Shadowdark Ran my first Shadowdark game!

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

(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.)

Yeah, they both scratch very different itches. Worth having both available.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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.

I am not a fan of funnels generally, so take this for what it's worth, but my Shadowdark campaign is up to level 3 or 4 now, and the game definitely feels a lot better for my crew of 5E players. They still need to be careful and we have whole sessions where they talk to or simply avoid the monsters, not fight them, but everyone seems to really enjoy the campaign, despite some of them being skeptical initially.

 

[renbot]

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.

It ran great but I chickened out and leveled them to 3 so that there was less chance of a TPK (I was trying to win them over to SD and killing them all would not have helped with that). It turns out it was a little too easy for level 3 characters but they also got really luck rolls and neither priest lost Cure Wounds so they healed up a LOT.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I cannot recommend enough running Skerples' Tomb of the Serpent Kings as an intro to the OSR for 5E players. It's explicitly meant as a teaching scenario. My group loved it and they stretched it out over three sessions. (I included the optional suggested fungus goblin NPC for them to meet and talk to early on, and they were just delighted with the dungeon from there on out.)

 

[DarkCrisis]

I remember running Scarlet Mino, good times. A lot of deaths but they easily slayed the Mino.

 

[Arilyn]

I played in the Minotaur scenario. We should have had a TPK with the Minotaur fight, cause we were stupid, but a few lucky rolls saved us. Relief and celebration!

 

[renbot]

I guess this is as good a thread as any to ask for SD advice. I noticed that the whole torch/threat of darkness was less dramatic that I expected. Even with having a torch go out it was pretty easy for a party member to light a new one. I made it a DC 12 check if they weren't in combat and DC 15 if they were so maybe they just got lucky with their rolls, a recurring theme to the day. Is there something I could have done differently? Also, the party had two clerics who never failed a light spell casting so that was just luck of the dice (that and the fact that neither lost a cure wounds check despite casting it a lot...grrrrr).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I guess this is as good a thread as any to ask for SD advice. I noticed that the whole torch/threat of darkness was less dramatic that I expected. Even with having a torch go out it was pretty easy for a party member to light a new one. I made it a DC 12 check if they weren't in combat and DC 15 if they were so maybe they just got lucky with their rolls, a recurring theme to the day. Is there something I could have done differently? Also, the party had two clerics who never failed a light spell casting so that was just luck of the dice (that and the fact that neither lost a cure wounds check despite casting it a lot...grrrrr).

There's a general Shadowdark thread that might be better for it, but in general, the threat of torches going out is mostly a problem when you're suddenly getting attacked with advantage by darkness-adapted creatures. And the intelligent ones will focus fire on the surface folk trying to relight torches, keeping everyone in the dark longer.

In many dungeons, groups might even be followed by one or more stealthy creatures waiting for the torch to go out, specifically to ambush the group at that point.

If your players aren't sweating their torches going out yet, that's fine -- just think of this as the ramp-up to the really scary parts of a horror movie when everyone's confidence comes back to bite them in the butt. My players will never forget the first (and last, in many cases) time their torches went out in combat.