Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
No, only for monsters, so far as I know.
Shadowdark Shadowdark Discussion Thread [+]
- Thread starter Brendan Byrd
- Start date
I sort of did that. I think it really only matters at char gen since the talent rolls are so similar and also randomized. Each class has 2 or 3 little benefits, like languages, or hauler, that don't really break down any further. Each class also has one big ability that carries more than half the effective weight of the class in terms of effect - Weapon Mastery, Spell Casting, and backstab. For a career system I might break those big ones down into maybe three slots that grant the full ability at the third tier.
The thief is a bit of an exception - the thief skills and backstab are far more even than is the case with the other classes' ability list. In that case I might break each of the two down into two tiers.
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
Sunday evening I ran another session of Shadowdark, a different 3rd level group, though only 3 PCs plus an NPC torchbearer (Amdor from previous adventure The Lichway) who occasionally gets brave and hits things, because they're giving him 1/4 share of treasure and have agreed to bump that up to 1/2 share if he kills a monster or saves one of their lives.
This party is more seasoned and careful, though beer can occasionally factor into tactical decision making.
I am using the setting from The Nightmares Underneath, a kind of fantasy Persian empire, more civilized and advanced than most quasi-medieval D&D settings, where The Law and the Prophets of the Law hold sway, and priests/cultists of old gods, demons, and spirits tend to be looked at a bit askance rather than being respected members of the religious establishment.
So far in this series this group has played Arnold K's Lair of the Lamb, Albie Fiore's classic The Lichway from 1978's White Dwarf issue #9, and now City of Poison by Johnstone Metzger, which is actually written for his game TNU. Lair of the Lamb is functionally a zero-level funnel, during which surviving PCs are expected to level at least to 1 (written for the GLOG); I had them run basically as zero level GLOG characters until halfway through, get promoted to L1 TNU characters halfway through, and told them at the conclusion of the adventure that the survivors were halfway to level 2. I ran Lair last year, and picked up the campaign again converting to Shadowdark because I found it more convenient to run with and to understand for the players, who are less hardcore than I am.
As part of the framing for putting our swords & sorcery heroes on the road to further adventures, I established with the PCs that they fled the great city of Lon Barago after Lair of the Lamb, to escape the White Temple, booking passage on a boat to the great city of Neth. Lon Barago is replacing Ferakheen on my setting map. They took what of their possessions they could from their homes and booked a river trip to Neth. Midway there the boat had a stopover of a week or so at a caravanserai where land and river trade routes meet, and they heard rumor of The Lichway. Having some downtime on their hands and a desire for treasure, they investigated...
The Lichway was a very good time, completed in three sessions, with one PC death in the first session when they started an unnecessary fight with 10 goblins. Nearly a TPK but the fighter managed to stay on his feet long enough to drop the 5th goblin and the remainder failed morale. The fighter then luckily stabilized the priest and Amdor, their recruited guide they met in the dungeon. The assassin (modified Ras Godai to better match the TNU Assassin class) was done for, as well as their torchbearer. The fighter managed to escape the dungeon with the survivors and rest and heal and recruit another adventurer, before returning. I had the replacement PC (a Sea Wolf) start fresh at level 1, but there was enough treasure that they all happened to hit Level 2 at the same time at the end of session 2, then in session 3 they managed to make level 3 thanks in substantial part to finding and looting the mythic-level treasure vault.
From there they did some epic carousing in the caravanserai, spent some money on potions, made a couple of NPC contacts (a friendly bard and a rival fighter leading his own crew of adventurers), and learned Amdor's dark secret (that he's not actually a Wizard at all, but was kicked out of his people, who are all fighters, for being an incompetent warrior). They decided to hire Amdor on a permanent basis, however, agreeing to pay him 1/4 share for being a torchbearer, increasing to 1/2 if he manages to actually down an enemy in battle or save one of their lives. And going up to a full share if he somehow learns magic and becomes a real wizard. Their new bard friend, Damina, also read their fortunes and advised they are all of marked/protected from the Nightmare Kingdom, and as such can get some societal respect, or at least lenient treatment from the law, if they agree to fight nightmare incursions.
Finally they resumed the boat trip, arriving at the great city of Neth. I seeded three adventure hooks- rumors of the Valley of the Desert Hound (Knock! issue 3), a door to another world having appeared underneath the stairs in a printmaker's shop (Through Ultan's Door), and their bard friend Damina also let them know that her noble patron Ghazil Khan was looking for help investigating a couple of deaths (murders?) and a missing painter, Bashir al-Barati, who owed the noble a portrait but had gone missing. They elected to pursue the latter.
City of Poison is a fun, thematic and horrific adventure (really three small dungeons/nightmare incursions, two of them directly connected), with excellent atmosphere and art, though the organization is not ideal. I've been a bit spoiled by the easy and succinct layout and writing in a lot of modern OSR adventures, and while CoP is not bad, it's definitely a bit more verbose (30ish pages compared to 10 for Curse of the Maggot God, which I ran the other night), and some of the descriptions are given in a way that it's easy to lose track of what should be more prominent/obvious details.
The PCs took two sessions to explore two connected nightmare incursions, finding various horrors (a couple of gruesomely murdered folks, and a couple more horribly-preserved and mutilated living people altered and kept alive by beings from another world), negotiating with a couple of nightmares and fighting several encounters with others, many of them terrible visions connected to Bashir's past and his paintings (corpse eaters raised from unblessed dead, predatory insect creatures from another world Bashir had opened a portal to, painter's model nightmares spawned from Bashir's mind, a Basilisk Man, harpies from more of Bashir's paintings bearing his murdered wife's face...), and had a couple of other near-death experiences with Amdor and their Sea Wolf getting dropped at times, and their fighter barely holding up at a couple of points.
Shadowdark has continued to hold up as a nice clean adventuring system, with the PCs generally tougher and more competent (especially as long as Cure Wounds holds out) than TSR-era adventurers at low level, and exciting drama occasionally prompted by the light going out when people get wrapped up in the action and forget about it.
This party is more seasoned and careful, though beer can occasionally factor into tactical decision making.
I am using the setting from The Nightmares Underneath, a kind of fantasy Persian empire, more civilized and advanced than most quasi-medieval D&D settings, where The Law and the Prophets of the Law hold sway, and priests/cultists of old gods, demons, and spirits tend to be looked at a bit askance rather than being respected members of the religious establishment.
So far in this series this group has played Arnold K's Lair of the Lamb, Albie Fiore's classic The Lichway from 1978's White Dwarf issue #9, and now City of Poison by Johnstone Metzger, which is actually written for his game TNU. Lair of the Lamb is functionally a zero-level funnel, during which surviving PCs are expected to level at least to 1 (written for the GLOG); I had them run basically as zero level GLOG characters until halfway through, get promoted to L1 TNU characters halfway through, and told them at the conclusion of the adventure that the survivors were halfway to level 2. I ran Lair last year, and picked up the campaign again converting to Shadowdark because I found it more convenient to run with and to understand for the players, who are less hardcore than I am.
As part of the framing for putting our swords & sorcery heroes on the road to further adventures, I established with the PCs that they fled the great city of Lon Barago after Lair of the Lamb, to escape the White Temple, booking passage on a boat to the great city of Neth. Lon Barago is replacing Ferakheen on my setting map. They took what of their possessions they could from their homes and booked a river trip to Neth. Midway there the boat had a stopover of a week or so at a caravanserai where land and river trade routes meet, and they heard rumor of The Lichway. Having some downtime on their hands and a desire for treasure, they investigated...
The Lichway was a very good time, completed in three sessions, with one PC death in the first session when they started an unnecessary fight with 10 goblins. Nearly a TPK but the fighter managed to stay on his feet long enough to drop the 5th goblin and the remainder failed morale. The fighter then luckily stabilized the priest and Amdor, their recruited guide they met in the dungeon. The assassin (modified Ras Godai to better match the TNU Assassin class) was done for, as well as their torchbearer. The fighter managed to escape the dungeon with the survivors and rest and heal and recruit another adventurer, before returning. I had the replacement PC (a Sea Wolf) start fresh at level 1, but there was enough treasure that they all happened to hit Level 2 at the same time at the end of session 2, then in session 3 they managed to make level 3 thanks in substantial part to finding and looting the mythic-level treasure vault.
From there they did some epic carousing in the caravanserai, spent some money on potions, made a couple of NPC contacts (a friendly bard and a rival fighter leading his own crew of adventurers), and learned Amdor's dark secret (that he's not actually a Wizard at all, but was kicked out of his people, who are all fighters, for being an incompetent warrior). They decided to hire Amdor on a permanent basis, however, agreeing to pay him 1/4 share for being a torchbearer, increasing to 1/2 if he manages to actually down an enemy in battle or save one of their lives. And going up to a full share if he somehow learns magic and becomes a real wizard. Their new bard friend, Damina, also read their fortunes and advised they are all of marked/protected from the Nightmare Kingdom, and as such can get some societal respect, or at least lenient treatment from the law, if they agree to fight nightmare incursions.
Finally they resumed the boat trip, arriving at the great city of Neth. I seeded three adventure hooks- rumors of the Valley of the Desert Hound (Knock! issue 3), a door to another world having appeared underneath the stairs in a printmaker's shop (Through Ultan's Door), and their bard friend Damina also let them know that her noble patron Ghazil Khan was looking for help investigating a couple of deaths (murders?) and a missing painter, Bashir al-Barati, who owed the noble a portrait but had gone missing. They elected to pursue the latter.
City of Poison is a fun, thematic and horrific adventure (really three small dungeons/nightmare incursions, two of them directly connected), with excellent atmosphere and art, though the organization is not ideal. I've been a bit spoiled by the easy and succinct layout and writing in a lot of modern OSR adventures, and while CoP is not bad, it's definitely a bit more verbose (30ish pages compared to 10 for Curse of the Maggot God, which I ran the other night), and some of the descriptions are given in a way that it's easy to lose track of what should be more prominent/obvious details.
The PCs took two sessions to explore two connected nightmare incursions, finding various horrors (a couple of gruesomely murdered folks, and a couple more horribly-preserved and mutilated living people altered and kept alive by beings from another world), negotiating with a couple of nightmares and fighting several encounters with others, many of them terrible visions connected to Bashir's past and his paintings (corpse eaters raised from unblessed dead, predatory insect creatures from another world Bashir had opened a portal to, painter's model nightmares spawned from Bashir's mind, a Basilisk Man, harpies from more of Bashir's paintings bearing his murdered wife's face...), and had a couple of other near-death experiences with Amdor and their Sea Wolf getting dropped at times, and their fighter barely holding up at a couple of points.
Shadowdark has continued to hold up as a nice clean adventuring system, with the PCs generally tougher and more competent (especially as long as Cure Wounds holds out) than TSR-era adventurers at low level, and exciting drama occasionally prompted by the light going out when people get wrapped up in the action and forget about it.
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Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
It's a fun little dungeon with some ancient Greek/Roman vibes, gross-out elements (maggots and bugs and bodies), and a terrible monster at the end that will be nearly impossible for low-level parties to defeat, but multiple ways are provided to avoid/circumvent fighting. It's part of OSE's Adventure Anthology I, along with The Jeweler's Sanctum, The Sunbathers, and The Comet That Time Forgot.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
That reminds me, I was (am) disappointed in the emphasis on the warhorse in Kelsey's Paladin, for a variety of reasons.
I was thinking of modifying the class so that the Paladin can choose either a horse or a "squire" (specific abilities TBD).
Thoughts?
zottel
Adventurer
Really like reading such tales from the table. Thanks for posting those.
Reynard
aka Ian Eller
Aaaand how.
Leroy ... JENKINS!
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
He just wanted to finish up and eat his chicken.
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
I think there's a legit concern about adding more reliable equipment/encumbrance slots and torch-bearing hands to the party. So I guess I can understand why Kelsey wouldn't want to make it a squire, beyond deference to the old school precedent of Paladins getting a special horse rather than a squire in OD&D and AD&D.
I have not let my 4 player group recruit an ongoing torchbearer, but for the 3 player group I feel like it's reasonable since they're comparatively short on hands and equipment slots.
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