Other D&D Variant [+] Curse of Strahd in Nimble vs Shadowdark

[timbannock]

I have just stumbled into the rare opportunity of running a campaign length game for a party of mostly new-to-TTRPG players through Curse of Strahd... But I'm deathly sick of 5E, and they don't really care about system, so I'm between Shadowdark and Nimble. Two very different experiences, in terms of character survivability and lots of other elements.

So consider this a "sell me on" thread for which one you'd use and, most importantly, why. And maybe specific things you'd do with each...?

 

[Bill Zebub]

I don't know Nimble other than that it exists, so I'll be curious to see responses to your question, and how people compare the two systems.

 

[zottel]

I don't know much about nimble, except that every youtuber seems to gabe a crush on it.
I can say, however, that Shadowdark works really well for Strahd. The tone of the game, the lethality, the vibes. Mike Shea has some.good resources on running Curse of Strahd in shadiwdark, and the distracted dm I think has an adventure that plays on Strahd, but loks very unique. Might be worth checking out.
My guess is, if you want to go very heroic, Nimble might be better than Shadowdark, but I would go with Shadowdark, personally.
If you already started with a system, I'd be curious to read your experiences.

 

[timbannock]

I don't know much about nimble, except that every youtuber seems to gabe a crush on it.
I can say, however, that Shadowdark works really well for Strahd. The tone of the game, the lethality, the vibes. Mike Shea has some.good resources on running Curse of Strahd in shadiwdark, and the distracted dm I think has an adventure that plays on Strahd, but loks very unique. Might be worth checking out.
My guess is, if you want to go very heroic, Nimble might be better than Shadowdark, but I would go with Shadowdark, personally.
If you already started with a system, I'd be curious to read your experiences.

Thanks for the info!

You'll get a chance soon, most likely: I am indeed starting it up and will be blogging about it on my site (timbannock.com) eventually. After a fun but ultimately false start with Shadowdark (largely thanks to Sly Flourish, like you mentioned, as well as LichHouse on YouTube), my group and I decided on Tales of Xadia, based in part on an article I wrote a while back, as it turns out. We just wanted to focus on the roleplay, so that won out over both SD and Nimble.

I'll try to remember to post here once I have my experiences written down.

 

[GMMichael]

I'll bid against Nimble given that its homepage has at least two typos and three of my least favorite RPG terms. However, it has great art, a tiny character sheet, and nice 5e streamlining that probably warrant a one-off trial when you have a Shadowdark session that's short on players.