I go in and out of this mode of hating prep. On the one hand, I’m endlessly inspired by the dungeon setting. On the other hand, there’s nothing I hate more than taking the mystery of the dungeon and turning it into a bunch of predictable cookie-cutter encounters.

I feel like one of the strengths of Torchbearer is its ability to take the truly mundane details of dungeon delving and give them new life. We played a game set in a sea cave that could only be approached during low tide. The idea that our exit could be blocked, or that seawater could flood the area at any minute was genuinely terrifying in the context of the Torchbearer rules. I recall a moment where I decided to use one of my traits against myself while opening an urn. The GM decided that a sea sponge hiding in the urn gave me a poisonous sting. Getting poisoned while searching for loot is an obvious D&D standard, but it felt fresh and new because the game gave it teeth in a new way.

As far as big mysteries go, when I played I felt like Torchbearer puts these beyond the reach of mundane characters. We’re never going to discover why these disturbing carvings of octopodes are in this ancient cave. That’s way above our pay grade. I suspect that GM had a reason for those carvings existing, but we never found out what it was. On the other hand, they feel all the more mysterious and ominous for being that. Sometimes it’s OK to do prep that the players don’t interact with. It will still inform how you present the world.

I have a love-hate relationships with Torchbearer. On the one hand, I think it gives fresh life to some of the core themes of the dungeon crawl. I LOVE to play it. I also find it impossible to game master. It runs totally contrary to my GM-ing inclinations.