Glimmermark After 26 Sessions: Shields, Goblins and a Living Dungeon

Twenty-six sessions into Glimmermark, the most compelling result is how much of the setting has grown from play itself. Goblins have become a regional power, the Stygian Caves have changed hands, and shields have turned into a central resource. The game began in July 2024, and its sessions have averaged about one every two weeks.

A flexible game, with a real scheduling cost

Glimmermark is an open-table Labyrinth Lord game, but an open invitation doesn’t guarantee enough players will be free on a given evening. The group settled on a minimum of two players, though they’ve occasionally gone ahead with one. Cancellations can be frustrating when a whole evening has been set aside and nobody arrives. At the same time, the last few months brought some low-energy weeks for the referee too, so postponing sessions wasn’t always unwelcome. The past two weeks have marked a return to the earlier rhythm.

That stop-and-start pace fits a game built to be manageable between sessions. Compared with the referee’s other games, including Shadowrun, Glimmermark needs little weekly preparation. It’s a straightforward dungeon and wilderness crawl, drawing on Keep on the Borderlands, with additional dungeons scattered through the region. There are larger threads in the setting, but the players haven’t yet followed some of the leads placed before them. The open structure gives them room to choose their direction without requiring every session to advance a single plot.

Player experience changes the danger

The characters may be inexperienced adventurers, but their players know how dungeon crawls work. Familiarity with Labyrinth Lord and other D&D retroclones brings expectations about monsters and encounters, and that knowledge has made some situations less dangerous than the referee anticipated. It raises an interesting design question: how would newcomers read the same clues, creatures and risks without that shared genre experience?

The Splintering Shield rule has also changed the odds. A shield can be sacrificed to prevent a character from dying, giving the party a way to spend equipment in exchange for survival. So far, no player character has died. Four NPC retainers have, across the group’s dungeon expeditions. Shields now function as extra lives in practice, and keeping track of them has become a significant part of managing the party’s resources.

That protection doesn’t remove danger from the crawl; it changes how the group handles it. The players must weigh the value of a shield against the risk of pressing onward, while the referee gets a clearer view of how a house rule affects the tone of play. Glimmermark’s rules are close to a house-ruled version of Labyrinth Lord, so the experience is also informing a set of house rules the referee hopes to introduce soon. Because the mechanics are already so similar, the transition should be straightforward.

Factions take shape through play

The region’s history is being written through encounters and consequences. Goblins, initially a smaller part of the picture, are establishing themselves as a faction in the ruins of Castle Dyson, particularly its upper levels in Dyson’s Delve. The goblin is the only additional character class introduced so far, a fitting choice given the group’s growing presence. The player characters remain ready to attack goblins who aren’t directly involved with them, which leaves plenty of room for future clashes.

The Stygian Caves have undergone their own upheaval. Hobgoblins now control most of the caves, after pushing out the orcs with help from the player characters and driving out the kobolds despite the characters’ assistance. The goblins who once lived there were killed by the group or moved to Castle Dyson, where they were later killed as well. The goblins now occupying Castle Dyson don’t know that history: they were separated from the original inhabitants of the upper levels.

These shifting relationships give the region texture without requiring the referee to plan every outcome in advance. One group’s actions can help a faction in one place and work against it elsewhere. There’s also a useful bit of dramatic irony in the new Castle Dyson goblins’ lack of knowledge about what happened to their predecessors. That history can matter if the characters uncover it, or it can remain an unseen connection in a world that keeps changing.

The next step is a wider table

The original plan was for multiple groups to explore the same region, with each group’s actions changing what the others encounter. That part of the design hasn’t started yet. Running convention games with new players might provide a practical way to test it and bring more adventuring groups into the setting.

For the referee, the most satisfying discoveries have come from encounter tables and reaction checks. These procedures can turn an ordinary meeting into a lasting relationship, rivalry or change in local power. The referee doesn’t need to decide beforehand which details will matter. Instead, small outcomes can accumulate until a previously minor creature or location becomes important to the game.

That’s the appeal of Glimmermark so far: a light preparation load leaves room for the setting to surprise its own creator. The goblins, the caves and the changing balance between local groups have emerged through play rather than a fixed story outline. As more sessions bring fresh encounters—and perhaps more groups—those unexpected developments are likely to remain the campaign’s strongest source of direction.