Looking back at my Dwarf Mine notes is always a fun trip for me. At the beginning of the design I had some wild ideas (see below!). But, through 2019 and 2020, I was able to focus the design of Dwarf Mine to the game you see today.
You may not know this, but the original version of Dwarf Mine was kind of bare-bones. The first PDF for purchase was only 15 pages (compared to 25 today). Since that first version, I’ve added a number of expansions within the base game including Mountain Creation, More than a Dragon, Bloodlines, More Rooms, a player aid, a room name generator, and an achievements list.
Even with all these additions, there are quite a few ideas that never made the cut. Some are in the discard bin forever, gathering dust. Others may still see the light of day (including a secret idea that’s not on this list, shhhhh). Let me know if any of these ideas sound fun to you! Here are the top 6 expansions I haven’t made yet for Dwarf Mine.
Dwarf Mine in Space
Originally the worst titled expansion of all time (I called it Dwarf Brine, ugh), Dwarf Mine in Space is an idea to simplify the game of Dwarf Mine, put more gameplay emphasis on room orientation, and make the space in your mine at a premium.
It’s more of a standalone game in the same family as Dwarf Mine, that focuses even more on the puzzle of building your mine.
There are some other fun ideas around this game that I don’t want to give away yet. I was actually trying to get this published last year (which is why I published the Beyond the Mountain expansion – because I thought that expansion would be a fun way to lead into this new game). I wasn’t able to get it over the finish line because I ran into a gameplay issue.
I still want to publish this game, because I think it improves on the original concept of Dwarf Mine and adds some new thematic and mechanic concepts that are quite fun. We’ll see if I can pick this back up someday!
Politics and Populations Expansion
This was one of the ideas included in my original Dwarf Mine design. Originally, you not only were going to be creating a mine, but also creating a world map around your mine. You would have neighboring nations, some hostile and some friendly. Neighboring nations would be run by different species (humans, elves, goblins, etc.).
On your turn you’d have to manage your mine and the dangers in your own mountain, and you’d also have to manage the relationship with the other nations on your worldmap.
Positive relationships with other nations would allow members of their nation to live in your mine, which would give different benefits. Of course, negative relationships would remove those benefits, and possibly even lead to war.
I abandoned this idea for two reasons. First, it’s so big it’s basically a game in itself.
Second, I have a game with epic scope that already kind of does this! I don’t think I’ve ever publicly talked about this game, but it’s the first game I ever seriously designed, and has been under light (but constant) development and playtesting since 2012. Maybe someday I’ll clean it up and get around to publishing it.
Crafting
Originally, I had way more treasure types you could gather during your treasure roll. These came in different forms of ore, gems, stone, and other materials.
I also had rooms would allow you to craft items from these materials once per turn. These bespoke items would help you in combat, give you prestige, allow for faster mine expansion, along with many other benefits. Like the politics expansion, it just ended up being too much for the initial release of the game.
I still think it’s a cool idea. The problem right now, is that I would have to completely revamp my treasure tables. I suppose I could do an add-on expansion where, in addition to doing a treasure roll each turn, you also roll on the “materials table”, and then a bunch of new rooms give you things to do with these materials.
So this idea isn’t completely discarded – it would just take some work. But if I’m being honest, it’s not one I am super motivated to pursue.
Trading Post Expansion
Another one of my original ideas was that enemies you killed would drop items, and with monsters you could harvest their teeth, hide, or poison. The items you would collect could then be brought to the trading post room and sold.
I abandoned this idea pretty early on for two reasons. First, it was very cumbersome to track this every single turn. Second, the gameplay loop wasn’t actually that fun, and took up a ton of space in the rules.
Of course, I did create the Trading Post room. But the original concept is probably never going to be revisited.
Traps Expansion
This idea was heavily inspired by Dwarf Fortress. Basically, the expansion would include a whole bunch of traps you can purchase. Similar to rooms, traps would be placed on the map – but they would go inside hallways and ladders.
During combat, different traps would help against different enemies. So a goblin snare may reduce the amount of goblins you see in combat, or a trap door might automatically kill or delay 1d4 enemies.
I decided to avoid this idea because it was originally based on enemy movement within the mine. After writing the rules for the Dragon, I realized that creating movement rules for each enemy would be cumbersome, and the idea died.
The one good thing to come from this idea was the trap room! I still think there would be a way to add more traps to Dwarf Mine. However, I think that the exciting part was deciding where to place the traps in the mine. Without enemy movement, the idea of traps isn’t as exciting to me. So I guess we’ll see.
The Deep
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you could dig down to a mine level of 5? This is what The Deep expansion is all about.
The idea is that, instead of the game ending with a Dragon attack (or other enemy), you could continue digging in the mountain down to mine level 5.
The treasure and combat table for mine level 5 would be filled with glorious treasure, powerful relics from a long lost past, dangerous mountain events and scary enemies with never-before-seen abilities. The treasure and combat rolls would be d100, and all 100 entries on each table would be completely unique.
I found brainstorming 100 unique table results a challenge. But creating 100 unique combat encounters, and treasures that feel special is incredibly hard. Not only that – but having another whole mine level for the player to build into means that they can build any room they want, and it removes some of the tension and decision making when first building your mine.
This was originally going to be my very first expansion, because it was the “end-game” of my original design. However, I’ve tried and tried again to create something that’s fun and not just a list of repetitive or game breaking table entries. And it’s really hard.
Despite my efforts, I’m not sure this will ever happen. Maybe I need to go back to the drawing board and reduce the scope of the design. I guess we’ll see.
Connect
What are your favorite expansion ideas?
You can let me know at the Dwarf Mine subreddit here.
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Finally, if you have feedback, you can follow me on itch.io where you can leave comments about the expansions I shared in this post.
Thank you for being a fan of games! I’m looking forward to digging with you!
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