January Dungeon Mail - Session 2
"I'm sorry. I don't speak Hume."
I'm playtesting Dungeon Mail, my work-in-progress fantasy roleplaying game about couriers delivering weird mail to weirder beings. My friends agreed to run a micro-campaign of it. I'll record the details of our sessions here, as well as some (hopefully) spoiler-free notes. You can find last week's session here
A New Face
This week our party consisted of:
- Charles MXLI, a scrappy clone of the Brother-King Charles.
- Evelyn Flatnose, a bulky clone of the Sister-Queen Evelyn.
- Melek, an acolyte of the Hare with a gift for languages.
- Antonia Eckart, an airship hijacker and wedding officiator.
Zachariah went back to the surface to get some air.
With a new player, we added more details to our setting:
- The Unnamed City has an airship dock on the edge of Palatia, hanging over the Turntable District.
- The local region is lined by a jagged mountain range, the Tasoula Mountains, rumored to harbor the nests of giant birds.
Down the Tube
Dispatched by the postmaster as backup, Antonia caught up with the rest of the couriers just outside a small apartment where they had dispersed a sentient whirlwind. They decided to explore the hatch that Zachariah and Evelyn had uncovered in the back of the bedroom. Opening it revealed the mouth of a curling copper tube descending like a waterslide.
Evelyn and Charles decided to take a chance and slide down, corkscrewing rapidly three stories downwards then managing to starfish enough to slow down before being launched from the slide's exit. They came out into a small circular room filled with copper pipes stacked along the walls. A single hatch door sat opposite the slide mouth.
Before anyone could follow, Evelyn opened the hatch, revealing a long narrow corridor and two molefolk clad in long leather coats and spiked helmets. They were armed with lance-like weapons - awkward in the confined spaces. The molefolk gestured for the clones to halt, whistling through a harmonica in Molse Code. Evelyn and Charles refused under the principle they followed no orders other than those of their monarchs.
The molemen responded by leveling a lance and firing. The weapon launches an explosive spearhead that Evelyn managed to block with the hatch door before being flung aside.
Chaos broke out. Antonia dropped a rope from her ship-hijacking kit. Charles started climbing the rope. Evelyn felled one approaching moleperson with her scythe, before breaking into a brawl with the second. Melek shouted something in the strange, snapping language of Flesh that caused everyone down the tube to trip and stumble.
Evelyn eventually came out on top, stealing a saber from the fallen moleperson. She scurried back up the tube before reinforcements arrived.
Borrowing Time
The party took a quick rest while Evelyn bandaged her wounds. A fresh torch was lit. They decided to try the door on the opposite side of the giant lathe near the entrance instead.
They carefully made their way under the spinning shaft and over to the far door. Melek cracked it open, revealing a small clockmaking workshop. Numerous pieces ticked away on the walls and workbenches lined the room. An archway led to a stairwell down on the far side.
Swinging the door open revealed the detonated remains of a sort of clockwork chimera. Beautifully articulated limbs lay scattered around a central scorch mark. Only a goat-like head remained, but it seemed to have articulated, artificial vocal chords. Someone had picked the gemstone eyes out of its head.
The party searched for valuables worth stealing. Evelyn snagged a nice silver pocket watch. The rest of the party found a few pockets-full of gold ornaments and other precious materials.
They pressed on down the stairs, finding the chimera's snake-headed tail on the mezzanine. Its teeth were four glass ampoules; its eyes, emeralds. Evelyn decided to take the whole thing.
Two Paths
On the next floor down, the party found themselves in a small room with a hatch door, a normal door, and a wall lined with cubbies full of coveralls and work gear. Each had a nameplate. Antonia checked for a nameplate and found one for Kylox (the recipient of their letter). Their gear was missing.
Charles opened the hatch, revealing a small gantry overlooking a vertical drop of 30 feet. A massive shaft turned in the center of the room, spinning under the power of colossal gears that merged into the walls. At the bottom they could see another door, but the party decided not to try to navigate that room.
Through the other door, the party found what looked like a small shop with a huge ornate glass mosaic on the far wall and rows of clocks marked for sale. They surprised a moleperson garbed liked the others they had met and tried to spark up a conversation. The moleperson couldn't speak or understand their language, but had a deck of translation cards that he held up:
Stop! Go back the way you came.
The party asked if he had seen Kylox. The moleperson produced two cards:
I'm sorry. I don't speak Hume. and Interfering with Molnau business is punishable by death.
The fronts of the cards were legible text. The back, stripes and dashes of the Molse Code. Melek gestured to ask if they could see them. The moleperson shrugged and offered them the box. The cards seemed to contain phrases in one of four categories:
- Asking for Directions
- Ordering at a Restaurant
- Managing Prisoners
- Guarding a Checkpoint
Antonia gestured at the nameplate for Kylox in the other room. Melek selected two cards to show the mole, brandishing the package they were here to deliver:
State your business! and Where is the post office?
The mole nodded and took the cards back.
Wait here while I get my superior officer!
They tapped the glass mosaic and with a metallic shriek, the whole ensemble slid sideways. Another moleperson head popped out, chirping quizzically.
GM Notes
A solid session. Adding a new character was a nice test of some revised rules text for rolling up attributes. It worked better, but still could use some streamlining. A little less elegant was the process of stapling more details onto the setting. Antonia's player's contributions were great, but it was kind of a lot of improv work to throw on a player at once.
When the party encountered the first molepeople, I asked Evelyn's player (who had invented them) what their language sounded like. They said "Morse Code" and we were off to the races. Playing TEA earlier this year made me really appreciate caring about languages in play and it was fun to improvise a little puzzle around that problem later on in the session.
I had a little time between sessions to flesh out the dungeon I had improvised last week. I'm giving myself license to go a little more funhouse than my usual, more grounded fair. It's nice and feels resonant with the setting, which we've described as being a little Moebius-like.
Attribute tests continue to work pretty well as written, though I noted a couple rough spots. Both are worth attending to:
- Enemy RES tests for morale are quite difficult to pass.
- One player asked if their was a mechanical benefit for helping. I ruled only if it lets them "act on a known weakness or opportunity" for advantage or made a test easier.
End of session experiences felt a little bit forced. Folks didn't feel like their scrap with the molefolk counted as notable foes overcome, didn't think feel like their loot counted as notable treasure, and were mostly riffing on notable truths learned. Hard to tell how much of this is system and how much is my prep. Good to note though for future GM-ing advice sections.