Campaign 2026: Dolmenwood
In November 2023 I backed the Kickstarter for the Dolmenwood campaign setting. In November 2025 I finally received my physical books. This is not a complaint; digital copies were available quite early and the delay was mostly due to the absurd tariff situation. If I wanted to I could have been running a campaign online well over a year ago, but I like having physical books in front of me, and while I don't mind printing off material for a GM binder (I did a bunch of this when I was running DCC) I figured my work would be unhappy about me printing off hundreds and hundreds of pages on the office printer.
The delay in the physical release, combined with some (completely understandable) scheduling delays in my usual group coincidentally places me at the perfect time to finally get a Dolmenwood campaign up and running as part of NBateman's Campaign 2026 challenge. We've been playing a Shadowrun scenario that should be wrapping up early/mid-January, and I've therefore been eyeing either a late January or early February start for this anyway -- I'm sure starting in late January is still within the spirit of the challenge.
I'll admit that I can be a sucker for Shiny New Product, and that's what got me to pledge to the Dolmenwood Kickstarter, but the campaign book in particular has a lot of legwork already done that, I think, makes it a good choice for this. At this point I've read nearly everything besides all the individual hexes, and I think I have a good enough handle on the setting that I could get things started at the drop of a hat. Prep would mostly consist of reviewing neighboring hexes to where the players start and would likely end up each week, plus those referenced by nearby rumors and the like, plus making some faction moves once we're at least a few sessions in (with the help of Elmcat's fantastic Dolmenwood faction series).
Scheduling remains the ultimate BBEG, as the reddit-tier joke goes. A few years ago a weeknight would have been ideal, but with a young child on our hands and occasional other weeknight obligations, I think this is out of the question. Planning games around a two-year-old's schedule is difficult in obvious ways, but there is one major saving grace: nap time. On Saturdays and Sundays when he's home with us there's a window of at least two hours where he's out like a light. That's at least two hours where my wife can join the group without any distraction, should I run the game at home, or where at the very least she doesn't have to actively watch him, should I run the game at a different location. This has been what we've been doing up until now, meeting at our house on Saturdays from 1 until about 4, and it has largely worked out, and so remains the most likely option.
Sundays remain a tantalizing possibility, though, because I usually watch our kid those mornings, so there's some balance. However, two of the members of my current group have some kind of church job, and so their Sunday mornings are already busy (particularly an issue for one who has kids who would probably like to see him for the latter part of that day). Not only does this exclude two people I like to play with, it further limits my already shrinking pool of players. However, I've been toying with running an open table game at either my local hobby shop or a brewery I frequent. A sandbox hexcrawl like Dolmenwood would be good for that, and Sundays would be a good day for that at either location. I might even be able to run this parallel to my current group, with the open table meeting nearly weekly on Sundays with my current group meeting less regularly on Saturdays.
The one feasible nightime option would be an online game somewhat late at night (well, late by my old man standards, from nine to midnight). I could probably only manage this on Fridays, though, which is obviously prime scheduling real estate. Still, worth considering.
My goal is to have scheduling pinned down in a couple of weeks, before we're well into January. Like I said, the most likely option is continuing with the current group at the current time, but if I did this I'd also want to find some other folks to join to keep up a weekly-with-some-breaks schedule (something I think my current group could not commit to exactly as it is, even with the understanding that it's fine to miss a session or two).