Image by Thorsten Wasastjerna
Dolmenwood: Of Mushrooms & Mandrake Root
Explore a tangled fairy tale forest of magic and secrets.
$18.00
/ Session
Details
Weekly / Sunday - 7:00 PM UTC
Mar 15 / Session 18
Session Duration / 2.75–3 hours
4 / 5 Seats Filled
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Schedule
Meet your party members
4/5
About the adventure
Welcome to a world of wonder and chaos, of strange nobles, ancient priesthoods, saints' relics, secret paths, and terrible monstrosities. This game is perfect for players new to TTRPGs who like stories like Jim Henson's Labyrinth, Princes Mononoke, and The Hobbit. Veteran players will appreciate deep gameplay and taking a break from vanilla D&D. Players can play as humans, elves, the cat-like grimalkin, the bat-like woodgrue, goat-headed breggles, or the leafy mosslings. Classes include standard D&D classes like fighters, thieves, bards, magicians (like wizards), and clerics but also friars, hunters, knights, and enchanters. New forms of magic specific to Dolmenwood include fairy magic, runes, and mossling knacks. The setting is designed for travel across a beautiful and detailed map with secrets to find as you explore. The rules are based on a venerable edition of D&D that was designed for young players.
Game style
Rules as Written (RaW)
Rule of Cool (RoC)
Sandbox / Open World
Hexcrawl / Exploration
Dungeon Crawl
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
5.0
(16)
3 years on StartPlaying
149 games hosted
Highly rated for: Teacher, Creativity, Storytelling
About me
Over 28 years of running roleplaying games, I've collected amazing stories as a game master for friends, family, and people I connected with online, in stores, and at conventions. My goal is to strike a chord in you that you forgot was there. To evoke your barely remembered dreams and memories. I strive to run your dream game, an immersive game that puts you in the moment, where you can exercise your imagination and make real choices. In my games, the fairies are eccentric, the pirates are craven, the dragons poignant and monstrous in turn. The battles are death-defying while the gardens hide secrets just out of sight, and the dungeons make you start to question reality as explore them. I've run over 100 different published adventures, in addition to homebrewed campaigns. I know what kinds of games leave players thrilled. I wrote a zine-length fairy tale roleplaying game called In the Court of the Fairy Queen (on DriveThruRPG). I’m also honored to be a recipient of the 2022 Goodie Award presented by Goodman Games!
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
We'll make characters all together during the first session. We'll introduce everyone and say what we're hoping for in this game. Character creation can take between 5 and 30 minutes and I'll walk through each step. After character creation and preliminary announcements, we'll jump right in and start playing during the first session! You don't need to study the rules ahead of time. They are quite easy to learn and you'll catch on in no time. If you join after the first session, we can meet up ahead of the next session and create a character or you can play, pre-generated character, or (if you feel confident in the rules, a character you build).
A woodland hunter and an otherworldly elf (player characters) are joined by a rat captain (ret.) and a gruff warrior (non-player characters) and sometimes other fortune-seekers wandering the land.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
You need a computer with internet access, a Discord account, a microphone, and speakers. A webcam is optional. We will roll dice in Owlbear Rodeo, an easy to use virtual tabletop that you can join from your browser. Optional: Check out the free Basic Rules PDF https://necroticgnome.com/products/old-school-essentials-basic-rules (or read them online here: https://oldschoolessentials.necroticgnome.com/srd/index.php/Main_Page) Optional: printing out a character sheet for you to fill in if you prefer a physical sheet. Otherwise, I will distribute digital form-fillable PDFs that we can use for character sheets.
What DM Brian brings to the table
the mystique of adventure! thorough knowledge of the rules and experience teaching new players, maps and other visuals on Owlbear Rodeo (easy to use Virtual Tabletop), character voices, ambient sounds, battles to be won, problems to be solved, tricks and traps to be avoided, monsters who are as likely to talk to you as eat you, a world with a life of its own, and more!
Equipment needed to play
Computer
Microphone
Internet
Platforms used
Safety
How DM Brian creates a safe table
We'll take a break about halfway through the session. When you join the game, I'll send you the RPG consent checklist, which covers a wide range of content. Since a roleplaying game can go in many unexpected directions, a checklist like that helps me proactively make sure you have a great time. For safety tools, you can send X, N, and O cards in a text message to me or to the group as a whole within the virtual tabletop if concerns with content arise. I encourage any feedback, concerns, suggestions or discussion of anything that came up at the end of the session or in between sessions. I hope you will feel immersed and will enjoy the game, so let me know about anything that could pose an obstacle to that!
Content warnings
Safety tools used