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- Hacker News
- I have the books and while I haven't played it, they're well made and structured. Well worth the price.
- For a video with a fairly comprehensive overview, worth checking out:
- Didn't know this existed. Have to say that's some great looking art.by 127
- I just picked up the books, after finishing playing in a short campaign. It's a great setting. The rules system is a bit bare bones, but you could easily run Dungeon World or pretty much any trad fantasy RPG there. Yes, 5e, sure. It would work great for Pendragon.by simonh
- Bare bones is a plus for me honestly. I'm fairly tired of crunchy mechanics that takes days and slow player interaction.
- If you're curious drivethrurpg is currently[1] offering a quick start adventure of this for free: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/575501/dolmenwood-qu... .
[1] - I found it in their "Free Title of the Week" from their newsletter. Not sure if it will go away 07-30 or so when the next newsletter comes out.
by er4hn - D'oh it's also on the owner's site's page for free: https://necroticgnome.com/products/dolmenwood-quick-startby er4hn
- I'm just working up the courage (and the people) to run it. I might have the face of a grognard, but I've only run a handful of sessions as a gamemaster / dungeonmaster. Between relative inexperience and the demands of my career in autism research career, I have not yet taken the plunge.
On the plus side for prep, the Dolmenwood books and pdfs are wonderfully organized...bringing the same expertise that Gavin Norman brought to Old School Essentials that had won him (and his team) wide acclaim.
- There's also a very new, innovative revival of the RPG format where players take on multiple characters, some of them faction leaders, called a Braunstein, played in Dolmenwood (search "Dolmenstein"): https://mythicmountainsrpg.substack.com/p/so-you-want-to-try...
Fair warning that there's a lot of contentious personalities in this scene, so be advised. However, the freshness of the new gameplay speaks for itself.
by t_gamer_kle - I have run several campaigns in Dolmenwood - from early Wormskin and OSE Patreon days through the current open game license free format.
I’m consistently amazed at the depth this setting offers a sandbox-curious referee and a creative table. It is well worth exploring. It is also a masterpiece of information design and the easiest tool I’ve used at the table.
My session notes for my current campaign are here if you are interested in what is achievable.
https://publish.obsidian.md/generallyobservable/Dolmenwood+S...
by sklargh - awesome. I'll check out. Its cool to find other HNers into the scene.
- The Dolmenwood Campaign Book [0] has been nominated in the both the "Best Setting" and "Product of the Year" category of the 2026 ENNIE award [1]
[0] https://necroticgnome.com/products/dolmenwood-campaign-book
by teroshan - it's beautiful AND incredibly well done. even if you don't plan to ever play dolmenwood: read through the campaign setting!by Kichererbsen
- Woah... this is crazy to see here. The books are absolutely amazing. Everything is carefully crafted and filled with love. The modern OSR and modern TTRPGS are absolutely wonderful. This is the craft at its finest.by jasonlotito
- > Woah... this is crazy to see here.
Yeah, I'd expect HN to be more into Eclipse Phase or something.
- I was a backer and the books are lovely, and the setting is awesome.
Also this is my favorite t-shirt: https://necroticgnome.com/products/dolmenwood-goatlord-t-shi...
Also check out 3d6 Down the Line, an actual play worth listening to. https://youtu.be/xNWg_IcbHl8?is=54oqh6TbY5g6DP-B
- I appreciate all that Gavin Norman and Necrotic Gnome have done for the OSR TTRPG scene over the past few years, but I have to say each time I see a D&D-derivative system it makes me wish that other systems of the time—like Runequest, Tunnels & Trolls, or West End Games' d6 system beneath Ghostbusters (1985) and Star Wars (1987)—got even half the attention. Tom Moldvay and Dave Cook's Basic/Expert (1981) has been done to death at this point. For a nice historical lesson, look to Moldvay's later work on the Challenges Game System[0], which pares down the AD&D 1E Players Handbook (1978) into 8 pages suitable for running the game at the table.
I could rant for hours about the sacred cows of D&D deserving slaughter, but I'll refrain.
All this is to say, the Dolmenwood campaign book is great and I own it. It was originally a setting for Old-School Essentials published through a zine[1], and I think they could have stopped at just a campaign book, the one that the OP links to. I just don't think we need any more flavors of B/X!
[0] https://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=14165
[1] https://necroticgnome.com/blogs/news/the-end-of-wormskin
by zbikowski - I think one of the impetuses to not using the Old School Essentials rules was the Hasbro DnD debacle where they started making moves to undo the Open Gaming License (OGL) in 2023. The resulting Dolmenwood system cleanly removed the last vestiges of anything that might be subject to the OGL...e.g. certain spell names, monster names, etc.
- There are two things that really scratch the dopamine itch at the table that I think plays well to DnD - 1) the d20. 5% of something amazing or terrible happening is just the right amount of chance for things being regular but not expected. And it being a single lotto ticket somehow makes it better.
2) fistful of dice - eventually you get to toss a fistful of dice and its very satisfying to climb that ladder.
DnD has both and that combined with ability progression I think really locks people in to the system, even outside of the network effect of it. GURPS for instance is great but 3d6 and getting an 18 just isn’t the same, for instance.
by conception - I am sure those systems deserve a modern renovation, but as a general matter, I think the particulars of game systems matter less, overall, when it is not a mechanics heavy system like Pathfinder and DnD 5e...or Rolemaster. It mostly comes down to rulings over rules...which is why rules lite systems, e.g. Mausritter, Knave, Into the Odd, have play in the OSR/NSR scene.
I do not know where on the crunch spectrum the systems you mentioned fall,
- At least BRP (the system behind Runequest) and d6 are actively developed and there are games, new and old, using them. They are also rather popular, at least if one browses rpg.net.
T&T I don't know. I think there is a new edition coming along?
by Propelloni - Whatever the merits of the rules themselves (which I think are estimable), the OSR "ecosystem" is buoyed up by a huge network effect. I would wager that just the list of official D&D modules from the 80s, all of which are easily playable in something like OSE, dwarfs the amount of support that's available for all of those other games combined. That's not counting the many many additional adventures, settings, rules addons, megadungeons, GM aids, etc. that have been created in the last 20 years for various OSR games, which are mostly cross-compatible. It's very hard to come in fresh and compete with that.by allturtles