I recently began refereeing for an open table that combines Gavin Norman's Dolmenwood setting/hex crawl with a system based on Luke Gearing's Wolves Upon the Coast. Future posts will contain my referee retrospective on game sessions (perhaps accompanied by a player-written summary). For now, here's an introduction to the experiment.

The DolMEGwood System

DolMEGwood, as I wrote above, is basically what if you smushed Wolves Upon the Coast (WUTC from this point forward) into Dolmenwood and didn't really think about the consequences much. (That's a problem for later, of course.) Character creation is pretty much unchanged from WUTC, though I've included the Dolmenwood random trinkets/backgrounds/names/traits tables because they might just be my favorite part of that book. Here's the procedure:

Characters begin play:

• With one hit die (HD). This is rolled to determine how many hit points (HP) they have. All HD are d6s.
• With an attack bonus of +2.
• Knowing 1d6/2 languages (minimum of one).
  • A language can be “half known,” being just enough to conduct trade. If a language is only half known, the player must say exactly what the character is saying in it, and can only use one syllable words to do so.
  • All characters should share at least one “half known language.” That language will likely be either Brythonic or Latin.
  • Language slots can be “held in reserve,” although a character must declare they know a language the first time it’s encountered. Some languages cannot be known this way.
  • For two language slots, the character is able to read and write in that language.
• With a backpack, a bedroll, and two days’ worth of trail rations.
• With 3d6*10 groats’ worth of arms and armor, supplies, and animals. Anything not spent is lost.
• With a moon sign, background, and trinket, all rolled randomly.
• Optionally, with a randomly rolled name, age (4d6+10), and character traits.

Pretty simple! All characters are normal-ass people who have just arrived in Castle Brackenwold (this may change for future characters who begin play in Dolmenwood), enough food for two days (but only one session: trail rations expire at the end of a session), some other supplies (there are no classes; WUTC functions under an equipment-as-class paradigm), and no money (get exploring!).

I am extremely taken with the way that WUTC frames magic as something that requires proper components to perform each time, if one knows the proper ritual. Similarly, blood, images, words, plants, and minerals can all ward against magic, if one knows how to use them. Rather than characters learning spells through leveling up and with Vancian spell slots/preparation, they must seek out the knowledge of various rituals and then find the components to conduct those rituals. Canyon describes the process of discovering these rituals best:

On these hazy matters, one has no choice but to trust rumor and superstition.

I've similarly cribbed WUTC's mode of advancement, boasting. Boasting is integral to the tone of WUTC; it requires a character to lean into the Beowulf heroic fantasy to play the game properly. I have taken how boasting works and copied it exactly; the only change I've made is in what I'm calling it. In DolMEGwood, a character does not boast; they swear a chivalric oath. I think that this simple reskin will be really successful in conjuring the proper tone. Removed from the gold-for-XP, B/X-chassis of Gavin Norman's Dolmenwood system, I think DolMEGwood can really lean into the fairytale chivalry of the setting: a social construct made real by the weight of its influence (and perhaps some beguiling Fairy influence). The social implications of chivalric oaths will play just as strong a role as boasting does in WUTC's Grand Campaign. (I think. We'll see!)

Chivalric oaths pair well with another mechanic I've stolen wholesale: Emmy Allen's rules for OSR duels. I think it'll work excellently for duels, jousting, &c. as-is. I've added one complication on top of what Cavegirl has written, however:

At any point a duelist may choose to cheat. They immediately slay their opponent, but revoke all honor forever—they lose the benefit of all chivalric oaths and may never swear one again. Wherever they go, they are known as a blackguard.

Immediate success at the cost of dishonor. Perhaps it's worth it in the short-term, but the long? This will essentially plummet a character to "level zero" status forever, unless some workaround is found.¹ Again emphasizing the social importance chivalric oaths have, outside of just mechanical advancement.

One last note on characters/advancement is that while the above rules are mostly meant for human characters and all initial characters are humans, I imagine that if/when the players meaningfully interact with the various other kindreds in Dolmenwood, they can then begin to create characters of that kindred, who might advance/function differently than a human character.² For example a breggle character hailing from the High Wold might advance via chivalric oaths like a human, with the differences lying in breggles' innate sorcery and their horns as a built-in weapon. (Perhaps a downside as well? Less travel endurance, compared to a human?) But traveling to Orbswallow and treating with the mosslings there might allow a player to unlock a mossling character that advances not through swearing oaths, but through consuming various rare moulds and mosses to cultivate symbiotic infestations.

Inventory is inspired by Yochai Gal's Cairn: a small number of "innate" inventory slots, but most storage coming from bags or pack animals.

The first four inventory slots of a character’s inventory represent readily accessible items strapped to the body or carried in belt pouches. These slots are called body slots. The six remaining inventory slots represent items carried in a backpack or other storage container. These slots are called backpack slots. Backpack slots require at least one combat round to access. A character without a backpack, sack, &., cannot fill backpack slots and thus can only fill their body slots. Most items fill one inventory slot, though some items like two-handed weapons or heavy armor take two. Extremely bulky items, like an iron lockbox or fragile porcelain vase, might take even more slots and could even be unable to fit in some containers.

Here's what a character's inventory looks like when empty:

Body Slots	Backpack Slots
1 (left hand)	1
2 (right hand)	2
3	3
4	4
	5
	6

Here's an example of a character's inventory when filled-out:

Body Slots	Backpack Slots
Heater shield (left hand)	Oil, pint flask of nut or seed
Lantern, hooded (right hand)	Oil, pint flask of nut or seed
Leather armor	Rations, day's worth of trail
Spear (packed away)	Rations, day's worth of trail
	Tinderbox
	Rope, fifty feet of hemp

As you can see, a character's inventory fills up pretty quickly. This character has (some of) the dungeon-delving essentials, but not the travel essentials—where are the bedroll, the tent, and the cooking pots? For that matter, where's the ten-foot pole?

The answer is that those things are being carried by some porters, packed in the donkey's pack saddle, or pulled in a cart. A porter carries an extra six-slot backpack, a donkey's pack saddle holds nine slots of items, and a cart can hold twenty slots of items if pulled by a draught horse (and if it doesn't get stuck in mud, &c.). Extended travel almost requires bringing along pack animals, people to tend to the animals, and people to guard the camp while the characters are delving into a dungeon.³ It's always been important to me to have retainers and camp followers hanging on to the heroic characters. And especially in this game, where the weight of a character's tale directly translates to their mechanical advancement, it makes sense to ensure there are people around to hear of the characters' exploits and oaths.

The Open Table Format

DolMEGwood is based in a Discord server and we play via a Discord voice channel. I've also created a number of text channels (and other resources) in the hope of scaffolding a system in advance so that the players can share knowledge between themselves. I think this shared knowledge pool is important because of the realities of the open table—not every player will be at every session or know the context of the current session if they've been unable to play for a little while.

There are three channels that I want to highlight here, which are #grimoire, #journals (a "forum" channel), and #quest-board (similarly a forum). All three are meant to be repositories of shared knowledge.

As stated above, I've stripped out the B/X spellcasting (and Gavin Norman's variants for Dolmenwood) in favor of one-time rituals and warding charms, inspired by WUTC. Thus it is not just the act of casting a spell that is notable, but even the knowledge of how to cast said spell. A player who learns how to cast a spell or the components of a warding charm may write down the ritual in the grimoire so that others can benefit from that knowledge.⁴

The other two channels are forum channels, which allows everyone to create a number of isolated and navigable posts, as opposed to a standard Discord channel where everything is continuous in one channel. To incentivize information preservation, I reward players who post a journal and/or update the quest board with a gold star (see below).

Outside of the Discord server itself, a MIRO board is used as the "virtual table" and (for now) contains the Dolmenwood player's map (evocative, pretty, hints at what might be out there, but not a to-scale guide to the Wood) and a blank hex map, which the players have already begun filling out with known locales. If the players ever enter a dungeon proper, I intend to provide them with a blank square grid so they can map that for themselves as well.

Lastly, I've created an editable Dolmenwood calendar in Google Docs so that everyone can write down things that happen during the sessions by date or have one centralized place to project future events. I have my own private calendar to plan out actions that various factions intend to take if uninterrupted by the players.

Gold Stars and Session Journals

Gold stars are a metacurrency I'm developing, inspired by something Canyon is doing in their game, as an incentive for out-of-session contributions to the game. They're so named because of the way I hand them out—I insert a gold star emoji in a player's nickname when they've earned one, much like sticking a sticker to their shirt.

A player earn one gold star by writing a public session journal: an out-of-character report reflecting on the session. I want to know what they thought went well, why they made the decisions they did, what they think about the decisions other players or I made, what they think went well, what they think didn’t (and what they'd do to fix that!), what they'd like to do next session, &. Instead of or in addition to a reflection journal, one person can also write a detailed account of events that occurred in the session and update the ⁠quest board with anything relevant for a gold star. For now, these are the only ways to get a gold star, but I'd also be open to rewarding creative work or some other thing a player does to make my/our life(s) easier.

A player may pay a gold star to receive a rumor about goings-on nearby or the components of a warding charm. They can let me know if they're specifically investigating something during downtime, or just keeping their ears perked in the inn common room. I want to let them poke at things they're interested in. They can also pay gold stars for other resources, too—they just have to propose a use for it. I’m open to pretty much anything at this point.

Journal retrospectives are something I really want to emphasize for this game, perhaps even more than the player information pool (though I anticipate that we'll get a proper recap every session). The DolMEGwood Open Table is an experiment—I want to collect as much data as I can in order to make it (and all future games I might run, and my players might play in) as best as it can be.

In Closing

I hope that everyone finds at least one thing useful or interesting when reading this post! I'm excited to start running this game in earnest; it's my first time running an open table as well as a proper hex crawl, so I anticipate I'll learn many lessons along the way (and will share those lessons when I learn them)! Next time: a retrospective on session one. :)

1. Perhaps by mass memory erasure? Perhaps by finding another avenue to power? Many options; none easy or desirable. Additionally, I don't anticipate this rule being a problem if players have the idea of just rolling up a bunch of characters as "duel fodder." Why would anyone worth murdering—because this would be murder—accept a duel with some nobody?↩

2. I imagine this is something for which a player could spend gold stars to unlock.↩

3. Extended travel will be more common in DolMEGwood than in Dolmenwood-as-intended-by-its-creator. I've upped the amount of time it takes to travel through various hexes, depending on the infrastructure and terrain type. I may post about this in more depth later?↩

4. Or, they could keep that knowledge secret—is it wise to share just how to conjure a fireball with everyone? Who knows what someone might do with that knowledge...↩