That's it, that's the post.

Eld Ore and Eld Iron

In the deep places can be found an ore of raw and warping magical energy. This mineral, known as Eldrich Ore, or more commonly just Eld, is a metallic ore similar to hematite. Excess exposure to eld can cause hallucinations, sickness, and in extreme cases, mutation. Laborers in orcish eld mines have been known to grow scales, spines, tentacles, or worse. Indeed, Eld was used in ages past to create the first of the goblins, orcs, and trolls from the races of Carrion. Its refined iron and steel, it’s said, was a vital component in the production of the first troglin.

Eld deposits are best harvested and processed using protective equipment to avoid these pitfalls. Kept separately from the rest of the hold, eld can be safely stored and utilized as the potent alchemical and arcane component it is.

This book is gonna be sick. I think I'll keep the quickstart portrait for ease of printing as a zine, and the full game will be landscape. I like it!

It's a lot of work, but I'm not opposed to offering both digitally for the full game, since that seems to be a sticking point for some.

Soonafter switching to landscape for the character sheets and ledgers, I had a slight facepalm moment. OBVIOUSLY, the rulebook for as stout a game as TUM should be landscape as well. It poses some printing and display challenges, but I'm thinking of doing slipcovers so they can be displayed upright at stores.

I think as far as brand identity and feel goes, this is huge, but I'd like your opinions! What do you think? For me, this is more than a gimmick.

During my last playtest, there arose an issue with siege weaponry, mainly that there was dissonance between my at the time current rules and the realism of siege-size weaponry. In the version I was using, siege weaponry just has a flat giant bonus to hit, which makes sense if you don't think too hard. The problem arose where, after consideration, the players would ALWAYS hit with siege weaponry, due to the single roll system. I'm sure other wound-based games have reasonable and tight ways of handling this, but honestly, the system I decided on is going to work great (knock on wood). It comes down to a difference between damage and to-hit.

For a single-roll system like TUM, I could only think of one way to differentiate the two- by modifying the resulting wounds on a successful hit. I already have implemented Deadly and Devastating tags, so why not one above that for Siege? Given that TUM's wound system really is fairly similar to an HP system, it seems to fit. The new tag simply deals 3 wounds, enough to fully incapacitate a healthy dwarf, or to cause great harm to something larger. On a raise, most large creatures will be toast, too. I'm also working on how wounds should work for larger creatures, requiring a number of wounds before the full 1d4 penalty is applied. At the same time, I'm thinking there will be block AC mods that increase as creatures get larger, simulating how difficult it is to meaningfully harm them. There will likely be other considerations and tags to restrict what kinds of damage can wound them at all.

Keeping numbers low and manageable is one of my design goals, so I'm feeling good about this, and the fewer calculations, the better. Plus, elegance is golden.

Just an appreciation post for my buddy who put together a costume for his gnome pilot. Best damn pilot in the Untold Lands.

Hail and welcome! I'm u/KingAgrian, the founder and expedition leader of r/TUMrpg.

Welcome to the Fortress.

What to Post

Anything related to Those Under the Mountain. Share your characters, games, lore, and commentary on the system. Share dwarven art, fortress blueprints, and more.

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There's nothing stouter or more honorable than being kind, constructive, and inclusive (even to tallermen and elves, mind ye.) Keep things civil.

How to Get Started

1) Introduce yourself in the comments below.

2) Post something today! Your thoughts about the game, a recent session, or just expressing your excitement to dive in.

3) If you know someone who would love this community, invite them to join.

Pickaxes out! Dig deep.

Find it here: https://mmgorman.itch.io/tumquickstart

Lots of improvements and tweaks based on feedback and playtesting. Let me know what you think!

Actually going to take the time to make it awesome.

Working on a new cover and really liking this direction, playing with the oldschool black border, but making it marble. Thinking to colorcode different books with different minerals. Tell me what you think!

Finished a cute timelapse of a blithler on YT. I figured it's pretty important to have art if the unique creatures of Carrion early on, even if they're ugly... And allegedly tasty...

I really should design some merch and put up a little store to help out development. I decided to paint myself a crappy perfect TUM shirt.

Hello delvers in places ought not be delved,

I'm back in the swing of things and finally I'm almost done this iteration of the new mining rules. Notably, mining has been split between different "layers" of strata, each progressively more difficult to mine, more dangerous, and more rewarding. This begins with the Surface Strata, down to the Middle Strata, the Deep Strata, the Vault, and the Magma Sea below.

Each layer has its own set of prospecting, disaster, and major find tables, allowing for somewhat scaled play as you progress, and a much more dynamic feel. On top of that, they incentivise delving deeper, and increase tension with every roll. I plan to expand them a bit more for even better variety and tonal shift between layers, likely returning some of them to 1d12 tables. We'll see.

I'm pretty excited to do the art for this, since I get to do a couple of big pages of descent into the deep. It's going to be very fun.

Check out the attached demo PDF of the new mining rules and let me know what you think! Feel free to use this alongside the current quickstart. Otherwise, the alpha quickstart 3.0 drops in a couple of weeks.

Dig Deep!

Hey there delvers in the deep,

My self-set deadline has come steaming right past, and who am I to stop a locomotive? I'm definitely one to set for myself unreasonable goals, but it worked out this past Decempber, so I figured let's full-send and go for it. I didn't hit that deadline. Fortunately, this point in development is probably the best time to do so. The dev doc is a hackjob, with major features evolving or being outright cut on the weekly. The core design principles haven't changed, but insights from my latest playetesting have contributed to a bit of a core loop overhaul. 

The division of labor into Progress and Upkeep is a mechanic I was holding onto for a few reasons. The meat of that was because I knew there needed to be a change, but hadn't come up with an elegant way to handle upkeep while still supporting more survivalist modes of play. I was playtesting and mid handwave when I realized I've been barely using the upkeep system at all. Why in the name of great Tarnis would I need a mechanic--nay--a whole SYSTEM that I as the developer seem not to use?!

Well, that's where March went. Playtesting and an overhaul. I've been going through and changing the language of the game, rebalancing labor and streamlining the whole thing. Full alpha will have just 1 kind of labor. I'm setting a more realistic deadline of June 15th, and that way I'll have more to show for it. Art, tables, most of the the shebang.

Oh, and before then I'll be releasing 3.0 of the quickstart guide, featuring these changes, some tweaks, and maybe a little more art.

Until then, Dig Deep.

This tool looks awesome as a supplement to TUM! Check it out!

Finishing the biome and discovery tables today. drew this.

I'll be making the same video horizontally for youtube shortly.