(We spend about 5 minutes or so trying to establish what the geographic scale of the islands are, bracketing between “several of our houses" big to “as big as Texas” for what miles might be.)

We sail to the other island and along the way encounter a friendly dogfish. Unfortunately, we can’t speak dogfish so we are treated to some friendly displays of swimming and jumping in the water before sailing on and waving goodbye.

The Rat-man is some kind of supernatural entity, able to fly as fast as a Cheetah, he doesn’t rely on our boats like me and my bowman. It takes us 4 days to get to the island.

We sneak amidst the fog into the cave and the baby goblins are asleep in the night. Thanks to the darkness, the gem glows brightly. We take it and barely are able to escape the baby goblins who awaken! We run FAST.

Then we row fast. And we row and we row to make it out to open water. There are no encounters on the days journey back to Paulvilletown where we return triumphantly with the gem.

Unfortunately, something awful has happened! A slime monster has eaten off the tops of most of the buildings and is attacking the town and making a huge mess!

Next session, I commit to finding a way to stop the slime monster.

DOLMENWOOD SESSION CHIME 10th of CHYSTING (JULY 14, 2026)

After a Human Fighter and an elf from the Otherworld receive a secret mission from the Duke of Brockenwold and his supernatural guest, they meet a Woodgrue Bard at a nearby Inn and set out into the wilds of the North.

Summary:

This was an adventure game-play session with two players, a supplied regiment of 20 bowmen and 5 x Heavy Footmen and the play of one character in the player’s absence. Their goal was to slay monsters and attain treasure and items of magical power while performing a scouting mission in the northern forest.

Initially setting out from Castle Brockenwold on a western road they decided they’d have better luck scouting enemy positions off main roads and headed north into the wilderness.

There they encountered 4 x Scarecrows which had come to life and were beating a group of man-crows to death gruesomely. They turned their clubs onto the adventurers but several arrow volleys put them down.

They continued into the wilderness to a road and camped out there. In the night they heard wounded men and it was a group of men-at-arms in the service of the armies of St. Signis. They invited them to camp and persuaded them to accompany them to Prigwort to help their wounded. They agreed.

The next day they set out to Prigwort but passing through a field were surrounded by giant spiderwebs. They encountered and slew 6 x Giant Spinning Spiders with arrow volleys and the hunter helped to harvest 1d6 poison glands as trophies per adventurer.

That evening on the road to Prigwort they encountered a demonic Centaur that had successfully chained a Black Bile Wyrm to a tree, but was wounded in the process. They took no risks despite the pleas from the Wyrm and hewed them both down with arrow fire from a safe distance as the Bard crippled the Centaur with enchanted song. The hunter then lead them to the Wyrm’s lair where they found great treasure.

The next day they made it successfully to Prigwort where the church rewarded them for their good deed by granting them a relic of St. Waylaine which is said to repel Liches. (item as Reliquary / Art object)

Character Grades

NOTE: Grades also include the subsequent SEEN posts!

Impudence– Grade S
Tyrone – Grade E
Mashker (Absent) – Grade F

E - Excellent, few deviations from norm = 1 S- Superior, deviations minimal but noted =2 F - Fair performance, more norm than deviations =3 P- Poor showing with aberrant behavior =4

(Page 86 AD&D DMG)

Monster XP

4 x Giant Scarecrows (65 xp) - +260 xp

6 x Giant Spinning Spiders (90 xp) - +540 xp

1 x Centaur Sylvan (80 xp) - +80 xp

1 x Black Bile Wyrm (460 xp) - +460 xp

Treasure

1,000 gp - +1,000 xp

1,000 pp - +10,000 xp

8,000 sp - +800 xp

9 sp - +1 xp

5 gems – (10, 50, 100 and 500 gp) - +660 xp

1d4 mundane or trade goods from the scarecrows
4,153 gp each and 1d4 mundane or trade goods which may be rolled for. Weight for each is 334 lbs of gold! Must be cached or stored.

Total XP: 13,801 xp

25 Men-at-arms = 12.5 Adventurer shares and 3 adventurers

890 xp Each

After Action Report

• Book control has improved greatly and despite moving between 3-5 large books the game moved fairly quickly.

• Roleplaying was great with the Hunter attempting to take trophies and the Bard identifying monsters as well as having an eye for being Chaotic and always seeking ways to use their enchanting songs.

DOLMENWOOD SESSION CHIDE 7^th of CHYSTING (JULY 7, 2026)
A cavern is rumored to contain lost treasures near Fog Lake north of the Woodcutter’s Encampment.

Summary:

This was our first time playing the game together as an adventure session during the Dolmenstein. All of the players were either veteran players, referees or active and excellent patrons in the domain game.

The adjustment went fairly well but with a few hiccups. We started about 15 minutes late. The adventurers set out from The Woodcutter’s Encampment along an East Road to find a path to Fog Lake.

Almost immediately they were beset by several problems. First, they were grossly over-encumbered, and spent some time in the game deciding what should be carried. Eventually I simply made the initial decision that they would go at the next lowest movement rate.

During that time they were unable to rest due to an encounter with a psychedelic giant snail in a rainbow waterfall which was opera singing and summoning forth a bunch of mystical divans to lay upon. Although Snowdrop wishes to sleep upon one, the humans among them picked up camp and dragged Snowdrop away and they began the next day with a rest penalty.

They ventured on and by the third day had ran out of rations. They took a full day resting and hunting and Bill Varlet the hunter was able to find a cavern of giant bats, which they slew and took their meat for lots of fresh rations.

After a couple of more days they were able to find the lake and spotted the cavern right away. They descended into the underworld but other than avoiding some kobolds and scraping some magic mushrooms from the walls were unable to find treasure, though they did find an obsidian statue of arms.

They left fog lake and the characters traveled to Castle Brockenwold to the southeast to rest.

Character Grades

NOTE: Grades also include the subsequent SEEN posts!
Dayle– Grade S
Bill Varlet – Grade E
Snowdrop – Grade E
Smith – Grade S
Crump – Grade F

E - Excellent, few deviations from norm = 1 S- Superior, deviations minimal but noted =2 F - Foir performance, more norm than deviations =3 P- Poor showing with aberrant behavior =4

(Page 86 AD&D DMG)

Monster XP
5 x Giant Bats - XP 100 - +20 xp each.

Treasure
0GP
Various magical fungi found in the cavern (unidentified)

After Action Report

• We became bogged down in book keeping on the front end. We noted that this should always be done outside the adventure.

• Beginning at level 1 with plate-mail is probably less useful than having the ability to carry loads and have survival equipment for the forest. If armor is generated, we considered that at first it might be better to sell it. Adventurers started with little money and it is difficult to buy equipment like mules or hire people.

• The book control improved over the course of the session, and having others assist with it made it go very quickly and we were able to identify lots of useful rules for situations. We got faster at the camping procedure as we did it.

• Having a standard tracking sheet to quickly cover business might smooth things into game-play faster.

This is actually a Re-upload, as future play reports for Dolmenstein will be in this substack for my play reports. This play report is from Dungeoneer ‘s“Dungeoneering Society” which is running a thrilling Braunstein Campaign using the Dolmenwood RPG and setting.

Situation

With Drune and Nag Lord attacks increasing across the north, the Duke of Brockenwold hosts a closed council of the Bishop and the 3 Breggle Lords to discuss a treacherous plan for the Duchy.

Dramatis Personae

Dungeoneer (Referee)

Glen (David Bowie the Goblin King + Lord Hogwarsh)

Kevin (Heinrich + Lord Ramius)

Percival (Pluritine Church)

Tipsy (Tipsy’s Thieves Guild + Lord Cornwall of London)

Bukaroo (Lord Malbleat)

Bing (Lord Murkin)

Summary

The meeting begins proposing the treachery of Lord Sagewine Hogwarsh, whose indolence as a Baron combined with cavorting with criminals and suspicion of involvement with the Drune leads the Duke to suggest his house must be given over to the Breggles. The Baron also promises the Breggles more land.

As this discussion is happening Lord Hogwarsh appears (actually David Bowie the Goblin King in disguise). The Baron makes a show of embarrassing the young lord and showing evidence that the criminals who sacked the Abbey of St. Clewd were related to the criminals of High Hankle. The Duke and Lord Hogwarsh have a brief private meeting and then the council continues.

Suddenly the Duchess Ophelia is stolen from the castle. Using prayers, the Bishop helps track the culprits down, but then Lord Hogwarsh (who is actually the Goblin King) casts a spell to conceal the culprits and also summons a massive goblin army within the walls of the Castle Brockenwold.

With the allotted time ending for the Braunstein, the session ends docketing a massive battle with hundreds of Goblins versus the Kingdom’s forces right in the streets of the capital city.

My After Action Report

• I think that allowing completely independent and autonomous actions by participants inevitably leads to these dramatic events with huge swings, and the necessity of docketing a massive battle right in the heart of the capital with fantasy forces is a desirable outcome

• The Type 1 Braunstein session really reveals the best way to have court intrigue gameplay

• There wasn’t a lot of private negotiation among participants, future Braunsteins may see more of this I think

It’s clear to us that the Heart Gem is magical and that if we could wield it we could stop the slime monsters but pieces of it were taken out. I go to the witch in town, despite her being so evil (and helping to kill one of my previous characters) because I tell her we are all in this together at this point. The witch does not have the magic to find the pieces but the wizard on the werewolf island does.

I despair at this because the werewolf island is days away by boat, and even then it’s got werewolves. Fortunately, magic the witch does have is portal magic and she opens a portal to the werewolf island.

The portal ends in a cave filled with sleeping werewolves. They have the gem piece needed! I have ratman cause a distraction and they give chase to him as he zips around (remember, he can fly) and I sneak past the werewolves, grab the gem and flee into the nearby island in search of the wizard.

The island that has the sea cave has baby goblins who are mean and will only go away from the island if driven off by magic.

They also say in Paulvilletown that there are no nice witches but there is one nice wizard among the islands nearby. However, he lives on the island inhabited by werewolves.

I make sail with one of my men-at-arms to the island which has the pole and is said to have goblins and treasure and I encounter SEA WEREWOLVES, in fact over 1,000 of them!

They are in a grand battle with the Pirates of the isles, but the pirates lose and are driven back to their island hideout. The battle attracts a Giant Octupus which swallows the Sea Werewolf army and misses us.

I continue to sail to the island with the baby goblins but they aren’t nice so I decide to cover myself with mud and act like them and then insist that, since I’m the biggest, obviously I’m the Goblin King.

The baby-Goblins buy this story but say that unfortunately, they don’t know where the treasure is I’ve heard of but casually mention the Heart Gem came to them from a visitor who is still here. The visitor turns out to be a kind of fairy. With the appearance of a Ratman, he can fly and swim. The Ratman says the gem was most beautiful and it washed up on shore while he was swimming one day.

He took it to the baby goblins, hoping they could hide it in a nearby cave but unfortunately the Pirates took it, and in the taking shattered a piece of it.

For this reason, I made plans to infiltrate the Pirates Island Hideout and to take back the gem.

Believe it or not, at 3 she was the ideal Adventure Game player. I could present situations and she would make choices, and I would then give the results.

At 4, her development has made this much more complex. She thinks about big choices and they tend to make her feel more strongly. While I assure her it is just a game, these choices feel very meaningful to her, and the part of her which can distinguish between a real life choice and a fake game one is lessened (meanwhile she’s getting really good at making good choices in real life! Which means she wouldn’t likely be in a terrible dungeon.)

It’s for this reason, that we have played much less adventure games sadly, after a few attempts.

Recently she said she wanted to be the Dungeon Master, which I happily agreed to. She was a pretty good Dungeon Master when she was 3 anyway, likewise presenting situations for me and then me making dramatic choices she thought was entertaining.

At 4 the complexity of her cognitive development has likewise changed this. What’s interesting is that she has a very clear idea of how the world works in her mind, and she’s fairly good at articulating it. She is able to operate from “Arneson’s First Law”, that is “I know this is how the world works!”

The downside to this is that she tends to railroad and say “no” to just about everything! After all, “that’s not how the world works!”

So after a couple of attempts at Dungeon Mastering we set that to pause and switched to wargames also.

Recently I made a proposal to her, “What if, when I get to a spot and don’t know how the world works you help me figure out how to make the choice I want?”

She was amenable to that so we returned to her favorite setting to Dungeon Master: Paulvilletown.

Paulvilletown is Anastasia’s paracosm setting. Paulvilletown is beset by all kinds of evils. There’s a mean witch that runs things, priates on the seas, ornery goblins on the nearby islands, and many other scary things!

I rolled up a new level 1 Fighting Man for adventures in Paulvilletown and asked around for glory, treasure and wonder at the nearby Inn.

Legend held that on each island was a secret passageway. Somewhere beneath is a dark, dark dungeon, that is very, very old. At it’s bottom is a Fire Giant with eyes of great treasure. The Fire Giant is tricksy and lures people in to get their stuff, but if you can outsmart it and poke it in the eyes you could take it’s treasure-eyes.

I stalk the city for a while and watch for this hidden entrance and find Pirates that are coming to and from the Giant! They know of the secret passageway and seem to be in league with the evil monster.

I ask to sneak and follow the Pirates but she informs me that I am not a Thief and that’s not in the rules so I get caught. The Pirates catch wind of me following them and I fail to impersonate them! Fleeing, I attempt to speak with the evil witch, thinking perhaps we could come to some deal, but am rejected and threatened!

I hear another rumor that there are werewolves who don’t like the witch and might eat her so I pay a dollar and sail to the werewolf island to speak with them. Sadly, I don’t speak werewolf! But being nice to them, they don’t eat me, even though they want to.

I try drawing on the ground to talk to them about the witch, but this is a island of sidewalks only! As far as the eye can see! It seems to have once been a city.

Sailing back I am despondent that I have had no luck in seeking my fortune, but I pay around for another rumor and hear that the witch has a map! So I sneak into her bedroom at night to snatch the map but she awakens and sees me! She turns me into stone.

At this point my Daughter frowns, chides me and says, “Daddy. You need to try to not get turned to stone next time.”

So I roll a second character, a magic-user with “sleep” and quite a bit of gold.

I find no rumors in town as the magic-user but I do pay 2 dollars to sail to a island with a giant tree. The boat captain tells me that the tree on this island is actually the secret lair of a different witch.

Thinking I could purloin treasure from it I travel to the island (before being intercepted by Pirates we are fleeing) and I make it to the giant tree with the magic door. It opens! Easily....

In the magic door is a staircase. It ascends for a whole day before I become exhausted and sleep. Nothing happens when I wake up from a full night’s sleep, it seems the witch isn’t home. I continue to ascend and nothing happens. A magic infinite staircase, a spell!

I go back the other way, but lo, some phantasmal force is on the way down; giant donuts. I try to eat them but it’s too much. I try to jump on one and make it to the door, but the door is magically locked. I’m stuck! I subsist on the magic donuts until the witch comes and I think I’m doomed. Fortunately (or perhaps not) she forgot her magic door password and couldn’t get in! We were both stuck.

I lived out the rest of my days eating magic donuts.

And that ended two characters in Paulvilletown.

I’ve decided I wanted to make this separate publication to more frequently post about what’s going on in the experimental and indie world of Mythic Mountains, and keep the main blog dedicated to the “big” posts I’ve been doing that take more time and research.

One thing I’ve really wanted to share is the single best adventure gaming experience of my life: beginning to play with my 2 year old daughter.

I say “beginning to play with my 2 year old” but, in truth, she’s 4. I’ve got some play reports to catch up on!

In brief, I play a series of games with my daughter and have for the past couple of years. I did mention some of this in my blog post here.

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The Floor Game and the Adventure Game

I separate the games we play into a few big categories. There’s “tabletop games” which are done with little figures and a stuff on our kitchen table usually with others. We play Dolmenwood together a lot that way. And then there’s “floor games”, inspired by the pattern of play and setup of HG Well’s “Floor games” with his own children.

We also play board and even wargames (an unexpected turn.) We mostly play floor games though, and of those there are adventure and story games. (Mentioned in the post previously linked.)

I want to emphasize this is all her doing. While it is the highest point of this hobby for me so far, she has insisted on playing “D&D” (despite me always calling it the ‘adventure game’ and despite her having no other exposure to the brand). She insists on playing, pretty much every day. And for the most part if time allows just 40 minutes we play the adventure game every single day I’m home and not away at work.

Today she wanted to return to something she hasn’t seen in a year and a half. I’m not even sure she had turned 3 yet when she went to the interdimensional space called the “Contoony” (also mentioned in the linked blog post.)

Our approach to the Contoony was more ‘s “Storygame” method if I recall correctly at that time. She get’s emotionally attached to things from even 2 years ago even though she was 4, and she remembers every detail of everything she’s ever seen usually.

I tried to tell her that world had changed, but if she really wanted to go back there, we could. She insisted so we went back to space again.

The first time didn’t go well

I had been planning this game but didn’t have it finished. We actually tried my favorite space adventure game “Traveller” (1977) and it…did not work at all.

I tend to lean very, very heavily on a “Free Kriegspiel” type of approach with my daughter, but how I do that is specific. I use lots and lots of abductive reasoning and fiction, but I depend more on procedures and tables because things move so quickly.

She loves this about old school D&D, and in fact, the preferred game for both of us is simply Original Dungeons and Dragons (1974). I run that game straight from the book for her with ease, and weave in Andrew Lang, Hans Christian Anderson, Tolkien and Grimm with no difficulty.

I figured Traveller would work just as well because of those hygienic procedures that could act as a springboard of choices, meaningful and persistent consequences and the application of fiction to results through abductive reasoning.

Unfortunately, not only was Traveller a bit heavy on hard science for her age (not that I was shying away from that) but it held core gameplay aspects rooted in American Pulp Sci Fi. That meant nearly everyone, including her, was a criminal as a result of Law rolls and interacting with random persons and starships that were authorities. It was unfair, and well, that’s a pretty good representation of the world, but we also live in a world where you can and should usually follow the rules and I want her to know that. Traveller shows the life of a criminal, and that’s a lesson we can look at in the future.

Facing unfair circumstances with monsters makes sense to her, and it’s in the fairy tales I read her. Death, unfairness, fear. All of that is being alive, human and good. But not trusting authorities who are shaking you down at the starport for something you didn’t do? It’s all a bit postmodern and gray for her right now.

I was a bit stumped for a while on what game to use. I considered just using D&D but using parts of Traveller for space, making something of my own, and I looked at things such as Ken St Andre’s “StarFaring.” Of course, any of that is a possible solution, but I’ve found having a strong central axle for things to rotate around is pretty helpful.

I used “Perilous Void” but it was a bit complicated and adult too. I have plenty of other Indie sci fi types of things but they all tend toward the adult and the cynical. What did I have which could be more open and left to my Daughter’s choices, with less of a heavy hand of fiction?

I was surprised to go back through my collection and find my way back near the beginning of my FKR journey: White Star.

White Star: The Space Adventure Game

White Star is of course the masterpiece of .

At first I didn’t return to White Star because I remembered how bare bones it was (on purpose, and at the time I primarily used the original version). It had character and resolution mechanics I really didn’t need anymore. But out of curiosity I checked.

What I was delighted to find in the “Galaxy Edition” was the back section. In the back is basically everything needed to play out of the book right away, fleshed out planets and sectors, and most importantly procedures for the game. Encounters and events for space, planets and persons.

The tables are flavored more toward a mashup of over the top pop sci fi or space fantasy.

It was perfect. We had rediscovered the perfect space game for her.

Back in Space again

She loves seeking treasure in D&D so much, I decided to pull from Ken St Andre’s game and make the game about finding space crystals which are both valuable, magical and make sci fi stuff work.

I took some little fake gems from another of her favorite board games (with her permission) and tied them to certain encounters and the map.

I kept the sector map open, she didn’t know what was out there.

She started back at the Contoony. Things had changed. In that way I’m a hardcore simulationist. I believe above all in treating the world like a real place. Especially so when playing with her.

The Spider King was sad. She had rung the “in charge gong” and now he was enthralled to her. But they couldn’t leave the Contoony because she had taken the stars to dance with his children. Now they had no gems to leave this interdimensional pocket.

She offers to travel with her Penguin friend into space to find a gem for them.

Then

BAM

(She was dithering a bit so I rolled an encounter check.)

A space rabbit-person called a “Lagomorph” crashed into the Contoony! He had lost the stars to navigate by thanks to her taking them and making them dance with the Spider King’s children!

He blamed her and demanded she pay to fix his ship!

She admitted she didn’t have the money to do so, but perhaps they could go get the gem and then get all of this fixed. He agreed and joined their crew of three.

Immediately upon entering space she had a series of disasters. First she jumped into an asteroid field and started to dodge space rocks!

I gently started throwing stuffies at her in the room and acting like rocks were coming toward her as she laughed and dodged them. I framed some options requiring her to act quickly and she decided to jump again.

This time she jumped near a blackhole. I started to grab her leg and pull her like she was getting sucked into a black hole and she cackled and she started to pretend to push buttons on the starship to get it to jump out again.

Thankfully, she jumped near a mining station. Wouldn’t you know it? They mine space crystals. Her ship was damaged and out of fuel, but they agreed to help her if she would clear some monster out of the mine.

Eventually, she reluctantly agreed to go into the mine and there found a Void Knight.

Now, Princess Flower Heart is familiar enough with The Way and has a Star Sword but they are no match for the mighty Evil Baron. He first tries to corrupt her, offering her 6 of the crystals if she’d only steal them and walk away. When she refuses and tries to fight he puts them all to sleep and steals the crystals he can. They wake up to only find one left. The miners are simply relieved the Dark Knight was gone and helped repair her ship and allowed her to take the crystal as payment (though she did nothing.)

She returned to the spider king, taking fuel on a jungle planet (and taking her little starship and pretending like it was taking off and landing from the paper) along the way and gave them the crystal. Then they had a party.