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’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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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!).

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.

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.

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.

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.