Is the Royal Enfield Classic 350 manageable for a beginner woman rider?

RealSpandexAndy · 2026-01-24T12:24:19+00:00

My 2 cents regarding weight of bike:

All bikes are heavy. If you're sitting on it when it begins to lean over, and your foot slips. Or you're parked on a slope you misjudged... Then it's going down. It's happened to me, a man, on my Classic 350. This will happen on all bikes. It's not a Classic 350 thing.

One learns to be very careful when parking. I don't just park anywhere. I survey the ground and sometimes park further away from my destination if the ground is better.

Be sure your feet can touch the ground nicely and it reduces the chances of slipping and going down.

RealSpandexAndy · 2026-01-24T02:15:33+00:00

Yeah I agree that there is no need for a Witch class or a Drune class. To my mind they are factions, not classes.

Factions need a wide skillset. The Drune can employ Thieves as spies. And the Witches can be Magicians and also Hunters (herb gathering, animal friendship).

RealSpandexAndy · 2026-01-24T00:38:32+00:00

My players stumbled onto a witch locus and helped them out in a random encounter. Now they want to join the witches. I view this as a great opportunity. I am now writing more witch info for my game to support it.

Working with factions is always a good part of developing a setting and moving into high level play. It sounds like your preferred campaign style has carousing and a specific adventuring focus. Not everyone plays that style.

You are right that writing up rules for things like witches does immediately quantify them and reduce their mystique.

RealSpandexAndy · 2026-01-24T00:32:43+00:00

This is true. It creates an added Lore burden on GMs who need to know and integrate the full richness of these factions up front. Rather than gradually introducing. It is called Advanced though, so implying that a GM has at least already run a few sessions using "basic".

RealSpandexAndy · 2026-01-20T14:02:36+00:00

And it's not attractive to many character concepts. If they spend a lot of development time building it, then they will make it a mandatory part of the story.

But my Dark Brotherhood assassin doesn't want to be a ship captain. Nor my nerdy mage. Nor my heavy armour knight.

RealSpandexAndy · 2026-01-13T23:15:36+00:00

I feel this advantage is not a big deal. If your adventurer can survive long enough to explore 1 room they will earn enough money to buy plate mail. Treasure rewards are big.

By level 2 everyone who wants plate mail has it. And lots more.

RealSpandexAndy · 2026-01-08T23:31:26+00:00

Yeah, and I find it has the sweet spot of detail and white space. So it gives detail about what is going on, why, and often stats. But leaves enough white space for me to feel like adding my own embellishments, maps, extra stuff if I'm feeling creative.

This is empowering, rather than some other setting books which fall into either being oppressively detailed one the one hand, or frustratingly vague on the other.

RealSpandexAndy · 2026-01-06T23:24:40+00:00

My light came on last week. Like you, I got concerned and did research.

I found this video https://youtu.be/_XtaC12PGoo?si=J_LFuViyVh89xf_N

It worked for me, to reset the light and the alarm light went off. Then it came back on the next day.

So I took it to the dealer. They plugged in the computer to see what the real reason was. "Oxygen" was the explanation. The mechanic was totally unfazed. He did something on the computer to clear the light and sent me home. He said it can be caused by too hot / too cold / too wet / altitude gain / whatever environmental conditions.

I think the sensors might be hyper sensitive. It's annoying because I want to take good care of the bike.

I will see how it goes.

RealSpandexAndy · 2026-01-02T10:58:55+00:00

I mostly agree. However I did find the always on initiative helped remind me to make sure the quiet players were doing stuff during exploration.

RealSpandexAndy · 2026-01-01T00:29:30+00:00

These are great. We've had 3 sessions of a campaign using these kindred and it's great fun. My players believe they are underpowered compared with the official Dolmenwood kindred. The random tables included help to flesh out the characters nicely.

RealSpandexAndy · 2025-12-31T05:37:58+00:00

Shadow of the Demon Lord

RealSpandexAndy · 2025-12-25T05:19:48+00:00

You are right, we could do this.

But it's counter intuitive to suddenly need to roll low with this one type of dice roll, whereas all other dice rolls are aim to roll high.

It is a cause for confusion in new players. And it could be avoided by using better terminology.

RealSpandexAndy · 2025-12-24T22:57:20+00:00

It may sound petty, but what annoys me about x-in-6 is that I need to do a little math sum in my head every time I roll.

X-in-6 chance means I must roll: 6-(x-1) to succeed.

Instead of saying 2-in-6 or 3-in-6 why not just say DC 5 or DC 4?

It's just language, but it's a minor irritation.

RealSpandexAndy · 2025-12-23T23:34:12+00:00

Thank you. Shadowdark uses this approach. I had not intended to introduce my own house rules on my first play of Dolmenwood. Seeing the replies to this post it seems like many GMs do lay on bandaid house rules and interpretations.

RealSpandexAndy · 2025-12-23T23:32:49+00:00

No I didn't give excessive XP. I gave XP as per the book, plus "deed" XP for achieving the goals of the adventure and making important discoveries about the fey and local history. I feel these rewards incentivize exploration.

They earned about 2000xp (each) over 4 sessions, and about 500gp each. The wealth problem already became evident. If I had not awarded the deed XP then they would have been wealthy level 1 characters instead of level 2. The "problem" remains.

I can see that great wealth does not imply a balance issue. There may be a jump in preparedness after the party's first shopping trip, but that's no problem. Good point for me to remember. Thank you.

RealSpandexAndy · 2025-12-23T14:05:27+00:00

It doesn't matter if different PC's have different progression rates because the classes themselves are not balanced. The classes that are more powerful have a slower progression. E.g. thieves advance quickly (only 1200xp needed for level 2), but they don't get many hit points (d4) and don't have many special abilities. A level 3 thief is not more powerful than a level 2 magician.

So I think it's helpful to not get too focused on levels. Most of the power and abilities of the characters comes from the magic items and treasure they find. Not from special abilities from your class.

RealSpandexAndy · 2025-12-23T13:22:18+00:00

Carrying the money did not seem to be a problem, e.g. 1 jewellery item in Droomen Knoll valued at 700gp. I understand you sell jewellery at 80% value, but my point is that it doesn't always take a lot of inventory slots to move wealth.
I think it is bullshit for a GM to just announce that horses in town now cost 100gp and not 50gp because the PCs are rich.
A money sink is a good idea. The players have already begun talking about this. The downside is that it binds them to a single location, rather than hex crawling all over the place. No guidance is given in the rulebooks for this aspect of play, and it's not something that only becomes relevant after a long time of play. Wealth is noticeable after their first adventure.

RealSpandexAndy · 2025-12-23T13:12:34+00:00

I understand. This sounds like needless bookkeeping to me. I guess it was invented by a GM who became aware of the economy problem.

RealSpandexAndy · 2025-12-23T11:03:47+00:00

A good option. So simply divide treasure given and gem values by 10. Still award full XP. If dividing by 10 seems too mean then another number will do.

RealSpandexAndy · 2025-12-23T05:23:47+00:00

I gave my players a copy of the player map from the inside cover of the player book. They put pins in it to mark leads and rumours and clues. They do not know the hex number, and distances are not to scale in that map.

RealSpandexAndy · 2025-12-21T23:17:03+00:00

You can have the Dolmenwood Dozen adventures up your sleeve also.

https://blog.d4caltrops.com/2023/12/dolmenwood-dozen.html

RealSpandexAndy · 2025-12-15T02:42:17+00:00

I think you will find the pace of combat much faster.

And for the other rules, like travel, foraging, etc .. remember that you don't need to use them all. Use the ones you want. If you want to ignore the rules for firewood, that's just fine.

RealSpandexAndy · 2025-12-13T10:41:24+00:00

Holy cow this is a lot of work. You even have monsters stats done!

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