3 Pillars In Practice

How gaming in the Wenderweald works

The tl;dr

Last week, I released the Wenderweald Primer. This is a small, system-neutral zine that’s table-ready for any game.

This week, I want to show how I use that at the table to illustrate my 3 pillars of game design:

1. Environments that apply pressure

2. Constraints that shape choice

3. Systems that push back

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Entering the Wenderweald

The Wenderweald is not an inert wilderness. It’s alive — literally — and it thinks and reacts to trespassers. It’s not a monster hotel, and it doesn’t scale to player readiness or power level. It remembers you and never lets go of those who slip its thorny bounds.

Using the doom dice procedure from the Primer, exploration is framed as risk accumulation. Every time the party stops to rest or make camp, a doom die is added to the pool.

When there are four dice in the pool, you roll them all together and count up the results with 4+.

Sometimes you get lucky with none. Most of the time, it’s far worse.

Doom dice do two things at once:

1. Apply pressure to time. You can rest, but it’ll cost you.

2. Creates mystery without doubt. This is reliable unpredictability.

Doom and gloom

When the doom pool triggers, the results aren’t abstract penalties. They’re concrete changes to the situation:

• Delay wastes time or costs resources

• Dread alters the atmosphere — torches gutter, cold seeps in, something feels wrong

• Danger introduces a hazard or a monster

• Disaster escalates everything already in motion

None of this asks players what they want to do next, but how they might attempt to survive the next obstacle.

This is the type of pressure I love to play: it’s not a plothook or stalled action but a narrowing of safe options.

Constraints at Work

Once pressure is applied, players immediately run into the constraints of time, supply, and capacity.

Time

The calendar matters. Events listed in the Primer — forced recruitment, witch burnings, spreading wildfires — do not wait patiently. The longer you hesitate, the worse those events get.

Supplies

Torches burn out. Rations spoil. Rope, once lost in sucking swamp mud or acidic bog water, is simply gone. These are not abstract resource points, but things players can understand intuitively.

Capacity

Hexflesh doesn’t care about balance. Witchery spreads. It manifests physically: blistered flesh, blackened tongues, veins turning green. Capacity erodes not because the GM decides it should, but because players choose to use dangerous magic.

These constraints aren’t limits — they don’t forbid a player’s action. They assign a price to action, and that price might be too high to pay. Or worse, too vital to do without.

Systems That Push Back

The Wenderweald is full of actors who respond intelligently:

• Stag Knights patrol, recruit, and burn witches

• Monsters hunt, stalk, and retreat when threatened

• Witches are not safe NPCs — their magic is contagious, and proximity is dangerous

Encountering a monster here is already a threat. You can run, you can hide, and you can fight — but you’re meat to the beast.

This is where players can exploit systems to survive:

• Choose which cost they’re willing to pay

• Move before the doom escalates

• Use witchery to survive

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Putting it all together

Nothing in the primer tells a story by itself. Instead, it creates conditions where stories must emerge at the table.

That’s the core of what I’m building toward with the Wenderweald as a full game.

Endurance. Choice. Consequence.

If you’ve run the primer, I want to hear what broke, what surprised you, and what your players tried anyway.

One last thing

I’ve had a few people ask how they can offer feedback and play-test this stuff.

I’m opening a Discord for the Wenderweald next week.

It’ll be a place to test material, share play reports, and break rules. No pressure to join. No obligation to participate.

Look for the invite on Substack.

Watch for the Wenderweald watching.

— Odinson