Unprotected Delving with Multiple Encounters: Saturday Night Delves

Greetings fellow readers, today I’m here to tell you about that very cryptic something that’s been taking up a majority of my free time lately. For once I’ve been absent from blogging for reasons other than my dayjob, life in general, or pure procrastination and I’m really excited to tell you a bit more about it.

I’ve been working with Sersa V from Save Versus Death and a handful of other very talented individuals on a project of somewhat epic proportions, a little something we’re calling Saturday Night Delves.

Saturday Night Devles (SND) are a series of one shot adventures for 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons set within the fourthcore vein, our aim is to recapture the fun and excitement of dungeon crawls of yore. Aimed at actually being able to pick one up and run it on any given night where you and your group have a few free hours, SND’s also come with all the materials you need to run the game along with optional tournament rules for competitive play and scoring.

SND adventures are challenging, innovative, deadly, evocative and most importantly – a ton of fun to play. Saturday Night Delves are not for the faint of heart, they will test both player and character skill as well as the DM’s. If you’re not familiar with what fourthcore is, I can give it to you in a nutshell; it’s a high risk – high reward, over the top challenging and often bleak playscape where ‘step and die’ rings as loud and clear as death bells themselves.

Intricate storytelling, and extensively detailed characterization are marginalized in SND in favor of providing clear goals for PC’s and fun mechanics for the players and DM. However bear in mind that the elements of realism, backstory and role playing are not ignored entirely and that these delves are not impossible, nor excuses for ‘killer DM’ing’. Before making any quick assumptions about what fourthcore is, or isn’t I highly suggest reading through the entirety of ‘what is fourthcore’ and then resume reading here for a final summation. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

As you can see, SND will not be something for those who believe all their players are special flowers or those prose laden bardic storytellers who want diceless gaming sessions where no one gets any boo boo’s. If you are not comfortable with the likelihood of character death (or at the very least, an extreme maiming), traps that can outright kill, monsters that are more often than not – a few levels above the PC’s, or cryptic puzzle solving then chances are you may want to stick to common, everyday delves. If all of that sounds pretty rad, then proceed onward!

Aside from my obvious hoping you all love SND because of the hours and hours of work I’ve spent helping to create it, my investment lies within the fact that I think it’s going to be a killer way to spend a night of gaming with your group. Also because I believe it to be a unique addition to the 4th edition D&D hobby and to our community.

There’s no need for retro clones here, or spending hours trying to recode all of your favorite old delves into 4e – just grab a SND and you’re on your way. Let’s face it, you can only run modules like Tomb of Horrors so many times before your group can do it in their sleep – with SND you’ll have fresh and deadly delves on a semi-regular basis where you can easily go get your fourthcore on!

Stay tuned to the official home (www.saveversusdeath.com) of SND and fourthcore itself all week this week for all the details on our first SND release including the adventure name & backdrop, intricate details on the contents of the delve, teaser tidbits and more! Be sure to grab the wallpaper while you’re there and prepare to Cry Tears of Rust with us, February 22 2011.