posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dorchadas at 02:52pm on 12/09/2025 under dungeons & dragons (ダンジョンズ&ドラゴンズ), game design (ゲーム企画), rpgs (ロールプレイゲーム), warhammer rpg (ウォーハンマーロールプレイ)
dorchadas at 02:52pm on 12/09/2025 under dungeons & dragons (ダンジョンズ&ドラゴンズ), game design (ゲーム企画), rpgs (ロールプレイゲーム), warhammer rpg (ウォーハンマーロールプレイ)So last week I wrote about how I was trying to decide between running a game of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and between running an OSR-derived game called Tales of Argosa. And I have to come to a conclusion, which is of course to do neither of those. To explain, a while back I heard about something called Dolmenwood, an OSR setting based on the fee, though not necessary the exact stories from, old British myths and legends. It's a giant forest, once ruled by an ancient faerie called the Cold Prince, now ruled by humans--or at least, humans claim dominion over the wood. There are still parts of it that have never felt the tramp of mortal feet, and parts of it where faerie lords still claim demesne and do not suffer humans to enter. It has a monotheistic human church that replaced the older religion that worshipped the wood gods, except among those of the peasants that still leave out offerings at the bases of oak trees at Midsummer and Midwinter. It has a corrupted unicorn called the Nag-lord that rules a portion of the wood, and is an obvious reference to the Black Goat of the Woods to the point that the peasants straight-up call it "Ol' Shub." It has playable fae elves (immortal, innately magical, capricious), talking magical fae cats called grimalkin, strange forest natives called mosslings, talking goat-people called breggles (from their own name for themselves, hregl) who are basically equal to humans and hold some noble titles under the Duke of Brackenwood, fae goblins who don't live in squalor and murder travelers, they just lie and cheat and set up markets and can turn invisible, but they can't use their powers on you or cheat you if you invite them into your house and they accept your invitation...I love it.
There's even a dungeon synth album, and I sure love dungeon synth so I've already bought that too.
I don't love using OSR D&D to run it, though. This kind of setting seems tailor-made for me to use WFRP, so my current project is converting over the mechanics to WFRP. Fortunately, since it's standard OSR and based on the Old-School Essentials ruleset, there's really no complicated mechanics at all. It's your standard 3d6 in order, pick your class, gain one power per level kind of deal, so all of that slots pretty well into the WFRP paradigm. Dolmenwood doesn't have dangerous magic but I think it would be better with dangerous magic so that doesn't bother me either.
The one thing I need to change is advancement. WFRP famously has the career system, where you start as a rag-picker or a roadwarden or a bravo or a fisherman or a rat-catcher (with a small but vicious dog) and then advance through into cat burglers, engineers, duelists, scholars, and wizard lords. This is both great for verisimilitude (it grounds all characters in the world) and awful for verisimilitude (a classic complaint was how many wandering vagabonds decided to become assassins purely to pick that sweet +2 Attacks). It's the most recognizable part of the system and I have a bit of a problem in that I have never really liked it, to the point that when I ran it I replaced the system with the more free-form one based on Aptitudes from the Warhammer 40K game Only War, though even there, there was some friction (![[facebook.com profile]](https://www.facebook.com/favicon.ico)
aaron.hosek picked Aptitudes that he was later pretty annoyed about picking when he saw the experience costs for the talents he wanted).
When I was younger I really didn't like class/level systems because they were unrealistic and they constrained player choice and all the usual reasons, but now that I'm older I recognize that analysis paralysis is a thing and class systems provide an easy way to distill a series of options down into limited set of choice--it's easier to pick Fighter and have all the stuff that makes you good at combat happen automatically than having to scan a list of 3000 Feats and pick ones that help while avoiding traps like Toughness. That's usually seen as one of the pros of the OSR, the lack of fiddly bits and endless "build options" and "character optimization." But while I'm not a fan of character optimization, I really like build options a lot.
However, the Warhammer 40K game Dark Heresy had a different system that I'm planning on stealing. Dark Heresy had a class/level system, but it was one with a lot of choice involved. You'd pick a class like Assassin or Guardsman or Imperial Psyker and as you gain experience you advance up in levels, but the difference is that what you gain isn't fixed. Each level has a list of possible advancements you can buy, as you gain more levels (and thus more experience with your character), the range of advancements expands but at a rate that increasing system mastery allows you to handle, or at least that's the hope. I'll just need to use the Dark Heresy careers as a guideline when I make fantasy versions like Magician and Warrior and Thief. Some of these are easy--Dark Heresy's Scum converts to Thief nearly 1 to 1--and some are a bit harder, like converting the Imperial Psyker over to the Magician, but I think the general framework splits the difference nicely. And Dark Heresy enemies aren't so mechanically complicated that it would be hard to convert OSR monsters over either.
I think this has potential.
There's even a dungeon synth album, and I sure love dungeon synth so I've already bought that too.
I don't love using OSR D&D to run it, though. This kind of setting seems tailor-made for me to use WFRP, so my current project is converting over the mechanics to WFRP. Fortunately, since it's standard OSR and based on the Old-School Essentials ruleset, there's really no complicated mechanics at all. It's your standard 3d6 in order, pick your class, gain one power per level kind of deal, so all of that slots pretty well into the WFRP paradigm. Dolmenwood doesn't have dangerous magic but I think it would be better with dangerous magic so that doesn't bother me either.
The one thing I need to change is advancement. WFRP famously has the career system, where you start as a rag-picker or a roadwarden or a bravo or a fisherman or a rat-catcher (with a small but vicious dog) and then advance through into cat burglers, engineers, duelists, scholars, and wizard lords. This is both great for verisimilitude (it grounds all characters in the world) and awful for verisimilitude (a classic complaint was how many wandering vagabonds decided to become assassins purely to pick that sweet +2 Attacks). It's the most recognizable part of the system and I have a bit of a problem in that I have never really liked it, to the point that when I ran it I replaced the system with the more free-form one based on Aptitudes from the Warhammer 40K game Only War, though even there, there was some friction (
When I was younger I really didn't like class/level systems because they were unrealistic and they constrained player choice and all the usual reasons, but now that I'm older I recognize that analysis paralysis is a thing and class systems provide an easy way to distill a series of options down into limited set of choice--it's easier to pick Fighter and have all the stuff that makes you good at combat happen automatically than having to scan a list of 3000 Feats and pick ones that help while avoiding traps like Toughness. That's usually seen as one of the pros of the OSR, the lack of fiddly bits and endless "build options" and "character optimization." But while I'm not a fan of character optimization, I really like build options a lot.
However, the Warhammer 40K game Dark Heresy had a different system that I'm planning on stealing. Dark Heresy had a class/level system, but it was one with a lot of choice involved. You'd pick a class like Assassin or Guardsman or Imperial Psyker and as you gain experience you advance up in levels, but the difference is that what you gain isn't fixed. Each level has a list of possible advancements you can buy, as you gain more levels (and thus more experience with your character), the range of advancements expands but at a rate that increasing system mastery allows you to handle, or at least that's the hope. I'll just need to use the Dark Heresy careers as a guideline when I make fantasy versions like Magician and Warrior and Thief. Some of these are easy--Dark Heresy's Scum converts to Thief nearly 1 to 1--and some are a bit harder, like converting the Imperial Psyker over to the Magician, but I think the general framework splits the difference nicely. And Dark Heresy enemies aren't so mechanically complicated that it would be hard to convert OSR monsters over either.
I think this has potential.
thoughtful
There are no comments on this entry. (Reply.)
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
hopeful
tired
awake
amused
excited
enthralled
calm
busy
accomplished![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png){kind=icon}
She's more talkative, but still has some trouble.