AAR: Deephaven, Gencon, 2023

After Action Report (AAR): Deephaven, Gencon on 8/5/2023

Deephaven is the design of Trenton Greyoak (awesome last name by the way) and this was its third run.

AAR by Tony Dougherty.

FYI, there will be significant spoilers to the game, so if you’re ever going to play it and don’t want to be spoiled, maybe skip this AAR.

Background and Pregame

I’m not going to lie, I had very high expectations for this megagame so it would’ve been very hard for it to live up to my expectations. Prior to the game, I’d heard from a couple of people that Deephaven might’ve been “the best megagame ever designed”. I wasn’t sure about that, but it was high praise indeed. I also knew that it had a similar feel to As Thou Commands which I played in last year and which I wrote about here. I had a good time in ATC last year, so I was hopeful I’d have as much fun at least.

Deephaven is a game about Dwarves who have come together to build a home together, digging under a mountain and delving for resources. Players are split into Clans (think nations) and they choose a Guild at the beginning of the game (think jobs). They’re also given a character sheet which gives them some background information that they keep secret and tells them some personal objectives.

There are way too many variations of clans, guilds and characters to go into all of them here, but I’ll talk about some specific things I was involved in throughout the AAR.

For this run, I wasn’t playing; I was to run the Deep clans (think old-school and traditional), and the Lamplighters guild who’s main responsibility it was to keep the lights on (or at least that’s what the outside world were told).

The deep clans

The first half of the game

I’m not entirely sure what the 3 players who picked lamplighters were expecting but I loved their reaction when they came to the table and I told them the big secret - that they were actually an organized crime syndicate and that lighting lamps was just the cover story. Their goal was to make money by underhanded means, maintain secrecy and work on their own character objectives.

The first few turns were a little challenging, partly because there were some teething issues with the rules - players and control alike were learning the rules. We had some pregame instruction from the designer but there’s nothing like doing it to help you learn.

Once I had done 1-of-everything, it was much easier for me to run control. For example, the main mechanic is a system whereby players come to you with an idea of what they want to do, then you ask them to provide 1 to 3 asset cards that are thematically appropriate. You assign dice based on how appropriate they are and they roll looking for 6s. The more 6s they get, the greater the level of success. Without any 6s, you can still grant the success but there might be some harsher consequences (e.g. broken equipment, negative traits, etc.). In the first half of the game, I didn’t see a single 6! It was amazing.

Another main mechanic is to create “trouble”. Players received some silver for coming up with interesting issues for other players to solve but as control, we could come up with troubles too. Thematically, these weren’t supposed to be created by the players, they were supposed to be discovered by the players. For example, my lamplighters kept finding convenient outbreaks of rats that they could use as distractions. One of my players came up with all sorts of health issues because he created a healthcare system (hospital, doctors, etc.) and healthcare insurance that he was skimming off the top.

One of my favorite stories of the game was the hospital. Due to a series of bad rolls and excellent negative asset traits, the hospital contained a massive maze of corridors that was tricky to navigate out of and was run by cultist vampires who were also skimming off the top (but in a different way). I was pushing plot control to use this thread as a worldwide threat in the late game but other things sort of got in the way. I certainly used it in my storytelling.

The final main mechanic is the giant Jenga tower. This represented the dwarves that were delving deep into the mines, looking for treasures and such. Every block that was pulled allowed the player to draw from a deck of cards, and convert the card they drew into a new asset (for very cheap). These assets were built using randomization tables which made for some interesting combinations. Players would end up with things like like “a large, grumpy lion that lays eggs”, or a “purple, glowing mushroom with hallucinogenic properties”. As control, I gave my players the option of rolling randomly or creating their own if they wanted. At one point, I encouraged a Deep Rock Galactic fan to come up with a version of Nitra that had healing properties!

Easy does it now…

The second half of the game

Across the course of the game, the Jenga tower fell a handful of times and at one point I even saw a player take a hammer to it (for reasons I don’t know). I do know that it was control adjudicated, they weren’t just being a menace. The fall of the tower represented big plot changes that were announced by lead control. I think lava kept spewing around the cave system causing trouble for various guilds though I didn’t personally see any issues from it. The exception was when every member of control was asked to create a trouble that was related to fire or lava and to disseminate those to our areas. I decided to hit the lamp lighters rather than my deep clans as they were having an easy go of it and needed a little pressure from the outside world.

There was an interesting story when one of my players created a trouble where one of the beer batches had been spoiled. This was right before a “drinking contest” so I went and told the player who was leading it. At first he looked really disapointed and he was worried he would'n’t be able to fix it in time. I told him that dwarves were a stout lot and asked him if it’d really be that bad if some dwaves were drinking spoiled beer? He perked right up and ran the contest with the bad beer. I’m not sure what came of it, but I made sure to let control know who were facilitating. If it were me, I’d probably have created troubles for everyone in the drinking competition (tummy issues).

One of the Dwarven delvers having to answer to the press on why they “dug too deep and too greedily”

The heist

One of the seafaring clans wanted to run a heist on the bank vault and their control member came over to tell me all about it as it seemed like something the lamplighters should know about. I let the lamplighters know and they were VERY interested to know that there was criming going on without their explicit consent. We arranged for some clandestine meetings between the two groups and the lamplighter rep demanded a 60/40 split! It was amazing. She was going to make sure the lights all went off near the vault at a specific time and she “acquired” a detailed map of the location. She set the wheels in motion for them and let them run it, thereby taking minimal risk. Their control member ran the heist and asked the seafaring players to roll for planning, execution and escape. I believe they failed 2 out of 3 of their rolls. They were told they could grab and run and they ended up with a handful of coins. The failure element was that it was very obvious who it was that did the heist so it was all over the dwarven news the next turn.

End game and final thoughts

It was a very interesting game and I had a lot of fun, though I found the end-game to be very anti-climatic. There was a plot point about the dwarves all uniting under a single king which was run as an election and a Jenga-tower-pull-off between the 2 finalists. It meant that the entire game was waiting for them to finish and took longer than it should’ve done.

Deephavens blessing and curse are the clans. It creates some very passionate tribalism between the clans and meant very few players supported a leader from a different clan. It also meant that when a clan was called upon, they all had their own cheers and comradery (which was amazing) but also meant there were some moments where the tribalism got a little heated between clans and soured the game for some.

The open nature of the game similarly had good points and bad. Good because it gave freedom to players to do “whatever they wanted” within the game. They could be as creative as their imagination let them, with control to guide their schemes and plays. But on the flip side, some players felt a little lost at times and I know of at least one person who left the game with a couple of hours remaining because they had achieved everything they wanted to and “ran out of things to do”.

I’m still on the fence about if I would run it myself. There are elements of the game that I love - the theme is amazing, the graphic design for the components and documentation is fabulous, the Jenga-tower mechanic is genius and I haven’t even mentioned the map that is drawn by the players - it’s inspired. BUT I worry about the tribalism and players who aren’t regular mega gamers running out of things to do. It leans heavily towards the LARP side of the spectrum and I’m not sure my local players are 1) ready for this and 2) would enjoy it as much as the “super geeks” at a gaming convention.

So I’m going to sleep on it and get some feedback from my regular control team. And if you are a Louisville player, shoot me a message and let me know if you think we should or should not.