How would YOU change Shadowdark?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Hammers?

Never heard of them.

 

[paradisebunny]

Fascinating thread! I’ll add my experience after running ~25 sessions: I’ve gotten a bit over the torch mechanic, it was fun at first but became a little bit of a nuisance to track and created „gotcha“ moments more often than fun moments. I would just drop it and replace it with regular round tracking. Other than that I would cut out the luck mechanic whole cloth or make it non-shareable, it creates too much of an imbalance later in the game as casters will never fail casting spells and classes that have a luck mechanic will learn to milk it beyond the point of fun. Also I like the game modes that up the fatality and reduce the healing. Other than that this system is just peanutbutter-jelly goodness for me! I’ll be sticking with it for quite some time, especially as my group of former 5e junkies now prefers it for its speed and amount of stuff we can experience in a single session.

 

[Bae'zel]

Each of the Cursed Scrolls has a detailed adventure, plus a hex crawl, plus new monsters and player-facing stuff. It's like a themed issue of Dragon, but for Shadowdark and all by Kelsey.

I like the adventure in Cursed Scroll 3 (the Norse one), especially if the party isn't kill crazy. Had some great encounters with creatures who weren't necessarily hostile by default (the "sirens in particular").

 

[Sacrosanct]

Close, near, and far. Just go back to distances in feet. It makes for awkward spell descriptions that are less intuitive.

 

[Reynard]

Close, near, and far. Just go back to distances in feet. It makes for awkward spell descriptions that are less intuitive.

It worked okay in person playing TotM for me, but when running on FG I found folks resorting to counting squares. I think 30/60/120 would work fine.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Fascinating thread! I’ll add my experience after running ~25 sessions: I’ve gotten a bit over the torch mechanic, it was fun at first but became a little bit of a nuisance to track and created „gotcha“ moments more often than fun moments. I would just drop it and replace it with regular round tracking. Other than that I would cut out the luck mechanic whole cloth or make it non-shareable, it creates too much of an imbalance later in the game as casters will never fail casting spells and classes that have a luck mechanic will learn to milk it beyond the point of fun. Also I like the game modes that up the fatality and reduce the healing. Other than that this system is just peanutbutter-jelly goodness for me! I’ll be sticking with it for quite some time, especially as my group of former 5e junkies now prefers it for its speed and amount of stuff we can experience in a single session.

The torch mechanic has been awesome imo. I keep the timer on my phone and just stabs to of like “your torch is half gone”. Really puts in some urgency. I subtract like 6 minutes when they do anything aside from walk. Search. Look for traps. Etc. They go through torches pretty quick and gives them another reason to go back to town.

 

[Reynard]

The torch mechanic has been awesome imo. I keep the timer on my phone and just stabs to of like “your torch is half gone”. Really puts in some urgency. I subtract like 6 minutes when they do anything aside from walk. Search. Look for traps. Etc. They go through torches pretty quick and gives them another reason to go back to town.

In my experience, they go through torches faster when you use old school turns.

 

[DarkCrisis]

It worked okay in person playing TotM for me, but when running on FG I found folks resorting to counting squares. I think 30/60/120 would work fine.

That’s how I did it. Made things much easier imo

 

[Sacrosanct]

It worked okay in person playing TotM for me, but when running on FG I found folks resorting to counting squares. I think 30/60/120 would work fine.

Yeah, I don't have a problem sticking with 3 measurements, it's just less intuitive to read:

"...in a near-sized area" than "in a 30-foot radius". If you don't remember what "near-sized is" as a new player, then you have to go look that up or ask whereas everyone knows what 30 feet is.

 

[Velderan]

It worked okay in person playing TotM for me, but when running on FG I found folks resorting to counting squares. I think 30/60/120 would work fine.

I've been debating how to handle that in Foundry as I've started to prep some material for it to try out. I might use that as a general guideline to start with.