Darkmantle Delve: Into the Mines (Ch 1)

Decades ago, Darkmantle Mine was a flourishing operation, providing ore and minerals to nearby towns. That is until it was suddenly and mysteriously abandoned.

Rumours have it that the miners dug too deep and unearthed something they couldn't handle, but nobody knows for sure what made them leave in such a hurry. Recently, however, scholars from a distant city have unearthed old texts suggesting that the miners might have uncovered an ancient library from a long-lost civilisation, hidden deep within its depths.

Sir Draven Ironcrest, a wealthy patron from Orm's Crossing, a town near the mine, caught wind of the story and hired a quartet of brave warriors, dispatching them to the mine to uncover the reason for its closure.

Unfortunately, goblins have taken up residence in the mine and nobody is quite sure what they are after.

Mechanics and GM notes are not for everyone. If you don't care to read these annotations, you can collapse them all by selecting this handy button.

Making A Scene

This is it, the very first scene of the adventure!

If you're unfamiliar with the Mythic Game Master Emulator, here's a quick breakdown of how scenes work:

Each scene should be about something specific, some event, some action, some premise. Once the specific action or events of that scene are resolved, the scene is over. Narratively speaking, a scene can be any length of time. Whether a scene covers a few minutes or several years makes no difference.

There are four types of scenes:

1. First Scene: This scene is special because it kicks off the whole adventure. Starting with some kind of conflict is usually a good idea, but this scene could be anything!
2. Expected Scene: All other scenes start life as an Expected Scene. After each scene (including the first), the player decides where they expect the next scene will start. They then use a die roll to determine if it does indeed start there, or if it becomes an Altered or Interrupt Scene.
3. Altered Scene: An Altered Scene is a slight modification to the Expected Scene. The player usually takes the very next expectation, assuming the Expected Scene doesn't occur.
4. Interrupt Scene: An Interrupt Scene occurs when something totally different to what the player was expecting happens. To determine what that is, the player will roll on random tables.

Mythic also uses three sets of lists to manage the narrative of the adventure:

1. Chaos Factor: The Chaos Factor (CF) regulates the flow of the story; how many random events unfold and the likelihood of the positive answers to questions posed to the system. Less of a list, it's really just a number between 1 and 9. The First Scene starts with a Chaos Factor of 5, which the player adjusts at the end of each scene based on whether the scene was in the characters' control or not.
2. Characters: In Mythic terms, a character can be anything in the game world that can influence the narrative: people, monsters, themes, factions, etc.
3. Threads: Threads are the quests, tasks, missions and plots that guide the narrative.

Alright, that covers the basics, on to the scene:

After a two-hour hike from Orm's Crossing, four warriors find the entrance to the Darkmantle Mine. Caelum, Kara, Vulkar and Tillo stare down the dark passage that leads into the mountain depths.

Scene Premise: The party explores Darkmantle Mine.

I won't test this premise because this is the First Scene, but I can create the lists. Even though the adventure has just started, I can already identify some characters and threads.

Characters

1. Sir Draven Ironcrest
2. Orm's Crossing
3. Darkmantle Mine
4. Goblins

Threads

1. Uncover the reason for the mine's closure
2. Find the ancient library

Chaos Factor: 5

"Ready?" asks Caelum, a young feyling with ash blonde hair.

"Yip," Tillo, replies.

"Ready as we'll ever be," Kara adds, adjusting her bow.

Vulkar, a demikin, simply nods and steps forward to lead the way. Tillo falls in behind, with Caelum following and Kara taking up the rear.

As they begin their descent into the mine down a long and winding passage, the light from the entrance fades until the party is engulfed in darkness. Tillo stops the party to strike up one of his torches. Caelum and Vulkar don't need it, both are quite capable of seeing in shades of grey without the light, but Tillo and Kara will be blind without it.

With the torch lit, the party continues on.

Generating Chambers

Whenever the party heads down a passage or opens another door, I'll generate a new chamber using my dungeon emulator.

The emulator doesn't generate details for passages yet, so I'll just make up these details for now. I'll say they walked 600ft. from the entrance to the first chamber.

Darkmantle Entrance Chamber

• Mining area, ore depleted, pool of water, chamber’s original contents are water damaged.
• Rectangle, 35ft. by 10ft., and 20ft. high.
• 3 exits aside from entrance.
  • Exit 1: Open, no door or gate, wall left of entrance, with stairs beyond it leading down.
  • Exit 2: Wooden door, closed, wall left of entrance.
  • Exit 3: Stone door, closed, opposite wall to entrance, barred from this side.
• The room seems devoid of inhabitants.

A half dozen minutes later, the passage opens up into a long, narrow chamber with a high ceiling. The chamber looks like a work area. The walls bear the scars of extracted ore. A pool of stagnant water lies at the centre, reflecting Tillo's flickering torchlight as dripping water punctuates the otherwise quiet expanse.

To the left of the entrance, an open exit beckons, revealing a set of stairs that descend into the unknown. Further along the same wall is a closed wooden door. On the far wall, barred by a pile of rocks is a stone door.

Kara looks down the stairs.

Oracle Questions

It's time for the first question to the Oracle.

In Solo TTRPGs, an oracle is a tool or system that you use to answer the kinds of questions that a player would typically ask of the game master.

In Mythic, questions must be answerable with a yes or no.

Once you have your question, you consult the Fate Chart to determine the odds of a yes answer, based on the likelihood of the outcome and the current Chaos Factor. It's up to the player to determine how likely they think the outcome is.

The Fate Chart also presents odds for an exceptional outcome; still a yes or a no, but more extreme, for example, asking "Is the door locked?" and getting an exceptional yes might mean the door is not just locked, it's also barred from the other side.

Asking questions of the Oracle in Mythic also creates the potential for a random event to be triggered, but I'll cover that when it happens.

This is how I notate questions to the Oracle:

• Question? (Likelihood) Outcome (hover over the icon to see details).

Alright, explanations done, time for the first question:

• Does Kara see any creatures down the stairs? (Unlikely)
  ❌ 85, No.

"That probably leads further down into an annexe of some kind," she says, "Let's check the door."

Vulkar tries to open the wooden door...

Emulator Interaction

Whenever one of the characters interacts with a door that was generated by my dungeon emulator, I propose the course of action (🤚🏽) to the emulator and it (🤖) tells me the result. If there is a skill check to accompany the action, I'll give the emulator that result along with the proposed action (🎲, hoverable to see the roll).

Behind the scenes, the emulator has generated the details for each door that are usually not visible to the player in TTRPGs: whether the door is locked or not, trapped, etc.

The emulator takes the proposed action, compares it against what is known about the door, and then adjudicates the outcome.

• Interact —
  🤚🏽Proposed action.
  Vulkar attempts to open Exit 2.
  • 🤖Emulator response.
    The door doesn't open, it appears to be barred from the other side.

The door doesn't budge.

"Stuck," he mutters and goes to bash it open.

• Interact —
  🎲 Proposed action, Athletics, 16.
  Vulkar attempts to force Exit 2 open.
  • 🤖Emulator response, success.
    The door opens, revealing a chamber beyond.

Vulkar puts his shoulder to the door, splintering the bar on the other side and revealing another chamber.

Abandoned Mining Chamber

• Mining area, ore depleted, in original condition.
• Rectangle, 55ft. by 25ft., and 20ft. high.
• 4 exits aside from entrance.
  • Exit 1: Stone door, closed, wall right of entrance.
  • Exit 2: Open, no door or gate, wall left of entrance, with passage beyond it.
  • Exit 3: Wooden door, closed, wall left of entrance.
  • Exit 4: Iron door, closed, wall right of entrance.
• The room seems devoid of inhabitants.

It's another of the mine's work areas, larger and wider than the first. The ore seams have been depleted, which is no surprise so high up in the mine.

Tillo casts his torch over the chamber and sees four potential paths onward. There's a stone door and iron door on the north wall, and a wooden door and open arch on the south wall. Through the open arch, a passage continues further into the darkness.

"We're gonna be picking through empty rooms a long time before we find anything useful," Kara says. She goes to check the wooden door.

• Interact —
  🤚🏽Proposed action.
  Kara attempts to open Exit 3.
  • 🤖Emulator response.
    The door is locked.

"Locked. Tillo?"

"My pleasure," the chipper kender chuckles.

• Interact —
  🎲 Proposed action, Thieves' Tools, 19.
  Tillo attempts to unlock Exit 3.
  • 🤖Emulator response, success.
    The door unlocks, revealing a passage beyond.

With a swift and assured motion, Tillo deftly picks the lock and pushes the wooden door open. Beyond it is another passage.

"Hmmm... boring," Caelum says, peering down it. "You want to try the iron door?"

"On it."

• Interact —
  🎲 Proposed action, Perception, 15.
  Tillo looks at the Exit 4.
  • 🤖Emulator response, success.
    It appears to be locked.
• Interact —
  🎲 Proposed action, Thieves' Tools, 19.
  Tillo attempts to unlock Exit 4.
  • 🤖Emulator response, success.
    The door unlocks, revealing a set of stairs going down.

With as sure a hand as before, Tillo successfully unlocks the iron door to find a set of stairs leading downwards.

"This place is going to be a maze, isn't it?" Kara sighs.

"Probably, let's keep our wits about us though," Caelum says, "No use getting down when we've only just begun."

"Shall we see what's behind lucky door number four?" Tillo asks brightly.

Vulkar rolls his eyes and puts his shoulder to the door.

• Interact —
  🎲 Proposed action, Athletics, 12.
  Vulkar attempts to force Exit 1 open.
  • 🤖Emulator response, success.
    The door opens, revealing a passage beyond.

With a determined grunt, he leans into the stone door, pushing with all his might. The door grinds open, revealing a dark passage beyond.

"Well, that solves that then... down?" Caelum asks.

"Down," Kara says, and the quartet descend the stairs behind the iron door.

• Interact —
  🤚🏽Proposed action.
  The party heads down the stairs behind Exit 4.
  • 🤖Emulator response.
    They descend the stairs for 50 ft., and the passage opens up to a chamber.

Broken Barracks

• Barracks for miners, contents wrecked but still present.
• Rectangle, 50ft. by 35ft., and 30ft. high.
• 1 exit aside from entrance.
  • Exit 1: Open, no door or gate, opposite wall to entrance, with stairs beyond it leading down.
• The room seems devoid of inhabitants.

The party enters what appears to have once served as the barracks for the miners. Carved from the rock, the rectangular space is 50 feet in length and 35 feet across, with a 30-foot ceiling. The remnants of the miners' living quarters are scattered around, broken and dishevelled, bearing marks of the goblin infestation. Opposite the entrance on the far wall is another flight of stairs descending into the depths of the mine.

"Worth picking through the scraps?" Kara asks.

"No, goblins will have picked it clean," Caelum responds.

"No harm in poking," Tillo says as he starts picking through the rubble.

Resolving DC-less Checks

In a usual game of D&D 5e, whenever a player is attempting a course of action where there is a chance of failure, the player will roll an ability or skill check against a hidden Difficulty Class (DC) that the GM sets based on how difficulty they think the action is.

I struggled for a long time to figure out why, in solo play, it felt so weird to both set the DC (in my GM role) and the roll against it (as the player), until I learned about the Czege Principle.

The Czege Principle is an idea in role-playing game theory that it isn't fun for a single player to control both a character's adversity and the resolution of that adversity. The principle is named after Paul Czege, based on a comment he made to Vincent Baker at The Forge after playtesting one of Baker's games.

I realised after the fact that everything I was trying to accomplish with my dungeon emulator was an attempt at subverting this principle, but in its current state, the emulator doesn't resolve all the instances in which this principle applies.

So back to skill and ability checks: My solution to this problem is to still make the roll as a player, but then leave whether I pass or fail up to Mythic's Oracle.

Now, I still have to set the likelihood of a positive response, and here my experience with regular 5e helps; over time, you gain an intuition for how likely a roll is to pass a certain DC.

As a player, you know if you roll very low, you're unlikely to succeed and if you roll very high there's a good chance you succeed, but you don't know for sure. And that's the mindset I take to these situations; I'll make the roll and set the likelihood of success, but I leave it up to the Oracle (as if it was the GM) to decide whether the check passes or fails.

It's a lot of mental gymnastics, I know, but it really does subvert the Czege Principle and bring the fun back to these kinds of situations.

I'll notate these instances similarly to how I notate questions to the Oracle, but with an added icon which you can hover over to see the roll.

So back to Tillo picking through the rubble...

• Does Tillo find anything of value?
  🎲 Perception, 4.
  (Impossible)
  ❌ 63, No.

"Let's not waste time friend," Caelum says and heads for the stairs. He strides confidently onward, his boots echoing off the stone as he starts down the stairs.

• Interact —
  🤚🏽Proposed action.
  The party walk down the stairs behind Exit 1.
  • 🤖Emulator response.
    They descend the stairs for 50 ft., and the passage opens up to a chamber.

Silent Mining Chamber

• Mining area, ore depleted, in original condition.
• Square, 45ft. by 45ft. connected to a Rectangle, 30ft. by 45ft., and 30ft. high.
• 4 exits aside from entrance.
  • Exit 1: Wood door, closed, ceiling, barred from this side.
  • Exit 2: Stone door, closed, opposite wall to entrance.
  • Exit 3: Iron door, closed, wall right of entrance.
  • Exit 4: Wooden door, open, opposite wall to entrance, with passage beyond it.
• The room seems devoid of inhabitants.

The party enters a vast chamber, 45 feet square, with a tall ceiling. To the side, a rectangular annexe is connected by a gaping archway. The walls are stripped bare of ore, but otherwise, the chamber appears untouched since the mine was abandoned.

There is a wooden trapdoor in the ceiling that has been locked closed with a metal bar. On the wall opposite the entrance, a stone door stands closed, its surface worn smooth. Next to it is an open wooden door and beyond it is a passage that leads further into the darkness. Through the arch into the adjoining annexe, Caelum can see a shut iron door.

5e Mechanics

I've already included some 5e Mechanics in the questions to the emulator and the Oracle, but when those aren't involved, this is how I'll notate mechanics:

• Character — Action (A), Bonus Action (BA), Reaction (R), Free Action (FA), or Move; mechanics, outcome (if applicable).

I play my game using Roll20 where all the rolling and math are done automatically, so I'll only present the final result without describing the modifiers and individual dice rolls. I'll also sometimes use icons to abbreviate details, and in these instances, you can hover over them to see these details.

• Tillo — A: Stealth, 18.
• Kara — A: Stealth, 16.
• Caelum — A: Stealth, 16.
• Vulkar — A: Stealth (dis, splint armour), 10.

"I think we should go quietly now," Kara whispers.

"Good idea. Hang back with Tillo, Vulkar and I will lead up front." Caelum approaches the iron door, carefully examining it.

• Interact —
  🎲 Proposed action, Investigation, 18.
  Caelum inspects Exit 3.
  • 🤖Emulator response, success.
    It does not appear to be locked or trapped.
• Interact —
  🤚🏽 Proposed action.
  Caelum attempts to open Exit 3.
  • 🤖Emulator response.
    The door opens, revealing a chamber beyond.

Goblin-infested Barracks

• Barracks for miners, contents wrecked but still present.
• Rectangle, 50ft. by 10ft., and 15ft. high.
• 1 exit aside from entrance.
  • Exit 1: Open, no door or gate, opposite wall to entrance, with chamber beyond it.
• Creature: Goblins. Condition: Dehydrated / Starving, Adult. Goal: Hide from enemies. Activity: Searching.
  • Encounter Difficulty: Easy

Since there is a chamber visible from where Caelum is standing (through Exit 1), I'll generate that one as well.

Charred Guard Chamber

• Guardroom, room contents mostly burned.
• Square, 20ft. by 20ft., and 25ft. high.
• 2 exit aside from entrance.
  • Exit 1: Iron door, closed, wall left of entrance.
  • Exit 2: Wooden door, closed, wall left of entrance.
• Creature: Goblins. Condition: Healthy, Adult. Goal: Seek wealth. Activity: Hiding.
  • Encounter Difficulty: Easy

Two easy encounters stacked is not going to be pretty...

Caelum gives the door a gentle push. The door shifts quietly on its hinges, opening just enough for him to see what's on the other side.

The room looks like it was once two separate chambers where at some point the wall between them was knocked out to make one larger chamber. The far side of the has been reduced to ash and rubble, while the wreckage on the near side suggests the space was once used as a barracks or guardroom.

• Are the goblins alerted to the creak of the door? (Unlikely)
  ❌ (73), No.

Caelum tenses at the sight of the goblins, but they seem unaware of Caelum's presence as they rummage through rubble and debris with a desperate intensity.

Normally, this would be a good point to end the scene as the premise, "The party explores Darkmantle Mine", has been concluded. The party explored the mine and now they've found something.

But that is not what I did in my actual play. I was so excited to resolve the coming conflict that I just kept playing.

However, this post is already very long, and knowing how long it took to resolve that conflict, I thought it best to break this scene into two parts.

Thank you for reading! I hope you've enjoyed it so far. If you have any feedback, I'd love to hear it in the comments or on Reddit.

The next part of this adventure continues in First Contact. For a full list of chapters, see Darkmantle Delve.