Shadowdark looks so good!

[CubicsRube]

I want to like this game, but each time I read about it, something feels like it's missing for me.

Games like forbidden lands, mork borg and DCC spark my imagination, butbfor some reason this one doesn't spark joy for me.

I like the real time torches rule and the always on initiative, but I'm a little bummed about the single magical mishap table for all spells. I also don't know why ability scores are being kept after character creation. The Borg games are perfect for me, you roll your stats, get the modifier from a table, then throw away the rolls. Same could be done here so i'm not sure why they've been kept.

 

[UnplayedRanger]

If I was to buy an osr like game this would probably be the one. All in one book is great, and it seems to have a unique charm and personality. But as with all osr games, I’m kind of put off by the sole focus on dungeon crawling. The worst part of any dnd campaign I’ve played.

 

[CubicsRube]

Another OSR game by the makers of Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures. Instead of being about young heroes who grew up together and set out to save their village, Grizzled Adventurers is about elderly adventurers who've been doing this for decades and now, even though they might have to bring their canes and hearing trumpets with them into the dungeon, are still going.

While Beyond the Wall and Through the Sunken Lands (the sword & sorcery game from the same folks) use playbooks for each character, GA deconstructs that with a single playbook that explains how each of these characters met, past adventures together and rivalries and grudges they developed over the years. The playbooks all resemble those in Powered by the Apocalypse, but they create characters that greatly resemble AD&D characters. My players have enjoyed bickering about decades-old grudges as they adventure; it's a really evocative system.

Building characters in these games via the playbooks is half the fun, but each game also has rules to procedurally generate adventures. The GA adventures section creates a two-hour dungeon adventure in about five minutes. The past two I've run have been shockingly successful, due in part to the writers drilling down on the classic themes, while still bringing in a lot of creativity. (Fighting goblin or skeleton hordes as a swarm was really effective in the two adventures I ran.)

Going from building characters to completing a satisfying adventure has taken my players about three hours total the last two times.

While that sounds like fun, I could see the older I get the more real.

I'm currently playing a middle aged man tired of his craft and sick of corruption among the powerful elite, and apart from D&D class, I'm feeling like I don't have to do any roleplay!

 

[Jahydin]

Holy crap. The art on the screen. Drool.

She mentioned it was done by her wife.

Talk about an RPG power couple!

 

[overgeeked]

She mentioned it was done by her wife.

Talk about an RPG power couple!

Right? Designer and artist. By their powers combined…

I hope there’s more of her art in the book because that’s an amazing picture.

 

[darjr]

I want to like this game, but each time I read about it, something feels like it's missing for me.

Games like forbidden lands, mork borg and DCC spark my imagination, butbfor some reason this one doesn't spark joy for me.

I like the real time torches rule and the always on initiative, but I'm a little bummed about the single magical mishap table for all spells. I also don't know why ability scores are being kept after character creation. The Borg games are perfect for me, you roll your stats, get the modifier from a table, then throw away the rolls. Same could be done here so i'm not sure why they've been kept.

Stat damage happens in the game.

That table is just the first one for the sample. I think there are higher level ones and I could see using DCC tables too. I’m even thinking of Magic Law that I just discovered I have an ancient copy of.

Not trying to change your mind fyi.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm currently playing a middle aged man tired of his craft and sick of corruption among the powerful elite, and apart from D&D class, I'm feeling like I don't have to do any roleplay!

In the Travels & Travails supplement, they even have a table to explain why someone missed a session. Among the choices: birth of a grandchild, death of a friend or family member, medical emergency! They also have a chart to detail the further passage of time, which includes medical breaththroughs, but a lot more stuff just breaking down.

It feels like the writers just had to do a light fantasy gloss over their Facebook feed to come up with choices.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I want to like this game, but each time I read about it, something feels like it's missing for me.

Games like forbidden lands, mork borg and DCC spark my imagination, butbfor some reason this one doesn't spark joy for me.

I like the real time torches rule and the always on initiative, but I'm a little bummed about the single magical mishap table for all spells. I also don't know why ability scores are being kept after character creation. The Borg games are perfect for me, you roll your stats, get the modifier from a table, then throw away the rolls. Same could be done here so i'm not sure why they've been kept.

The nice thing about OSR games is that they are almost entirely compatible. It would be trivial to find a magical mishap table you like, either in another game or as a standalone, and just use that. Heck, I bet you could crowdsource one here on ENWorld.

 

[ART!]

The way Arcane Library's products are written and and laid out makes them very easy to digest - a real breath of fresh air for someone like me who struggles to find information is paragraphs of "natural language" text. I've looked at the preview and I will absolutely be backing this.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Oh man oh man, I thought I was done with Kickstarters for a bit... And I had passed on this because I'm not really a fan of the old skool man-o-war aesthetic... But y'all are making me at least put this crowdfund on watch...