Aug 16, 2020

Dolmendays - Preparing for an Uncertain Future

Actually managing to play tabletop roleplaying games is tough. A lot of factors put people off of trying it for the first time or continuing it week to week. So last summer I started prepping a campaign for my group of friends to enjoy in our distant and uncertain futures. And as un-luck would have it, a global pandemic and quarantine warped that distant future into a sudden present.


Dolmendays is built out of many OSR adventure resources stitched together, founded on the Dolmenwood campaign setting described in the weird and whimsical Wormskin zines. Since the full campaign book for Dolmenwood has a fair chunk of time left in Gavin Norman's brain-oven, I pulled in loads of tonally consistent adventures to fill out the empty swathes of the map. And when the campaign book eventually does descend from the Kickstarter heavens to our bookshelves and PDF readers, my plan is to overlap its material with what has already been prepared, replacing and ret-conning old stand-in material as little as possible. (Six-mile chunks of terrain can each hold plenty of locales, after all.)


Here’s our current modified map. Most human settlements have fewer that 60 people.


Made with the free version of Inkarnate


As for how to organize the game with the intent of actually playing it, here’s what I prioritized: 

  1. Online compatibility. People move, get sick, go to college, have back pains - sometimes all at once. Getting everyone together physically is wonderful, but would be unrealistic long-term. So everything has to be prepared with the Internet in mind. 

  2. Simple access. No paid services or virtual tabletops; just Discord voice chat, and the occasional Google Drawing for exploring complicated architecture. Rely on theater of the mind as much as possible. Miniatures and tactical grid-based combat systems are abandoned. Video calling is iffy for slow/unreliable internet connections (like mine), so relying on voice alone is a must; this also lets people connect to the game through their phones. (One player has even walked their dog during a session. Neat!) 

  3. Minimal physical media. A pencil, a character sheet, and some 6-sided dice are all that a player needs to have on hand physically, and all of these can be digitized. Making the system rely solely on the d6 makes things easier even when using virtual dice. I couldn’t find a dice-rolling site or plugin that allowed people to share dice results without it being incredibly fiddly to use, so instead the game relies on the good ol’ honor system. Players roll their own dice, announce the results, and everyone trusts each other. Speedy. 

  4. Short session length. We usually keep the weekly sessions to 2-½ hours or less. 5 hours of DM-ing fries my brain, especially in a sandbox campaign based entirely on content written by other people. Restricting sessions to the length of a feature film makes it much more reasonable, and much less daunting, for people to keep the game in their regular schedule. It does leave me chomping at the bit to see what happens next, but it’s worth it for the session quality vs session quantity trade. 

  5. Open table with an ever-changing cast. Even with all these considerations, you can’t expect everyone to show up to every session. And with short session times, it’s also not possible to pursue the ideal of resolving an adventure or expedition at the end of each session. So characters are going to be coming and going in the middle of adventures. Luckily, Dolmenwood is a bit of a fairy-tale madhouse, and strange events can be creatively leveraged to explain away the lack of party cohesion. No one should feel obligated to show up, and everyone should feel welcome to drop in.


These are the principles behind the campaign’s structure. Not strictly a West Marches deal, but similar in spirit. So far it seems to be working well; as of writing, we’ve had 18 proper sessions of the main campaign, one per week. This blog, Capers by Candlewick, exists partly to host the write-ups of what I remember happening in each session, so that we can look back on these rambling adventures in future days. I’ll do my best to make it enjoyable for anybody to read!


The rule system being used is custom, and mostly unimportant in the context of this blog. It’s been specifically written for Dolmenwood, with all the content that players need to generate their moss dwarfs and grimalkin and various other characters of Brackenwold and beyond. Most aspects of character creation can be randomly generated, and many players enjoy doing so. I’ll share any game resources that can be used alongside other rule systems, and leave mechanics vague unless it becomes relevant. Just imagine that we’re playing an odd mash-up of Maze Rats, Knave, and various hacks of both. It’s not D&D, but it produces similar results.


So that’s Dolmendays; an ongoing series of adventures in and around Dolmenwood, utilizing several gigabytes of PDFs from the indie RPG community. It'll be a wild ride.



(P.S. Here’s a non-comprehensive list of stuff that inspired and enabled this campaign:


Wormskin and the Dolmenwood setting by Gavin Norman and Greg Gorgonmilk

Knave, Maze Rats, and the Questing Beast reviews by Ben Milton

The Gardens of Ynn and The Stygian Library by Emmy Allen

Wonder and Wickedness by Brendan Strejcek, and Marvels and Malisons by Paolo Greco

The Goatman's Goblet blog and Rakehell blog/zine by Brian Richmond

Coins and Scrolls blog by Skerples

d4 Caltrops blog by ktrey

The Renaissance Woodsman blog by Dylan Shields

The Nine and Forty Kingdoms blog by John Laviolette

The Forest Hymn & Picnic by Cecil Howe

Into the Wyrd and Wild and They Cried Monster by Charles B.F. Avery

The Midderlands by Edwin Nagy, Mark Nolan, and Glynn Seal

Ryuutama by Atsuhiro Okada, translated by Matt Sanchez and Andy Kitkowski

Veins of the Earth by Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess

Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures by Peter Williams

The Hobbit by John R.R. Tolkien

 

I heartily recommend them all.)

1 comment:

  1. I'm looking at incorporating more of Dolmenwood in my home campaign too. Really enjoying your write-ups, and thanks too for the recommendations of other resources.

    ReplyDelete