Shadowdark Finally Played Shadowdark

[Arilyn]

I never liked D&D back in the day because of the rapid character death, the horribly boring dungeons and the slow crawl of hitting every square with the 10 'pole and thoroughly investigating every square inch for traps and lurking "gotchas." I remember the days of Bob the 2nd, 3rd and 4th.

I am thoroughly enjoying OSR (or NSR?) games that follow the new philosophy of old school gaming, like telegraphing danger, making sure players have meaningful choices and having interesting environments, NPCs and factions to explore. These days there are a lot of weird, whimsical and highly imaginative settings and adventures coming out of the Old School and Indie scene.

I never drag out old TSR modules. I look to Kelsey Dionne, Gavin Norman, Brad Kerr, Joseph R. Lewis, to name just a small few.

 

[TiQuinn]

My main thought is that SD adventures are structured in a different way than B/X or 1e adventures and the older modules wouldn’t play well without a good amount of DM prep and adjustments. We ran afoul of the casting rules and while my first experience was unintentionally hilarious and set a good mood for us, I can also see it be frustrating. So much of OSR landscape is reteaching people how to play in a style expected by that game, and sometimes there’s this mix/match mindset of system to adventure that is not aligned. For instance, a lot of old adventures expected you had a group of porters or henchmen along with you to absorb and distribute damage. I don’t see that as much anymore even in new OSR games.

I think there’s still work to be done in producing a good, repeatable experience for players in the space.

 

[Retreater]

There's a part of me that really wanted to like Shadowdark. After all, I backed the deluxe "everything" version of the latest Kickstarter. And after signing up for games at a convention, I purchased a regular copy of the rules (since the previous hadn't been shipped).
I'm having an Internet blackout at my house right now, so I can't download and look at my Cursed Scrolls to verify if my thoughts about them (that they're hack 'n slash adventures) are accurate. I'll do that when I can get off my phone data.
Here are some of the things I was hoping for (some of which was achieved).
1) streamlined and faster play without HP bloat
2) priests who cast at 1st level (unlike OSE)
3) familiar mechanics for those coming from 5e
4) compatibility with older material
5) have a copy of a game that is frequently played at conventions
6) consider using the Shadowdark license to convert a large adventure I wrote for Swords & Wizardry (because that system is a has-been compared to Shadowdark.) look into publishing that adventure.
7) hopefully faster play facilitates more time for role-playing and character growth. or at least "thinking outside the sheet."

It didn't meet the experience I was wanting. But to be fair, I gave Pathfinder 2e four shots before I figured it out (including running a few campaigns and playing in one for over a year) - and now have a good defensible position of not caring for it.

 

[Bill Zebub]

There's a part of me that really wanted to like Shadowdark. After all, I backed the deluxe "everything" version of the latest Kickstarter. And after signing up for games at a convention, I purchased a regular copy of the rules (since the previous hadn't been shipped).
I'm having an Internet blackout at my house right now, so I can't download and look at my Cursed Scrolls to verify if my thoughts about them (that they're hack 'n slash adventures) are accurate. I'll do that when I can get off my phone data.
Here are some of the things I was hoping for (some of which was achieved).
1) streamlined and faster play without HP bloat
2) priests who cast at 1st level (unlike OSE)
3) familiar mechanics for those coming from 5e
4) compatibility with older material
5) have a copy of a game that is frequently played at conventions
6) consider using the Shadowdark license to convert a large adventure I wrote for Swords & Wizardry (because that system is a has-been compared to Shadowdark.) look into publishing that adventure.
7) hopefully faster play facilitates more time for role-playing and character growth. or at least "thinking outside the sheet."

It didn't meet the experience I was wanting. But to be fair, I gave Pathfinder 2e four shots before I figured it out (including running a few campaigns and playing in one for over a year) - and now have a good defensible position of not caring for it.

As I said upthread, it doesn't sound to me like Shadowdark is the system you want. Sure, it sounds like you had some GMs who totally did not understand Shadowdark and tried to run it like 5e. And, sure, you also had some bad RNG losing your one offensive spell on the first cast, and didn't play long enough to experience the opposite: chain-casting all day long.

But, ultimately, when you started describing all the "abilities" you wanted a Thief to have, I think it showed that the Shadowdark aesthetic is just not your cup of tea. Which is totally fine. I really wanted to like Dungeon World, but it turns out the whole "play to see what happens" approach is not my cup of tea. I really enjoy @pemerton's write-ups of Torchbearer, but that game also isn't the RPG experience I want. Etc. etc. etc.

It's fine.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think that there's a disconnection between GMing styles and what Shadowdark could do well.
First off, Basic D&D adventures from the early 80s are largely monster hotels. I think there's some gaming revisionism that says people were incredibly clever, mature players back then. But let's be honest, we were 8 years old.

Oh, there's definitely a split between D&D-as-it-was-played in the 1970s and early 1980s and what people sometimes call the NSR, where treating it strategically is an assumed part of play.

Back in the day, what passed for strategy was often hiring up dozens of apparently suicidal hirelings to be sent in to set off every trap and act as cannon fodder, neither of which I think are common today. (For one thing, DMs are much more likely to ask why these NPCs would agree to do this stuff.)

Second, the 2-hour convention games run by Lurking Fear were not intended to be cerebral puzzles and tense negotiations.

Oh, I get it. But they also sound like they didn't know what they were doing.

A combat-heavy OSR/NSR game should give the players very good odds or some ability to swing battles in their favor, or be advertised in advance as a bloodbath.

Even then, I question how much fun that is for anyone other than maybe the DM. When I've run online con games, characters may be in real danger, but they so far have all made it through to the end.

Until I see real content created that suggests it should be played differently, I can't appraise it. Even the official Cursed Scrolls material is pretty much "monster lair - kill the monsters."

I would watch some of Kelsey's walkthroughs of her adventures on YouTube. She certainly believes people are talking to monsters and sneaking around a lot of the time.

 

[wicked cool]

I love shadowdark

House rule
1) max hp at level 1.
2) other tweaks like balancing treasure as its experience

Going to disagree with you on mostly everything except it stinks you got a gm master that didn’t have any idea what they were doing

It literally plays like d&d except for
1) magic isn’t a given at low levels
2) the torch timer-probably one of my favorite parts. For me it’s add in a scary encounter and remind the party about light sources. I’ve taken inspiration and created monsters that come out of a horror movie. I literally bought a timer for just this purpose
3) it’s fairly easy to convert old school adventures. There’s an old school Ravenloft conversion that someone in our group is going to run this fall

The tpk or threat of a tpk is what made old school d&d great. Tomb of horrors was literally a meat grinder and so were many old school dungeons

What Matt Mercer is doing with age of umbra for daggerheart is fantastic. Week to week it’s like GOT where you weren’t certain (if you didn’t know) who would live or die
Now d&d your character becomes a permanent attachment . People don’t run away from encounters (didn’t this site have an article bemoaning the fact that players don’t use caution and don’t run away from say a dragon

 

[TiQuinn]

Random thought: when I’m playing or GMing a new game, one of the first things I do is look for some actual plays online to get a feel for how close the game matches up to how I think it should run. I’ll do this for board games too. Does anyone else do this?

 

[Arilyn]

Random thought: when I’m playing or GMing a new game, one of the first things I do is look for some actual plays online to get a feel for how close the game matches up to how I think it should run. I’ll do this for board games too. Does anyone else do this?

I sometimes do this. I try to track down the creator's actual plays if I can. Watched some of Kelsey's walkthroughs and definitely sought out a couple of Brindlewood Bay streams because I was nervous about running it.

 

[billd91]

Random thought: when I’m playing or GMing a new game, one of the first things I do is look for some actual plays online to get a feel for how close the game matches up to how I think it should run. I’ll do this for board games too. Does anyone else do this?

I've done something similar. It's great that the internet is around to enable this kind of thing. Back in my day, <pulls pants up to armpits> I had to look for a Series Replay published in The General to see how some of the wargames I was interested in played out.