Dolmenwood is a combined OSR game and setting by Necrotic Gnome (who also
makes Old-School Essentials). Kickstarter will go live on August 9th 2023.

Signup for email announcments when they go live here:

<https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exaltedfuneral/dolmenwood-tabletop-rpg>

Intro to Dolmenwood
---------------------------

Dolmenwood is a fantasy adventure game set in a lavishly detailed world
inspired by the fairy tales and eerie folklore of the British Isles. Like
traditional fairy tales, Dolmenwood blends the dark and whimsical, the
wondrous and weird.

Players journey through tangled woods and mossy bowers, forage for magical
mushrooms and herbs, discover rune-carved standing stones and hidden fairy
roads, venture into fungal grottoes and forsaken ruins, battle oozing
monstrosities, haggle with goblin merchants, and drink tea with fairies.

Streamlined rules and helpful introductory materials guide novice players,
while unique new magic and monsters bring a fresh sense of the unknown to
veteran role-players.

Download a 76 page preview here:

<https://necroticgnome.com/products/dolmenwood-preview>

--
gbbgu

On 13 Jul 2023, gbbgu wrote:

> Dolmenwood is a combined OSR game and setting by Necrotic Gnome (who also
> makes Old-School Essentials). Kickstarter will go live on August 9th 2023.

Looks like there's some debate about whether modifying the OSE rules and
merging them into Dolmenwood was a good idea or not. This was prompted by the
OGL mess and he pivoted to remove potentially troublesome SRD content.

Pros: Standalone product that doesn't need it's own ruleset, may be more
likely to get picked up by newbies in a FLGS.

Cons: People probably don't want to learn another almost-BX-but-not-quite
ruleset. We have lots of those now.

Any thoughts, what are your preferences? I'll be participating cause I'm a
shameless book dragon and always thirst to build my hoard of books.

I guess it comes down to "you can't please all the people all the time".

--
gbbgu

On 14 Jul 2023, gbbgu wrote:

> On 13 Jul 2023, gbbgu wrote:
>
>> Dolmenwood is a combined OSR game and setting by Necrotic Gnome (who also
>> makes Old-School Essentials). Kickstarter will go live on August 9th 2023.
>
> Looks like there's some debate about whether modifying the OSE rules and
> merging them into Dolmenwood was a good idea or not. This was prompted by the
> OGL mess and he pivoted to remove potentially troublesome SRD content.

Here are two blog posts detailing the thought process and expected changes:

Gavin details the reasons here:

https://necroticgnome.com/blogs/news/dolmenwood-developments

and rules changes here:

https://necroticgnome.com/blogs/news/dolmenwood-core-rules

--
gbbgu

On 14/07/2023 00:42, gbbgu wrote:
> Any thoughts, what are your preferences? I'll be participating cause I'm a
> shameless book dragon and always thirst to build my hoard of books.

On the one hand, it would be nice to have a "condensed Dolmenwood" book
for people who don't want to buy an almost-the-same version of the same
rules yet again.

On the other hand, I can see how that would make things much more
expensive for Necrotic Gnome to do that product and the standalone as
well - and their reasons for doing the standalone seem logical.

Wizards' behaviour has completely poleaxed people's confidence in the
OGL, and people are right to be nervous of it going forwards. I am not
surprised it's led to this outcome - it would be irresponsible of
Necrotic Gnome not to revised their product.

If the setting is interesting and evocative enough, it'll sell fine -
and if people who already own the OSE books really want the setting
stuff but don't want to devote shelf space to yet another BX
restatement, PDF is an option. They're making the best of a bad
situation, to be honest.

On 14 Jul 2023, ArthurBDD wrote:

> On 14/07/2023 00:42, gbbgu wrote:
>> Any thoughts, what are your preferences? I'll be participating cause I'm a
>> shameless book dragon and always thirst to build my hoard of books.
>
> On the one hand, it would be nice to have a "condensed Dolmenwood" book
> for people who don't want to buy an almost-the-same version of the same
> rules yet again.

This seems to be the main point I've seen made against it. "We already play
OSE/BX etc and want to use the rules we are currently using with it."

I'm sure a conversion guide will be made, and Necrotic Gnome and OSE seem
to try hard to be 100% BX compatible I'd say they haven't changed
too far from the original rules, and it should be fairly simple to convert. I
do also get that "we already own the rules and I'll have to pay extra because
it makes the books larger".

> On the other hand, I can see how that would make things much more
> expensive for Necrotic Gnome to do that product and the standalone as
> well - and their reasons for doing the standalone seem logical.

They do make several books of the OSE rules. The combined books for Classic
and Advanced, and the individual books. I think that's 12(?) seperate books in
total. This confused me a bit when I first started looking at the ruleset but
I can see the logic. I guess there might be a "Dolmenwood OSE" product in
future, but maybe all those seperate books are just too much work.

> Wizards' behaviour has completely poleaxed people's confidence in the
> OGL, and people are right to be nervous of it going forwards. I am not
> surprised it's led to this outcome - it would be irresponsible of
> Necrotic Gnome not to revised their product.

I was working on a small pet product that was to be highly OSE compatable
using OGL and all the shenanigans were enough to kill my motivation to work on
it. Took me months to start working on it again. I'm sure other people feel
the same, worried that supporting a product and having the rug pulled out.

> If the setting is interesting and evocative enough, it'll sell fine -
> and if people who already own the OSE books really want the setting
> stuff but don't want to devote shelf space to yet another BX
> restatement, PDF is an option. They're making the best of a bad
> situation, to be honest.

I've been a patreon for a while and know I'll buy it, but I'm a book dragon
and need to always increase the book hoard in my lair. I'm sure the hit that
he'll take wouldn't be too significant and it's probably just a noisy minority
like most things on the internet.

--
gbbgu

On 18/07/2023 01:01, gbbgu wrote:
> I was working on a small pet product that was to be highly OSE compatable
> using OGL and all the shenanigans were enough to kill my motivation to work on
> it. Took me months to start working on it again. I'm sure other people feel
> the same, worried that supporting a product and having the rug pulled out.

Yeah, that whole shebang was appallingly handled by Wizards. I tried to
write an article about it and it ended up being a three-part epic
because it just takes that much time to unpack a) what the original OGL
actually accomplished, b) why the initially proposed revision was so
bad, and c) why the revised revision didn't actually fix all the problems.

https://refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2023/02/11/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ogl-y-part-1-forging-the-pax-arcana/

https://refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2023/03/04/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ogl-y-part-2-breaking-the-pax-arcana/

https://refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2023/03/10/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ogl-y-part-3-repairing-the-pax-arcana/