Dolmenwood: Fantasy RPG built around the acclaimed Old-School Essentials rules
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Re: Dolmenwood: Fantasy RPG built around the acclaimed Old-School Essentials rules
#2The Dolmenwood Campaign Book [0] has been nominated in the both the "Best Setting" and "Product of the Year" category of the 2026 ENNIE award [1]
[0] https://necroticgnome.com/products/dolmenwood-campaign-book
Re: Dolmenwood: Fantasy RPG built around the acclaimed Old-School Essentials rules
#3The Dolmenwood Campaign Book [0] has been nominated in the both the "Best Setting" and "Product of the Year" category of the 2026 ENNIE award [1] [0] https://necroticgnome.com/products/dolmenwood-campaign-book [1] https://ennie-awards.com/2026-nominees/
it's beautiful AND incredibly well done. even if you don't plan to ever play dolmenwood: read through the campaign setting!
Re: Dolmenwood: Fantasy RPG built around the acclaimed Old-School Essentials rules
#4I was a backer and the books are lovely, and the setting is awesome.
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
Re: Dolmenwood: Fantasy RPG built around the acclaimed Old-School Essentials rules
#5Dolmenwood rocks. A monumental achievement in TTRPGs.
Re: Dolmenwood: Fantasy RPG built around the acclaimed Old-School Essentials rules
#6For a video with a fairly comprehensive overview, worth checking out:
Re: Dolmenwood: Fantasy RPG built around the acclaimed Old-School Essentials rules
#7Woah... this is crazy to see here. The books are absolutely amazing. Everything is carefully crafted and filled with love. The modern OSR and modern TTRPGS are absolutely wonderful. This is the craft at its finest.
Re: Dolmenwood: Fantasy RPG built around the acclaimed Old-School Essentials rules
#8Woah... this is crazy to see here. The books are absolutely amazing. Everything is carefully crafted and filled with love. The modern OSR and modern TTRPGS are absolutely wonderful. This is the craft at its finest.
> Woah... this is crazy to see here.
Yeah, I'd expect HN to be more into Eclipse Phase or something.
Re: Dolmenwood: Fantasy RPG built around the acclaimed Old-School Essentials rules
#9I appreciate all that Gavin Norman and Necrotic Gnome have done for the OSR TTRPG scene over the past few years, but I have to say each time I see a D&D-derivative system it makes me wish that other systems of the time—like Runequest, Tunnels & Trolls, or West End Games' d6 system beneath Ghostbusters (1985) and Star Wars (1987)—got even half the attention. Tom Moldvay and Dave Cook's Basic/Expert (1981) has been done to death at this point. For a nice historical lesson, look to Moldvay's later work on the Challenges Game System[0], which pares down the AD&D 1E Players Handbook (1978) into 8 pages suitable for running the game at the table.
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
Re: Dolmenwood: Fantasy RPG built around the acclaimed Old-School Essentials rules
#10I just picked up the books, after finishing playing in a short campaign. It's a great setting. The rules system is a bit bare bones, but you could easily run Dungeon World or pretty much any trad fantasy RPG there. Yes, 5e, sure. It would work great for Pendragon.