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Runaway Hirelings is a breeze compared to what I've done previously. Clocking in at a lean 40 page PDF, this should hopefully go smoothly. It's a game by Thomas Novosel where you play as the hirelings an adventuring party hires to do their menial tasks, like hauling or torchbearing. Your employers made it to the Boss Room, but both parties took each other out, leaving only you to escape from the dungeon with the left behind loot.

General Information

• Hirelings are extreme specialists. They do 1 thing well, and everything else VERY POORLY.
• Game appears to use a token economy called Flail points, that allows players to modify dungeon rooms, challenges, and used for scoring automatic successes.
• It's also a map making game, as you try to retreat through the dungeon, you map out the rooms you may have avoided or different paths you didn't take on the way in.
• This is a game with a GM, labelled the Dunarch (Dungeon Architect). Recommended group size is 3-5.
• The game starts by everyone deciding what the name of this dungeon is, and why adventurers would come here. These details can be referenced later for resources if applicable.
• Turns go in clockwise order.
• You need D6s for this game. 1-4 is a failure, 5-6 is a success.
• The Exit is triggered by one of the following conditions: The party has survived 8 rooms, a player is on their 3rd character, or there is only 20 minutes or so left of time in the session.

General Gameplay

• Actions can either earn you Flail Points, or cost them. Entering a new room gives everyone a point the first time their turn comes around in it, while succeeding on something outside your specialty costs 2 points.
• Some actions also cost, or gain, Gold, the treasure of the Dungeon.
• When you enter a new room, whoever's turn it is will answer one of the two following questions: "What is the name of the room" and "What is a problem that can be sensed". The next player will answer the next question.
• After this, the Dunarch will fill out more details. The players can ask for more information and details freely, but some questions may trigger one of the Moves.
• Upon arriving to the room, the Dunarch can either roll a d6 to determine the Danger Score (which is how many successful actions are needed to escape the room), or they can preroll 10d6 and use those.
• If you try to escape a room before completing the needed number of actions to clear the Danger Score, you will have to roll the harder "Doing Something That Isn't Your thing" roll, even if the task you're attempting is your Specialty, due to the challenge not being properly addressed.
• The "It's My Specialty" move has the GM as the player one of 4 questions about how you had come to learn how to do this, or the last time you've done it, or so on. Then the task is passed. Since the players outline some of the challenges, each question can only be answered once for free. After that, any of the four questions can be used when applicable, at the cost of 1 Flail or 2 Gold. No roll needed.
• You can choose to Fail to gain a Flail Point. You can either turn a success into a failure on a roll, or just opt to fail something you could automatically succeed at. You lose 1d6-1 gold. Compare this to failing the "Doing something that isn't your thing" move, where you lose 2d6+2 Gold. By turning a success into a failure, you're easier able to roll with the punches.
• HIRELINGS DO NOT FIGHT. In a straight fight, you WILL lose. Instead, you need to set up Rube Goldberg machines, tricky deception, sneaky, or negotiation. The book gives an example of saying your Torch is housing a god of flame, and offer them a flaming shoe as their blessing for passage (then decide who is giving up a shoe).
• The Exit room has some special rules. 1st: All gold loss is doubled, as you get reckless trying to get free of this dangerous place. 2nd. No new player characters can be intorduced in this room, so if you lost a character in the room before the exit, sorry. 3rd: The challenge should be a sort of amalgamation or recap or fusion of challenges in the dungeon so far. Kind of like, encapsulating what the dungeon was about.

Characters & Setup

• Each of you is a hireling for one of the adventurers that came here. In character creation, after you introduce your character, you will mention how your employer died at the hand of the boss and his minions in the boss chamber.
• There are 7 Classes of Hireling to choose from. Specialization in parenthesis: The Trap-Poker (Finding and tinkering with traps), Torchbearer (Seeing through the dark), Peasant (being seen as unthreatening/sneaking around), Chronicler (Knowledge about legends and history), Fool (Making people laugh/spry), Itinerant Monk (Advice and intuition), Slop Chef (Detecting poison and making food out of bad ingredients).
• All classes have some specific gear, as well as a piece of generic gear from the Adventuring list you can choose. Special mention to the Peasant who gets a sack with 5 potatoes and a live chicken.
• You start with 15 Gold, which means a particularly nasty room could wipe you out of 14 on a single failed roll. The life of a Hireling is hard!
• If your hireling runs out of Gold they perish, because the combination of stress and lack of resources means they can't adapt to the troubles of the Dungeon anymore.
• Then, create a new character following the same rules as the first, except it starts with 10 Gold. Also explain why this character got left behind or how it became lost during the trek to the Boss Room. They appear in the room after your first character died. (unless the next room is The Exit)
• Finally, if that character dies, bring back your first character with 5 Gold in the next room, and explain how they survived their brush with death. One of their items is altered from the experience. If this character dies, you're done for.

This seems like a silly way to spend an evening, playing characters who are ill-equipped to handle a dungeon run. With multiple ways to trigger the end, it feels like the End will always be just around a corner, which is a cool way to handle things to ensure nobody is sitting out for too long, since the Exit room is triggered by somebody playing their 3rd character, if they survive that room, it's time for the Exit. Neat setup. Game ends, and people describe what their character does with the money, and what they're doing in 10 years time. If you died in the dungeon (or if you say your character is dead within 10 years), you say what's on their gravestone. It's nice.

Feels like a fun little lightweight game.