I suppose, having had the site up for a month, I should really fill in the details on delve nights... Adam

The concept of the dungeon delve is nothing new, but does seem to have found a home with 4th edition. Maybe its the tendency to rely on minis and tiles, maybe its the ease of character creation thanks to the digital tools, maybe its the fact that the monster roles and traps reduces some of the grind of previous editions (or causes the grind depending on your experience).

Whereas in the past, the concept of the delve might have been to race thru the encounters in a short space of time and try and survive to the end, my experience of 4th edition delves is that you can design a set of 3 encounters, with a variety of monsters, minions, traps, with increasing difficulty. This is certainly how delves have been presented in Wizards awesome and essential DM's book 'Dungeon Delves'. in the Dungeon magazine and at games days.

And thats how we have run them at Leeds D&D. Scheduled to start at 5:30pm, but usually not getting underway till 6, giving players chance to chat and read up on their characters powers, we aim to finish by 8:30pm, and generally manage to fit 3 fun encounters in, in this time. We aren't too sadistic, we don't aim for the total party kill, but we will smile gleefully when we get it...

Our delve nights are designed as a turn up and play night - if you don't want to bring anything, then its not a problem... we have a stack of level 3 pre-generated characters, and we try to ensure that we have any exclusive characters the moment they are in the character builder (so in november, there will hopefully be a Warrior Forge Artificer for the delve on the 23rd). Theres also a bag of player minis, a bag of dice, and pens and paper.

If your new to rpg's, DnD or 4th edition, don't worry... We don't bite, and we've become pretty good at explaining the rules as we go. The general rule though - roll a 20 sided dice when told, and then if someone goes 'yeah' roll your damage dice... The delve nights are a perfect way to learn the basics of 4th edition.

Delve nights are run fortnightly, and you can keep an eye on the calendar and upcoming events section on the left to see when the next night is and what its theme is. And you can have a look at the past adventures page to see some of the delves we've run previously.