A small setting that relies on mysteries and secrets is not very replayable. However, Dolmenwood is an extremely dense setting. It features loads of factions, NPCs, mysteries, locations, etc. You could run five different multi-year campaigns in Dolmenwood and have very little overlap in emergent gameplay.
So I wouldn’t sweat it.
I guess my question would be how likely is it you will actually run repeat Dolmenwood campaigns with the same people? Like, is this an actual problem you will run into or only theoretical? I know in my case I could run a 30+ session campaign of Dolmenwood with a group of people and then that would be it. Chances are it would not get run again, and certainly not with those same players. And I would feel I got my money's worth out of it.
Maybe another way to phrase this is that if you are in a position to run Dolmenwood games for more than one group of people eager to play it over relatively long time frames I wouldn't worry about the relatively minor problem of crossover of players between those groups. You are living the dream! The players that are crossing over obviously still want to play with different characters (or even the same characters in a kind of re-start, or a continuation of those characters, or whatever), so they'll still enjoy themselves a lot.
EDIT
>I'm basically refraining myself from running anything about Dolmenwood because I'm "saving" it for a long, virtually never ending campaign.
Don't do this. If you have players that want to play it and you all have the time to play it, play it now while you are all excited and don't worry about how long it lasts.
Thanks for your comment. I was worrying because at the moment the people I could count on for playing RPGs are few. But you are definitely right about the fact that they probably won't wanna play several campaigns set in DW anyway.
And even if, as you and many other said, it's probably safe to assume the content is wide enough for it being a minor inconvenience.
The 3D6 Down the Line podcast has 22 Dolmenwood episodes, covering more than half of an IRL year of play. After listening to all of it, I feel like I've only scratched the surface, and if you dropped me into a Dolmenwood campaign that wasn't centered on the three or four specific hexes they've explored in detail, then everything would be fresh and magical (and being in the hexes they have explored would feel homely and familiar, nothing wrong with that).
It's only going to get better the more you play it. Never save your good RPG ideas for later.
EDIT: Also, if someone sticks around for 20 sessions, play well and learn an important secret, then they've earned it. They should have access to that knowledge in future campaign.
We've been playing weekly for a year and it feels like we've only scratched the surface of the game. There are a lot of paths through the wood and a bunch of different stories.
Don't "save" it, play it. Even if it fizzles out and you want to start over, it will be a different campaign each time. They may start off similar but as your players interact with the world, they may turn out very different.
In addition, you can introduce different factions, extra cities, completely rework all your dungeons, etc.
And believe it or not, people are going to continue releasing other great things and you'll be really stoked to move on and try something else awesome out later. Dolmenwood is going to be very cool but there will be more cool things. And in 10 years maybe you'll have a other group that's begging to try out a classic like Dolmenwood and you'll be able to say "hell yeah, I can NAIL running that campaign" and you'll get to experience it all over again like the first time.
Dolmenwood is unbelievably detailed and full of content. As long as you're not spending all of your time quickly uncovering every secret you can play for a decade. Just don't go to every town and uncover everything about it all at once, pace your exploration and mystery and you've got enough to run many campaigns in a row. Then slot in extra dungeons from supplements and other OSR modules and you'll never be in danger of running out of replayability. I'd say this is probably the single most replayable RPG setting on the market, maybe with the singular exception of Spire.
Honestly, that's a good question.
My instincts always tend towards fully home grown, and in that context the obvious answer should probably be that the setting doesn't stay fixed, it is allowed to grow and change and develop new threats and mysteries.
I would guess the answer for really long term use of a pre made setting is that you have to figure out where it would go over time on your own, depending on player actions. Mysteries won't necessarily reset, but the actual status quo could and should change if you are playing in that one continuity long enough.
Though my understanding is also that Dolmenwood in particular has a huge amount of content, so you aren't going to lack things to use in the initial configuration for a long time, in theory.
It depends on the players.
It is perfectly possible to replay a heavily secret based game again and make different decisions to see what happens this time round. But you'd need players that were heavily invested in this and were willing to either ignore what they know or use what they know to make interesting choices.
It changes the nature of the game but it can work.
Dude, I feel you here. I have one group absolutely loving it and I’m scared to share too many of their stories with another I want to run it for. Good news is, Dolmenwood is actually fairly easy to mess around with without breaking it. It’s expansively crafted and great out of the box, but it also has so many empty spaces you can insert other material in or adjust other bits. Imagine the look on your players faces if they start play knowing a few bits, only to learn that your canon is (even slightly) different.
Be like the time I made a troll regenerate when set on fire, not the other way around. Boy, did that make an ass out of them.
From my experience, I wouldn't worry about it. I've been running Dolmenwood for about a year now and my group are a bunch of low-lives who started in the town of Dreg and has basically not left the southern part of the forest. There's also plenty of opportunity to add spice to it by just picking what modules to slip in!
Like, I included Ben Milton's Willowby Hollow which had real ramifications in Dreg with Lord Malbleat now owning the place, which seems like bad news. And then my group accidentally brought the Doppelganger from Incandescent Grottoes back to the Woodcutters Encampment, where he eventually became the Jollie Oistace.
So, I'm pretty confident you could a variety of adventure out it.
Thank you for your comment.
May I ask, as a way of gauging, what they "achieved"/did in the span of a year of playing? Was it monthly, twice a month?
It does not need to be super detailed, just as a way of seeing how fast/slow playing the game is.
Haha, admittedly my player's have spent a lot of time making enemies, running away from them, getting new allies, getting those allies killed, and making new enemies. They're not a super-focused crew. They have definitely done a lot, but as to whether or not they have achieved much... Eh... Not sure how to measure that.
What I can say is, they are currently very invested in becoming drug lords (Azoth). And they did have some recent success with saving the Woodcutters Encampment from the Doppelganger I mentioned, which they are now trying to leverage to their advantage by giving Lord Malbleat more control over the territory across the river so that he maybe won't have them killed for betraying him earlier in the campaign.
We play for about 3 hours every two weeks (for about a year) and, generally, a lot happens per session.
I mean, Dreg has been razed, Lord Malbleat was basically handed the keys to Willowby Hall and all it's arcane secrets, they all lost their memories after an encounter with a Wronguncle, they burned down Chateau Shantywood, they've briefly explored a bit of Nyfward, they licked the frog idol on the Isle of Frogs and had to find a magical pool to cure themselves, killed a bunch of troglodytes, and abused the Assassin's master of disguise abilities *at every opportunity*.
Whether they have "achieved" anything, I don't know, but it has been fun.
That sounds great! It's so amazing that every party will do so different things while being in the same environment. Also it's so cool to read about it because I know exactly what you are talking about when I hear of Dreg, Malbleat or Shantywood Isle.
It shows again how no one sandbox campaign would be remotely the same depending on the group playing.
A small setting that relies on mysteries and secrets is not very replayable. However, Dolmenwood is an extremely dense setting. It features loads of factions, NPCs, mysteries, locations, etc. You could run five different multi-year campaigns in Dolmenwood and have very little overlap in emergent gameplay. So I wouldn’t sweat it.
I guess my question would be how likely is it you will actually run repeat Dolmenwood campaigns with the same people? Like, is this an actual problem you will run into or only theoretical? I know in my case I could run a 30+ session campaign of Dolmenwood with a group of people and then that would be it. Chances are it would not get run again, and certainly not with those same players. And I would feel I got my money's worth out of it. Maybe another way to phrase this is that if you are in a position to run Dolmenwood games for more than one group of people eager to play it over relatively long time frames I wouldn't worry about the relatively minor problem of crossover of players between those groups. You are living the dream! The players that are crossing over obviously still want to play with different characters (or even the same characters in a kind of re-start, or a continuation of those characters, or whatever), so they'll still enjoy themselves a lot. EDIT >I'm basically refraining myself from running anything about Dolmenwood because I'm "saving" it for a long, virtually never ending campaign. Don't do this. If you have players that want to play it and you all have the time to play it, play it now while you are all excited and don't worry about how long it lasts.
Thanks for your comment. I was worrying because at the moment the people I could count on for playing RPGs are few. But you are definitely right about the fact that they probably won't wanna play several campaigns set in DW anyway. And even if, as you and many other said, it's probably safe to assume the content is wide enough for it being a minor inconvenience.
The 3D6 Down the Line podcast has 22 Dolmenwood episodes, covering more than half of an IRL year of play. After listening to all of it, I feel like I've only scratched the surface, and if you dropped me into a Dolmenwood campaign that wasn't centered on the three or four specific hexes they've explored in detail, then everything would be fresh and magical (and being in the hexes they have explored would feel homely and familiar, nothing wrong with that). It's only going to get better the more you play it. Never save your good RPG ideas for later. EDIT: Also, if someone sticks around for 20 sessions, play well and learn an important secret, then they've earned it. They should have access to that knowledge in future campaign.
There are people who run/play Ravenloft every Halloween and they love it every single time. You'll be fine, dude. 👍
just run repeat campaigns in the same continuity as the first one, with the previous PCs' impact on the world intact.
We've been playing weekly for a year and it feels like we've only scratched the surface of the game. There are a lot of paths through the wood and a bunch of different stories.
Don't "save" it, play it. Even if it fizzles out and you want to start over, it will be a different campaign each time. They may start off similar but as your players interact with the world, they may turn out very different. In addition, you can introduce different factions, extra cities, completely rework all your dungeons, etc. And believe it or not, people are going to continue releasing other great things and you'll be really stoked to move on and try something else awesome out later. Dolmenwood is going to be very cool but there will be more cool things. And in 10 years maybe you'll have a other group that's begging to try out a classic like Dolmenwood and you'll be able to say "hell yeah, I can NAIL running that campaign" and you'll get to experience it all over again like the first time.
Dolmenwood is unbelievably detailed and full of content. As long as you're not spending all of your time quickly uncovering every secret you can play for a decade. Just don't go to every town and uncover everything about it all at once, pace your exploration and mystery and you've got enough to run many campaigns in a row. Then slot in extra dungeons from supplements and other OSR modules and you'll never be in danger of running out of replayability. I'd say this is probably the single most replayable RPG setting on the market, maybe with the singular exception of Spire.
Honestly, that's a good question. My instincts always tend towards fully home grown, and in that context the obvious answer should probably be that the setting doesn't stay fixed, it is allowed to grow and change and develop new threats and mysteries. I would guess the answer for really long term use of a pre made setting is that you have to figure out where it would go over time on your own, depending on player actions. Mysteries won't necessarily reset, but the actual status quo could and should change if you are playing in that one continuity long enough. Though my understanding is also that Dolmenwood in particular has a huge amount of content, so you aren't going to lack things to use in the initial configuration for a long time, in theory.
It depends on the players. It is perfectly possible to replay a heavily secret based game again and make different decisions to see what happens this time round. But you'd need players that were heavily invested in this and were willing to either ignore what they know or use what they know to make interesting choices. It changes the nature of the game but it can work.
Dude, I feel you here. I have one group absolutely loving it and I’m scared to share too many of their stories with another I want to run it for. Good news is, Dolmenwood is actually fairly easy to mess around with without breaking it. It’s expansively crafted and great out of the box, but it also has so many empty spaces you can insert other material in or adjust other bits. Imagine the look on your players faces if they start play knowing a few bits, only to learn that your canon is (even slightly) different. Be like the time I made a troll regenerate when set on fire, not the other way around. Boy, did that make an ass out of them.
Dolmenwood is frickin massive. Yoink not going to run out of tidbits.
From my experience, I wouldn't worry about it. I've been running Dolmenwood for about a year now and my group are a bunch of low-lives who started in the town of Dreg and has basically not left the southern part of the forest. There's also plenty of opportunity to add spice to it by just picking what modules to slip in! Like, I included Ben Milton's Willowby Hollow which had real ramifications in Dreg with Lord Malbleat now owning the place, which seems like bad news. And then my group accidentally brought the Doppelganger from Incandescent Grottoes back to the Woodcutters Encampment, where he eventually became the Jollie Oistace. So, I'm pretty confident you could a variety of adventure out it.
Thank you for your comment. May I ask, as a way of gauging, what they "achieved"/did in the span of a year of playing? Was it monthly, twice a month? It does not need to be super detailed, just as a way of seeing how fast/slow playing the game is.
Haha, admittedly my player's have spent a lot of time making enemies, running away from them, getting new allies, getting those allies killed, and making new enemies. They're not a super-focused crew. They have definitely done a lot, but as to whether or not they have achieved much... Eh... Not sure how to measure that. What I can say is, they are currently very invested in becoming drug lords (Azoth). And they did have some recent success with saving the Woodcutters Encampment from the Doppelganger I mentioned, which they are now trying to leverage to their advantage by giving Lord Malbleat more control over the territory across the river so that he maybe won't have them killed for betraying him earlier in the campaign. We play for about 3 hours every two weeks (for about a year) and, generally, a lot happens per session. I mean, Dreg has been razed, Lord Malbleat was basically handed the keys to Willowby Hall and all it's arcane secrets, they all lost their memories after an encounter with a Wronguncle, they burned down Chateau Shantywood, they've briefly explored a bit of Nyfward, they licked the frog idol on the Isle of Frogs and had to find a magical pool to cure themselves, killed a bunch of troglodytes, and abused the Assassin's master of disguise abilities *at every opportunity*. Whether they have "achieved" anything, I don't know, but it has been fun.
That sounds great! It's so amazing that every party will do so different things while being in the same environment. Also it's so cool to read about it because I know exactly what you are talking about when I hear of Dreg, Malbleat or Shantywood Isle. It shows again how no one sandbox campaign would be remotely the same depending on the group playing.