Playtest Session One Report: Delving Deeper — The Ruination of Tenamen

Hi everyone! I ran my first Delving Deeper game today—I chose the module “The Ruination of Tenamen.” I’m working on translating DD into Russian for the Russian-speaking OSR community, and we’ve now had the first online session using my translation. Below is a short report. Please excuse any mistakes—English isn’t my native language. Thanks for reading!

Playtest Session One Report: Delving Deeper — The Ruination of Tenamen

Players had to prep on the fly during the session, which ate about 40 minutes. That made the start a bit chaotic—rather than the classic town-tavern opener with NPC chat and hiring, the group hurriedly picked up a few hirelings, threw on the Rumors table, and set out. From the rumors they learned: Grom is actually a human under a sorcerer’s sway; he wields a cursed axe; and he and his crew are holed up north of town.

The hike was short—half a day at most. After scouting the hill, the party chose not to look for a back way in and instead followed the path straight into the cave. The spiral descent was slow and cautious, with lots of checking for traps and tripwires. They reached a narrow bridge over a swift stream without incident. On the bridge they found a corpse propped up and disguised in its armor. They stripped it; the helmets went to the hirelings, and one of them even wrapped himself in the freshly-taken mail without a second thought. Beyond the bridge they hit a door. Failing to hear anything, they started to force it—at which point a sliding panel snapped open and a pig-snouted voice challenged them. Luckily our Cleric speaks Orcish, and after a bit of parley they convinced the sentries the party had urgent business for Grom.

Bolgug, the orc sergeant, began an interrogation, during which our bold Fighting-Man tried to establish dominance and challenged him to a duel. The Cleric cut that off—she grabbed the orc’s arm and, with her malign, chaotic sorcery, made him weep blood. While this was happening, an orc archer slipped through the south door to alert the lair. A fight broke out. The Magic-User cast a ring of mist to shut down the archers’ lanes. In the melee Bolgug was brought low, most of the orcs went down, and two survivors remained—just as another seven orcs rushed in. Unbothered by the fog, they pushed through and crashed straight into the culprits.

That’s where we wrapped after 3.5 hours. To my surprise, the party survived—and even cut down Bolgug. (My dice were ice-cold. Again.) Place your bets: will they live through the second wave of orcs?