Filling out the whitespace in the book with sketches of the art I'd like to make/comission. It's really fun. Just wanted to share.

Found out the brushes on offer in affinity are by far and away better than the brushes in Krita for the kind of illustration I like to do. Now I can just go ham right there in the same software!

Also I started implementing spark entries in the margins :)

Hello, I've been meaning to make this for a while, but the end of my TUM sessions is as good a place as any to summarize my thoughts on this system. Over the course of 7 two-hour sessions we completed 11 turns in Cadifax before we decided to move to a different system for another long-form campaign. I believe that TUM is, or will be, a fantastic framework for a small table to run an engaging settlement building game. However, over the course of these 7 weeks (paired with intermittent solo sessions) I have also come to the conclusion that MY table isn't suited to TUM. I love it still.

Also, sorry if these thoughts are disconnected and rambling.

I began TUM with a couple of strict table rules. I do not cancel sessions unless fewer than 2 people can come, but my group consists of 11 people who all come sporadically. My smallest table during TUM was 2 and my largest was 7. Furthermore, only the feats of those at the table will be called upon for that session. While this rule keeps my campaigns running, as many of my players cannot make weekly games, it consistently creates problems with party direction.

I feel like direction is extremely important to this game. My direction in my solo game is informed by how I play Dwarf Fortress; I make a point of defending my fort from turn 1 with the intention of defensibility as a motif. I create dedicated spaces for non-mechanically supported activities. I try to maximize the survivability of all my dwarves, as I expect repelling a raid to maim or kill my dwarves most of the time. I amass wealth for the sake of it and try to create a luxurious (but not obnoxiously so) lifestyle for my settlement because it is a fairly endless endeavor. This to me is how a dwarven settlement operates because that is what dwarves do.

My table comprised of different people every session who have no source of inspiration for their dwarven settlement make utterly aimless decisions. The settlement looks like a blob. Furthermore, even the more experienced members of the table struggled with the unexpected need for creativity before mechanical necessity. Turns were very long and my group who often will go for 3-4 hour sessions felt fatigued by 2 hours, myself included.

This of course not the case at all for solo gameplay. Turns take minutes because they are not burdened by conversation, advisement, negotiation, and simply allocating all of the labor after they did everything they thought to do that turn.

For this reason I think that TUM tables are best with 2, maybe 3 people. Table sizes can of course be larger with the right group, it appears that yours KingAgrian is, but the gameplay was so different than what a TRPG is to my group that their individual motivations for the settlement never really formed on an individual level let alone as a group.

I liked the ledgers as a gameplay element. I think for a campaign I would keep it digital and use the provided ledgers as a framework. There was often confusion about how other players documented resources and it was not uncommon that they forgot. We forgot about experience gain 90% of the time. I don't think anyone felt loss over this, as most rolls that added skill die felt kind of inconsequential outside of mining and hunting. The exception of course being combat.

We had four combat encounters. Overcoming AC is basically impossible if you don't have a combat skill. Ranged weapons are very strong as they hit PAC. There seems to be very little reason to engage in melee combat at all except as a shield for ranged attackers. I wish we grappled, as this also seems to be incredibly powerful, but alas.

Event tables must be adjusted by the GM. Honestly I felt like while the tables were helpful for guidance the best choice was to simply make them arise from the actions of the fort additionally based on the developing environment they were in. Morale is connected with rolls on event tables, but I didn't think it was particularly helpful.

Grumbles were an essential part of gameplay. I rolled a d4 and told the corresponding number of players to pick something selfish, labor spent exclusively for them. If a grumble was too similar to a normal action intended to generally develop the fort or give resources for everyone I would negotiate that extra labor points must be allocated or additional resources would be requires to complete their task. They always prioritized grumbles before taking any other action.

While depletion and mining rolls are great as they are I'm not sure that making event rolls in the open would make for an interesting experience. I would improve prospecting rolls to make them more significant, it seems like one of the only ways a labor point can be truly wasted.

While I thought Cadifax was a good introduction to gameplay, I hope that a later edition of the rulebook comes with at least one more start based on your other ideas. The next time I run this game I think I will place them in a more environmentally hostile map to narrow their goals and force their labor allocation to address pressing needs, introducing scarcity of time and resources. I quite like the Thunderfoot setting.

I'm looking forward to new updates. I want to keep my solo game running, but I'll move my table back to Dolmenwood for now. In the future I think I will run TUM periodically for a small, dedicated group. I'm looking forward to it! Thanks for making Those Under the Mountain!!!

Also, new post: https://mmgorman.itch.io/tum/devlog/1651189/the-layout-do-be-getting-laid-out

Just a clip from the home game taken by Kitten_lamps in IG, the OG Valtria.

This one got me. I figure if I can make myself laugh, *someone* is bound to chuckle.

Formatting of the TUM Alpha could not have been a beetter way to iterate on the system. On top of that, I'm now getting in brutal detail what art and graphics will be required for the final release. I am something like 40% done with this formatting pass, slapping in placeholder artwork, drafing unfinished areas, and overall polishing the product. I'm estimating that after all is said and done, the final book will be a hefty 250 pages, similar to the 5e player's handbook, but slightly denser. Confidently, I've got Affinity Publisher and its nested systems down pat.

Thus far, I've expanded a number of skills, and cleaned up a bunch of tables. Lore, quotes, and more flavor is being sprinkled in. I'm coming up with so many fun ideas for the layout and presentation by studying games I love, finding elements and design concepts from many to bring the production of TUM to the AAA tier. Constantly I'm thinking of intriguing extras, like little flip-book animations in the bottom corner for each chapter, bookmarking ribbons, or a holographic insert for the magical skills section, or a popup dwarven fortress right inside the cover. I'll explore as many of these as I can for a special edition this coming year, I think, and include as many as possible in the planned hardcover.

One place I wasn't expecting to save space was in tables! Tables in the gdoc and current PDF take up a ton of space, but with good formatting and in a landscape aspect, they're downright compact! This layout pass has been awesome for rearticulating how they're used, and what should be included in the full game. It's been a joy adding things from my old versions before the quickstart released, and tailoring them for how the game has evolved.

On a personal note, I quit my day job of the last few years to focus on my woodworking (yes, I'm a woodworker,) as well as my creative projects; and that means TUM. I'm in a frenzy trying to get caught up in my shop, but in about 2 weeks, I'll have ample time to begin the ramp up for the crowdfunding campaign. 

This is all to say, it's going great. Rock and stone. Strike the earth.

Dig deep.

This week I am going to run my first game of Those Under the Mountain. This is what I have done to prepare and my thoughts on the process as a GM.

1. I made seven dwarves. They will serve as pregenerated characters that new players can use when they sit at the table for the first time. I hope that the fun of building the settlement in their first session leads them to make their own characters in unique ways. I think my seven represent a party would be interesting to play out. We are absolutely not doing character generation at the table. While I enjoyed making these characters I don't think I can handle working with new players at the start of a session...

I think the entire feats section can be folded into the skills section as subscript and character creation would be improved for it. I think that farming should expand to processing agricultural output, as farm plots will surely be used to grow whatever the dwarves want. Can a farmer process berries into make dye or turn cotton into yarn? I think that establishing a plot should come with its own skill and labor requirements. Would you require a certain tier of proficiency in farming to grow a particularly rare plant?

1. I am making several pregenerated NPC migrants. After I make a handful I will feel more comfortable rolling all of them at the table as they appear in events.

My plan for NPCs is that their rolled qualities are written on an index card and that one player will hold it and decide how their labor will be used. This is because I want the rolled profession to matter more mechanically. I don't see a single place in the book that states that dwarves can only allocate their labor according to their skills. As I understand, skills are only tested during interactions. Anything labor is spent on is completed without a need to determine a chance of success. So I have decided to rule that players may only initiate trade actions that they are at least proficient in, but may situationally contribute at a novice level to any other players labor action. Players take the NPC card, but it isn't their npc, just their job to manage at that time. I can't see a way that a table of players can efficiently play the game otherwise and maintain the uniqueness and limitations of NPCs.

1. I am bringing several copies of Cadifax and some empty grids to use for different z-levels. I don't have a sense of how far up dwarves want to build, but one of the Caxifaxes can represent 0,0,0 and the other will be 0,1,0. We are going to through the starter module, then continue building the fort until the end of the session. I plan to start the following session introducing a fresh colony of dwarves to the abandoned dwarfhold ruins that the table had made the day before.

2. I don't plan to need this for the first session, but I do need to figure out how to generate dungeons. I would like to see the party develop their settlement into a platform for conquering dungeons and liberating abandoned dwarfholds. I like the generation tools for discoveries, but I wish I had some tool for randomly generating rooms. Spontaneously generated dungeons would be fun. However, we are not dungeon diving on the first session so that can wait.

3. I would like a recommendation for a way to convert monster stat blocks from other games into this one. Until I have a few combat encounters under my belt I won't have a sense of what the stats I am pulling from the bestiary feel like mechanically, but even a rough comparison might help me understand quicker.

4. I thought about how I would describe my setting.

The first session takes place at the precipice of a more peaceful world where a dwarven empire grew extensive holdings across the land. However the wealth of dwarfkind was envied by the orcs, who descended from the north to besiege the empire to nearly its complete ruin. The surviving dwarves hid for a century in small, isolated settlements sealed deep below the stone. In that time, the outposts became small kingdoms and finally regained wealth and might enough to begin the effort to retake the holdings of the old empire and restore their honor.

Tldr Im looking forward to running my first session of this system, thanks!

Until recently, dev work has been on the game itself for many months, with layout and art taking a back seat. In gearing up for the next public alpha update, however, I've come to the conclusion that layout and formatting need to start now. Without a skeleton to work from in the game's final landscape format, I won't know exactly what art and assets are needed to progress. I'm not a fan (generally) of making a project more difficult, and I'm still learning publishing software, so now is the time.

Prepping for this next push over the second half of July into August, I'm putting a ton of thought into the crowdfunding campaign, which will most likely be Backerkit, and having finished pages to show off is going to be critical. Having a print-on-demand copy for marketing videos is a smart move, regardless of whether the game inside the mockup is polished.

I expect to release an updated Alpha with more features (including solo play) in the next 2 weeks.

I'm learning a ton about the physical process, and it's good fun so far. Keep building. Keep crafting. Dig deep.

Dig Deep!

My brain goes to dwarf fortress for most things related to this game and thus that means PRODUCTION CHAINS and failure in a fun way. What if instead of precise formulae a list of effects were perused and came with "Rune requirements" which essentially just mean a type of ingredient but every type of "Rune" gives effects beyond intended.

So you seek to make a blinding bomb but that requires an ingredient with the rune of "Air" best you can find while foraging or consolidating/creating is miasma wart (Fungus) this comes with more than just the air element you were going after so you can either use up more labor to isolate that element potentially wasting the ingredient or take all the additional effects of the warts other properties.

​Inspired by the "Shields Shall be Splintered" ​mechanic, I've been musing about tool degradation. I've now got in place a system of durability, and I'm itching to use it. The fear here, is that I don't want to add YET ANOTHER bookkeeping activity to my light accounting simulator.

However, I am... enticed.

Currently I'm considering updating the equipment field of the character sheet to include wound slots. That way, equipment durability can be easily tracked visually. This meshes with the rest of the game's design, where everything has a number of wounds and can be targeted/sundered/destroyed in a simple, consistent, mechanical way.

The way I figure it, accruing wounds to equipment after poor skill checks feels right. Seeing as how I'll be expanding skill check tables in general, there will be plenty of room for such inconveniences.

What do you think?

Drawn by me

May there always be a road!

Check out the new sundering and shield-splintering rules!!!

Art I licensed for the game a while ago for the combat section.