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Discussion (33 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
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
T&T I don't know. I think there is a new edition coming along?
My point isn't necessarily that there shouldn't be modern versions of these games—obviously, D&D is the most popular TTRPG (at least in the US), and itself barely resembles the three brown booklets of '74. It's that by going back and discovering what made the originals so great, we can carry these lessons forward and make loving modern interpretations like Old School Essentials/Dolmenwood.
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.
I do not know where on the crunch spectrum the systems you mentioned fall,
A lot of how a game encourages play is based upon the small details that designers choose to include. In 1974, looking at OD&D for the first time, players probably wouldn't think to tap the floor for traps, but a 10' pole is curiously listed on the equipment table. Same with listening at doors, or things like that.
So instead of coming up with something entirely bespoke, companies seem to use D&D as a base not because it serves the game, but because it has lower "buy-in" for customers. Which I think is a shame.
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
[0] https://necroticgnome.com/products/dolmenwood-campaign-book
[1] https://ennie-awards.com/2026-nominees/
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.
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...
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.
[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.
Even with it's stripped down system, we spent plenty of time rulebook diving in Dolmenwood, where I've never needed to reach for the rulebook running Dungeon World. It manages to be very concise, but also massively more capable as a system.
https://youtu.be/hL_YAarvB5U?is=SQGjmmBP0ignvSy4
Personally, I have tired of the modern 5e/Pathfinder type games where the play often revolves around combat that takes way too long, where playes don't interact much, spend their time waiting to roll the dice and gazing at their character sheets trying to find an answer rather than by interacting with the world.
That's not something you need to do for OSR, though, at least not in general. Dolmenwood is obviously based on that, it's a complete setting paired with a game system. But you can grab an OSR game system without paying much (if any) attention to the setting it may provide. Hell, even for Dolmenwood, I can't be bothered to read it all (it has a lot) and I enjoy making up my own things, so I'll still use the system and just use the setting as inspiration.
Half of my sessions are, "What monster piqued my curiosity this week on my skim through some system's monster manual? Can I create a scenario around it or a bunch of them?" The other half are "I wonder what the river pirates are up to this week, maybe they raided a nearby town and there's an award out for their capture. But what if they were actually hired to do this raid by someone even more nefarious than them..."
No real setting concerns, drop the PCs in a random place and the players will figure it out.
Yeah, I'd expect HN to be more into Eclipse Phase or something.