Every few days in June I’m picking a TTRPG book that’s been languishing on my shelf or hard drive, reading it, and writing a review. I don’t believe in attempting a full critique of game content I haven’t run or played, so my focus will be on discussing the work’s best ideas and keeping criticisms to text-level quibbles.
Today I cracked into Dolmenwood dozen, a 15-page book by ktrey who you may know from d4caltrops.com. Dolmenwood dozen consists of twelve one-page adventure locations, for use with Necrotic Gnome’s Dolmenwood (which I really thought I owned, but couldn’t find on my hard drive when I checked). The locations were semi-randomly stocked, and I think the results of what ktrey calls ‘calibrating for coherence’ (i.e., polishing them up into something consistent) were very successful overall.
It’s all got a slightly twee, woodsy style, which makes me want to check out Dolmenwood, where it presumably inherits that from.
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| A cute hint |
Things I like:
There’s so much great content in just fifteen pages here. I'm not surprised; I'm a big fan of everything on d4caltrops. These adventure locations are all for detailed situation-based play, from the small (in #1, Strange Smoke from Mattle Mound, three barrowbogeys are bickering over a specific issue) to the broad (#8, the Moonscar Manor, revolves entirely around the disruptive effects of a recent mistake made by some mosslings). All of it’s saturated with unique flavour, so I’m just going to pick out a few highlights.
- A temperamental and fey boat, made without iron, with neat faerie powers
- The aesthetic of tadpoles swimming in a chalice on an old ruined altar
- A suddenly looming horned ogre-like monster (actually a massive puppet being used as a trap)
- A false relic seeing deliberate use at a chantry
- The blood powers of the grume and its sanguineous lair defences
There are lots of interesting magic items, the kind that I like due to their "additional" properties: a shield that is translucent to its bearer, boots that make pond plants bear your weight, and so on. It’s the kind of stuff that I’m always keeping an eye out for, and one of the reasons I follow the d4caltrops blog.
In adventure location #9, Crisis at Kelpie Run, it’s interesting to see the ‘loot’ all presented and priced, even when the place is the village homes of some innocent civilians, almost all of whom are still alive and just need rescuing. PCs gonna PC.
There’s really just one thing that’s a step below stellar in this work, and it’s the order that information is presented in. ktrey described the creation process as:
For each, I tried to limit myself to around twenty minutes or so for each to replicate that “left it to the last minute” experience. Of course, there are some that necessitated breaks or other interruptions during their creation (I didn’t exactly click a stopwatch on each!), and as I was compiling them together I couldn’t help doing a little bit more editing or expanding once I found some free real-estate by consolidating the formatting.
I'm frankly jealous of how fast ktrey can work. But I think this process resulted in some overall information flow problems. This is a free work, one I like a lot, so I don’t want to dwell on the negative. But I do think it would hugely benefit from a paragraph at the start of each entry neatly summing up exactly what’s going on for the GM. This is especially the case because (a) the locations are all mysteries/puzzles/sites of recent activity and (b) there are references to things (characters, monsters, objects, traps, locations, etc) before they are defined, so as it stands, to really understand an adventure location, you have to read it two times in a row.
...But there’s no room left on the page for an introduction! I think that one page per adventure location just isn’t enough. Turning every page into two pages with hierarchically presented information, full sentences, and a brief introduction would do this resource wonders.
Minor text quibbles:
- There are quite a lot of typos.
- I think using pictograms instead of emphasis (boldface and/or colour) for words like ‘door’ and ‘key’ frustrates reading comprehension; there’s a reason why a rebus is a puzzle.
- I suspect that the map in #11, The Ensorcelled Cellar, is mislabelled, with rooms 3 and 4 inadvertently swapped.
All minor concerns, especially for a free resource.
Overall:
I haven’t dived into Dolmenwood, but when I do, I’m going to keep Dolmenwood dozen on hand.
I should note that it also feels like it would be fairly easy to convert this into other old-school style systems, as long as you’re fine with improvising monster stats on the fly.
My favourite bit:
It was hard to pick just one thing! But I love the oenophile wizard, their secret chamber of special magical wines, and their cantankerous rival. That could port to any fantasy game.
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