Vox Arcana - Blog

While (over)prepping for a recently-finished Shadowdark game, I was looking for a big hex map into which I could fit many adventures. That's how I came across Dyson Logos' Midsummer Lands map. I learned some new photoshop skills, and spent about 16 hours (!) coloring it. I'm providing it here, since I believe the best part of the hobby is sharing cool stuff with strangers. I even made a version where I removed the cities, which might be good if you have your own ideas for where civilization should (and shouldn't) be. You can find the Google drive folder right here. Vox Arcana takes no credit for the cartography, just the color scheme. Dyson Logos is the man, as always.

 In case anyone was wondering, I don't use AI to write these blogs. Since Google and every other AI company are scraping the internet for content and providing text-only summaries, I figured I'd stop adding images to my posts. Making this blog look fun and image-heavy takes a lot of time and attention away from what I want to do, which is posting my thoughts with minimal editing.

These are my opinions and analysis of these spells. I'm not an expert, but I've played an awful lot of D&D over the years, so I think these points are worth considering. This post is meant to accompany the Dolmenwood Player's Book readthrough. Summary: The early Arcane spells are quite weak and/or situational. With the rules as described, in which a caster must prepare each specific spell he/she wants to use that day, I feel that casters are at a major disadvantage early on (even more so than in other AD&D retro clones). That being said, if a caster can survive long enough, the spells become extremely powerful (even more so than in other AD&D retro clones).  Rank 1 Arcane Spells I’m not usually one to do tier lists, but I think in this case, it’s warranted. CRYSTAL RESONANCE This spell allows the caster to imprint their surrounding energies onto a gem, then later release it. It cannot cause damage, blindness, deafness, or other special effects. There are four...

  “A piece of sharp, rusty metal dipped in ice cream.” That’s how I came to describe the setting of Dolmenwood after much reading and writing out these readthroughs. While the setting may at first appear to be a fantastical realm of fairies and cute talking animals, in truth, there’s a dark edge to this world that is not always apparent. It saddens me to recognize that many prospective referees and players will take their first impression at face value and miss out on experiencing perhaps the most detailed, elaborate, and exhaustive settings to date. Intro My original plan was to sit and read through these books, cover to cover. These read-throughs help keep me focused. Here we go. I’m going to go section by section and write my thoughts down as I go. Player’s Book Table of Contents Gavin does a terrific job organizing this. Even with the bookmarked PDFs, I still find myself clicking back to the table of contents in all of these books, due to their usefulness. I really must...