Shadowdark Shadowdark General Thread [+]
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Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Distract yourself with Pirate Borg for a few weeks. They're hoping to begin fulfillment any day now on the Lost in the Locker Kickstarter. By the time you've played the starter set and the three big adventures, Western Reaches will be out.Going to need that CS 5.
Scribe
Legend
Yeah it's not for lack of things filling my time, I just want it all to get here before I'm looking to move lol
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
Last night I ran my first session of a miniseries (play one adventure, probably 3ish sessions) using Shadowdark. I'm running classic adventure The Lichway from a 1978 issue of White Dwarf.
I only had three of my four players, so I allowed them to hire a torchbearer, despite hirelings not usually being desirable in SD due to wanting to limit slots and torch hands. I figured it was fine with the small party, and my observation was that they still felt the pressure on slots and hands. They defaulted to filling their slots to start, so after their first treasure find they were already stashing a few extra torches and crossbow bolts.
My group was a bit more aggressive and less careful searching for hidden treasure than I expected from past experience with them. They missed out on a couple of things, and despite having three easy-mid difficulty fights (3 stirges/stingbats, 4 thieves, 4 goblins and a hobgoblin) and coming through those ok, nearly had a TPK when they decided, close to the end of the session, to charge a group of 10 goblins that they really didn't need to. I tried to telegraph that this band of goblins wasn't aggressive (the PCs busted into their campsite, but the reaction roll was high, so they'd have been willing to talk and/or let the PCs go), but for some reason they felt like they needed to push it. Not that it was unwinnable (especially if a Burning Hands with luck token backup hadn't failed), but the odds were long.
For a minute it looked like a TPK in the offing, but the Fighter, the last man standing on the PCs side, managed to kill the 5th goblin and the survivors broke morale, in time for him to bandage the Priest and then an NPC they had picked up (Amdor, if you know the module). One piece of luck- the Fighter EXACTLY made the check to save the Priest, thanks to rolling a 12 for his first Talent roll, which let him not only increase his starting Strength from 15 to 16, also shored up his Int from 9 to 10 so he had no penalty on the stabilization check. The torchbearer and the PC Assassin (tweaked Ras Godai) died, but the survivors were able to escape the dungeon and retreat to town, where they will recruit at least one more PC.
I feel good transitioning this series from The Nightmares Underneath to Shadowdark (first part of initial zero level gauntlet was GLOG, but they leveled to 1 part way through Lair of the Lamb). It's just simpler and easier to remember the SD mechanics, generally. I adapted the PCs from their TNU versions to the SD equivalents of the classes. The only one I altered was to make the Ras Godai more like the TNU Assassin. In this case I removed the teleport ability in favor of knowing 1 random Wizard spell per level (+Int mod bonus spells), because the player had wanted to experiment with being a partial caster, and was enjoying that aspect.
I only had three of my four players, so I allowed them to hire a torchbearer, despite hirelings not usually being desirable in SD due to wanting to limit slots and torch hands. I figured it was fine with the small party, and my observation was that they still felt the pressure on slots and hands. They defaulted to filling their slots to start, so after their first treasure find they were already stashing a few extra torches and crossbow bolts.
My group was a bit more aggressive and less careful searching for hidden treasure than I expected from past experience with them. They missed out on a couple of things, and despite having three easy-mid difficulty fights (3 stirges/stingbats, 4 thieves, 4 goblins and a hobgoblin) and coming through those ok, nearly had a TPK when they decided, close to the end of the session, to charge a group of 10 goblins that they really didn't need to. I tried to telegraph that this band of goblins wasn't aggressive (the PCs busted into their campsite, but the reaction roll was high, so they'd have been willing to talk and/or let the PCs go), but for some reason they felt like they needed to push it. Not that it was unwinnable (especially if a Burning Hands with luck token backup hadn't failed), but the odds were long.
For a minute it looked like a TPK in the offing, but the Fighter, the last man standing on the PCs side, managed to kill the 5th goblin and the survivors broke morale, in time for him to bandage the Priest and then an NPC they had picked up (Amdor, if you know the module). One piece of luck- the Fighter EXACTLY made the check to save the Priest, thanks to rolling a 12 for his first Talent roll, which let him not only increase his starting Strength from 15 to 16, also shored up his Int from 9 to 10 so he had no penalty on the stabilization check. The torchbearer and the PC Assassin (tweaked Ras Godai) died, but the survivors were able to escape the dungeon and retreat to town, where they will recruit at least one more PC.
I feel good transitioning this series from The Nightmares Underneath to Shadowdark (first part of initial zero level gauntlet was GLOG, but they leveled to 1 part way through Lair of the Lamb). It's just simpler and easier to remember the SD mechanics, generally. I adapted the PCs from their TNU versions to the SD equivalents of the classes. The only one I altered was to make the Ras Godai more like the TNU Assassin. In this case I removed the teleport ability in favor of knowing 1 random Wizard spell per level (+Int mod bonus spells), because the player had wanted to experiment with being a partial caster, and was enjoying that aspect.
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Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Where did you find a copy of Lichway? I've wanted to run some of the classic White Dwarf stuff for years, but don't know where to find it in 2026.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
I'm reading The Other Wind right now, the sixth and final book of Earthsea. For folks who are excited about Shadowdark's necromancer, I strongly recommend the last four Earthsea books, which go deep into the atmosphere that Kelsey baked into the Necromancer.
It's something very distinct from, say, Greek myth (which is what I think most gamers go to for worlds of the dead) and is even different than what I think of as the Shadowdark implied setting from the core book.
I would love to run either an all-necromancer campaign or one-on-one campaign with a necromancer serving as a psychopomp, guarding the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead, and not in the typical undead slayer mold.
It's something very distinct from, say, Greek myth (which is what I think most gamers go to for worlds of the dead) and is even different than what I think of as the Shadowdark implied setting from the core book.
I would love to run either an all-necromancer campaign or one-on-one campaign with a necromancer serving as a psychopomp, guarding the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead, and not in the typical undead slayer mold.
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
I found a new copy edit online, with new maps. It's still not the most clearly explained so you'll want to read it multiple times and make notes. There are at least two versions, from 2025 and 2023.
Five-O
Celebrating D&D’s 50th anniversary with a brand new copy edit of The Lichway adventure.
onthetabletop.blog
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
The holiday season must be well and truly over, since there's a whole flurry of Kickstarter status updates over the last few days. Everything is still coming, but other than Pirate Borg, everything is just close but not close enough. One project I thought was dead just popped back up with a "all writing and layout done, about to send proofs to the printer," which was a pleasant surprise.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Yeah, that's where he said he was putting his energy while waiting for the printing market to stabilize a bit.
I saw on (free tier) Patreon that he's working on Glumdark Space (great for Mothership) and the Glumdark Game, whatever that turns out to be.
Very much looking forward to putting Glumdark through its paces in Shadowdark this year.
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