Posting Ls: Dolmenwood 2026

22 May, 2026

I had planned to do three campaigns this year for Campaign 2026. One ended to make room for another, another never started cuz I started reading Classic Traveller, and Dolmenwood was the last to die. We got about a dozen or sessions in of the game and dug into the areas around Prigwort. My players had fun, I came up with XP rules I don’t hate for D&D in the modern era, and I became more and more familiar with TLDraw (the ultimate VTT.) Though after running some CLassic Traveller I felt it really hard to get the motivation to run Dolmenwood again.

With how dense Dolmenwood is it often feels like there is never a chance for players or the party to just be traveling or have a day where some lead isn’t unraveling before them asking to be tugged. Most hexes have two to three features and most will be discovered rather easily. Idraluna has a great post about hex density and how it affects the feel of the game, and for me I was struggling with how smothered the entire hex map felt. There can be too much of a good thing.

I am not a folklore, fairytale, fable person at all. Running Dolmenwood was a chance for me to go outside of my usual comfort area of modern investigations. It’s all very nicely presented. I just don’t find it very inspiring. Something about the presentation of the Fae and other fables just really bores me and even though the entire owl is drawn here I don’t feel very motivated to present it. The most fun I had was when the players assaulted the lair of the bile wyrm with a full retinue of knights. Finally something tickled the part of my brain that loves watching toy soldiers trundle across a map.

Near the end, after running some Classic Traveller, I found that I was getting really irritated by D&D’s class/level structure. While the taxonomy makes designing for attrition and arcade play easier I do think it’s but one way to skin that cat. The Classic Traveller loop of adventuring for cash and maybe a lick of fame works a lot better for me. I think if I were to return to D&D it would be with some flavor of classless/leveless D&D like WW’s Baker’s Street.

So none of my planned campaigns for Campaign 2026 took off the way I thought they would, but having started a Classic Traveller campaign that is going well I don’t feel the usual touch of blues for a game having ended before I felt “finished” with it.