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Dolmenwood – Kickstarter Has Arrived!

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As a general rule, I don’t touch Kickstarters with a ten-foot wizard’s staff. Too often, they feel less like scrappy dream-fueled projects and more like corporate “fund me” jars rattling for coins, a kind of alchemy I find, frankly, a bit of hogwash. If you’ve got the treasure hoard to make a game, then by the gods of dice and destiny, make it, release it, and I’ll happily toss my gold pieces into your coffers for a completed product. Misuse of the platform is as common as goblins in a mushroom glade, it irritates me to no end.

But every so often, a true conjurer of words and worlds appears, someone who uses Kickstarter exactly as it was meant to be: as a lantern-lit path for dreamers without publishers, great houses, or corporate dragons backing them. These are the brave creators weaving wonders with nothing but ink, imagination, and maybe a touch of faerie dust.

Dolmenwood is one such marvel, sprung from the mind of Gavin Norman of Necrotic Gnome. For a few years now, Gavin has been quietly brewing some of the most curious, creative, and downright enchanting projects in the roleplaying sphere. These are the kinds of things that would never survive the soulless glare of a big publisher’s boardroom, too niche, too strange, too delightfully weird. Exactly the sort of creations adventurers like me crave.

From the spellbinding Old School Essentials (a meticulous, love-drenched re-edit of Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons) to a treasure trove of smaller adventures, the cheeky and delightful Carcass Crawler zine, and now an entirely new game built around his own fairy-tale fever dream: Dolmenwood.

I have talked a lot on this blog about Old School Essentials. I ran a 3 year campaign using the system and it performed beautifully. It made me a fan of Gavin Norman. He makes a lot of good stuff.

I’ve been waiting for this one. Patiently, well, mostly, for nearly two years, ever since I pledged back in September 2023. And now, at long last, the package has arrived on my doorstep like a mysterious parcel left by a mossy-footed pooka. To say I’m buzzing would be an understatement. I tore into it with the giddy energy of a halfling spotting second breakfast.

One of the many charms of this whole journey is that Gavin has been an absolute wizard of communication, keeping us updated since day one with missives, sneak peeks, and development notes that felt like dispatches from the enchanted woods themselves. He gave us that personal touch, so even before my box of goodies arrived, I already felt like I’d been walking alongside the project every step of the way. I had been watching the trailer for two years, now I finally got to see the full production.

Today, we’re diving headlong into Dolmenwood. I’ll tell you what’s in the box, we’ll explore the game and its myth-soaked setting, and, most importantly, we’ll discuss who this game is for. So grab a cup of something hot and spiced, lean back in your favorite chair by the hearth, and settle in, because this is going to be a BIG article.

What is Dolmenwood About?

The very first question my friends asked, before I’d even cracked open the box, was: “Okay, but what exactly is Dolmenwood?” A fair place to start, I think, though a simple question this is not.

The best way to answer is to split Dolmenwood into two halves: first, how it works as a game system, and second, what it is as a fantasy world and story engine.

Dolmenwood as a Game

At its heart, Dolmenwood feels like a curious blend of two schools of design. On one side, it clearly draws heavily from Old School Essentials (OSE), Gavin Norman’s brilliant revival of 1980s Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons. On the other, it borrows the best lessons of modern narrative-first RPGs, which put storytelling, character invention, and immersion ahead of crunchy rules.

Now, that might sound like oil and water to some. After all, when many people hear “1st edition D&D,” they picture a rules labyrinth: THAC0 charts, descending AC, bizarre subsystems, and the heavy hand of the dice. Dolmenwood is not that. It doesn’t replicate old-school rules, it reimagines old-school concepts, polishing them into something that feels sleek and accessible to modern tables, but secretly, yes its old school rules. Confused?

To old dogs like me, this is just my adolescent stomping grounds, but I’m not blind to the fact that you have to really be glutton for punishment to still use systems that look like this today. There are better ways.

Ok so to be clear, there are no THAC0 charts, no wargame math, no headaches of deciphering unclear and unforgiving rules for which old school D&D is famous. For anyone coming from 5e, the rules will feel familiar and welcoming, even though for all intents and purposes, these are in fact old school rules. Imagine if a modern game designer, could travel back in time and advise Gygax on the fundamentals of rules writing and game design. Most of the decisions here are common sense for todays standards, but there is a clear focus on capturing the core concepts of these old school rules which (some of us old school guys) really do love. So its the good parts of these rules, without all the non-sense, which, when you get right down to it starts to look very much like a light, alternative, but modern version of D&D.

What Dolmenwood does carry forward from its old-school ancestry is the philosophy: this is not a game of superhero characters with endless feats and powers. It is low fantasy, low magic, high peril. A sword to the gut will probably kill you. You’re fragile mortals, not demigods, and that fragility is what makes your bravery meaningful. In Dolmenwood, you are heroes not because of your hit points, but because you willingly risk your tiny candle-flame lives in a world full of wolves, witches, and weirder things still.

Dolmenwood is not completely absolved of old school gaming shenanigan’s that deserve to stay dead and buried. For example, getting an XP bonus or penalty for having too low or too high prime ability score is just silly. There is some logic to it, but it dirties the waters in my opinion unnecessarily.

Of course as was the case in classic D&D, magic remains the great equalizer. Power often comes from what you find: a scroll, a wand, a ring, a talisman, the coveted equipment that often makes the difference between life with bags of holding full of treasure and horrifically tragic death at the end of a spear. Dolmenwood leans into that old-school rhythm where exploration and treasure-hunting matter to your prospects of survival and success. In fact, equipment is survival; resources are power, the story is about that glorious rise from a mere nobody to a powerful agent in the world.

Dolmenwood as a Story

Where Dolmenwood really unfurls its colors, though, is as a setting-first game. The rules exist, yes, but they feel more like a stagehand pulling ropes than the star of the show. Storytelling and atmosphere take center stage. In that sense, it leans closer to narrative-driven games like Vampire: The Masquerade or newer experiments like Daggerheart, where the drama lives in the back-and-forth between Game Master and players, rather then execution of rules.

This is why Dolmenwood’s books are so massive. The books are mainly tapestry of herbs, fungi, folklore, factions, fairies, pipeweed blends, oddball traditions, and richly described places. (Yes, there’s literally a two-page spread on different varieties of pipeleaf, and another on common fungi. You don’t need these details, but oh, how they make the world breathe.)

The game invites players not just to survive, but to inhabit. Characters don’t begin with a scripted epic or a railroad adventure paths. Instead, they’re handed a living sandbox, an open world alive with secrets, strange folk, and tangled politics.

At the start, you know almost nothing. You’re level 1 peasants with little more than a rusty sword, a pocketful of pipeweed and big dreams. The world is wide, mysterious, and dangerous, and you must carve your own path in it. The magic lies in how your choices, what goals you set, who you befriend, and which factions you side with slowly shape your story. The game doesn’t hand you a narrative; it hands you a place, filled with people with their own motivations and events brimming with fairy tales, and trusts you to grow a narrative out of it.

Dolmenwood is a stage ripe for theatre, something made clear from its evocative art and the writing style, even though theatre is not really traditionally an old school core ideology.

Over time, as you explore deeper, you begin to see the strings: the larger story of Dolmenwood itself. The factions, the plots, the creeping powers behind the veil. Small adventures tie into greater ones, and before you realize it, your once-humble would be adventurer is entangled in the grand weave of politics, prophecy, and faerie mischief.

And every inch of this playground is meticulously detailed. The campaign book runs a staggering 465 pages, stuffed with lore, locations, NPCs, and oddities. Every hollow, every hamlet, every mushroom ring feels like it has a story waiting to be uncovered, it feels that way because it is that way.

So yes, Dolmenwood is a game of rules. But more than that, it is a world, a moss-carpeted, fungus-studded, pipe-smoke-wreathed world, ripe for infinite exploration.

The Dolmenwood Setting

Let’s be clear: as a game system, Gavin Norman hasn’t reinvented the wheel. The “open world, make-your-own-adventure” style of play has been part of the D&D tradition for decades. But Dolmenwood tips its mossy cap to those old-school roots while polishing them for a modern audience, and I’m delighted to report that this approach is making a hearty comeback across the hobby.

Where Dolmenwood becomes something truly unique, where the real fairy-dust sparkles, is in its setting. This is no cookie-cutter fantasy world. In fact, I don’t think anything like it exists in today’s RPG landscape. It’s bold, strange, and deeply imaginative, so much so that it might even feel a little unsettling to players who are used to the safety blanket of Tolkien-inspired worlds.

Most fantasy settings lean heavily (sometimes lazily) on the Tolkien template: elves, dwarves, orcs, kingdoms, repeat. Dolmenwood gleefully shatters those expectations while still remaining recognizably “fantasy.” Its fairy-tale woods are bizarre, whimsical, and very dangerous. Nothing unfolds quite the way you expect, there are fewer recognizable fantasy troupes that players will connect with from other familiar settings. It’s geared towards real exploration, not the exploration of yet another alternative version The Forgotten Realms.

If I had to reach for an analogy, I’d say Dolmenwood is like a strange potion brewed from equal parts Harry Potter, Narnia, Legend and The Never Ending Story, with just enough Tolkien sprinkled in to keep it grounded. Fey folk, enchanted groves, and peculiar traditions abound, Gavin Norman delights in breaking expectations whenever possible.

The 1980’s classic Legend is a mostly forgotten film despite the fact that it was directed by Ridley Scott and stared a young Tom Cruise. It depicts a truly original fantasy world that departs from the Tolkien roots while still remaining oddly familiar as a fantasy world. It’s kind of the same effect Dolmenwood has when you read it.

Even at the character-creation stage, the game asks players to embrace the unusual. You can play a proud goat-headed Breggle, or a small, pipe-smoking Mossling, who feels like a halfling raised in a damp mushroom hollow. Sure, there are humans and elves, but they aren’t the focus. Dolmenwood itself is the wilderness, the edge of the map, the place where weirdness is the default.

The strangeness continues with classes. While you can still pick a Fighter or Cleric, you’ll also find uniquely Dolmenwood roles like the Enchanter, the wandering Friar, the cunning Hunter, and the noble Knight.

Magic, too, is peculiar and deeply rooted in folklore. While there are plenty of familiar things like the generic fireballs of high fantasy, spells draw on fairy glamour, rune-carved standing stones, ley lines, herbal concoctions, and fungi with names that sound like they were whispered by trickster spirits. It feels less like a spell list and more like a hedge witch’s grimoire.

But what elevates Dolmenwood above all else is the way the world itself is built. Nothing is random. Every ruined keep, every ancient shrine, every mossy mound is tied into the greater tapestry of Dolmenwood’s history. Stumble upon an abandoned tower in the woods, and you’ll eventually learn how it connects to the factions, politics, and hidden stories of the land. Nothing is throwaway. Nothing is meaningless. There is purpose and often you will not understand that purpose until later in your adventure, these locations become future lightbulbs for the players to connect in a larger story.

For players, this creates a delightful sense of discovery and self-importance, a logical puzzle where every new clue makes the world sharper and more comprehensible, known only to them. Knowledge that they can leverage in pursuit of their own success if they are clever.

For DMs, it’s a godsend: a pre-built web of places, people, and events that all interlock seamlessly. Players will feel clever as they connect the dots, while you’ll always have the tools to support their choices.

All of this is brought together in the Campaign Book, a masterpiece of editing and design. It combines event-driven encounters with location-based hex maps, giving you the freedom to run Dolmenwood as a true sandbox.

The one page layout approach of the campaign book is perfect for use at the table, you are a 2-3 minute read away from being able to run any area with plenty of flavor and direction, there is no need to read anything in advance even though you will not be able to help yourself.

What makes it brilliant is its clarity. You don’t need to read 100 pages ahead or memorize obscure lore. Every location is laid out in a simple, precise format: history, features, atmosphere, day/night differences, and the secrets that might be uncovered. No wasted words, no bloat, just clean, evocative notes that give the DM everything they need without scripting the events of an adventure.

Take The Craven Mounds, for example. In just a single page you’ll learn what the mounds look like, their unsettling history, the strange shrine hidden among them, the difference between visiting by day or by night, and which creatures prowl there. It’s enough to spark a full evening of play, while leaving room for you to weave it into the larger story. It’s connection to lay lines give it deeper meaning that might become important to the players later and then there is of course the real question, what are they for? The answer is not nothing and its this sort of intrigue that drives the Dolmenwood drama, a purpose in everything.

This structure repeats across the entire book: compact, flavorful descriptions that give you narrative cues and storytelling beats without ever tying your hands. The result is that your players can go anywhere, chase anything, and you’ll always be ready. It’s the kind of prep support most DMs dream about.

Dolmenwood is a sandbox done right: players get freedom, you get preparation, and the world itself does the heavy lifting.

What’s In The Box

While I don’t usually do kickstarters, if and when I decide to donate my hard-earned gold coins to a project, I don’t fuss about; I go all in for the full monty. I went for the limited edition loot box which includes pretty much everything except for a few of the “non-game” related items like T-shirts, buttons and stuff like that. It was a $200 dollar box and includes everything that is designed for the full Dolmenwood experience.

The Books

Let me say this right out of the gate: if you pick up these Dolmenwood books and are not utterly gobsmacked by their quality, then I’d like to meet the little green gremlins piloting your brain. The production values are jaw-dropping, perhaps the best I’ve ever seen in tabletop RPG publishing. The only comparable recent release is Daggerheart, and honestly, Dolmenwood still wins the duel, particularly when it comes to editing and layout.

These books are a dream to reference. The language is clean, concise, and direct, no wading through two paragraphs of purple prose just to extract one useful rule. Everything you need is right where you expect it to be.

Gavin Norman has always had a sharp editorial hand, OSE already proved that, but here, he’s outdone himself. This feels like divine work, a new gold standard for RPG book design. From this point forward, anything less will feel like sloppy wizardry. Work like this makes Wizard of the Coast publications look like incompetent goblins are running the company.

The Player’s Book

One of the trickiest challenges in RPG design is convincing players to actually read beyond the rules. When a game has a unique setting, as Dolmenwood certainly does, the danger is that players learn just enough mechanics to roll dice and stop there, never really tasting the flavor of the world.

The Players Book is a very handy reference for pretty much everything you need to know about Dolmenwood as a game, but its a bit light on giving players story based direction in my humble opinion.

I think Gavin understood this problem. The Player’s Book takes a deliberate approach: keep it short, sharp, and reference-friendly, while leaving the bulk of the lore and storytelling muscle to the Campaign Book. On one level, it works brilliantly. This is a book you don’t need to read cover-to-cover. Instead, it’s a handy companion that breaks the game into digestible chunks, how to make a character, how adventuring and combat work, how the physical universe ticks along. As a quick-start guide to “what is this game, mechanically?” it’s flawless. Often players books that are filled with lore between the pages, create an issue when you actually just want to look up some rules at the table, you won’t find problems like that in this players book.

But here’s the rub: Dolmenwood isn’t a system-first game. Yes, the rules matter, but the beating heart of the experience is the setting. It’s the moss, the pipeweed, the grimalkin, the fey bargains, the eerie ruins waiting in the mist. And I worry the Player’s Book doesn’t give enough of that to the people who arguably need it most, the players themselves. They need the inspiration for character creation and the grounding for their plans because this is after all, a open world game where players are expected to seek out the adventure on their own. How can they be expected to do that if they don’t know much about the place where that adventure is to take place?

Sure, there are delightful sprinkles of flavor scattered throughout. The races and classes ooze personality. The languages, gear, food, and drink entries all sneak in playful, flavorful cultural details. And there’s a particularly excellent chapter called “The Adventure” that does a stellar job explaining what role-playing actually looks like in Dolmenwood, complete with examples that make the difference between “rolling dice” and “telling a story” crystal clear.

Still, I can’t help but wish for just one more chapter, a lore dump, a short but rich introduction that gives players a real sense of what Dolmenwood feels like to live in. There is a kind of two page layout of major factions and settlements as a reference but its just not enough.

This is because while mechanics get us rolling, it’s the setting that inspires us to play. We don’t pick between Alien and Star Trek Adventures because of their initiative systems, we pick them because one is about horror in the void and the other is about utopian space diplomacy. It’s the story behind the game that drives the whole thing.

And Dolmenwood, for all its mossy brilliance, deserves that same up-front love and it should be in the first chapter of the players book. It’s absence I think in particular with players like mine, will be a bit of a problem.

As it stands, the Player’s Book is beautifully illustrated, brilliantly organized, and a joy to use, but I’d argue it’s just shy of being the perfect guide for players. A little more lore, and it would be flawless.

The Campaign Book

Ah, the Campaign Book. This towering tome isn’t just a rulebook, it’s a storybook atlas of wonder, equal parts practical GM guide and enchanting fireside read. From the very first page, I was grinning like a mischievous faun. Gavin’s writing is clever, breezy, and endlessly readable, just enough flourish to make it fun, but never so much that you lose track of the game-ready details. It’s splendid, cover to cover.

This is the meat and potatoes of Dolmenwood, written in a style that makes this entire book a page turner you will want to read cover to cover.

Now that I’ve got the finished version in my hands, with all its lavish illustrations, it feels like a treasure pulled straight out of a mossy chest. The art captures the words perfectly: whimsical, eerie, and evocative all at once. The character portraits especially are so vivid you can practically hear their voices, quirks, and mannerisms leaping off the page.

At first glance, one might assume Dolmenwood’s open-world, West Marches–style design means there’s no central story, just a big faerie sandbox. But that’s a trick of the briars. Hidden among the hexes and hamlets is an overarching narrative, an honest-to-goodness tale threading its way through people, places, and events. I won’t spoil it here (the delights of discovery belong to the reader!), but trust me: it’s there, and it’s wonderfully easy for a GM to weave into play.

The ink art is absolutely amazing, crafted to depict the bizarre world of Dolmenwood with a nod to classic D&D that is unmistakable.

The settlements section alone deserves applause. Each one feels like its own mini-campaign in a bottle, bursting with unique cultures, strange laws, and peculiar inhabitants. There’s no generic “town” or “city” here, every settlement is a little gem of fairy-tale worldbuilding, more bizarre and enchanting than the last. Its like reading Harry Potters version of England, except you have a wide array of cities from all over the world to explore, each wildly different from the next. They’re richly described in the Campaign Book and beautifully backed up in the accompanying Maps Book.

And then there’s the heart of it: the hex-crawl. A full third of this 460+ page grimoire is devoted to detailed hex locations, and they are a masterclass in design. Each entry can be digested in a couple of minutes, giving you just enough to run the area with confidence, but always laced with hints and connections that pull you deeper. It’s impossible to flip through without “cheating” as a DM, sneaking ahead to peek at how people, places, and events intertwine. Those connections are exactly what players will discover in play, and they’re intoxicating. You’ll want to run Dolmenwood the moment you put the book down.

Of course, the Campaign Book also comes stocked with the GM essentials: magic items, curious equipment, random tables, charts, and all the toys you need to answer the question, “What if my players…?” Whether your party sets out to plunder dungeons, open a tavern hawking strange ales, or establish a kingdom in the mist, you’ll have what you need within a page flip. That’s the real magic of this book, it makes running Dolmenwood feel effortless.

In short: I absolutely love this book. Honestly, if Dolmenwood had shipped with only the Campaign Book, it still would have been worth the price of admission.

The Supporting Tools

Dolmenwood comes with its share of frivolous extras (see below), but the real treasures for a GM are the supporting tools, clever, practical, and brimming with utility.

The Monster Book

This volume is a delight. The illustrations are gorgeous, the entries lean hard into roleplay cues, and the mechanics always come with a twist or two. Many of these creatures aren’t meant to be generic foes but unique denizens of Dolmenwood, weird, singular beings with their own origins woven into the setting’s lore.

An fantasy RPG is incomplete without a monster book, but frankly I have so many of these you have to do something really special to make it worth are time. In my humble opinion, Gavin nailed it, you cannot run Dolmenwood without this book and maintain it’s unique character.

That’s the real trick here: every monster’s backstory matters. Their histories and methods of creation often double as clues for how clever players might deal with them.

One of my favorite touches is the chart of monster rumors, half true, half deliberately false. They’re perfect for seeding tavern gossip, confusing players, or foreshadowing a lurking horror in the woods. It’s playful and practical, like the rest of the books.

The thing about most monster books for me personally is that I find that they are usually generic replications of pretty standard fantasy monsters that I have seen scraped together based on everything that has come before in D&D. This book is unique to the setting and you could not run Dolmenwood without it. Its a must have to do this setting justice and t ensure its well executed.

The Maps Book

Think of this as a stack of enchanted lenses. Each map presents Dolmenwood filtered through a different lens: political boundaries, faction domains, herb and fungus distribution, shrine locations, ley lines, and more (no spoilers!).

This is without a doubt a luxury, not really something you need, but having a lot of material that is easy to reference allows you to answer wacky questions that might come up unexpectedly and that is a nice touch to making the world feel lived in for the players. I like it.

For a DM, it’s an absolute luxury. Need to know which lord rules the next region? Or which strange herb grows in that hex? Flip a page and it’s there. The book also includes full-page settlement illustrations, styled to reflect local culture. They’re mostly for flavor, but oh, what flavor. Pull one out mid-session, and your players instantly feel the character of the place.

It’s not a necessity by any stretch, but its cool and I can definitely see myself using it.

The GM Screen

I’ll be honest: I’m not usually a GM screen fan. It can feel like a wall between me and the table. But if ever there was a screen that earns its keep, this is it.

I don’t use DM screens generally, but so far as they go, this is a pretty useful one.

Printed on thick, sturdy board, it’s packed with genuinely useful reference material: combat reminders, weapon traits, faction names, settlement lists, and those regional pronunciations you’re bound to butcher under pressure.

Again, not a necessity, but sure, why not.

The Adventures

The box also comes with four stand-alone adventures tailored to Dolmenwood:

  • Winter’s Daughter
  • Emelda’s Song
  • The Fungus That Came to Blackswell
  • The Ruined Abbey of St. Clewyd

Each one can be prepped in about fifteen minutes and run on the fly, short, sharp, and clearly laid out so you’re never bogged down in text when you should be running the table.

They’re tied into Dolmenwood’s broader story web, but they also work independently as bite-sized campaigns. And while I haven’t run them yet, I backed Dolmenwood largely because of Gavin Norman’s adventures. His style is unpredictable, evocative, and brimming with creativity, exactly the kind of storytelling that surprises even veteran GMs.

Winter’s Daughter is probobly THE adventure that made me a fan of Gavin Normans creativity and led to me buying Dolmenwood.

More importantly it doesn’t overcook your prep. This isn’t a story laid out point by point, or just a bunch of location place descriptions, its more of an adventure guide that gives you the basics and you fill in the rest. Though it gives you enough so that you don’t have to plan or think about it in advance, you’ll be able to run these on the fly.

That’s the mark of a good adventure writer: giving you something you couldn’t have conjured up yourself. These adventures hit that mark. Brilliant work, full stop.

The Frivolous Fun Stuff

Beyond the core treasures of Dolmenwood, the box also comes sprinkled with a handful of whimsical oddities, frivolous, yes, but delightful all the same. Think of them as the shiny baubles and enchanted trinkets you might find tucked into a mossy hollow after a long woodland ramble.

First up: funny dice. Yes, Dolmenwood blesses you with a set of charming polyhedrals, your trusty click-clack friends, ready to be rolled in fury or folly. Then there’s a jaunty little Dolmenwood patch, perfect for sewing onto a bag, cloak, or perhaps the satchel you take into the woods when mushroom-picking. Add in access to a digital soundtrack (more on that in a moment), and, most surprisingly, a full set of miniatures.

I tend not to use miniatures in my RPG sessions, mainly because I want combat to be just an extension of role-playing rather than a “mini combat game” we play periodically when a fight breaks out. But I love collecting and painting miniatures so these are going to get some paint regardless, because they are pretty unique.

Now, as a longtime lover of pewter and plastic adventurers, I must say the minis were the most delightful surprise, mostly because I had completely forgotten they were included! These are single-mold game pieces already perched on bases, sturdy and practical. No, they’re not dripping with hyper-detailed resin flair, but they’re absolutely paintable, and more importantly, they embody Dolmenwood’s curious cast of races and classes. Goatfolk, moss dwarfs, grimalkin, and other odd denizens you won’t find in your average fantasy bestiary, they’re here in charming form, ready to stalk across your tabletop. For anyone who likes to use minis in play, these are a genuine boon.

The soundtracks, meanwhile, are a touch of magic I didn’t realize I needed. I adore setting the mood at the table with music, and Dolmenwood’s offerings are wonderfully distinctive. There’s a proper “music” soundtrack, full of strange rhythms that feel like a cross between old-school video game tunes and eerie X-Files-esque mystery. Then there are the atmospheric tracks, which I think are the real gems. These are subtle soundscapes, whispers of wind, the patter of rain, the creak of branches, the low murmur of something uncanny just beyond sight. Many are region-specific, perfectly tailored to accompany particular areas of the setting.

Together, they capture the peculiar, otherworldly vibe of Dolmenwood in a way that words alone can’t. You can practically smell the damp moss and hear the flap of a nightbird’s wings.

So yes, these extras may be the garnish rather than the feast, but they’re flavorful little morsels all the same. Cool stuff, and wholly in keeping with Dolmenwood’s knack for enchanting the senses.

Conclusion – Who Is Dolmenwood For?

I’d love to say Dolmenwood is for anyone who loves fantasy and role-playing games, but that would be too broad, and not entirely fair. This is a unique world and a very particular system, and not everyone will vibe with it.

If you grew up with old-school Dungeons & Dragons, particularly the stranger, more experimental settings of 1st and 2nd edition, Dolmenwood will feel like a nostalgic return to form. It has the same bold departure from Tolkien tropes that made worlds like Dark Sun and Planescape so compelling, while still carrying that classic sense of story-driven adventure that made D&D a phenomenon in the first place.

For modern audiences raised on 3rd, 4th, or especially 5th edition, the appeal is more complicated. The setting, whimsical, fairy-tale, tinged with Narnia, Harry Potter and Neverending Story, may hook you immediately. But mechanically, this is not a game of heroic power curves, feat chains, or endless character builds. Dolmenwood is not about gaming the system, it’s about dynamic narrative play. Growth is slower, victories are hard-won, and characters are fragile. If you try to play it like 5e, leaning on dice and mechanics to bail you out, you will die. Often. This is a game that rewards planning, cunning, and creativity over brute force.

And yet, this might be exactly what modern players are looking for. Many D&D players openly admit they find the modern rendition of the game too easy, too bloated with safety nets, too focused on “powers” rather than theatre. Dolmenwood offers a refreshing change of pace: a system that strips things back, trusts the players, and invites you to rediscover role-playing as a collaborative story first and foremost.

That’s why Dolmenwood matters. It’s not just a curiosity, it’s part of a broader movement in the hobby. Games like Blades in the Dark, Shadowdark, and Daggerheart, along with the OSR revival, are all pushing role-playing back toward dynamic player-driven experiences. Dolmenwood stands proudly in that lineage, and in many ways raises the bar for what a modern fantasy RPG can look like despite its nostalgic nod to classic D&D play.

Now I would personally argue if you really want to experience a modern RPG as a design, Daggerheart is just pure magic. But as a built in story, combined with clever writing and an amazing set for theatre, Dolmenwood is also a fantastic choice.

So yes, I recommend it. Wholeheartedly. Not because it will replace D&D at every table, but because it reminds us that fantasy role-playing can be stranger, braver, and more imaginative than the well-worn Tolkien mold. Dolmenwood is extraordinary, a design triumph, a storytelling feast, and a bold step in the right direction for the hobby.

Role-Player Game Reviews

Shadowdark – Review…sort of…

I don’t usually review role-playing games here at Gamersdungeon.net, and for good reason. Reviewing an RPG after a single read-through or a session or two is like reviewing a restaurant after sniffing the menu. Sure, you could, but you’re not doing the chef, or in this case, the designer, any favors. It doesn’t help your readers either. RPGs are machines with a lot of moving parts, and you only hear the engine purr (or cough) after you’ve actually run the thing for a while.

But Shadowdark is a different beast. A strange, time-twisting beast. Because even though it’s a brand-new game, I’ve been playing it for… oh, about thirty years. Yes, thirty. Cue the Twilight Zone music.

How is that possible? Well, Shadowdark isn’t just a game, it’s the codex of house rules we old-school Basic/Expert D&D folks have been scribbling in the margins for decades. Shadowdark is, for the most part, “the best of” mixtape of all those tweaks, adjustments, and modern fixes that grognards like me have been lugging around in binders and notebooks since the Reagan administration. Reading it felt less like discovering something new and more like reading my own notes, only better formatted and with a professional layout instead of coffee stains with a few clever extras.

So yeah, I know this game. I know it like the back of my GM screen.

And yet, that doesn’t take away from what Kelsey Dionne (The Designer) has pulled off here. She’s taken the essence of classic D&D, bottled it, polished it, and somehow made it shine brighter than it ever did in the first place.

Spoiler alert: it’s a masterpiece. So instead of doing the usual review thing, I’m going to give you the tour of how Kelsey pulled off this wizardry.

Introduction to Shadowdark

If you’re an old-school D&D player, Shadowdark needs no introduction; it is a dungeon-crawling survival adventure in which players (not their characters) are challenged to take their avatars into dangerous places, explore them, and relieve them of their treasure. It’s the foundational concept of old school D&D dungeon survival gameplay, and Shadowdark doesn’t just lean into it; it makes it almost exclusively about that.

This core concept isn’t just a metaphorical thing, as it is the case in some modern fantasy RPG’s (think Forbidden Lands) that try to capture the dungeon survival genre. Like 1st edition B/X, it is a literal, mechanically supported goal built into the game. How much XP you get in this game is based on how much treasure your surviving avatars walk away with. This is key as treasure is intended to be the primary motivation behind the game…period….

This core pillar (treasure = XP) is not part of modern RPG fantasy play like 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons; rather, it has been replaced by the many shinaningans that go into character creation and session 0 planning. In modern games, “motivation”, aka, why are we here, why are we going on this adventure, how does “my character” feel about the story, events and plots, is the replacement for this rather simplistic motivation Shadowdark (and old school D&D) offers.

Shadowdark, as a concept, is a derivative of 1st edition Basic/Expert rules, even if many of its core mechanics are drawn from modern 5th edition D&D.

It’s a significant complication that comes with playing a modern take on role-playing in fantasy worlds. I’m not here to tell you what Shadowdark is better; it’s not a competition, but it is a hell of a lot simpler. So simple, in fact, it alleviates the need to have any discussion in advance at all. Like a board game, treasure = XP, is a simple, direct goal that ensures all the players and their characters understand the “why” behind the game’s primary motivation. All you have to do is create mechanical characters, and you’re ready to play. You don’t need any more information.

That, however, doesn’t mean that this old school approach doesn’t have character, story, plot, and narrative, but it puts those things outside of the scope of the work at hand.

Think of it this way. Your life, what you’re about, who you are, how you live, and what you wish to accomplish in your life aren’t necessarily linked to the 9 to 5 you put in every day. You do that for money, it’s what supports your other, more important ventures in life.

This is more or less how Shadowdark (and the old school gaming approach) sees it. You don’t go on personal quests in pursuit of some glorious ambition; being an adventure is “your work”. It’s dangerous work to be certain, but it’s where your wealth comes from, and so when you show up to work at the door of a dungeon, it’s time to buckle down and focus on the job at hand. Go in there, find the treasure, and get out. What you do with that treasure, what ambitions you will fulfill with it, well, that’s a kind of sidescape that is developed between player and DM later, perhaps even between sessions as a sort of backdrop to the game. That is, if you do it at all.

Maybe you open a tavern, maybe you start a guild, perhaps you build a Wizardry tower, or become a land owner constructing a keep and town. Perhaps you use it to destabilize the politics in the region etc.. etc.. All of it is possible, but none of it has a direct impact on what you actually do in Shadowdark as a game.

Now it’s important to recognize the difference between intent and application. As is always the case with RPG’s, you do with it as you please. You can just as easily run Shadowdark as a traditional story-driven game; there is nothing about the rules that prevents it, but as a design, what you find in the book in terms of advice and direction will push you towards the more classic old school gaming tradition. It’s a game, first and foremost, not a narrative storytelling “concept” as is the case with many RPGs that came after the 90’s.

While many will argue, the concept of storyteller and narrative first style gaming is largely credited to Vampire The Masquerade by White Wolf. Though story has always been a part of role-playing, prior to VTM, most people did not think of the game as theatre.

In the end, it is plain and simple: Shadowdark is a dungeon-crawling survival adventure game. It’s challenging and it’s fun.

Characters

Let’s talk avatars. One of the pillars of old-school dungeon crawling is simplicity, not just in the rules, but in the very idea of what your character is supposed to be. This isn’t about min-maxing or building the perfect “damage engine” with more moving parts than a Swiss watch. Shadowdark hands you a mostly-random pile of stats, a handful of hit points, and enough pocket change to buy a pointy stick and maybe a sack to carry your regrets in. Then it shoves you into the dungeon and cheerfully says, “Good luck!” It’s an idea that screams old school D&D, and it delivers it with precision and no apologies for being what it is.

The core game gives you four classes. Not forty-seven. Not a three-ring binder of subclasses. Four. The classic archetypes.

  • The Fighter. Your armored battering ram. They’ve got one job: take hits like a champ so everyone else doesn’t have to. Fighters are the heroic meat-shields we all need but never appreciate until they’re gone.
  • The Priest. Think of them as part-time warrior, full-time walking first-aid kit with divine customer service hours. They heal, they buff, they keep the rest of you standing long enough to make bad decisions.
  • The Thief. Not really meant for fighting so much as everything else. Locked doors, hidden traps, stolen wallets, the dungeon is their playground. In a dungeon, a thief is the difference between springing a deadly trap and dying horribly or walking out with bags of gold.
  • The Wizard. Wizards are the ultimate problem-solvers. The catch is they’re fragile. Like, “trip over a rock and die” fragile. But once you get past that whole being alive problem, they can bend reality, melt faces, or turn invisible just to mess with people. Basically, they’re children with nuclear launch codes.

On top of that, you pick an ancestry (what we crusty grognards used to call “race”). The usual Tolkien suspects are here: Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, Human, but Shadowdark spices it up with Goblins and Half-Orcs, which is a refreshing nod toward the “we know you want it, don’t lie” side of player choice. Each ancestry gives a small bonus, usually just enough to patch a weakness or flex a strength. These ancestries are also sufficient to act as a template for creating your own, which is generally kind of the point of games like Shadowdark. Every element in it is a blueprint for making your own stuff.

Importantly, unlike B/X, ancestry and class are separate. (Shocking, I know.) No more “Elf-as-a-class” nonsense. Also gone are the AD&D-style restrictions where, say, a Halfling couldn’t be a Wizard because… reasons. Here, it’s house-ruled freedom straight out of the box, I don’t know a person alive today who still plays with these sorts of restrictions. I’m sure they are out there; most of them hang out on the Dragonfoot forums, and I’m sure Kelsey has had to defend this decision more than once.

But that’s not all. You also get:

  • Backgrounds (modern flavor text so you can say you were a “Turnip Farmer” before all this).
  • Alignment (Lawful, Chaotic, or Neutral—nice and simple, like the good old days).
  • Talents. This is where things get spicy. Instead of cookie-cutter class abilities everyone optimizes to death, you get talents from a list, randomly stacked over time. No picking, no power-gaming. Just, “Congratulations, you rolled this weird perk, deal with it, make it work.” It’s very much in line with the “you get what you get” ethos of old-school gaming.

I’ve been running a house-ruled talent system myself for years, but I’ll admit it: Shadowdark’s version is smoother, fairer, and way more polished. Like, I brought a garage-built go-kart to the race, and Kelsey Dionne showed up with a Lamborghini. It’s the difference between someone who designs games professionally and amateurs like me.

This setup is perfect for a straight-to-it D&D game; it’s simple enough for character creation to be quick and easy, but interesting and diverse enough for each character to be unique. It’s kind of what old school B/X was trying to achieve, but I always recognized it didn’t quite nail it and ended up house ruling the crap out of it. Shadowdark effectively recognized the same thing and fixed it in an eerily familiar way, almost like Kelsey has access to my Google Drive.

Equipment and Magic

Here’s where Kelsey and I part ways a little. Shadowdark takes a very lean and mean approach to gear and spells: a short, functional list that covers the basics and nothing more. It’s clean, it’s efficient, and it absolutely works.

However, I’ve been running survival dungeon crawls long enough to know that equipment and spells are the only real currency players have. When you’re trudging through a dungeon, every ten-foot pole and flask of oil is the difference between “triumphant return” and “everyone dies in a pit trap.”

So while I respect Shadowdark’s minimalism, I can already hear my players asking: “Where’s the breastplate? What happened to Blink? Who stole my Bag of Holding?” To which the answer is: it’ll show up in supplements, or as is more often the case, I add in the stuff I think is missing. That’s how RPGs work, past and present. The core book is your foundation, and Shadowdark gives you a rock-solid one. The spice rack comes later or in the form of house rules and player-created content.

One of my favorite books of all time is the Arms and Equipment guide from 2nd edition AD&D. While largely it does not change the game in any significant way, I loved knowing stuff about all the wild medieval weapons, armor, and gear, both real and made up. This book remains a foundation for every type of fantasy campaign I ever run.

Now, magic. This is where Shadowdark got me grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. They use a mechanic I’ve been house-ruling for years: roll to cast.

See, in D&D, magic is basically an escalator that only goes up. Wizards get more spells, bigger spells, scarier spells, forever. No brakes, no consequences. Which is fun, sure, but eventually your wizard stops being “squishy scholar” and starts being “walking apocalypse with a staff.” It makes everyone else in the party feel like they are getting weaker and triggers classic conversations you will hear all the time among modern players like….for example, how to make martial classes more useful and comparatively powerful to a Wizard. This is the source of most power creep in D&D over the years; few think of ways to scale back mages rather than scale up martial classes.

Shadowdark fixes this with a brilliant twist: spell slots are gone. Instead, you roll to cast. If you succeed, great, the spell goes off, and you can cast it again later. If you fail, you don’t get to try that one again today. No tedious slot tracking, no Level 1 wizard crying in the corner because they already burned their single Magic Missile. It’s simple, it’s clever, and frankly, it makes me a little jealous. I’d been circling this idea for years, but Kelsey nailed it.

And then there’s the mishap table. Oh yes. Cast a spell, roll a natural 1, and magic slaps you upside the head for your arrogance. Fireball goes boom in your face. Illusions turn on you. Weird stuff happens. It’s delightful. Even better, clerics get their own version: instead of exploding mana, they get into an awkward theological argument with their god about “proper spell usage.” (“Really, Steve? You used divine power to impress barmaids again?!”) Chef’s kiss.

It’s elegant, it’s dangerous, and it makes magic feel like what it should be: a risky, volatile force that doesn’t always do what you want. And I love it.

Gameplay

When it comes to gameplay, Shadowdark isn’t here to reinvent the d20 wheel. If you’ve ever played Dungeons & Dragons, any edition, you’ll sit down at the table and immediately know what’s what. Roll a die, fight some monsters, loot the shiny stuff. It’s comfort food gaming, but with a few extra spices thrown in.

That said, Shadowdark doesn’t just photocopy D&D and call it a day. It sprinkles in house rules most old-school tables already use, and polishes them until they shine.

Take Advantage and Disadvantage from 5E. Elegant, simple, and a godsend compared to the days of juggling a dozen fiddly +2/-1 situational modifiers. I’ve been running with this mechanic since the moment Wizards of the Coast unleashed it, and Shadowdark agrees: it belongs everywhere.

The first article I ever wrote for this blog (From Mediocrity To Perfection: The Trials of D&D 2014) was an article about the 5th edition, namely the advantage and disadvantage mechanic. I still hold that it is the best mechanical contribution to the game of D&D that came out of the modern version. I use it for everything.

Then you’ve got critical hits and failures. Another fan favorite. Roll a natural 20 and something awesome happens. Roll a natural 1 and the universe laughs at you. Shadowdark makes sure both ends of the dice curve matter.

Need a quick ruling when you’re stuck? The 50/50 resolution rule has your back. Flip a mental coin (d2) whenever you can’t decide whether that dropped torch actually ignites the spilled oil or whether the surly innkeeper decides to punch the bard in the face. Simple, fun, done.

There are also Luck Tokens. Basically re-roll currency. Call them inspiration, hero points, light side/dark side chits, every system has its version. In Shadowdark, they work smoothly and give players a nice little “get out of jail free” moment when the dice go sour.

And when it comes to skills? Forget them. Gone. Instead, Shadowdark keeps things light with straight ability checks. Want to recall a trail, spot a goblin, or notice the barbarian is trying to cheat at dice? Roll your ability score and move on. It cuts down on bloat and keeps the game moving. Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of chunky skill systems either; they just overcomplicate what is, statistically, already a chaotic d20 toss. Kelsey clearly feels the same.

Initiative is simplified too, rolled once at the start of the session, not every combat. Nice and efficient, though personally I prefer Daggerheart’s “players choose” approach. Either way, Shadowdark doesn’t let bookkeeping drag the fun down.

Everything else, light sources, movement, hiding, surprise, resting, works exactly as you’d expect. Solid, reliable D&D bones. But the real fun is in Shadowdark’s quirks, the bits where it struts out on its own.

Carousing

Not new, but always a delight. Shadowdark bakes in carousing, spending your gold on wine, women, song, and general debauchery, in exchange for XP. It’s perfect for those characters (players) who don’t have lofty ambitions like “found a kingdom” or “uncover ancient truths.” Nope. They just want to party like rockstars, and Shadowdark says, “Sure, here’s some XP for your troubles.” A beautiful money sink and a role-playing excuse rolled into one.

The Real-Time Torch

And now, the poster child of Shadowdark: the real-time candle. Light an actual candle at the table, and when it burns out, so does your character’s torch. It’s atmospheric, I’ll give it that. You will get tension as you watch the flame sputter lower. But honestly, it’s more of a gimmick than a core mechanic. My players are usually prepared enough that the candle rarely does more than stress out the snack table.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of time pressure mechanics. I just think the execution works better in other systems, like Daggerheart’s use of timers and fear/hope points to tilt the spotlight between players and GM. That feels more interactive. The candle is a cool set dressing. But set dressing, all the same.

The DM Guide

So far, I’ve only skimmed the surface, roughly the first hundred pages of Shadowdark’s 300+ page tome. The rest of the book is the DM’s playground. Advice, tables, monsters, treasure, it’s essentially a lovingly crafted toolbox for running the kind of dangerous, seat-of-your-pants adventures old-school D&D is famous for.

I firmly believe that the best Dungeon Masters Guide ever written was done by Gary Gygax for 1st edition AD&D, but it’s not an easy read, it’s not convenient and it’s a horrific editing job compared to modern standards.

Now, I could spend three separate articles dissecting this section alone (believe me, I have opinions), but let’s keep it simple: if you’re new to being a Dungeon Master, you could not ask for a better teacher than Kelsey Dionne. Her guidance is sharp, practical, and rooted in that “fun first, but scary second” vibe that makes a great game.

Two parts stood out to me in particular:

Monsters That Want You Dead

Shadowdark monsters don’t exist to pad your XP bar. They exist to kill you. Brutally. Gleefully. They’re designed to remind players that being an adventurer isn’t glamorous; it’s like taking out life insurance in a world where goblins are the actuaries.

This isn’t a game where you kick down doors and expect a “balanced encounter” to be waiting. Shadowdark firmly plants its flag in the old-school camp: if you fight fair, you die. The odds are stacked against you. Survival depends on planning, creativity, and maybe just a smidge of cowardice. Frankly, I adore it.

Treasure Like a Slot Machine

Then there’s the way Shadowdark handles magic items, which is pure genius. Instead of handing out the usual +1 sword you’ve seen a thousand times, items are generated in a Diablo-style mix-and-match fashion. Random rolls create unique gear combinations, so you never know if that sword you just looted is going to be “pretty good” or “campaign-definingly insane.”

This approach does two things: it keeps DMs from drowning in prep, and it keeps players leaning forward at the table like gamblers feeding coins into a slot machine. Every treasure haul is a gamble. Sometimes you win big, sometimes you don’t, but either way, you’ll dive back into the dungeon for another pull on that loot chart.

The most addictive part of Diablo was (is) the dynamic loot system. It drives you to delve deeper and play longer, and coming back to town to identify everything to see what you got was pure joy. Having that as a core element to a table top RPG is brilliant.

And honestly, that’s perfect for a game like this. Because if monsters are going to chew you up, you should at least have the hope of finding a shiny toy worth dying for.

Conclusion

There’s a lot more I could say about Shadowdark, but here’s the thing: RPGs aren’t meant to be absorbed purely through reviews. They’re meant to be cracked open, rolled with, and tested in the wild. You’ve got to actually sit at the table, sling some dice, and see if it sings for you.

That said, let me be crystal clear: Shadowdark is one of those rare books that belongs on your shelf even if you never plan to run a grand, sweeping campaign with it. It’s the perfect “anytime RPG.”

Here’s a scenario I know you’ve lived: you’re hanging out with friends or family, and someone says, “Wouldn’t it be cool to play D&D?” Everyone nods enthusiastically… and then reality sets in. Fifth Edition? Character creation alone is a three-hour marathon of spreadsheets and spell lists. The evening’s already gone before you’ve even rolled initiative.

Shadowdark laughs at that problem. With this book, you can go from “should we play D&D?” to “roll for initiative” in about twenty minutes. It’s quick, it’s deadly, and it captures the heart of old-school dungeon crawling without burying you in prep.

And that’s the magic of it: Shadowdark isn’t just for grognards or OSR diehards. It’s for everyone. New players. Casual tables. Busy adults who miss the game but don’t have the time for a full-blown campaign commitment.

So yeah, spoiler alert confirmed. It’s a masterpiece. And more importantly, it’s an RPG you can get to the table very easily. It respects your time and doesn’t assume you have hours to spend on prepping your entertainment. It’s the RPG equivalent of saying “let’s go to the movies… right now”

I love this game; it nails the intended design goal with perfection.

Gaming Articles, On The Table, Role-Player Game Reviews

In Theory: Critical Role, Daggerheart vs.Dungeons and Dragons

The biggest headline in the world of nerdy tabletop gaming just dropped like a fireball: Critical Role, the internet’s most famous troupe of voice actors turned dice-slinging legends, has made their choice, and it’s a big one!

For the upcoming Season 4, Critical Role won’t be rolling with their own shiny new system, Daggerheart, a game that exploded in popularity the moment it hit the scene. Instead, they’re doubling down on the freshly released 2024 edition of Dungeons & Dragons (what many of us are calling “5.5e”).

While Critical Role is famous for its D&D campaigns on YouTube, they have done a hell of a lot more than that as a business. The Legend of Vox Machina, for example, is reminiscent of the classic D&D cartoon from the 80’s (albeit obviously a hell of a lot better) is just one among a slew of entertainment offerings that have spawned from their success.

So what does this seismic decision mean for the RPG community? Should we be surprised, or was this move written in the stars like a prophecy from a high-level divination spell? That’s what we’re unpacking today, from the perspective of someone who’s both a die-hard Daggerheart player and a lifelong D&D fan.

The Short And Sweet Of It

First, a little disclosure: while I have a ton of love for Critical Role and all the incredible things they’ve done for the tabletop RPG community, I’m not what you’d call a dedicated viewer. Honestly, watching other people play D&D just isn’t my jam. I understand the appeal, and I respect it, but personally? I’d rather be rolling the dice myself.

That being said, there’s no denying that what Critical Role chooses to put on their table carries massive weight for the entire hobby. When Matt Mercer and crew pick a system for their main campaign, it doesn’t just shape their story, it shapes our tables, too. Critical Role is one of the biggest gateways into role-playing games. Quite simply, the game they play often becomes the game everyone else wants to play.

For their first three epic campaigns, that game was Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, and while D&D was already sitting on the throne as the most popular RPG in the world, Critical Role cemented it there with adamantine chains. Their endorsement wasn’t just influential; it was defining.

So when Daggerheart, Critical Role’s very own homegrown RPG, burst onto the scene with massive fanfare, there was an inevitable question hanging in the air: would they abandon the dragon-shaped juggernaut of D&D and ride their shiny new creation into the next campaign?

Personally, I wasn’t all that shocked when the answer turned out to be no. D&D was always the obvious choice, and for one clear reason: it’s the most universal, recognizable system in the hobby. Add to that a perfect storm, the unprecedented success of Baldur’s Gate 3 (arguably the best PC game ever made), Stranger Things barreling toward its final season (and bringing D&D references back into the spotlight), and Wizards of the Coast launching the new 2024 ruleset (the cleanest, most polished version of the game to date). All roads pointed back to D&D. Why fight gravity?

Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition is successful in ways that one could never have imagined back in the 80’s when we were playing in cellars and lying about it at school. It’s gone mainstream, we can where T-shirts with the D&D logo and get nods of approval walking down the street. It’s awesome!

That said, I can’t overstate how much I adore Daggerheart. I’ve been playing in a campaign with my local crew since its release, and it’s quickly become one of my favorite RPG experiences of all time. Its narrative-first design, elegant mechanics, and streamlined resolutions make storytelling feel effortless. Every session feels like a spark of creativity, and the game has inspired me to role-play and write in ways I haven’t in years. Simply put: I’m in love with it.

But D&D holds a different kind of magic. It’s the comfort food of RPGs, the game that’s just fun at the table. I always keep a couple of 5e campaigns running on the side, usually dungeon-crawling, monster-slaying, treasure-hunting romps. They’re especially perfect for younger players or folks newer to the hobby, where the focus is more on rolling dice and less on heavy narrative.

For me, D&D and Daggerheart aren’t competitors; they’re tools in the same creative toolbox. Sometimes you need the universal accessibility and classic adventuring vibe of D&D. Other times, you want the narrative spark and fresh mechanics of Daggerheart. The beauty is in knowing which tool fits the story you want to tell.

What Does The Future Look Like?

There’s always a debate simmering around Wizards of the Coast and their crown jewel, Dungeons & Dragons. And honestly, I sometimes ask myself, why?

At the end of the day, D&D is a beloved game. With anything that popular, there will always be an “anti-crowd” ready to pick it apart. That’s just the price of being the industry leader.

Now, to be fair, I’ve had my own frustrations with D&D, but never with the game itself. My gripes have always been with the company behind it. Case in point: during the infamous OGL scandal (if you don’t know about it, give it a quick Google), I actually banned 5th edition content from my blog as a show of solidarity with fellow creators and players. That was a messy chapter, but it blew over quickly, and in the end, the actions of Wizards of the Coast don’t define what the game itself is.

Because the truth is, D&D is still everything it’s always been: a monster-slaying, dungeon-crawling, dice-chucking blast. Sure, I could argue all day about which edition I personally prefer (and I do on this blog all the time), but for modern enthusiasts, especially those who don’t carry the decades of history that older grognards like me do, the smart move is simply to play the latest edition. That means 5th edition, and with the 2024 update, it’s clear this version is here to stay.

It’s unlikely to ever reach the popularity of D&D, but there is no question in my mind as a 40-year veteran in the hobby that Daggerheart is one of the best RPG’s to be released since Dungeons and Dragons, second only to perhaps Vampire The Masquerade.

So what does the future hold for tabletop RPGs? Honestly… more of the same. D&D will continue to reign as the most popular, most widely used system on the planet. Wizards will keep releasing books, people will keep buying them (myself included), and creators like me will keep making content for them. The cycle isn’t changing anytime soon.

And Critical Role knows this. No matter how much success Daggerheart has (and yes, I absolutely love the system), it’s not a universal game. It’s niche. It caters beautifully to a specific type of table and a specific style of play, but it’s not the catch-all, mass-market juggernaut that D&D is. If Critical Role had shifted to Daggerheart for Season 4, they’d risk cutting their audience in half. There was no upside to that gamble.

So in the end, their decision simply cements what many of us already knew: in tabletop RPGs, it’s business as usual. And honestly? I’m more than okay with that.

Gaming Articles, Role-Player Game Reviews

In Theory: The New Generation of Dungeons and Dragons

One of the unexpected perks of hurtling toward the half-century mark, aside from creaky knees and reading glasses, is having grown up with the world’s greatest roleplaying game: Dungeons & Dragons. For as long as I can remember, this game has been a part of my life, sometimes in the background, sometimes front and center, but always there, like an old friend ready to spark the imagination.

And one of the greatest joys of D&D is passing it on to others and watching them discover the game as I did in my youth.

This summer, my family escaped to the sun-drenched hills of Tuscany, where we rented a villa nestled among vineyards and olive groves for two blissful weeks. It was an Indian summer, the air thick with heat, our days melting away by the pool. But as the sun dipped behind the cypress trees and the cicadas finally fell silent, a new tradition emerged. Dungeons & Dragons by moonlight.

My players ranged in age from 12 to 20, kids from my extended family, including my own, and for many of them, this was their first taste of the game. We cracked open the Essentials Kit and plunged into Dragons of Icespire Peak. Our first evening began with character sheets and dice, laughter and name-picking, as we stepped into the legendary Forgotten Realms on a quest to slay a dragon.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure how it would go. This is a generation raised on iPads and X-Boxes, a digital world of instant gratification. I half expected eye rolls or short attention spans.

What I got instead was lightning in a bottle.

From the very first session, the spark caught. D&D didn’t just become part of our vacation routine; it became the reason to clear dinner plates faster than ever before. The excitement was palpable. The story, the characters, the dice rolls, they were hooked. It was electric.

For them, it was magic. For me, it was something deeper. Watching them discover the wonder of tabletop storytelling in real time was like watching fireworks go off behind their eyes. There’s something incredibly moving about seeing a new generation fall in love with something that shaped your own youth.

In a word, Pure magic.

A Game About Rules You Don’t Follow

When introducing Dungeons & Dragons to a new group, especially adults or seasoned gamers, there’s a sacred ritual: session zero. You take your time. You explain the rules. You build characters thoughtfully. You lay down the groundwork for the campaign like a careful gardener planting seeds.

But when your players are kids?

They just want to fight the dragon!

Their impatience was a jolt, a glorious, chaotic reminder of what D&D really is. Yes, it has rules. Yes, there are mechanics and modifiers and sourcebooks full of fine print. But none of that matters if you’re not having fun pretending to be a sword-swinging, ale-guzzling hero with a questionable moral compass.

There have been a few different starter sets for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, but I think the Essentials Kit is one of the most complete and arguably the most flexible. It includes rules for creating your own characters, a campaign that takes players through 6th level, and has additional material like cards and a DM Screen. Most importantly it’s an adventure about fighting a dragon, which I think is sort of on point with new player expectations.

The kids didn’t care about encumbrance. They didn’t ask what armor class was or how spell slots worked. What they did care about was choosing the coolest-looking helmet (even though modern D&D doesn’t have rules for helmets) and ordering a frothy mug of tavern ale (because pretending to be drunk is, apparently, hilarious).

They wanted to dive headfirst into the fantasy and so we did.

We built 1st-level characters lightning-fast: 4d6, drop the lowest, straight down the line. Four classic classes—Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard. No agonizing over feats or backstory minutiae. In less than 20 minutes, we were on the road from Neverwinter, headed toward the sleepy frontier town of Phandalin, backpacks light, coin purses jangling, stomachs growling.

I told them they were running low on rations, poorly equipped, and unprepared for the dangers ahead. They ignored all of it. Naturally. Because five minutes later they stumbled upon the corpse of a murdered merchant, Orc tracks leading off into the woods and that was all the motivation they needed.

They were in.

There is a new starter set coming out later this year called Heroes of the Borderlands based on the classic 1st edition adventure Keep on the Borderlands. This robust set clearly targets a younger audience and looks like it will be quite perfect for introducing new players to the game with lots of visuals and extras to help make the introduction as easy as possible.

They didn’t know the rules. They didn’t need to. What they did know was that something had happened. Something bad. And these make-believe heroes were going to chase those orcs into the forest and make them pay, because they knew what Orcs were, they had all seen The Hobbit.

It was everything D&D is meant to be: danger, mystery, and bold, messy heroism.

Every face was locked in. Eyes wide, pencils nervously chewed, dice clutched tight. When I asked, “Who’s tracking the orcs?” and introduced the very first Survival check, you could feel the energy spike like a lightning bolt hitting the table.

The Rogue rolled a natural 20.

They followed the trail right to a clearing where a band of orcs sat around a campfire, drinking and laughing. Before anyone could strategize, the Fighter slammed their fist on the table and shouted, “I attack the Orcs with my Axe!”

One of the other players protested, but it was too late.

“The Fighter takes off running. The rest of you better catch up”, I told them.

Boom. Chaos. Laughter. Screams of delight.

Pure D&D magic.

What is D&D?

When I first sat down to write this article, I wasn’t sure what it was going to be about. I just wanted to tell the story, because even the act of writing it out stirred something in me. A kind of quiet, emotional tremor. Watching those kids, my kids and nephews, discover Dungeons & Dragons the way I once did was more than just heartwarming. It was life-affirming.

I’ve spent my life playing games. Role-playing games, miniature games, board games, you name it. And if you’re like me, you know the looks you get. The raised eyebrows. The half-smirks from people who have never had a gaming table in their lives. Even my wife, who’s known me for over 25 years, has often looked at me with a kind of affectionate confusion.

Why does a grown man care so much about all this?

But this time… I saw something different in her eyes.

She watched what was happening around that table, not just the game, but the way the kids leaned in, eyes wide, hanging on every word and I think, for the first time, she really got it. And then something happened that neither of us expected.

One day, the adults decided to go on a wine tour through the Tuscan countryside. It was going to be a long day of vineyard-hopping and child-free relaxation. No D&D that night, the kids would be left to their own devices. There was some grumbling, of course, but we kissed them goodbye and set off for a day of indulgent day-drinking.

When we returned, we braced ourselves for the usual post-unsupervised chaos. But there was no chaos. No screens. No locked bedroom doors.

Instead, the kids were all gathered around the table again, playing Dungeons & Dragons, on their own.

Dungeons and Dragons in my day was a big mystery; it was not a very approachable game, but the vivid art combined with that mystery of discovering the game through the many books printed for it was absolutely irresistible to me.

My son had taken the mantle of Dungeon Master. Despite barely knowing the rules, he was narrating a story, guiding the others through improvised adventures. They were telling tales, fighting monsters, completely immersed in a world they’d decided to build together.

No one told them to do it. No one handed them a script. They just wanted to.

They’d even drawn portraits of their characters, hoping, of course, to earn some extra XP from me when the campaign resumed. And before I could even step fully through the door, they were on me with rapid-fire questions:

“Why didn’t you tell us about Saving Throws?”

“There’s a Paladin class? What about Barbarians?, Why didn’t you tell us!?”

“Why didn’t you tell us about D&D Beyond!?”

It was… stunning. These screen-savvy, digital-native kids had unplugged themselves. They weren’t mindlessly scrolling, or zoning out, or retreating into the isolation of algorithms and apps. They were creating. They were collaborating. They were lighting up a part of their brains and their hearts, which too often lies dormant in today’s world.

And that, right there, is what D&D is. That’s what it’s always been.

It’s not just dice and rules. It’s freedom. It’s pure creative expression. It’s a primal kind of joy, something ancient and instinctual that lives inside every person. Some people find it in books. Some in painting, or sculpting, or dancing. But when you sit down at a table, look your friends in the eye, and say, “What do you do?”, you’re unlocking something sacred.

D&D is a release valve for the imagination. A bridge to wonder. A reminder that we are all still storytellers, no matter how old we get.

So, if there’s a takeaway from all this, it’s simple.

Play Dungeons & Dragons with your kids.

It’s good for them.

It’s good for you.

It’s good for the soul.

Gaming Articles, Role-Player Game Reviews

D&D Theory: The lost art of fantasy adventure

The Gilded Griffon stands at the village’s edge, deep in the unexplored frontier, its weathered stone walls are bathed in torchlight, the sign of a majestic griffon hanging above the door. Inside, the scent of roasting meat and exotic spices fills the air, while shadows dance across scarred oak tables. A grand hearth crackles, its mantle adorned with ancient weapons and relics of past adventures. Patrons from distant lands murmur in hushed tones, and a minstrel’s haunting melody drifts through the room. Behind the bar, a silver-haired barkeep watches with a knowing eye, recognizing you with a nod as adventurers looking for work.

DM: What do you want to do?

This is the moment, this is how D&D kind of started for me. Not this exact start, but it’s how I imagined it. I was 10 years old, it was 1985, I was for the first time invited to a D&D game, I had my 1st level fighter (Darius) character sheet in front of me and all I knew about the game I was about to play was that my job was to pretend I was this fighter in a fantasy world in which terrible monsters existed.

It was a magical moment, one that would define how I would spend my free time over the next 4 decades. It made me a prolific reader, it drove a lifelong passion for creativity, and resulted in the most memorable friendships of my life.

As far as the game went there was an important discovery that I would not make until nearly 40 years later about how and why this moment was not only unique but why I would spend the next 40 years trying to re-create it every time I sat at a gaming table.

See the magic of this moment is not about nostalgia, it’s not really about old-school gaming, or the OSR, or something about the “edition of the game” or game mechanics specifically either. There were many theories I and others would come up with that would try to explain this moment and why D&D back then was different than today and what has changed and why but they would all turn out to be dead wrong.

The magic of this moment it turns out was simply that, I didn’t know what was about to happen and I was not following any script filled with assumptions. There was nothing that happened before the game other the mechanical work of producing an abstract character which we knew nothing about except a race and class and maybe a name. Meaning, I had virtually no information about the game I was about to play. All I knew was that I was a “Fighter” and that meant I knew how to use weapons and armor, a generalization at best. I knew that the goal of the game was to explore the game world (somehow) and we were told by the DM that “you can do whatever you want, go wherever you want”.

The question was “Why”? Why would I go anywhere? I was instructed that as a 1st level fighter, I was not very good at fighting yet, that I would need more experience (which notably I was unsure how to get), and that the world outside of the tavern was dangerous and you could die easily.

Here was the thing, It was scary and though I just made this character, I was already quite attached to Darius. The act of writing down his name on a funny looking, but intriguing page called a character sheet had built him up in my head, he wasn’t just a “character”, he was a person I cared about and I didn’t want him to die, I didn’t want to do anything “stupid” that would put him at risk. The DM was well known for cruelly tearing up character sheets of dead characters right there at the table, we had all heard this rumor, so I knew and believed in the danger of the game.

One of the tricks of the trade among DM’s in the early days of D&D was that they did not reveal much to the players. It would be several months before any of us even realized that we were actually near the City-State of Greyhawk, a famous place in the D&D “world” we would eventually have the pleasure to visit.

But the DM of course did not make my life easy. He said, “You are hungry and thirsty and tired as you have traveled many weeks to get here and are low on supplies”. The DM told me that you can die of thirst and hunger and you can even die from exhaustion. So we did the natural and perhaps predictable thing, (we being a couple of my friends in similar situations with similar characters in our adventuring party) we walked into the tavern, ordered food and drink, and asked for rooms so that we could rest. It seemed logical and it was our idea, our plan, we made the decision to do that, our first act as role-players. It felt powerful, even though it was very simple.

The DM then, in the voice of the tavern keeper told us that this would cost 2 silver for the food and drink and 3 silver for a night in a room. And in that moment, that split second of pretending to exist as characters in a fantasy world, we all realized what this game was really about. We were about to spend the rest of the money we had collectively together just to eat and sleep for a day. If we didn’t get more money soon, we would probably die of thirst and hunger, it was the harsh reality of the game.

We….. needed money!

And so a purpose was born, we were adventurers, fighters, clerics, and thieves and we needed money because we were just about out of it and we had no jobs and no way to make more and so the game truly began. We were promptly approached by an old thief who had a treasure map of a ruin nearby and offered us 100 gold, not to explore it, but just to find the entrance hidden somewhere in the nearby forest. You can’t imagine what an exciting moment that was. We had a mission..ney, a quest and it felt real, it felt important. We were role-playing and it didn’t take much to get us there.

The 1st edition AD&D DMG had a lot of very strange rules, but of course, none of us ever looked inside of it. It was only sometime in 1992 when I became a DM that I finally read this book, getting my own copy. It never occurred to me that the game we were playing really didn’t have any firm rules and was built on abstract philosophies like 1 gold = 1 XP, things that defined the metagame, but were mere suggestions at best, not really rules.

There was no session zero, no elaborate rules or explanations, no backstory writing, and no “defining” anything about what was about to happen. We relied on our natural and very basic instincts and imagination to create a game of make-believe that we would make every bit as real to us as the world we lived in. We were playing Dungeons and Dragons, a magical fantasy world of pretend, not rules.

This was Dungeons and Dragons to me from 1985 well into 1995. That little gaming group was together for over 10 years and though my fighter from that first session would quickly perish in a terrible incident with a Gelatinous Cube as did many characters that followed, I will never forget him, his adventures, or any of the characters I played in Dungeons and Dragons during these years. Oddly, I never wrote a single word about them down, yet I remember each with crystal clear clarity. I remember their deeds, their adventures, how they grew into power and often how their story ended tragically in some dungeon as we (the avatar and I) pursued our ambitions in the game.

This is Fantasy Adventure, this is what D&D was and I have to be honest and this will make me sound like an old Gronard, but it was so much better, so much more fun and narrative than anything that happens at a gaming table in the modern day. A fact that would plague my group for the many years that followed.

Is it possible to learn this power?

In 1995 my group had been together for 10 years, we had played through 1st and 2nd edition AD&D and while we loved our games, like all gamers do we started noticing that there were “other games” and everyone wanted to try their hand at some new stuff. After all, we loved D&D and we loved role-playing so, doing it with other settings and rule systems sounded awesome. It sounded amazing to be a Jedi in the Star Wars universe, or a Highlander or a Star Trek Captain. The opportunities of other games were very attractive to us and we began exploring them.

For about 5 years we went through what I would call a sort of “role-playing ring around the rosy”. We played everything that wasn’t D&D you could think of. All the world of darkness stuff, various science-fiction games and every system under the sun from GURPS to Warhammer Fantasy. You would be hard-pressed to name a game my group and I didn’t try, we did it all, and nothing was off the table.

It was fun, and I really want to nail this point home here that no one was disappointed, we really enjoyed these games, but….. We all realized by around 1998 that we didn’t get together as often, campaigns didn’t last as long, people got bored and often games died when people didn’t show up to sessions, and really, the entire “magic” of D&D that kept our crew fully dedicated for 10 years prior was missing from all of these games. These games were all a bit empty, absent of the magic and wonder that we found in D&D. By 2000 we barely even played RPG’s anymore.

Then 3rd edition D&D came out and we of course got excited again. We all got back together with fresh new books in hand, everyone read every rule, cover to cover and we were ready to play, invigorated by the hopeful return to those amazing and magical D&D games which at this point were distant, nostalgic memories. There was a promise of a new golden age, a return to the wonderful world of Dungeons and Dragons that we all missed, that in our eyes was “true role-playing”, the only game that ever really gave us that intangible gaming experience.

I think we had all hoped that 3rd edition D&D would bring the magic back to the table, but as I discovered many years later, the problem wasn’t the game system so much as gaming culture that led game design. I don’t want to suggest that AD&D was the only way to create magic at the table, but it was the only game that didn’t get in the way of the attempts to do so. 3rd edition had too many explicit rules that defined what characters could and could not do, a trend that would catch on and became the methodology for game design. It was in a way, the death of role-playing as I knew it. Games no longer lived in our imaginations, we could no longer “do whatever we wanted”. Games now lived on the table with very strict rules about what was and was not possible and we would spend most of our time arguing about whether these rules were good or not rather than playing D&D.

By 2002, role-playing in our group was all but over. 3rd edition D&D, even though it was Dungeons and Dragons and felt very familiar just had no magic in it, that much was clear. There was no excitement, no mystery, and no mystical spirit in the game. The rules were convoluted and far too explicit and we argued about their abstracted representation of the game worlds living in our head constantly. These rules killed the imagination because they sought to place it with game mechanics.

In many ways, the rules of the game became the only point of any conversation about D&D between us, we no longer wondered about what D&D was, or what mysteries were hidden within its intangible imaginary words. We spent an ungodly amount of time instead trying to fix the rules as we fought among ourselves and the world (internet) over them. To put it plainly, it just wasn’t fun anymore, the year was 2002 and Dungeons and Dragons was over, it was dead and 3rd edition would create 2 decades of terrible game design that would slowly drown out any life D&D had in it. I know that is cruel to say and one might even challenge its accuracy given the popularity of 5th edition, but, modern D&D is popular in the same way McDonalds is popular. It’s a processed and manufactured game for the masses, reduced to the most basic, lowest common denominator. When I tell people about the intangible magic of D&D, they call be a Gronard, a relic that doesn’t know what he is talking about. For a time, I almost believed it.

Our group was pretty much fully disbanded by 2003 and I would not play D&D or anything else with any of those guys until nearly 2 decades later. I did continue playing with other groups myself though. As much as I enjoyed the many people I shared RPG experiences with over the years the games were simply never as good as those original AD&D experiences of the mid 80’s and 90′.

In fact, most of the time I was quite bored and have continued to be quite bored with most role-playing games since, it’s really a rare game that even marginally excites me these days even though I’m constantly chasing that dragon. I still like playing them, I still enjoy the pursuit, but more in a conceptual and philosophical way rather than actually playing. When I play, most of the time, I’m just disappointed that these games are just not as good, not as much fun and lack that intangible spirit of the classic D&D that we played for over a decade in the 80’s and 90’s.

So what really happened? What is the problem with other games? Why is there no magic, no spark, no heart in any of these other RPG including the latest and greatest versions of D&D from Wizards of the Coast? Why did Dungeons and Dragons die around the 00’s? Did it die or did I change?

Not from a Jedi..

I have contemplated this for years, I have researched, I have reflected, I have tested a wide range of theories to try to understand what was so special, what it was that was so unique and/or different that altered the experience and made it so much better in those 80’s and 90’s D&D games that I find missing in modern RPG’s and the modern RPG experience?

For a time I wrote it off as nostalgia and my age. I was between 10 and 20 years of age when I played AD&D, I’m nearly 50 now, it was during a much simpler time in my life and I just presumed that back then I just had more imagination, more energy, and more appreciation that today I lack. The game didn’t change, I changed.

It seemed like a fair and reasonable assessment, one I could accept, but…. then something magical happened. Almost like a fairy tale, as if some genie appeared out of thin air and granted me the wisdom I needed to understand and to find perspective and of course a little help from a little show, maybe you heard of it “Stranger Things”.

One of the oddest elements of Stranger Things is that it’s a show driven by classic D&D tropes and specifically 1st edition D&D fantasy adventure which is played and represented on the show. The very game and very experience I had and missed was right there on the screen, yet oddly enough modern fans would take this inspiration and instead of playing AD&D they would play 5th edition that does not in any, way, shape or form represent what you see on Stranger Things. It’s bizarre to me.

A friend of mine called me up, an old friend from my old gaming group and said “Hey, the old crew wants to get back together and play some D&D, we want to do an AD&D 1st edition one-shot”.

I thought to myself, holy shit yes.

I have the high ground..

In the first 30 seconds of our first session, I was back in 1985 as a 10-year-old playing Dungeons and Dragons for the first time. It required nothing more than the DM using the old formula, the most basic introduction and the simplest core element of D&D to bring it all back.

There was nothing to it, we made characters, essentially randomly generating them as one would in AD&D. Made some basic choices about equipment and who would play what roles, we gave our characters names and we were dropped into the game world with a very basic plot hook to “investigate the evil temple”. It all fell perfectly into place like dominos.

That moment I realized that this game had more story, those characters had more meaning and this game had more role-playing magic than everything I have done at the table for the last 20 years combined. I recall writing entire books of lore, of story, players writing 20-page backgrounds in preparation for a game, doing session 0’s, and endlessly preparing mass plots for my players and none of it compared to the simplicity of the game we were about to play. By comparison, those experiences were lifeless husks, meaningless, about the equivalent of doing your taxes for fun.

So, what was the secret? How did I go from RPG’s feeling dead inside to being back in 1985 as a 10-year-old playing and feeling Dungeons and Dragons again? What did this magical DM do to bring it all back?

Actually, it was pretty simple. It turns out, that it’s not nostalgia, it’s not age or some sort of expertise of the DM, there is no secret knowledge or method. It wasn’t even the system or an edition of the game really, though I do hold that 1st edition AD&D allows classic Fantasy Adventure to happen a lot easier. In the end it was just the simplicity of the role-playing philosophy the system brought to the forefront, plain and simple. It didn’t need to be AD&D and you didn’t need weird old-school rules, what you needed was a system that just got out of your way. That cleared the path for the imagination and allowed you to experience the world in your mind without a lot of input and rules to govern your thoughts and instruct you about what you can and cannot do.

In our game we didn’t have skills and feats and countless “buttons” to press. We had to make decisions, use our imagination, and form plans and our actions weren’t mechanical executions, they were narrative ones. This is what Fantasy Adventure was and in a sense, I feel always should be. I was filled with regret because I realized in that moment that we could have been doing this all along for the last 20 years. There was nothing keeping us from playing this way, but we got distracted and wasted 20 years of gaming out of stubbornness.

For years I had been playing every system under the sun, every game, under every DM, every format, every style, using every method you could imagine. Oddly enough, it never occurred to me to pick a system that just did a lot less, I always thought the more robust the mechanics and infrastructure of the game the more direction you had. So it was just about finding that right system that had the right balance of mechanics. It never occurred to me that the only thing that I actually ever had to do was just to apply the old Gygaxian philosophy about running an RPG, good old 1st edition AD&D thinking was all that was needed.

The feeling, the intangible quality, and the wonder of that moment that made D&D this unique, one-of-a-kind experience, it was all right there perfectly preserved and it wasn’t in rules so much as it was just a philosophy, a way to think and a method to approach the game.

Make a character, give them a name, drop him into the world and see what happens. That’s it…. that’s the magic.

The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural..

It’s true and I have to be honest about this, it was awkward. Playing 1st edition AD&D after years of modern mechanics felt strange but It was the philosophies of AD&D that made all the difference, which in modern game design and modern gaming culture are seen as barbaric and out of date. Hell some even consider using such philosophies antimine to role-playing, as if using them somehow makes you a terrible person.

Does that mean I like THAC0? Am I fan of descending armor class or 1 gold = 1 XP? Am I ok with female characters having reduced max strength or racial ability scores?

hmmm… I want to say no, I really do. I feel like AD&D is like the dark side of the force, that lures you to it by some dark power, some evil energy that is quick, dirty, and easy to attain. That somehow by using this game I have become a lesser man… but then I think about it and realize that…. well, it’s only a game and I think that is the trouble I have always had.

You see, in around the 90’s “being a role-player” became this very serious thing. It was an identity and there was a definitive “right way” to role-play and the right way to setup an RPG campaign. You had to write a really big backstory for your character, it was absolutely paramount. Your DM was expected to take those backstories and write a massive plot with twists and turns that incorporated your backstory into the campaign. You needed to have many many books of rules and options to make sure that the players could “fine-tune” the vision of their characters. There were so many new cultural RPG requirements, things that still persist to this very day that if you don’t follow you are not really role-playing, you are not a good GM or player and, probably you should just not be playing RPG’s if you can’t follow these cultural norms. It is considered virtuous to play this way, it makes you a better person. This is the weird mindset of modern gamers.

More than that, in modern gaming it has become synonymous with using old game systems like AD&D to be a bigot, sexist and homophobic, so not only are you not a virtuous person for not buying into modern gaming cultural norms and expectations, but you are clearly an evil person if you play these old games that teach this old philosophy.

I realized recently however that this is a hobby, I do it for fun, and I think a big part of the reason why I and so many role-players feel kind of lost in finding the game is that we have created way too many rules for ourselves as barriers to entry. Both culturally and literally. I mean as players and GM’s we have far too many expectations, and place far too many demands on the games and as gamers, we demand way too many rules and mechanics to “support role-playing”, a concept that should never even be part of a conversation about the game in my opinion. We have sort of broken the spirit of the original D&D game and modern games never really tried to understand, how and what this spirit was and so it never found its way into other RPG’s. We sort of killed the magic with our own ignorance and pride.

What I want is to feel the energy and the magic of D&D, that thing that Gary Gygax and his cohorts invented not how the pretenders that followed him tried and failed to re-invent. I want to have THE D&D experience and the only way I know how to do that is with these older systems like AD&D and B/X systems which have that magical simplicity instilled in them, but I don’t think that is the only way to do it.

Today gamers and game designers are making the same discoveries and it catching on. ShadowDark for example won 4 Ennie awards, a game that instills the classic gaming philosophies and uses a modern, digestible system to do it and actually does a masterful job of bringing that magic to the table.

For many years the only way to get the true Fantasy Adventure experience of old was through the original game or retro-clones, but today you have amazing new game designs that are modernizing the game while ensuring that the magic of D&D fantasy adventure is firmly built in. Its a great time to be a D&D fan.

I am Vinz, Vinz Clortho, Keymaster of Gozer. Volguus Zildrohar, Lord of the Sebouillia. Are you the Gatekeeper?

It’s the original, it’s the classic, it’s the only true D&D experience and this is not conjecture, it’s not opinion, it’s not even objective truth, it just is AD&D and games that follow its philosophy like ShadowDark. I know that sounds like gatekeeping but it really isn’t.

To gatekeep you have to want to keep people out and I’m trying to do the opposite, I’m trying to let people in on this strangely kept secret. There is a game that exists and you probably haven’t played it, even if you have been playing role-playing games for years, even if you have been playing D&D. It’s truly a magical experience but it only exists under one philosophy, using one very specific playstyle built into the classic game of D&D. Its a very explicit act to play AD&D and games like it, it doesn’t follow any of the cultural gaming rules of modern RPG’s and lives outside of the sphere of influences on which most modern RPG’s actually function today. Modern RPG’s are not based on AD&D, they are based on 3rd edition D&D which is an entirely different thing.

For this magical, intangible experience, there is only one path, only one way and it lays between the pages of the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide. It took me 40 years to realize it, hopefully, you won’t have to wait that long and thankfully that magic is finding its way into other modern games so you don’t even have to go out searching for copies of 1st edition AD&D.