The hexmap and descriptions of each hex for Dolmenwood is INCREDIBLE.  Nothing against Western Reaches, but based on hex description and POI's alone DW is much more rich.  There are a ton of other cool things about SW's Western Reaches though.  Love them both!

"DJ" is pronounced as an English J. Most European languages pronounce J as Y, so putting a D in front of it is their way of making it clear to each other that it should be the English J sound.

Love the shirt!
Not gonna lie, in the thumbnail it looked like you had a little grey patch in the front of you hair, painted on for the Dracula vibes haha.

Great video as always muh dude 🤘😎🤘

I don't do PDFs, for various reasons, so I'm waiting for the print version.  I'm jazzed to check it out.  I've only played around with ShadowDark a little bit, but I've liked it so far.  I haven't read Dolmenwood, but I read their Free RPG Day adventure for 2026.  It was nice, but I don't think the tone is right for my tastes.  Also, the system seems too close to old D&D for my liking.  Still, if I found it at a good price, I'd probably pick up the hex crawl book.  I won't rant about that here, but suffice to say, DCC and ShadowDark are about as close to D&D as I'm really willing to go.  I like that ShadowDark's tone reminds me of the old Fighting Fantasy books, to a degree.  And it looks like the City of Masks will be even more of that.

Shadowdark is styill one of those games thats on the shelf... I really must get round to playing it!

Gah! I'm trying to get my ShadoDark group ready for their first adventure(LvL 1). Someday I will check this out. I just received Phillip Reed's SD pdfs! Great video! Take it easy. :trophy-yellow-smiling:

What's your favorite system for Hexcrawling?

This is a great start to the day!  I'm always excited to see a new video.  As for the particular topic, I have opinions.  

Honest unfiltered opinion: I know I am usually very positive, but I can't say I'm excited about the Western Reaches.  I chose to back it instead of the Dragonbane expansion and I regret that move so much.  It's almost a year later than expected and I'm not excited about it anymore at all. I legit just want a physical book so I'm not out 85 bucks.  And then I looked through the PDF and I was like this is it?  All that wait for this?  I'm super disappointed in it.  It honestly feels like they lifted the idea from the Basic Fantasy Morgansfort Western Lands campaign and then made a luxury looking book with sterile generic fantasy in it.  

I shouldn't be surprised though because the Cursed scrolls zines didn't land for me either. It's hard to put a finger on, but I find everything with Shadowdark to be generic and uninteresting.  I like the layout, but layout only gets you so far if the rest isn't engaging and honestly, it's just the same uninspired generic 5e adjacent themes and prose that don't interest me at all.  When I get my copy it is most likely getting sent to Noble Knight within a day or 2 of receipt.


Harsh opinion of the book.  Not the video.  I love getting your perspective on these things.  I'm done with Shadowdark though.