#368
Oct 19, 2025
Books
This week I read:
The Dolmenwood Campaign Book from Necrotic Gnome
I’ve not read any of this since my abortive work campaign in 2022, and even then I was working off the draft material as it existed for my prior campaign, some months previously. Since then the material has been modified to suit the new rules, as well as benefiting from a lot of review and feedback. It’s been a fun read, it is mostly as I remember, but there are a few new things.
One thing I particularly liked—which may have been there before but I just didn’t notice—is in the rules for exploring a hex. I always found it a bit unsatisfying to give the players all the hidden features when they explored a hex, as that makes it hard to add new features (like a dungeon) to a hex that the players have already visited. And also a six mile hex of woodland is a huge area to search, finding everything there is to find in a few hours doesn’t seem reasonable. The book now clarifies that finding all the hidden features is the default, but you can instead opt to reveal just one hidden feature (i.e. the next one they haven’t found), or even roll for whether they find a hidden feature. I really like the rolling option: it means you can never really know for sure that you’ve found everything, and even familiar locations you’ve visited many times can still surprise you.
Roleplaying Games
The Halls of Arden Vul
This week, more exploration. The players found their way down to the base of the chasm and met Vingelok, a niravairi havildar in the Order of Planar Explorers and rescued him from a band of demonic hunters. Now I need to read up on a whole sublevel that I thought the players would never find! I expect the players to visit Level 10 in the climax of the campaign, so we may end up visiting every level and sublevel this campaign: all that’s left is SL11, the Tomb of Isadora, which they’ll get a hint towards when they complete the Trials of Arden.
Vingelok is going to spend a few days recuperating before setting off, so next session will be about killing time. Will they return to the Trials of Arden..?
Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades
We’ve picked the date for our next campaign break: the 9th, and possibly 16th, of November. I’ll be running The Obsidian Bat, the sample adventure in the rulebook. I’ve never run a wuxia game before, it’ll be fun! The thing to keep in mind is just to have all the characters’ behaviour be totally over-the-top.