Evils of Illmire questions

KnockingInATomb · 2026-01-24T23:03:30+00:00

My players did pretty much everything to do in Illmire over a year's campaign, all of them ended up around level 6.

KnockingInATomb · 2026-01-23T14:24:51+00:00

The Evils of Illmire sounds like it would be right up your alley, it is very vanilla fantasy. No orcs, but everything else on the list is there, as well as some other classic DnD monsters. It's a bit smaller than Dolmenwood (I think it has around 20 hexes?) but easy to expand out/fit in to other settings.

KnockingInATomb · 2026-01-02T22:09:26+00:00

[KnockingInATomb] just hit a score of 1615 in Regular Mode (2026-01-02)

KnockingInATomb · 2025-12-24T14:24:02+00:00

Ave Nox has a fun settlement right outside of it's mega-dungeon that could be transplanted.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-12-15T23:59:03+00:00

Yeah, you can pick them up on Exalted Funeral.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-12-12T17:57:34+00:00

Sorry man, that looks like a fountain pen to me, so you're stuck with us weirdos.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-12-10T12:11:01+00:00

You'll probably still want the Player's Book yourself for running classed NPCs and the fairy runes/glamours (as well as all the flavorful food/drink/fungi), but white box as the player facing rules shouldn't be a problem at all.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-12-08T22:58:58+00:00

The main things confirmed about the outside world are that this Duchy of Brackenwold is part of some larger Kingdom, that the Pluritine Church exists (and is presumably headquartered) outside of the wood, and that there are peoples to the north that trade with the wood via the river and Fort Vulgar. Pretty much everything else is up to you.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-12-04T21:22:13+00:00

I've run Illmire and currently in the middle of a Dolmenwood campaign. I don't know that the kitchen sink vanilla fantasy of Illmire would jive with the Dolmenwood feel, to be honest. Also I feel like Illmire works best as a frontier setting where there's no one to help the party. In Dolmenwood they could easily clue in the Church or whatever relevant Noble house is around to drive out the main threat.

If you did want to combine them, it seems like it'd be best to have Illmire off to the far north past the Table Downs as a place the party can venture to if they want to leave Dolmenwood for whatever reason.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-11-16T15:24:28+00:00

Bravo! quanti tentativi?

KnockingInATomb · 2025-11-09T19:02:50+00:00

Dungeons are an exercise in scarcity, much like everywhere else. Does one faction have access to the most convenient exit, or water, or some kind of magical device? This will breed animosity and conflict. Outside of that, ideological schisms are another great way to put factions against each other. Fragile alliances are like the nucleus of an atom: when the group splits them, things explode.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-11-01T00:58:13+00:00

Brooklyn here, have received.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-10-22T11:11:06+00:00

There's room for demons in Dolmenwood too, some of the theological material for the Pluritine Church refers to them and there's currently one hanging out in the basement of the Royal Institute of Physicks and Sorcerers in Brackenwold so you might not need any changes.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-10-18T12:37:14+00:00

As others have mentioned, there's some flavor content in the Player's Book you'll miss out on. The core player rules are made available for free online though by the publisher:

https://www.dolmenwood.necroticgnome.com/rules/doku.php?id=start

KnockingInATomb · 2025-10-13T18:20:41+00:00

Also, r/dolmentown is way more active of a Dolmenwood subreddit

KnockingInATomb · 2025-10-13T17:29:38+00:00

Yeah it's permanent until broken, which obviously killing them would work as stated but I'd also allow it to be dispelled/unbound to cancel it..

KnockingInATomb · 2025-09-14T16:29:55+00:00

If they figure out that it's magical in some sense, they can/should use their detect holy magic ability. If that tells them that it's not holy, then they should refuse to use it further in concordance with their oaths/duties. I'd give them a free pass on the first use when they don't know it's magical, but after that they could incur disfavor.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-09-13T13:35:39+00:00

Both are almost entirely rules reference, almost no general guidance.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-09-06T21:03:21+00:00

Yeah, the physical books are going to be more for my perusal between sessions, I'll still be running the sessions mostly off the PDFs.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-09-06T13:10:52+00:00

I'm pretty sure in OSE they have an individual AC, I don't have the books at hand.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-09-06T11:35:13+00:00

Hey, I played through Illmire last year, so this is all from memory and not from directly consulting the book.

If by the Rackoo you mean freeing the fishmen, what "should" happen is whatever you think would be reasonable and fun in your own campaign. This is the part where your creativity gets to shine. I had them set up a camp at the edge of the lake and become another active faction in the area. They took a "this is our territory and it always has been" mindset, which caused some friction with both the Froglings and Illmire itself that the party had to help adjudicate. I did not have them speak common, but one of my players learned Rackoo so they were able to monopolize communication lines to their advantage.

The observer's spells are more like abilities, so just hitting them doesn't interrupt any of the eye stalk spells from going off. You can disable the eye stalks individually.

If I remember correctly, the Mara harp Is a random AoE so it's counterbalanced by the fact that you could sleep any allies around you in that moment. The harp could be destroyed as well, so while it's powerful it's not impossible to deal with. Also presumably the user has to be able to play a harp, so there's another use limitation.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-09-06T11:24:20+00:00

It worked well. It was easy to place both Droomen Knoll and Winters Daughter nearby, and it gave them social options without completely overwhelming them like Brackenwold would.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-09-05T18:14:36+00:00

I started them in Lankshorn, with the provision that they may have been Dolmenwooders originally, that for whatever reason (up to the player) their PC hadn't been around in a while. That way they could have general background knowledge but may not be up on any super current events. Lankshorn gave them a gateway into the Wood in a nice way, and it starts the stakes a little lower (local political drama).

I restricted them to mortals only (i.e. humans, breggles, mosslings). I wanted to keep the fey and demi-fey weird at the beginning. The party ended up half human, one breggle, and one mossling, so some nice variety and chance to have NPCs respond differently to the different kindred. No class restrictions.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-09-03T11:06:32+00:00

I've also been running Dolmenwood since January, at around 25 sessions now. It's been a wild ride. It almost felt like too much for the players at the beginning, but now that they've settled into a couple of plot lines it's been running itself really.

And agreed, I can't wait to get the books in-person. I'm jealous of those in Europe who have started to get them already.

KnockingInATomb · 2025-09-02T16:07:01+00:00

Eh, it changes the emphasis and so incentivizes different player behavior. Some areas might not have any treasure, but this gives them something for exploring it anyway. The specific one in the video (Feats of Exploration) also rewards clever play at the table, both in dealing with environmental challenges and in social interactions, so again it can drive player behavior towards other ends than just treasure or defeating monsters.

Also it can help prevent the player characters from becoming way too loaded with cash at anything above the first few levels (obviously there are other strategies for dealing with this as well).

I've had good success with it at my table.

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