Shadow of the Demon Lord - your analysis?

[cavetroll]

In doing my game design research, I came across SotDL and watching a video on it I really liked many of their mechanics.

I see we have an enworld thread that heaps lots of praise

Five Things I Love About Shadow Of The Demon Lord

I’m not sure why I like dark fantasy the way I do. Maybe it’s because I fell hard for the World of Darkness in the 90s and just can’t shake it. Maybe I wanted to step away from my Tolkien loving dad but still have something to talk about in our shared nerd heritage. Maybe I just like brooding...

www.enworld.org

I think they have done well, bunches of money made on kickstarters.

But their discord is relatively small (400 active) and reddit not that big (3000 members).

So what do you think prevented it to getting to a larger audience? Obviously D&D is a marketing juggernaut. But perhaps it could have picked up a chunk of Pathfinder players.

What are the issues that prevented it from being bigger? Game design? Marketing? Themes? Need more art ?

How would you improve on it (asking for a friend).

 

[Waller]

Popularity is 99% marketing budget and 1% product quality.

 

[Blue Orange]

What does it do that D&D doesn't?

All the other second-place TTRPGs (Vampire, Call of Cthulhu) were substantially different from D&D. Pathfinder took advantage of a split in the base over 4th edition.

I mean, I've read it and I like it and I think it's original, but it seems like it kind of occupies the same market segment, which makes growing the market difficult.

 

[Mezuka]

1) The theme is very grim dark and not sanitized like current D&D.

2) It's a small company, mostly a one man operation, but the support for the game has kept coming in the form of adventures and supplements.

3) I wouldn't change anything. The career tree paths system is very good. You start with the 4 basic classes but branch off into more specific careers as you advance in levels. It feels more organic.

 

[Jd Smith1]

IMO, a very innovative core concept for the setting.

However, again IMO, they fail to sustain the uniqueness down to the 'user level' the way Lovecraftian games or the War Hammer/40k games have.

When you get down to the PC level, it's just another fantasy campaign.

 

[Blue Orange]

There's a lot of

IMO, a very innovative core concept for the setting.

However, again IMO, they fail to sustain the uniqueness down to the 'user level' the way Lovecraftian games or the War Hammer/40k games have.

When you get down to the PC level, it's just another fantasy campaign.

Yeah, it's too bad, because I like a lot of what they did with the game. They had a lot of original variants on the subclasses and a great setting and feel to it. But...you could do a D&D conversion.

 

[jdrakeh]

My favorite thing about SotDL is that they found a way to shove an entire campaign into 11-12 game sessions. Which is fantastic for folks who have limited time to play games. I wish D&D would find a way to do this (well, they kind of have with LMoP and the Dragon of Icespire Peak, both of which are effectively micro-campaigns).

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I must say, SotDL is everything I wish 5e would be.

The biggest selling points, to me are:

• Ancestry matters more than at first level only, mechanically speaking.
• Thematically grouped magic spells instead of schools.
• less ability scores and vaguer ''skills''.

And some things I've ported to my 5e games:

• equipment proficiency based on STR score, making Dex a little less all-encompassing.
• stacking advantages and disadvantages.

And things I dislike:

• 1000 different conditions that more or less just give one Bane.
• Sanity rules and the Horrifying (?) trait for monsters making that your character goes mad pretty easily.
• Cringy juvenile elements (to my taste) in many parts of the rules and setting.
• The lack of classic fantasy, generally due to the fact that the basic setting in pretty ingrained in the rules.

(I hear that Shadow of the Weird Wizard, Schwalb next book, will rework some of these issues)

 

[TerraDave]

Its a successful fantasy heartbreaker.

I think there are many who have wanted to publish their own version of D&D and get people to play it. He has done so, and good for him.

 

[cavetroll]

Its a successful fantasy heartbreaker.

I think there are many who have wanted to publish their own version of D&D and get people to play it. He has done so, and good for him.

His success was never in question. The question is how, given the product looks excellent, why is it not bigger, how would you get it in the hands of more people.

Maybe the answer is that the TTRPG industry is too small, there is only room for one main game and then the other 10% is split over too small a user base. While the Crit Role/DnD exploded in size, a lot of that is people who probably never pick up another TTRPG game.