Shadowdark Setting Looks Set To Be 2025's First Million Dollar TTRPG Crowdfunder

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Just launched today, the new Western Reaches setting for the Arcane Library's popular Shadowdark roleplaying game (which itself raised $1.3M in 2023) has flown past half a million dollars in the first few hours, and looks certain to join the Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarter Club imminently!

[[Edit/Update--and it's done it! $1M less than 12 hours into the Kickstarter campaign!]]

2025 has been quiet so far this year on the million-dollar crowdfunding front. This new setting is a sandbox environment with new classes and ancestries, and various areas such as the Gloaming Forest, Djurum Desert, and Myre Swamp. It comes in two 200-page digest-sized hardcovers. Also included are new issues of the game's Cursed Scroll zine. The full core set will cost you $129, or $149 for a premium version, with fulfillment expected in December 2025.

At $670K at the time of writing, just 3 hours into the campaign, The Western Reaches is already the 7th most first-day funded TTRPG ever, having just passed 2024's Terry Pratchett's Discworld RPG: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork. It looks set to pass 6th place very soon, which is 2023's Ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms - A 5e Tome. Only five TTRPG crowdfunders (so far!) have ever hit the million-dollar mark on the first day. You can see the full ranking at the Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarter Club.

The Western Reaches are an unexplored land of fragile civilizations, majestic landscapes, and forgotten horrors that lurk in the dark.

In the Reaches, you could play as:

• A painted witch from the steppes hunting for the secrets to deeper magic
• An armored knight from the City of Masks guarding frontier villages from attack
• A silent monk from the mountains searching for the assassin who killed his teacher
• A scarred pit fighter from the desert looking to make her fortune outside the arena
• A quick-witted explorer from the jungle who can find any artifact for the right price
• A seafaring warrior from the northern isles who fights for the glory of the Old Gods

This sandbox setting is fast, elegant, and flexible in the signature Shadowdark style. You don't have to memorize lore; you'll discover it as you go. The world moves and grows with you as you explore it.

 

[darjr]

Yeah like I said. People are free to make Shadowdark Heartbreakers, the lack of CC-BY is not an obstacle. They're just not allowed to copypaste slop something together

You’re arguing with someone else.

 

[Reynard]

Yeah like I said. People are free to make Shadowdark Heartbreakers, the lack of CC-BY is not an obstacle. They're just not allowed to copypaste slop something together

No one is talking about making Shadowdark heartbreakers.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Well, no, he is affected because I am angry. If I wasn't angry, I'd buy things, because Numenera is cool AF.

I think you missed my point.

 

[Queer Venger]

at last! Ive been waiting for the new KS to jump into shadow dark and backing the shite out of this.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I finally got a chance to read through the entire preview for the new books and, man, is this full of good stuff. I'm ready to run games based on issues 5 and 6 tomorrow. And, as expected, the two setting books are full of things worth using in homebrew games not set in the Reaches.

She is such a consistently excellent creator.

 

[SlyFlourish]

They aren't open, which means you can't reproduce them.

I still wish there had been an SRD. I am kind of an Open gaming purist and do not like it when people profit largely from other folks work and then close off their own.

Now, Shadowdark is not particularly heavily based on existing Open Content, so I am not as irritated as I was with, say, Monte Cook Games during their d20 era or MCDM. But, still, a Shadowdark SRD would have been good.

I hear you and I'm a huge fan of open licenses for game systems but it doesn't bother me in this circumstance because we have the core SRDs already that we need to make just about anything (as Kelsey did with Shadowdark and Gavin Norman did with Old School Essentials). You don't need a Shadowdark SRD to make your own lightweight version of 5e. You can do that with the 5.1 SRD or A5e's SRD. If you want to make something Shadowdark compatible, you have the Shadowdark license itself which is pretty open.

I'm not really sure what product can't be made because there isn't a Shadowdark SRD.

Another thing I think about is that no game company owes us an SRD under an open license. They choose to or they don't. That's up to them. I think, given the longevity of D&D overall, it's a huge boon to the hobby that all the core d20 RPG mechanics are basically in the open now based on the 5.1 SRD (there are still arguments to be had about whether we needed it at all but that's another topic).

I'll give you one where I am sort of miffed though.

I'm a huge fan of Kobold Press but I don't like how they use the ORC license for Tales of the Valiant. They built it off of the 5.1 SRD in the CC and then locked their own content behind ORC. Thus, they got to hold material back, like about half of their subclasses, by not releasing them under Black Flag but anyone who writes material based off of the Black Flag SRD must release all of their mechanics under ORC because of the viral nature of ORC. So they got the benefit of a big open Creative Commons SRD but do not offer that same open benefit downstream.

That also dosen't matter too much because 5e material is also, generally, Tales of the Valiant compatible. So, again, I can use the core 5.1 SRD or A5e SRD (as I did with City of Arches) and know my material is compatible with Tales of the Valiant.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I hear you and I'm a huge fan of open licenses for game systems but it doesn't bother me in this circumstance because we have the core SRDs already that we need to make just about anything (as Kelsey did with Shadowdark and Gavin Norman did with Old School Essentials). You don't need a Shadowdark SRD to make your own lightweight version of 5e. You can do that with the 5.1 SRD or A5e's SRD. If you want to make something Shadowdark compatible, you have the Shadowdark license itself which is pretty open.

I'm not really sure what product can't be made because there isn't a Shadowdark SRD.

Another thing I think about is that no game company owes us an SRD under an open license. They choose to or they don't. That's up to them. I think, given the longevity of D&D overall, it's a huge boon to the hobby that all the core d20 RPG mechanics are basically in the open now based on the 5.1 SRD (there are still arguments to be had about whether we needed it at all but that's another topic).

I'll give you one where I am sort of miffed though.

I'm a huge fan of Kobold Press but I don't like how they use the ORC license for Tales of the Valiant. They built it off of the 5.1 SRD in the CC and then locked their own content behind ORC. Thus, they got to hold material back, like about half of their subclasses, by not releasing them under Black Flag but anyone who writes material based off of the Black Flag SRD must release all of their mechanics under ORC because of the viral nature of ORC. So they got the benefit of a big open Creative Commons SRD but do not offer that same open benefit downstream.

That also dosen't matter too much because 5e material is also, generally, Tales of the Valiant compatible. So, again, I can use the core 5.1 SRD or A5e SRD (as I did with City of Arches) and know my material is compatible with Tales of the Valiant.

Paizo did the same thing with Pathfinder, correct?

 

[SlyFlourish]

Paizo did the same thing with Pathfinder, correct?

From what I understand, Paizo released all of Pathfinder 2 under ORC. So they didn't hold anything back for themselves while forcing people downstream to release everything. They "ate their own dogfood" as they say.

This is at the end of the Pathfinder 2 Core Player guide:

 

[Reynard]

I hear you and I'm a huge fan of open licenses for game systems but it doesn't bother me in this circumstance because we have the core SRDs already that we need to make just about anything (as Kelsey did with Shadowdark and Gavin Norman did with Old School Essentials). You don't need a Shadowdark SRD to make your own lightweight version of 5e. You can do that with the 5.1 SRD or A5e's SRD. If you want to make something Shadowdark compatible, you have the Shadowdark license itself which is pretty open.

I'm not really sure what product can't be made because there isn't a Shadowdark SRD.

Another thing I think about is that no game company owes us an SRD under an open license. They choose to or they don't. That's up to them. I think, given the longevity of D&D overall, it's a huge boon to the hobby that all the core d20 RPG mechanics are basically in the open now based on the 5.1 SRD (there are still arguments to be had about whether we needed it at all but that's another topic).

I'll give you one where I am sort of miffed though.

I'm a huge fan of Kobold Press but I don't like how they use the ORC license for Tales of the Valiant. They built it off of the 5.1 SRD in the CC and then locked their own content behind ORC. Thus, they got to hold material back, like about half of their subclasses, by not releasing them under Black Flag but anyone who writes material based off of the Black Flag SRD must release all of their mechanics under ORC because of the viral nature of ORC. So they got the benefit of a big open Creative Commons SRD but do not offer that same open benefit downstream.

That also dosen't matter too much because 5e material is also, generally, Tales of the Valiant compatible. So, again, I can use the core 5.1 SRD or A5e SRD (as I did with City of Arches) and know my material is compatible with Tales of the Valiant.

The benefit of a Shadowdark SRD is mostly a symbolic move: it is an acknowledgment by Arcane Library that they made a great thing off the backs of others, and they want to continue and extend that to other creators. It doesn't really matter that it is "legal" for folks to create compatible stuff using the 5.1 SRD when the message to the community might be "join us."

Again, I am a bit of a Open Gaming purist and I acknowledge that. I am not saying Kelsey et al did anything wrong. I just like to see an intentional giving back.

To me ORC does it right: if you choose to benefit in Open Gaming, you must thereby support others in Open Gaming.

 

[SlyFlourish]

is an acknowledgment by Arcane Library that they made a great thing off the backs of others, and they want to continue and extend that to other creators.

I think they did that with their own creator license. They really just don’t want people copying and reprinting their core books. If they had particular mechanics locked behind the license somehow, I’d feel different.

“To me ORC does it right: if you choose to benefit in Open Gaming, you must thereby support others in Open Gaming.”

My example shows how ORC ends up benefitting publishers at the top of the food chain. Rules for thee but not for me.