Shadowdark Finally Played Shadowdark

[Retreater]

Yeah, that is a bad DM implementation. In my Shadowdark campaign, there's been one round of combat in the last two sessions, because the PCs are being cautious and only fighting when they feel guaranteed of victory.

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

 

[Bill Zebub]

Off the top of my head
Ideas I'd like for the thief...
A talent that lets you hide while being observed, even if it's just for a split second. And maybe with a mechanic where you can lose it (like a spell casting roll). [Because in my game it was almost impossible to ever get to backstab. Or escape from enemies.]
A talent that lets you see in the dark for like one round - so you can either sneak or maybe relight another torch under dire circumstances. Can also be a roll to lose it for the day.
Other abilities...
Escaping grapples/bonds.
Learn to use scrolls.
Quick appraisal of treasure.
Ability to carry treasure more effectively (maybe coins weigh half as much?)
Dodge to take half damage from certain attacks or spells
Ability to use poisons

Yeah I would say Shadowdark is definitely not the game for you, based on the above. Even if your GMs had run the game "correctly" (meaning, like Shadowdark not D&D) you still wouldn't have the kind of mechanics you want.

But kudos to you for trying something new!

 

[Scribe]

Even the official Cursed Scrolls material is pretty much "monster lair - kill the monsters."

Thats...not true.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Thats...not true.

Yeah, that was a weird take.

 

[DarkCrisis]

House rules, baby!

I used d&d standard array for stats. Full HP at level one. Etc Etc.

Shadowdark is great because it's easy to mod

 

[Fenris-77]

Honestly, if that were my experience, I absolutely could (and would) judge the system based on that. This wasn't simply a one and done - it was giving a full three strikes, including a weekend-long go at it as one of those three. How much misery does someone have to endure before deciding a system that they aren't liking isn't for them?

I was trying to take a broader view, but this is probably fair.

 

[NN]

Roll-to-Cast working against strategic planning is a very valid point.

The rest seem to be naughty word Dming.

 

[NN]

Stats i made an excel that spits out 6 x 3d6 arrays.

 

[Flying Toaster]

Retreater’s experience of Shadowdark reminds me of something I read on The Alexandrian blog. Justin Alexander ran an OD&D Caverns of Thracia campaign in order to test out how the game played RAW. The 3d6-down-the-line method produced such poor characters that after several TPKs the players no longer bothered to give them unique names, instead using designations like “Bob the Dwarf III”. They measured progress in terms of how much farther they could get into the dungeon before the inevitable TPK, almost like a Roguelike computer game. It sounded excruciating to me.

I started in 1985 or 1986 with the Moldvay Basic Set, even though Mentzer Basic and Unearthed Arcana were already out. I learned all of the dungeon crawl rules from Moldvay but rarely used any of them once I started playing heavily streamlined AD&D 1E with older kids. On paper I should be an ideal recruit for the OSR crusade, but like Retreater I actually prefer something like 2E or a somewhat depowered 5E.

Off topic:
While the original goal of J. Alexander’s campaign was to try playing OD&D RAW, they quickly discovered that this was basically impossible since so many parts of the rulebooks directly contradicted each other. The original rules assumed that the DM owned both Chainmail (for mass combat) and some long-forgotten Avalon Hill game (for wilderness survival), so technically the original box was not quite a complete game. In the original standard rules all weapons do 1d6 damage, and most of the combat rules people remember using were actually optional rules variants.

 

[Velderan]

Honestly, if that were my experience, I absolutely could (and would) judge the system based on that. This wasn't simply a one and done - it was giving a full three strikes, including a weekend-long go at it as one of those three. How much misery does someone have to endure before deciding a system that they aren't liking isn't for them?

Yes and no.

OP could have figured out from reading the book that the game wasn’t going to work for them because of the low HP, roll to cast mechanics, and general lack of character abilities so from that perspective, sure the sample size they played was enough to say “this isn’t for me” because it proved those things were issues with how they apparently play TTRPGs.

But the rest of the problems were either the GM not running the system according to the advice in the book (reaction checks to see how monsters respond, giving hints to warn PCs of danger) or the PCs just refused to pick up on the hints and figured if there was danger they could handle it because they played 5e and just charging in works mostly fine there. If I played a system and had their results, then had people explain ways the game wasn’t being ran correctly according to the designer’s intent I would definitely be willing to try the game again either running the game myself to make sure it was being ran the way it was intended or with a GM who actually was aware the game is supposed to be different from modern TTRPGs.