that handle things like initiative and what range people start at. But yet still fiction first even in high granularity like this.
The main classes: The Cartographer, The Quartermaster, The Master-At-Arms, The Theologist, and The Arcanist feel old school but have some nice flavor, as well as some meta-level responsibilities, such as making checks to do their job: mapping out the space they move through.
Everything boils down to d6 rolls with modifiers applied. The formula itself is 1d6 + Attribute (Tough, Deft, Wise) + Descriptor + Tool + Alignment. Essentially, if you can get work these other things into the fiction you'll get a +1 to your roll. If another character helps you, that player rolls two dice and takes the highest, so long as it makes sense in the fiction. You land a hit, you roll the damage die for your weapon minus armor (depending on the kind of damage being dealt).
Instead of HP everyone has a Health Descriptor track that gets crossed out as you're wounded and people can take debilities to mitigate damage. But if you're on the last descriptor at the end of the scene--ya dead.
There are lots of skills and an emphasis on light, very torchbearer in this. It's assumed dungeons are in complete darkness and you need to spend resources to keep it going, or else the group suffers penalties.
You get equipment based on your lineage: Elvish, Dwarvish, Halfling, Humans; which all seem to be pretty D&D/Tolkien-esk. Old elves, halflings in the shires, that sort of stuff. Then you get stuff for your class and, finally, you roll a d12 for a random thing you can start with.
There are relationships that work like Bonds in Dungeon World, one direction things your character is working toward resolving or exploring in the fiction. And everyone's got their alignment statements as well, which can be used for fictional positioning.
Spells are pretty standard but also have failure results, which I like a lot. Orisons, for the Theologian, which need to memorize spells and make pilgrimages to temples to memorize new ones.
Advancement and XP have multiple avenues including resolving relationships, recovering health, if your alignment pushed the story forward in a meaningful way, or giving a session recap. When you gain a new level you can increase one of your attributes (to a max of +3), choose another skill from the comprehensive skill list, or learn a new spell.
There is a GM section with good advice on dungeons, towns, perilous journeys, and wilderlands (between towns and the deep dark). It has principles laid out similar to Apocalypse World games and segues into this stuff. There's a long play example at the end that is also pretty helpful.
Overall it's pretty interesting. I think I'd feel comfortable GMing it. I suspect it might end up being a bit too granular for me and the tactical portion of combat with Mouse Guard was a bit of a miss for me. Starting out in different ranges so that only some of you might be able to go, like ranged people and whatnot is interesting, though. It's stated characters move 1 step per round though, I'd just call it a day and say you move in and out of ranges with a move action or something.
It all feels like it would gel together nicely and thrusts at an overall design goal that would be Old School... except the influences are mostly anything but, at least, mechanically.
The main classes: The Cartographer, The Quartermaster, The Master-At-Arms, The Theologist, and The Arcanist feel old school but have some nice flavor, as well as some meta-level responsibilities, such as making checks to do their job: mapping out the space they move through.
Everything boils down to d6 rolls with modifiers applied. The formula itself is 1d6 + Attribute (Tough, Deft, Wise) + Descriptor + Tool + Alignment. Essentially, if you can get work these other things into the fiction you'll get a +1 to your roll. If another character helps you, that player rolls two dice and takes the highest, so long as it makes sense in the fiction. You land a hit, you roll the damage die for your weapon minus armor (depending on the kind of damage being dealt).
Instead of HP everyone has a Health Descriptor track that gets crossed out as you're wounded and people can take debilities to mitigate damage. But if you're on the last descriptor at the end of the scene--ya dead.
There are lots of skills and an emphasis on light, very torchbearer in this. It's assumed dungeons are in complete darkness and you need to spend resources to keep it going, or else the group suffers penalties.
You get equipment based on your lineage: Elvish, Dwarvish, Halfling, Humans; which all seem to be pretty D&D/Tolkien-esk. Old elves, halflings in the shires, that sort of stuff. Then you get stuff for your class and, finally, you roll a d12 for a random thing you can start with.
There are relationships that work like Bonds in Dungeon World, one direction things your character is working toward resolving or exploring in the fiction. And everyone's got their alignment statements as well, which can be used for fictional positioning.
Spells are pretty standard but also have failure results, which I like a lot. Orisons, for the Theologian, which need to memorize spells and make pilgrimages to temples to memorize new ones.
Advancement and XP have multiple avenues including resolving relationships, recovering health, if your alignment pushed the story forward in a meaningful way, or giving a session recap. When you gain a new level you can increase one of your attributes (to a max of +3), choose another skill from the comprehensive skill list, or learn a new spell.
There is a GM section with good advice on dungeons, towns, perilous journeys, and wilderlands (between towns and the deep dark). It has principles laid out similar to Apocalypse World games and segues into this stuff. There's a long play example at the end that is also pretty helpful.
Overall it's pretty interesting. I think I'd feel comfortable GMing it. I suspect it might end up being a bit too granular for me and the tactical portion of combat with Mouse Guard was a bit of a miss for me. Starting out in different ranges so that only some of you might be able to go, like ranged people and whatnot is interesting, though. It's stated characters move 1 step per round though, I'd just call it a day and say you move in and out of ranges with a move action or something.
It all feels like it would gel together nicely and thrusts at an overall design goal that would be Old School... except the influences are mostly anything but, at least, mechanically.