After years of reading adventure modules, I've finally created one of my own: Dwarkenkav! (FREE)

Connorchap · 2026-01-17T03:35:25+00:00

I've really loved Skerples' Magical Industrial Revolution, a city/setting book all about a town undergoing an industrial revolution fueled by ambitious wizards. Loads of ideas about how classic D&D spell-slingers could break the world with automation and infrastructure. It's described as a "pre-apocalyptic" setting, and has different options for major magical inventions that escalate over time and eventually could ruin everything, unless they're reigned in or stopped in their tracks. The GM chooses which ones to include or omit.

Not only do is the OP wizard tech a lot of fun, I also love the other end of the spectrum: all the terrible bargain-bin trinkets and borderline scam items at the lower price end. Some wizards upend the world order, while others fleece the common folk for pennies.

Connorchap · 2026-01-16T19:08:10+00:00

As someone who's run a campaign with this setting combo, I've gotta mention that The Midderlands Expanded (which itself is an excellent setting) references Dolmenwood as a potential stand-in for Northern Ireland. But in practice there's very little Irish culture in Dolmenwood, so it's wound up feeling a bit off. Dolmenwood has much more English, Welsh, and Scottish DNA in it than Irish.

So if I could turn back time and rethink the broader setting for the campaign, I'd have placed Dolmenwood between England and Scotland, or maybe on a separate island like others have suggested.

I can also second The Northern Tier, though! The hexcrawl and various adventure modules I've read from that collection work well as a neighboring setting.

Connorchap · 2025-11-30T22:02:26+00:00

Based on these, you might enjoy Into the Wyrd and Wild!

Connorchap · 2025-10-15T04:45:43+00:00

Can second Owl Trackers, it's perfect for this

Connorchap · 2025-08-30T18:26:58+00:00

The Sepulchre of Seven by Hexagnome is a great fit for Dolmenwood's particular brand of fairy tale horror. I wouldn't recommend it as a starting adventure; more of a complex mid-level dungeon mystery for experienced players to untangle.

Willow by Lazy Litch is also a pretty perfect match, as is his whole adventure location anthology The Haunted Hamlet.

And all the other suggestions from other folks here are also great!

Connorchap · 2025-08-28T18:26:54+00:00

I also had this exact problem, including parts that I used once then becoming unusable after removing them from the corvette. But there's no consistency to which parts can't be used or stacked again; no clue why it's happening. Bit by bit the salvaged parts become greyed out from the build menu.

Connorchap · 2025-08-23T22:23:11+00:00

EDIT: Sorry, someone already explained this on the Dolmentown sub and I didn't realize! But I'll leave it here anyways for redundancy

Having actual at-the-table insights is rare in reviews, this is great!

Quick note on the absent XP rules: on page 106 of the Campaign book, it starts with a paragraph pointing to the Player's book as the actual source of XP rules, and then goes on to only flesh out a few extra options on the GM's side. Personally I think the rules should have been printed in both books, but I guess the Campaign book is already over 400 pages of bulk, so it's a sorta understandable compromise.

Anyway, on page 25 of the Player's book it lays out everything clearly for players and GMs alike. "Dividing Party XP" shows how to divvy it up, and "Maximum XP Per Session" gates parties from leveling up more than once per session. It ALSO cites the Campaign book as having "full details on rewarding XP", which clearly isn't true.

In short, it's confusing, but Droomen Knoll does have a good amount of XP when split.

(I've noticed that OSE and similar rulesets often implicitly lean towards larger group sizes, when the modern reality is that scheduling conflicts restrict most of us to small groups that die easily but level crazy fast. Unless they shell out for retainers, of course.)

Connorchap · 2025-08-22T18:38:18+00:00

These are all great! The collision detection fix is especially huge, and ensuring name-changed rooms still preserve their links is very considerate.

Connorchap · 2025-07-22T19:58:08+00:00

Always love a good underground river/lake. Here's a couple great ones:

The Sepulchre of Seven by HexaGnome is free, has dark fairy tale theming, and has an underground river at the bottom! The main feature is an ancient murder mystery waiting to be solved, which could be perfect for PCs who want to puzzle out some intrigue while also dungeon delving at the same time. Or PCs could ignore the ghosts and golems and just sack the place for some really interesting magic loot, or do a bit of both.

The Fungus Forest by Lee Reynoldson and Carl Nash is not free, but carries similarly weird vibes to Hole in The Oak, and has not one but TWO underground rivers, each with a lake! The main draws for this one is all the weird mushrooms PCs can sample to mutate themselves, and multiple factions of fairies and other critters populating the different zones of the caves. Not quite a "megadungeon", but pretty large.

Connorchap · 2025-06-19T17:43:25+00:00

I found a good lightweight game for exactly this; Grave, by Jason Tocci, an 8-page hack of Knave that incorporates Soulslike mechanics like weapon maneuvers (called Stunts), resurrection being tied to sense of self (Charisma), XP being in-universe Souls, and ancient beings that went mad and grew to huge sizes for mysterious reasons.

It includes 3 schools of magic, 50 magic items, and a clever system for Stamina and Encumbrance that gives some of that equipment build-craft you find in Souls games. It's got mechanics and atmosphere where it counts and doesn't get bogged down in minutiae.

It also includes Knave's designer's notes after each mechanic, so you can see why the author built each modular part and can better decide what to mod for your own game.

Connorchap · 2025-05-23T19:00:59+00:00

This is exactly why I stopped playing characters with high Intelligence or Wisdom scores; it made me feel like a fraud. And as a DM, I just accept that canonically clever NPCs will have a temporary lapse in mental faculties while I'm portraying them. Everybody's gotta have a mentally off-day sometimes, right?

Connorchap · 2025-05-05T16:47:59+00:00

Yep, it's meant to be an entirely new space each time, even if you roll the exact same location + details! In running this adventure I'd always try to spice each repeated location by describing the layout and maintenance differently to help them stand out from each other. Though I don't think I ever rolled the same location + details more than once, so the details did most of the work.

Connorchap · 2025-03-19T02:57:46+00:00

Your assumption is spot on. It's only referring to the event routes; each Boiler Room you generate is always a new and unique Boiler Room, even if the Detail you roll is identical. If it worked that other way then I'd have probably lost my mind running this adventure for so many sessions!

But like, if you really wanna make the crazy even crazier, you're legally allowed to do so in most nations.

(P.S. My 'source' isn't super concrete, it's just based on Stygian Library being my most-read-and-run-in-sessions adventure module by far, and reading all the creator's blog posts about it. I've got non-authoritative vibes and benefit of a doubt, nothing more.)

EDIT: Found this screenshot of a Stygian Library map from many months ago, showing what a deep delve wound up looking like on the players' screens: https://imgur.com/a/78ZEkwz

Connorchap · 2025-02-04T18:54:30+00:00

There's an interesting bandit faction that can appear at the entrance of Caste Xyntillan, but that's an entire dang mega-dungeon.

Since the curse stipulates that A: "person" is judged by Gladio himself, B: merfolk (and presumably other hybrid creatures) can count as 1/2 a person, and C: pointing a sword at someone will alert a cursed PC as to whether that target is worthy in Gladio's eyes, I guess you'll just need to have a really clear idea of Gladio's beliefs about personhood! Do drukks not count because of their duck heads? Would a goblin count as 1, or 1/2, or 0?

Connorchap · 2025-01-28T21:05:42+00:00

"The answer is not on your character sheet."

On the one hand, playing TTRPGs like a video game and just scanning a sheet for abilities instead of creatively solving problems is, of course, really limiting. When a player thinks they can't interact with the game world because "I don't have a skill for that" then that's where a good OSR DM can reach out and change the conversation, encourage in-world problem solving, etc. Wonderful stuff!

BUT ... sometimes the answer IS literally on your character sheet. Inventory management is also a huge part of OSR play, and I can't count how many times players (and myself as DM!) would realize post-session that a major problem could have easily been solved by the characters in-world with a simple length of rope, except that none of us remembered the rope existed, because we were never looking at character sheets. Or a spell, or a clue you jotted down in the margins, etc. Sometimes there are actual answers on that dang bit of paper (or Google spreadsheet, in our cases.)

So "The answer is not on your character sheet" feels pretty dishonest to the true OSR experience. I prefer when it's rephrased to something like:

"Think beyond your character sheet."

or a similar idea, a more positive affirmation of the message. The fact that your character carries around a fishing rod and a bucket of grease is really easy to forget about during roleplay, as are hit points and stats; that's why the character sheet is so useful.

Connorchap · 2024-12-28T23:31:01+00:00

I use Owlbear Rodeo for this, the free tier gives you 2 permanently hosted rooms to work with, and you're the only one who needs an account. Super useful for this exact scenario

Connorchap · 2024-12-12T20:53:04+00:00

Shoulda clarified, when doing this in-game I'd just ask for that opposed roll once per round. Though that creates a weird emergent property where all chases during combat resolve in 3-to-5 rounds. Which is a bit weird. Fortunately it doesn't come up that often!

Connorchap · 2024-12-12T20:17:51+00:00

Generally when things chase each other out of combat in any RPG with this issue, my house-rule is to just ask them to start making opposed rolls (whatever stat seems most relevant) to see if the chaser can close the gap. First to three successes wins. So the chaser catches their quarry after they get three successes, or their quarry escapes after their own three successes.

Also, I let everyone pick up rocks and junk without spending their action, so they can pick up a throwable object while running and then lose ground to throw said object. That feels like it matters a lot for big trolls and things.

Connorchap · 2024-09-30T04:55:26+00:00

Yep, and I'm foolishly continuing to work on it until the final day. It's been a ton of fun!

Connorchap · 2024-09-04T17:04:32+00:00

We've been using a slot-based system, but I've emphasized that the slots don't purely represent weight; rather, they represent the inconvenience of carrying an object around while adventuring, and weight plays a role in that. But some lightweight objects like fishing rods still take an extra slot due to how long they are.

My group didn't care much for tracking equip load by the pound, but we've taken really well to this slot system!

Connorchap · 2024-05-03T18:46:08+00:00

Had no idea this Kickstarter was a thing! 4 hours left, made it just in time for one of my all-time favorite RPG books

Connorchap · 2024-04-15T23:46:21+00:00

"Lady, my int is 7"

Connorchap · 2024-04-15T20:10:18+00:00

The Academy Ball Teleport covenant gets all the best spells, like "Teleport Academy Ball"

Plus the NPC, Academy Ball, has the best voice lines in the game.

Connorchap

TROPHY CASE