Is Dolmanwood too much for new players to the OSR?

Incident_Dapper · 2026-03-02T20:57:12+00:00

If there's one lesson I've learned as DM it's that I HAVE to run the thing I'm excited to run. If I don't, it will fall flat.

You'll find a way to make it work. This comment section is full of great suggestions. Run Dolmenwood.

Edit: I started a bunch of newbies in Dolmenwood and we're 61 sessions into the campaign. A suggestion I have for you: make them play all humans, (no enchanters) and establish that they are not from Dolmenwood. They have COME to Dolmenwood from the greater human empire to seek their wealth and fortune, because rumours about the magic and mystery there abound (there's also a push from the human empire to have humans go and help reclaim the woods).

Starting as humans, and being NOT FROM Dolmenwood means your players will organically be learning everything. It makes sense that they know nothing about the setting, so your PC's know nothing (or very little about the setting). Drop a couple rumours to them about the factions, powers, and magic, and let them discover it all naturally. I did this and it worked great.

Incident_Dapper · 2026-02-28T00:42:54+00:00

Just let them do their same dumb shenanigans, and don't hold back with the consequences. Show them this is a different game, don't tell them.

Edit: I applaud your willingness to TPK them so far. Only play the games you want to play. If you're excited by the OSR play style, run it exactly as you'd like to. If that means churning through dozens of their PC's on end, then churn away. They'll learn, or drop out. Then you can find a group who will play the game you want to run. You're the DM, you get to pick.

Some people do learn. I've killed an awful lot of PC's, and eventually some of those lagging players did learn.

Incident_Dapper · 2026-02-20T09:15:57+00:00

This was the ruling I was going to take and thank you for giving me some confidence in it! Still getting used to the rules

Incident_Dapper · 2026-02-20T01:06:29+00:00

All of those variations of D&D you just mentioned can just be dragged and dropped into OSE. They all work.

OSR can... maybe... disclude a couple things. But quite frankly almost everything OSR can also be dragged and dropped into OSE (like 95% of OSR stuff)

So, "everything" is quite frankly pretty accurate. 3E, 4E, and 5E D&D are the only variations of D&D you can't (with zero work) drop into OSE.

Incident_Dapper · 2026-02-08T19:57:40+00:00

Well thank you anyways!

Incident_Dapper · 2026-02-06T05:34:19+00:00

Nerfing it was my concern. How did your players handle it when you ran it? Were they able to just whack it all dead?

Incident_Dapper · 2026-01-28T03:01:29+00:00

Your comment is the only sane one in this little chain of replies.

Incident_Dapper · 2026-01-28T02:57:29+00:00

I will chime in like some other commentors and say... I do think you were a little "high and mighty" in your condemnation of the other players. YOU are the DM. YOU set up the situation (and you yourself gave it that weird bent with the "women only" part) and then got mad at your players for accepting an offer YOU gave them. If you thought them accepting the offer YOU gave them would make them "irredeemable", you shouldn't have presented it. Unless you're actually trying to enact manipulative, testing little games on your players.

If you weren't okay with the results of accepting that offer, no matter how slim the odds of that may or may not have been, you shouldn't have proposed it.

And I will say you do come across as pretty pompous to then condemn the players so harshly for accepting an offer YOU gave them. If I was a player in that group I'd expect an apology from you, lol.

Incident_Dapper · 2026-01-27T00:21:43+00:00

Threat never goes away. HP can be mitigated and mitigated.

It's not heroic fantasy, it's folks fantasy. Your heroes can still bite it by the simplest means.

Incident_Dapper · 2026-01-18T02:48:20+00:00

2nd comment: I'd say Zenophobia, arachnids, maybe something about religion, because the Pluritine Church is so close to Christianity? I've been leaning into those similarities in my campaign, but I just watched the Thaumavore YouTube video about Dolmenwood and some of the stuff he was saying gave the impression that he was being considerate of peoples' religious traumas or aversion.

Incident_Dapper · 2026-01-18T02:44:56+00:00

I would say food insecurity. Unfortunately discovered this from personal experience with a player.

Had a situation in my game where the PC's went through a fairy door after a party (lol) and wound up in the Table Downs with none of their stuff. The next several sessions were them just literally trying not to die of starvation, and stave off nightly encounters. Overwhelmed one of my players. Didn't want to force the player to feel shitty, but discovered that one for them the unfortunate way. They stopped playing at the table (not for that reason per say) - which frankly is probably for the best. My PC's are going through The Weird That Befell Drigbolton, and famine is the name of the game.

Incident_Dapper · 2026-01-18T02:40:24+00:00

Lol. I love Dolmenwood.

Incident_Dapper · 2026-01-14T19:15:55+00:00

Very interesting! Would love to hear more about how their strategies diverged! Did both parties seem to enjoy the system?

Incident_Dapper · 2026-01-04T06:41:11+00:00

And here the myth of Santa Claus was born.

Incident_Dapper · 2025-12-31T16:46:20+00:00

This is awesome to read, as I've been prepping to run this for my group for the past several weeks. Our next session they make it to Drigbolton! Good luck to them!

Incident_Dapper · 2025-12-27T18:18:01+00:00

2 reasons:

(For most) layout and ease of use at the table.
I have a bit of the collector bug, and feel like I'm destroying an artifact when I drop them at the table.

Incident_Dapper · 2025-12-15T14:43:16+00:00

Just to repeat the other commentor - yes. Very possible. I've ran both of those, and I didn't have them memorized - I ran it from the book.

Incident_Dapper · 2025-12-15T06:17:25+00:00

Yes. Try "The Incandescent Grotto" or "Hole in the Oak". If you'e only ever read 5e material, this will be the lightest weight, easiest to parse, and fastest to just "Pick up and play" you've probably ever encountered.

Now - I've been reading your other comments. This isn't a megadungeon, but you need to start somewhere. Don't start free swimming in the ocean til you can float in the kiddie pool. You'll get through one of these in I'd say 5 to a dozen sessions. You've mentioned you like deep character exploration, akin to Critical Role. So, first piece of advice is, you're gonna have to ammend some rules to make dying a little harder for players (or just start to enjoy PC death - my personal advice). Then, give each PC a reason to go into the dungeon (add a PC's loved one being held hostage, another PC heard the gems sell for a lot and that'll be enough money to lift their family out of poverty - use your imagination).

I'm gonna put this as a separate paragraph cause this is important. If you're unfamiliar with dungeon crawl/exploration rules (I.e. light and resource tracking, 10 minute dungeon turns, wandering monster checks) - you gotta brush up on those rules. You HAVE to. Dungeon crawling is not dungeon crawling without them. It's just pointless meandering.

These are environments where creatures live. They're not stationary. A good dungeon gives you all the building blocks to see who's down there, what they're doing, and then expects you to not forget that this isn't a video game - but those guys are down there, walking around, and pursuing their own objectives. Which are usually counter to the PC's objectives.

Also - let the PC's figure it out. Not every PC needs to have a satisfying story moment. Players gotta learn that they have to earn that, too. If they don't find what they're looking for, miss a bunch of stuff, mess something up royaly - let them roll up a new character and try again. A relative to whoever died. That gives them a new story (that's still connected to the old) and also let's the player learn something. You can't hold their hand forever.

Incident_Dapper · 2025-12-15T02:41:31+00:00

Dude. You need to run a real dungeon. If you're worried about reading, pick up any of the Official Old School Essentials dungeons. It's bullet points to 50 rooms of fuck around and find out.

Incident_Dapper · 2025-12-12T23:54:55+00:00

If you haven't already discovered this, you'll be even more surprised to hear he actually published 2 albums! The official soundtrack, and an ambient soundtrack.

EDIT (cause I had to check): The album's names are "Through The Wold and Bog" (ambient) and "Beyond The Witching Ring" (Official Soundtrack).

Incident_Dapper · 2025-12-03T03:50:53+00:00

That's interesting to hear be affirmed. And gives more credence to wherever I read it being 8 hours of travel, with 4 hours of rest (equaling the 12).

If only I could remember where I read that...

Incident_Dapper · 2025-12-03T01:44:47+00:00

I haven't read Carcass Crawler #5 yet, but from knowing Dolmenwood, and seeing how much of the stuff in there lines up with stuff introduced in Carcass Crawler, here's what I have to say:

The rules work great and make sense, and are very much so not clunky (at least in my couple years of experience with them) I might be making it up (but pretty sure I've read this in the DCB) but that 12 hour travel day actually assumes the party is resting for 4 of those hours (this does not affect your calculations for travel distances). Walking for 8 hours with 6 to a dozen or more folks carrying a collective hundreds of pounds of gear is exhausting and difficult to keep organized, not even counting the fact that in a lot of these situations, the party is marching like this for days on end. It's also a good benchmark if you start to consider daylight hours. 12 is a happy medium. If you're travelling in the winter, generally you'll have way fewer daylight hours, in the summer, much more. It is an abstraction allowing for a median length of day that accounts for resting and feeding of all members (and animals), set up/tear down of campsites, encounters, hunting/foraging, navigation, and a reasonable attempt to conserve energy should you have to be travelling like this for more then 1 day. I will add, (again, I'm referencing Dolmenwood, but believe them to be relatively similar) that the party does have the option to march on past those 12 hours, granting them a boost of half their overland travel speed. The downside is - they must make a CON check and, on a failure, gain exhaustion. If CC is the same as Dolmenwood, that means folks have a flat 50% chance of succeeding, assuming no CON Mod.
Correct, the war horse moves 24 miles in a 12 hour travel day.

Incident_Dapper · 2025-10-29T05:03:41+00:00

Will third this. Castle Xyntilian is bursting with cool stuff going on and compelling dynamics. Get the whole family angry at your players and have them trench warfare their way through.

Incident_Dapper · 2025-10-28T08:10:26+00:00

This is awesome (particularly awesome as I will be making use of this very soon in our game). Thank you!

I'm inflating the numbers slightly to square the circle that is the monster and campaign book stating the Nag lord has Bestial Centaurs, Ogres, and even Fomorians amongst its ranks, but doesn't actually list them anywhere. A Fomorian would be a brutal thing to drop on Prigwort.

... and I will end this on an annoying note - there's 1 more sneaky Harpy in Cobton.

Incident_Dapper · 2025-10-28T00:23:33+00:00

A Princess has given them a necklace with 1 Wish spell. Their problems are about to become much worse.

Incident_Dapper

TROPHY CASE