// How to play
Silent Depth
One crew, one hull.
Complete the dive's five phases — silence, the minefield, cascading failure, the hunt and escape — with the hull intact. If the hull reaches zero, the submarine is lost. With two teams, each one navigates its own submarine on the same mission.
- Players
- 3–10 people
- Teams
- 1–2 teams
- Duration
- 35 min (configurable from 20 to 60)
- Difficulty
- High
- Devices
- Computer or tablet · does not work on phones
La premisa
A mesh of autonomous sonar buoys — the Red Cazador — seals off the Fosa Nahuel. The submarine S-71 Abismo has to cross the trench undetected, find the control buoy hidden among decoys, take it out with a torpedo, and get out before the network resets.
Five stations, one hull. The Helmsman can't see the chart. Sonar doesn't touch the rudder. Engineering doesn't have the damage control manual. Weapons doesn't know the launch code. The Commander has the navigation chart but no instruments. The only way to operate the submarine is to talk.
The match has five linked phases: dive in silence, cross a minefield through a corridor only Sonar can see, survive a cascading failure, hunt down the right buoy, and escape. Time moves in short simulation steps: the heading takes time to turn, the depth takes time to change, and detection climbs on its own if the submarine makes noise.
Los roles
Cada puesto ve una parte distinta. Nadie puede resolverlo solo.
Commander
The mission chart with the three legs — each with its heading and a recommended depth note — the acoustic signature book (which band and pulse belong to the control buoy), the launch code, and the available orders.
Give the standing order aboard: Rig for silent running, Attack order, or Evasion order. You're the only one who can change it, and without an attack order no one can fire.
- Dictate the leg's heading to the Helmsman as soon as the phase starts: they have no chart.
- When Sonar reports bands and pulses, tell them which one belongs to the control buoy. The signature is only in your book.
- You hold the code. Dictate it digit by digit once Weapons has the tube ready, not before.
- The attack order unlocks firing, and the evasion order is part of the condition to escape: don't forget to switch between them.
Helmsman
A large compass with the current heading and the ordered heading, a depth gauge with the current needle and the ordered mark, and the speed telegraph with four positions. Nothing else: no chart, no seafloor, no contacts.
Set heading, depth and speed. You're the only station that drives the submarine.
- Repeat what they dictated before you move the rudder: "heading 215, depth 160, Silent speed, confirm."
- The submarine has inertia: the heading turns gradually and the depth takes time. Ask for changes ahead of time.
- If the rudder doesn't respond, don't force it: there's a casualty, and Engineering fixes it.
- Always ask two things before diving: the thermocline depth and the seafloor depth. Sonar has both.
Sonar
The circular sweep display with contacts as blips — bearing, approximate distance, band and pulse — a vertical profile with the thermocline and seafloor lines, the clear corridor between the mines shaded onto the compass, your own noise, and the exact detection meter (0 to 100).
Classify contacts (name a blip) and use the active ping, which sharpens contacts' distances and depths in exchange for a sizable jump in detection.
- You're the only one who can see the water. Report the thermocline and the seafloor before the Helmsman touches anything.
- Call out the clear corridor as a range: "between 232 and 248." The Helmsman only has the compass.
- Describe each contact by its band and pulse, not your conclusion: the Commander is the one who knows which signature to look for.
- The active ping is pure noise. Use it when detection is low and you need exact numbers, not out of habit.
Engineer
The reactor with its output, its temperature, and its scram status; the five power-allocation bars with the available budget; the compartment grid with each one's flooding level and casualty; and the progress of the repair in hand ("step 2 of 3"). You don't have the procedure.
Execute repair steps and split power between propulsion, sonar, weapons, pumps and life support.
- Announce the casualty with compartment and type: "flooding in the Engine Room." Weapons has the manual.
- Execute the steps in the order they're dictated. A step out of order resets the sequence and makes the casualty worse.
- With a flooding, raise the pumps: they bail faster than the water comes in.
- Don't allocate more bars than the available budget: an overload scrams the reactor on the spot.
Weapons
The two tubes with their status, the bearing and depth controls for the firing solution, the code keypad, the decoys, and the attempts. On the right, the damage control manual: the procedure for every casualty type, plus restarting the reactor and the rudder.
Prepare the tubes in order (load, flood, open), set the firing solution, fire with the code, and launch decoys.
- When Engineering announces a casualty, read them the procedure step by step and wait for confirmation on each one.
- Get ready early: load and flood the tubes when the hunt begins, not once you already have the target.
- The solution needs the bearing Sonar gave and the correct contact's depth band. Don't fire with just one of the two.
- An open tube makes noise and raises detection. Don't leave it open longer than you have to.
Una partida, paso a paso
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Lobby and briefing
Everyone picks an avatar and a color and marks READY. At the start, the five stations are assigned in secret and the mission is told: cross the Fosa Nahuel, neutralize the control buoy, and get out.
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Phase 1 · Silent dive
You have to take the first leg's heading, get below the thermocline — with margin over the seafloor — and run at Silent speed. Holding those three conditions for a few seconds completes the phase. The two risks are staying above the thermocline or going too fast (the network starts detecting) and scraping the seafloor by diving too deep.
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Phase 2 · The minefield
Sonar sees a clear corridor and a safe depth band; the Helmsman has to keep the heading inside that corridor and the depth inside that band, without going past Cruise speed. Straying outside the corridor during this phase triggers a nearby explosion: the hull takes damage, a flooding starts, and detection spikes.
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Phase 3 · Cascading failure
Entering this phase triggers several casualties at once: depending on difficulty, a reactor scram, a flooding, and — on the highest level — a jammed rudder. The phase completes once no casualty remains, the rudder responds, the reactor is online with enough output, and the power allocation is within budget. Weapons dictates from the manual, Engineering executes.
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Phase 4 · The hunt
Several contacts show up: one is the control buoy, one is a decoy, the rest are wildlife and merchants. Sonar reports band and pulse, the Commander identifies the correct signature and dictates the code, Weapons aims and fires under attack order. A torpedo at the wrong contact — or a bearing outside tolerance — triggers a counterattack: hull damage, flooding in the Torpedo Room, and detection maxed out.
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Phase 5 · Escape
The network shifts into pursuit. You have to take the exit heading, get back to Silent speed and below the thermocline, drop detection below the threshold — that's what the decoys are for — and have the evasion order standing. Hold all of that, and the submarine gets out of the trench.
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Results and debrief
Everyone sees the result at the same time: phases completed, remaining hull, casualties suffered, torpedoes fired, decoys used, and incidents. The Game Master's debrief brings the dive's timeline and five questions about what information each station had and when it was shared.
Reglas de oro
Los equipos que ganan hacen casi siempre estas mismas cosas.
- One voice at a time. Five stations talking at once is the number one cause of a detected submarine.
- Repeat before you act. Whoever executes confirms out loud what they heard: heading, depth and speed.
- Say numbers in full, with units: "heading 215," "depth 160," "between 232 and 248."
- Report changes, not just states. "Detection is climbing" helps; "detection alert" from five seconds ago no longer does.
- Ask by station and by name: "Sonar, thermocline?" lands much faster than "does anyone know the depth?"
- Announce the casualty with compartment and type before touching anything: the procedure lives at another station.
- Silence is a decision too. Before an active ping or opening a tube, give a heads-up: both raise detection.
Errores típicos
Cosas que pasan en casi todas las partidas. Son hechos observables, no juicios sobre nadie.
The Helmsman dives without knowing where the seafloor is.
Scraping the seafloor damages the hull and opens a flooding in the Bow. Ask Sonar for the thermocline and seafloor before the first depth order.
The team runs at Flank speed "to get there faster."
High speed raises detection the whole time. In the silence and escape phases, Silent speed is part of the condition to move forward.
Sonar calls out the corridor as a single number.
It's a range of headings, not one heading. Say the minimum and the maximum, and the depth band too.
Engineering executes repair steps by intuition.
A step out of order resets the sequence and makes the casualty worse: more water or more heat. Wait for the manual to be dictated.
More power bars get allocated than the budget allows.
The overload scrams the reactor right away and it has to be restarted. Check the budget before raising a bar; lower another one first.
Sonar classifies a contact without checking the signature book.
The classification doesn't validate anything on its own: the truth is in the Commander's book. Report band and pulse and let them say which one is the control buoy.
The team fires at the wrong contact or with a stale bearing.
Contacts drift a few degrees per step. Ask Sonar for the updated bearing right before firing.
Decoys get saved "for later" during the escape.
The escape needs detection below the threshold. A decoy drops it in one shot: use them when detection rises, not at the very end.
A tube stays open after firing.
An open tube adds detection on every simulation step. Close out the tube's cycle once the hunt is over.
Glosario
- Thermocline
- The layer of water where temperature changes. Below it, the submarine is much harder to detect.
- Bearing
- A contact's direction, in degrees. It's what Sonar reports and what Weapons uses to aim.
- Acoustic signature
- The combination of band (low, medium, high) and pulse (single, double, triple) that identifies what a contact is.
- Contact
- Anything Sonar detects: wildlife, a merchant, a decoy buoy, or the control buoy.
- Detection
- How much the network knows about the submarine, from 0 to 100. Everyone sees a rough version (calm, alert, danger); Sonar sees the exact number.
- Clear corridor
- The band of headings you can use to cross the minefield. Only Sonar can see it.
- Reactor scram
- The casualty that shuts down the reactor. Until it's fixed, output drops, and with it the power budget.
- Power budget
- How many bars can be split across the five systems. It depends on the reactor's output.
- Firing solution
- The bearing and depth the torpedo launches with. It has to match the chosen contact.
- Decoy
- A device that drops detection in one shot. There are only a few, and they don't come back.
- Standing order
- Rig for silent running, Attack order, or Evasion order. The Commander sets it, and it unlocks or blocks everyone else's actions.
- Hull
- The submarine's integrity, from 0 to 100. If it reaches zero, the crew loses the submarine.
Preguntas frecuentes
Why can't the Helmsman see the chart?
Because if they could, there'd be no need to talk. The asymmetry is the game's mechanic: every station holds one piece, and the submarine only moves forward once those pieces are said out loud.
Can the submarine be paused?
The Game Master can pause the session, and that freezes the whole simulation: detection doesn't rise, water doesn't flood in, and phases don't advance.
What happens if the hull reaches zero?
That submarine is lost and its crew can't send any more commands. With two teams, the session continues: it's enough for one to complete the mission for the result to be a success.
We're four. Which station goes uncovered?
None: the Commander also takes charge of Weapons, so they have the code and the tubes, but still can't see Sonar's screen. With three, the Helmsman also covers Engineering.
What if we're more than five?
Stations repeat: the sixth person becomes Commander again and sees exactly the same thing. It's worth agreeing who gives the orders so you don't end up with two different ones.
What does difficulty change?
Heading tolerance, the corridor's width, how many contacts and decoys there are, how fast water floods in, how many casualties the cascade triggers, and how many steps each procedure has. On the lowest level, procedures are two steps and there are more decoys.
What does the "Facilitator hints" setting do?
In this game it does matter: if it's turned off, the Game Master's hint selector stays empty and there are no automatic hints.
Is there a hidden traitor in the crew?
No. The game is fully cooperative, and that's a design choice: a secret saboteur turns the debrief into suspicion about people, when what we want to talk through are observable facts.
Jugar en solitario
In "Play solo" you take one station on the submarine and bots cover the other four, in a single five-seat team. The match starts once you mark READY, with no Game Master.
Reacts slowly, gets a repair step wrong, and forgets to report. Good for practicing the habit of asking and confirming.
Reports without being asked and rarely makes mistakes. This is the recommended level to get to know the submarine.
Anticipates: Weapons preps the tubes before the hunt starts, and Sonar repeats bearings as contacts drift.
- Each bot decides with its own screen and the team chat. The bot Commander dictates each leg's heading and the code, Sonar reports the thermocline, seafloor, corridor and contacts, Weapons dictates the procedure from the manual, Engineering executes it, and the Helmsman applies whatever gets said in chat.
- If you play Helmsman, the bots will dictate heading, depth and speed to you over chat: it's enough to apply them. It's the simplest station for a first match.
- The bot Helmsman understands phrases like "heading NNN," "depth NNN," "silent / cruise / flank / stopped speed," and the corridor as "between 232 and 248."
- Only expert bots use the active ping, and only when detection is low.
The other guides
Play Silent Depth with your team
Sessions are set up from your organization's panel: people, teams, scenario and a facilitator. Don't have a space yet? Write to us at larp.latam@gmail.com.
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