Folk Horror RPG Resources & Dolmenwood

[Fenris-77]

So while folks are patiently waiting for me to get my SWON game off the ground I'm also faffing about with Dolmenwood, which is excellent but which I've also never gotten around to running. I'm converting the bits and bobs over to BH2E, which is the easy part, but I was also wondering if anyone had any suggestions for good folk horror resources. I'm not fashed about system but rather about quality evocative bits. I'd prefer fantasy or fantasy adjacent, but whatever.

I'd also be interested in anyone's experience in running Dolmenwood using any system. Tell me your tales of psychedelic horror-tinged woe.

 

[Uferschnepfe]

I enjoyed Wickerpunk.

 

[Fenris-77]

I enjoyed Wickerpunk.

Is that a game then? I mean yeah, I can look it up, and I'm about to, but I thought I'd ask first...

Edit: Eiyee - 5E?! Wow. Still, I won't discount it based just on that. Thanks.

 

[stonetoflesh]

My Dolmenwood campaign ran for over a year, it has been a ton of fun. We're taking a break right now and playing something else (Fading Suns), but eventually we'll get back to it.

I plopped the Barrowmaze (the original version) into the setting a few hexes east of Prigwort and reskinned the factions (and their motives) to be the Drune and Lord Malbleat. PCs (including a Knight and a Friar) were charged with recovering the Font of Law and closing the chaos portal, which was drawing Atanuwë southward. Some sessions were spent in the maze, others were focused on exploring the wood. The Winter's Daughter adventure was a fun diversion early on, with some repercussions the PCs have yet to fully uncover. Shenanigans at the crystal caves south of Fog Lake. Visiting the mysterious lady in the Tower of Frost. Rescuing Lady Harrowmoor's daughter from her captor at the ruined Abbey of St. Clewyd. Searching for the lair of Chasobrithe, the yellow bile wyrm. Cleansing a tainted chapel. Attending the woodgrue moot. So many cool, weird monster encounters -- antler wraiths, witch owl, bestial centaur, redcaps... The last session ended with the PCs recovering the Font of Law from the Barrowmaze.

The Dolmenwood calendar actually made me excited to keep careful time records, something I've always been very handwavy about in the past; having all the feast days, moon phases, etc. adds a lot more flavor and interest. Supporting at Woodgrue level was some of the best money I've ever spent on gaming, as the Player/Campaign/Monster books are so well-written and well-laid out. I'm really looking forward to the Kickstarter!

 

[Nick J]

I ran a Dolmenwood game using BRP/Magic World for a couple of years. 4-5 players playing Grimalkin, a squire, a physician, and a Deep Magic-using witch’s son.

The game started out in Dreg, meandered to Lankshorn. Players helped precipitate a war with the crookhorns, got tangled up with the Cold Prince’s agents in Prigwort, tried to find a way to break the curse of a faerie-knight killed and his spirit imprisoned in a cruel mace (forged by a goblin smith in Faerie).

Unfortunately my life got really chaotic a couple of years ago and I had to suspend the game. My source material was strictly the 8 zines, so a lot of the new additions in Gavin’s Patreon content is fairly divergent from my take on it, but I’d love to start the game up again, or maybe it would be best to start fresh? I think if I’d run it again, I’d adapt it to Design Mechanism’s Lyonesse, but it was fun hacking at Magic World to make it fit the setting. I’ve probably still got my 30ish page gazetteer on my hard drive if anyone is interested?

 

[stonetoflesh]

I ran a Dolmenwood game using BRP/Magic World for a couple of years. 4-5 players playing Grimalkin, a squire, a physician, and a Deep Magic-using witch’s son.

The game started out in Dreg, meandered to Lankshorn. Players helped precipitate a war with the crookhorns, got tangled up with the Cold Prince’s agents in Prigwort, tried to find a way to break the curse of a faerie-knight killed and his spirit imprisoned in a cruel mace (forged by a goblin smith in Faerie).

Unfortunately my life got really chaotic a couple of years ago and I had to suspend the game. My source material was strictly the 8 zines, so a lot of the new additions in Gavin’s Patreon content is fairly divergent from my take on it, but I’d love to start the game up again, or maybe it would be best to start fresh? I think if I’d run it again, I’d adapt it to Design Mechanism’s Lyonesse, but it was fun hacking at Magic World to make it fit the setting. I’ve probably still got my 30ish page gazetteer on my hard drive if anyone is interested?

A similar thought crossed my mind to combine the Lyonesse RPG with the Dolmenwood setting, as Vance's trilogy is one of my all-time favorite fantasy works, but the path of least resistance (I.e., lighter rules, zero conversion, and a healthy dose of pure laziness) prompted me to use BX/OSE instead.

 

[JAMUMU]

So while folks are patiently waiting for me to get my SWON game off the ground I'm also faffing about with Dolmenwood, which is excellent but which I've also never gotten around to running. I'm converting the bits and bobs over to BH2E, which is the easy part, but I was also wondering if anyone had any suggestions for good folk horror resources. I'm not fashed about system but rather about quality evocative bits. I'd prefer fantasy or fantasy adjacent, but whatever.

I'd also be interested in anyone's experience in running Dolmenwood using any system. Tell me your tales of psychedelic horror-tinged woe.

Folk Horror is my jam, man.

• Watch Midsommar, Blair Witch+The Remake, The Wicker Man, and The League of Gentlemen
• All is klar?
• Watch Black Death (2010)
• Naked maidens
• Snakes in the grass
• Susurrations in the treetops, susurrations in the weeds, the water, in the witches
• Punish them, punish them for accepting aid from the natives of Dolmenwood
• Punish them, punish them for being nice to the natives of Dolmenwood
• Punish them, punish them for holding themselves apart from the natives of Dolmenwood
• Punish them, punish them for committing violence in Dolmenwood
• Punish them, punish them for not spilling blood in Dolmenwood
• Severed paws on the trail
• Severed paws off the trail
• The children on the hillock
• THE CHILDREN ON THE HILLOCK!
• Nobody dances until the PCs make music
• Everybody dances until the PCs make music
• Punish them, punish them for making music!
• Three legged dogs
• The crows! The crows! What do they knows? BEES!
• And in the darkness bind them!
• They should have listened to the wizened old fool at the gas station

 

[Mankcam]

I ran a Dolmenwood game using BRP/Magic World for a couple of years. 4-5 players playing Grimalkin, a squire, a physician, and a Deep Magic-using witch’s son.

The game started out in Dreg, meandered to Lankshorn. Players helped precipitate a war with the crookhorns, got tangled up with the Cold Prince’s agents in Prigwort, tried to find a way to break the curse of a faerie-knight killed and his spirit imprisoned in a cruel mace (forged by a goblin smith in Faerie).

Unfortunately my life got really chaotic a couple of years ago and I had to suspend the game. My source material was strictly the 8 zines, so a lot of the new additions in Gavin’s Patreon content is fairly divergent from my take on it, but I’d love to start the game up again, or maybe it would be best to start fresh? I think if I’d run it again, I’d adapt it to Design Mechanism’s Lyonesse, but it was fun hacking at Magic World to make it fit the setting. I’ve probably still got my 30ish page gazetteer on my hard drive if anyone is interested?

This thought also crossed my mind while perusing Mythras Lyonesse earlier this year, and I think it would work well!

Lyonesse has all the foundations for the meta-setting, and you could easily drop things down to localised regions retrapping Dolemwood.
I also have Rackham Vale which could also be inserted somewhere in Lyonesse with relative ease and explanations as well.

I also backed Crow Land Publishing's book Wickerpunk on kickstarter a year or so ago, so there's lots of advice in that little digest on how to darken things up a bit using folk-horror elements.

 

[Uferschnepfe]

Is that a game then? I mean yeah, I can look it up, and I'm about to, but I thought I'd ask first...

Edit: Eiyee - 5E?! Wow. Still, I won't discount it based just on that. Thanks.

Although 5e is mentioned in Wickerpunk sales pitches, there is no 5e inside. There is no OGL, no nothing.
In fact, that is the biggest criticism when it comes to the book. It presents no new 5e classes, no new spells, no monster stats (as if we need more of that!).

Wickerpunk is all fluff. 270 pages of ideas, concepts, scenario suggestions & monster descriptions for folk-horror fantasy adventures. It would be a great addition to Dolmenwood.

I could provide a more detailed review, when needed.

 

[Fenris-77]

Although 5e is mentioned in Wickerpunk sales pitches, there is no 5e inside. There is no OGL, no nothing.
In fact, that is the biggest criticism when it comes to the book. It presents no new 5e classes, no new spells, no monster stats (as if we need more of that!).

Wickerpunk is all fluff. 270 pages of ideas, concepts, scenario suggestions & monster descriptions for folk-horror fantasy adventures. It would be a great addition to Dolmenwood.

I could provide a more detailed review, when needed.

Review away if you're feeling industrious.

My current table of things to adapt includes Into the Wyrd and Wild and Trophy Loom, both of which do wilderness and folk horror brilliantly. I'm going to work the existing Dolmenwood setting just enough to wrap a bigger and perhaps darker forest around it or behind it.

 

[Necrozius]

Seconding Wickerpunk as a nice resource. While it discusses how to adapt typical (ie, 5e) classes to the concepts within, I can't recall any mention of game mechanics.

If you can get the PDF on discount, go for it.

 

[Fenris-77]

The PDF is $10 so I'm not too worried about finding it at a discount. A decent pint of beer here costs more than that.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

I wouldn't say I am a huge folk horror person but occasionally things I am interested in seem to intersect with it. This might be too rooted in American folk horror but you might enjoy the novel Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon. It is modern though so not sure if it connects with what you are looking for

Something that might also be of interest is an anthology I picked up last year called Damnable Tales A Folk Horror Anthology

 

[Korgoth]

I thought the 'Dolmenwood' wasn't released yet? Like in a finished PDF/Print version and it's still a ways (years) away from that stage no?

Are people running their own Dolmenwood campaigns just reading the old blog posts on the creators blog and working with that material?!?


.

 

[Fenris-77]

I thought the 'Dolmenwood' wasn't released yet? Like in a finished PDF/Print version and it's still a ways (years) away from that stage no?

Are people running their own Dolmenwood campaigns just reading the old blog posts on the creators blog and working with that material?!?
.

The new books are (were?) slated to kickstart this year sometime. I have the 8 issues of Wormskin that cover most of the details plus the four other PDFs they put out - The Calendar, The Goat Man, The Rogues Gallery, and Winter's Daughter.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think I'm going to use some procedurally generated stuff to model parts of the Fairy realm. So modules/settings that randomly generate each location as the players play and that change from visit to visit. So far I have Stygian Library and the Gardens of Ynn by Emmy Allen and Vast in the Dark by Charles Ferguson-Avery. Each will serve for a different part of the Fae realm.

 

[AsenRG]

I think I'm going to use some procedurally generated stuff to model parts of the Fairy realm. So modules/settings that randomly generate each location as the players play and that change from visit to visit.

Talk about moody and whimsical!

 

[Bilharzia]

I thought the 'Dolmenwood' wasn't released yet? Like in a finished PDF/Print version and it's still a ways (years) away from that stage no?

Are people running their own Dolmenwood campaigns just reading the old blog posts on the creators blog and working with that material?!?

It is my understanding that if you were a long standing supporter on Patreon at this point you already have most of the material that will be published, since it was made available as it was finished on the Patreon account.