Shadowdark Ran my first Shadowdark game!

[renbot]

And it was great! We played a marathon session in a room we rented in a gaming store during which we played a couple of hours of Daggerheart for the first time (it was a very short intro adventure) then about 5 hrs of SD. The players, who all but one cut their teeth on Basic/1st edition, forgot everything they learned from classic adventures and at first didn't dig through burial mounds or look for secret doors etc., so there was a decent amount of backtracking. But their old instincts kicked in and we had a blast. They didn't finish the adventure and probably won't because I gave spoilers as we cleaned up but it looks like I convinced enough of them that we will be playing again in the near-ish future.

Thanks to the community for all the posts containing advice etc.

 

[renbot]

(PS: Daggerheart was great also and probably more in line with what my players are looking for. But I think SD will be our "who wants to play even though not everyone is available" game.)

 

[zottel]

Awesome!
Recently ran Shadowdark for the first time, also. We got about halfway through the Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur, and the group actually managed to get it down, and only one PC perished (in an epic way!). I wonder if I did everything right.
Had bad luck and never got a 1 on my Random Encounter Checks, maybe should have fudged.
We all had a blast and will be back to Shadowdark in the near future, I am envisioning an open table, west marches style.
What adventure did you run, and did you have some things you were unsure about or your players didn't really gel with?
I had one complaint that they didn't get to roll enough.

 

[Mannahnin]

Awesome!
Recently ran Shadowdark for the first time, also. We got about halfway through the Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur, and the group actually managed to get it down, and only one PC perished (in an epic way!). I wonder if I did everything right.
Had bad luck and never got a 1 on my Random Encounter Checks, maybe should have fudged.

Did you miss the note above the random encounter chart, which makes it increasingly likely to inevitable that the minotaur will keep showing up?

The Scarlet Minotaur. Each time you roll on the Random
Encounters table after the first, apply a cumulative -2 to the result
(treat results below 1 as 1). Reset this count each time an encounter
with the Scarlet Minotaur occurs.

 

[zottel]

Did you miss the note above the random encounter chart, which makes it increasingly likely to inevitable that the minotaur will keep showing up?

I interpreted it such that you apply the modifier to the roll on the table (what random encounter occurs), not on the encounter check (if a random encounter occurs).
Basically, not make it more likely that a RE happens, but make it successively more likely that it will be a Minotaur RE, IF a RE happens at all.

 

[Mannahnin]

I interpreted it such that you apply the modifier to the roll on the table (what random encounter occurs), not on the encounter check (if a random encounter occurs).
Basically, not make it more likely that a RE happens, but make it successively more likely that it will be a Minotaur RE, IF a RE happens at all.

Ok, sounds like you did it right, then, and they just got lucky with the RE rolls, I guess.

 

[Velderan]

Awesome!
Recently ran Shadowdark for the first time, also. We got about halfway through the Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur, and the group actually managed to get it down, and only one PC perished (in an epic way!). I wonder if I did everything right.
Had bad luck and never got a 1 on my Random Encounter Checks, maybe should have fudged.
We all had a blast and will be back to Shadowdark in the near future, I am envisioning an open table, west marches style.
What adventure did you run, and did you have some things you were unsure about or your players didn't really gel with?
I had one complaint that they didn't get to roll enough.

I've been running the gauntlet dungeon in Cursed Scroll #3. After last night we're about 3/4 of the way through it and like you, I have yet to roll a random encounter. It hasn't been a big deal, because every time I roll to check it gives them the sign they need to move on which they were quick to notice, so it's been serving a purpose.

I'm not sure what we'll end up doing with Shadowdark in the long term. My group seems to enjoy what we're playing, but playing a 0th level character isn't the same thing as a 1st level character so they haven't interacted with things like roll to cast or how dying works just yet. I will probably run Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur as a follow up and see how they take to the full rules experience, then decide if I want to run a campaign or just stick to short adventures.

 

[kermit4karate]

Awesome!
Recently ran Shadowdark for the first time, also. We got about halfway through the Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur, and the group actually managed to get it down, and only one PC perished (in an epic way!). I wonder if I did everything right.
Had bad luck and never got a 1 on my Random Encounter Checks, maybe should have fudged.
We all had a blast and will be back to Shadowdark in the near future, I am envisioning an open table, west marches style.
What adventure did you run, and did you have some things you were unsure about or your players didn't really gel with?
I had one complaint that they didn't get to roll enough.

If everyone had a good time, you did everything right.

 

[renbot]

I also didn't get a single random encounter in 5+ hrs of play! Finally the players were like "oh just hit us with a wandering monster already or it won't feel like old-school D&D."

I ran a published adventure called "Tomb of the Dusk Queen" by Sersa Victory (best. Name. EVER!). I fell in love with her Shrine of the Jaguar Princess but SJP was too long and too high a level (level 4, 12-16 hrs of projected play). I plan to run SJP when they have some more SD experience under their belts.

 

[zottel]

I also didn't get a single random encounter in 5+ hrs of play! Finally the players were like "oh just hit us with a wandering monster already or it won't feel like old-school D&D."

I ran a published adventure called "Tomb of the Dusk Queen" by Sersa Victory (best. Name. EVER!). I fell in love with her Shrine of the Jaguar Princess but SJP was too long and too high a level (level 4, 12-16 hrs of projected play). I plan to run SJP when they have some more SD experience under their belts.

I thought about running Tomb of the Dusk Queen as our first adventure, too! Decided to run the Scarlet Minotaur, because I thought if we run only one thing with SD, this should be it.
How did it run? I heard nothing but praise about Sersas stuff.