tell me about dolmenwood?
Dolmenwood is a setting specific osr (old school revival) game about venturing into a large primeval fairitale forrest.
Originally first developed as part of a series of zines in 2015, collecting inspirations from all sorts of folklore, to the point where it is now THE fairytale forrest to explore.
Something that has bothered me about other osr games like Old School Essentials, Dungeon Crawl Classic or even Shadowdark, is that in cutting back the game to a simpler and older style of play, they often end up with very broad and generic FantasyLand assumptions that makes it so nothing can be too specific or tailored.
Dolmenwood is the opposite, everything in the rules is specifically to reinforce the vibe of the setting itself, whether it be that every spell or magic item has a specific place and context in the world, or that your character inherently has a place in the setting from character creation.
These are the options for characters, you can be a moss/shroom person, a goatperson, a bat-goblin, human, puss-in-boots, or a farie. These are all specific to the goings on in and around the Woods.
This specificity allows the game to make relevant to play a bunch of stuff that otherwise would be sanded off and simplified. Because the game and setting have been set up to support it, there so many incentives to go exploring because you never know what you are gonna find, and its guaranteed to be Interesting.
