{"id":10506,"date":"2026-07-08T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10506"},"modified":"2026-06-17T08:00:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T12:00:48","slug":"under-the-dolmens-delve-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10506","title":{"rendered":"Under The Dolmens, Delve #3"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By B. Wraven Wright
2Die10 Games
Dolmenwood
Levels 4-5<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Four months ago, Father Wolfgang and several other members of the Church of St Pastery\u2019 clergy were having strange dreams that all had one thing in common: a call of pilgrimage from The One True God. Father Dobey, Vicar of Lankshorn, initially had these strange dreams also but they faded in frequency and severity for him while the opposite was happening to Father Wolfgang and the others. Having been compelled into blind pilgrimage towards the direction of Hags Addle, Father Wolfgang and those afflicted with these dreams were confronted by Father Dobey, who declared these dreams as heresy. In doing so, the pilgrims openly questioned his piousness as well as his status of Vicar of Lankshorn. Father Dobey, eager to avoid conflict, decided to let the pilgrims go on the condition that they return in one month\u2019s time. The pilgrims agreed and took their leave with the vicar\u2019s blessing. One month has come and gone, with Father Dobey wanting to know what happened to the pilgrims for a host of reasons\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This seventeen page adventure uses about five pages to describe 27 rooms in a small dungeon. Hack till you drop and do little else as you explore the monotony of uninspiring rooms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was quite disappointed with this one. Dolmenwood has been hitting at a decent rate, but, I guess, as a sign of its success, \u201cmore is coming out now.\u201d I would hope you can understand the euphemism. The map, also, looks promising. It\u2019s a larger Dyson affair with forty or so rooms on it, only about thirty of which are keyed in the his adventure. Some columns, stairs, curtains, an overhead passage and murder holes. Almost none of which is taken advantage of in te text. ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The local clergy been having God dreams. The vicars gives them permission to go on a pilgrimage to their dreamed of site. They don\u2019t come back so in you go to find them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe One True God who weeps in the temple underneath the dolmen\u201d is pretty strong flavour. There is no preamble to the adventure, no investigation, so there\u2019s no build up to this before you get to the dungeon. Once in the dungeon the theming, of The One True God, and the weeping, is essentially not present either. You will find a weeping statue face (with decent art piece to accompany it) but that\u2019s it. What you WILL find are a bunch of clergy\/clerics. They are all scaly bipedal wolfmen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why are they scaly wolfmen? No clue. You just show up and there are these empty, or mostly empty rooms and more than a few of them have these scaly wolf men in them that are doing clericy shit. And they attack you. In fact, everything and everyone attacks you in this. Monsters attack you and in a couple of rooms there\u2019s a false floor that breaks away in to pit things. That\u2019s it. That\u2019s your interactivity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I cannot emphasize that enough. \u201cYou see 4 beings standing, frantically \u201creading\u201d scrolls out loud in a hissing, barking language.\u201d Thats your room. Oh, also, in the description for BEINGS, \u201cFour LUPINE CLERGY stop praying and attack on sight.\u201d Mystery. Wonder. Exploration. Not present. Just stabbing things that attack, which are the scaly wolfmen clergy and some black blobs that are in a few rooms. More than a little one-note. Oh, and the \u201cbreak through the false floor\u201d pits, Order of battle, for our clergy? Nope. They just sit in their rooms and get stabbed. Stab stab stab. Stab stab stab. Stab stab for the fun of it, stab stab for the fun of it, stab atb for the fun of it stab stab for the fun of it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s little to no treasure present. The last room of the dungeon has Lareth in it. There is not hint, anywhere, that Lareth is about. \u201cAs you get close enough to the tapestry to make out the material it\u2019s made of, you see that the ground starting in front of you winding all the way around the room to the pillars on the other side, is freshly turned earth that has a strong sickly-sweet smell of vinegar.\u201d That\u2019s Lareth for you, all vinegar-smelling! So, an earth wyrm pops out of the dirt and then attacks. LARETH WAS BEHIND EVERYTHING THE ENTIRE TIME!!! Oh, Lareth, such a card. No hint. No build up. Nothing that means anything. Just stab some scaly bipedal wolf clerics and then in the last room a wyrm pops up from the ground and you kill it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Formatting is ok. Headers, color changing, underlines, bolding. You can find things well enough. It also notes the door, light conditions, and exits in the rooms. I am not amused by anything done by rote. I think, that, unless told otherwise, we can assume darkness, or light, depending on the mood of the individual dungeon. Note what\u2019s different, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t know, man. It\u2019s just a VERY basic and simplistic dungeon. It;s padded out, with doors, and light and exits. It\u2019s got some formatting to make it scan nicer. But the core of what\u2019s going on it is quite simplistic. The One True God is not played up. The wolf dudes get nothing. The Lareth behind the curtain is not hinted at. There\u2019s no build up. There\u2019s no really e octave room descriptions, just a bunch of They Attack!s. There\u2019s no insidious presence in town. There\u2019s nothing really to EXPLORE ot interact with in the dungeon, proper. Even the scaly wolf dudes just sit around waiting to die with no order of battle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is different than, say, a raid. In that case you know what you are doing and the various encounters and environments are engineered by the designer to support the raid. This is just \u2026 basic and static?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $1 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/570825\/under-the-dolmens-delve-3-a-one-shot-dungeon-for-levels-4-5-adventurers-in-the-dolmenwood-setting?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By B. Wraven Wright2Die10 GamesDolmenwoodLevels 4-5 Four months ago, Father Wolfgang and several other members of the Church of St Pastery\u2019 clergy were having strange dreams that all had one thing in common: a call of pilgrimage from The One … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/570825.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10507,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10506\/revisions\/10507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}