Shadow of the Weird Wizard Is Finally Here!

Long anticipated, it’s here! You can grab the PDF from DriveThruRPG. In fact, it has hit the #1 spot on the site.

By Rob Schawlb, SotWW is the sequel to Shadow of the Demon Lord and presents a more family friendly version of the game system.

Not DnD - Shadow of the Weird Wizard

Shadow of the Weird Wizard voted as one of the most anticipated ttrpgs of 2023 by EN World users. Join us as we discuss Rob Schwalb's family-friendly incarna...

www.youtube.com

Shadow of the Weird Wizard® is a fantasy roleplaying game in which you and your friends assume the roles of characters who explore the borderlands and make them safe for the refugees escaping the doom that has befallen the old country. Unsafe are these lands: the Weird Wizard released monsters to roam the countryside, cruel faeries haunt the shadows, undead drag themselves free from their tombs, and ancient evils stir once more. If the displaced people would rebuild their lives, they need heroes to protect them. A brand new game built using the system powering Shadow of the Demon Lord, this game gives you everything you need for you and your friends to champion the innocent, to brave grave dangers, and right terrible wrongs, all while exploring the wild frontier of the borderlands!

Some saw him as a mad sorcerer who commanded eldritch powers of staggering might. As proof, one only has to look at all the abominations he set loose in the lands—the hybrid beasts, the multilegged hulking collectors, floating eyes that hang in the air trailing their nerve endings. And then, far, far beyond the edges of the new lands rose the walls of the Forbidden City and the clockwork peoples who dwelled there in seeming servitude to the dread mage who ruled over all he surveyed.



But the Weird Wizard is gone. His shadow remains, but the figure casting it disappeared and none, not even his closest servants, know where he went. It might be coincidence that his absence preceded the bloody civil war that tore the Great Kingdom apart and that precipitated the violent struggle between the other nations in the west, or the Weird Wizard might have had some stabilizing influence that enabled civilization to flourish once more following a far older, nastier decline. Too, he could have been the source of the conflict and abandoned the world to its fate.

Either way, the instability sends people by the thousands spilling into the borderlands. As this territory grows more and more crowded, refugees are looking to the east to make their homes. The first forays into the strange place have ended with disappearances and death, and the few people who have returned carry tales of hostile inhabitants, cruel faeries, and hideous, ravenous monsters. If the new lands would be tamed, there must be peace with the inhabitants.

Such efforts demand heroes. Luckily, there might just be a few around. This book shows you how to make a hero who can meet and triumph over the greatest challenges of exploring a world that stands in the shadow of a Weird Wizard.

​

 

[Thomas Shey]

I
It's not a complete game and can't be playtested - ergo, it can't be reviewed.

I have to note that far from all reviews are playtest reviews. While its arguably a superior approach (though only arguably, since a single adventure played through can both miss things and overemphasize things that ongoing play will reveal--most recently I learned that with the Dragon Age game), its hardly a pure necessity if you have a good eye for mechanics.

 

[Retreater]

Yes, and? I have to point out most games don't actually have much guidance there. Its a very modern conception and only exists, that I know of, in a handful of games.

I'll disagree on that.
Sure, maybe back in the 1980s there wouldn't have been much help, but in modern games - at least any of them worth playing - would at least give the GM the idea of how to build encounters and the expectations of play. I don't mean specific challenge ratings exclusively. Even Call of Cthulhu gives the Keeper the idea how to design encounters and what the play experience is supposed to be.

 

[Zehnseiter]

I don't know about Rolemaster, but I can speak about the 3.0 staggered release.
What else was released with the 3.0 Player's Handbook's release?

• First, it included a rudimentary bestiary in the back
• Second, there were downloadable free adventures ready on release date (including 3PP games such as Necromancer Games' "Wizard's Amulet").
• Third, there was the 3.0 SRD - which I think was available before the Monster Manual

To my knowledge, Weird Wizard has none of this, not even some free downloads on Schwab's website to "get you started."
It's not a complete game and can't be playtested - ergo, it can't be reviewed.

I still don't really care. D&D could do this as it has the resources. I doubt that Mr. Schwalb has them. He is probably hard working on book 2.

This is basically an early preview of what is to come. The real release of the game is when it is finished and send send to the backers. That you can already buy the first book on drivethru is actually a nice bonus and nothing much more. ( And when I say bonus I mean it. At least here in Germany print is still what decides about the success of a RPG game. The percentage of digtal sales compared to phsyical sales are way to small. )

I mean I can see that you have issues with the game. That is obvious from the very first comment of the thread. But the book is currently sitting on the top sales spot on drivethru. So I guess the product seems interesting enough for people to buy it.

 

[Retreater]

I still don't really care. D&D could do this as it has the resources. I doubt that Mr. Schwalb has them. He is probably hard working on book 2.

I was asked about D&D's staggered release approach, so that's why I provided those examples.
I assure you there are games with far fewer resources than Schwab that have provided much more to get started. (Shadowdark being one of them.)

But the book is currently sitting on the top sales spot on drivethru. So I guess the product seem interesting enough for people to buy it.

And I wonder how many of those people know they're getting an incomplete game?

My whole point of this is to make sure people coming here see that it's only a player's book. If they do a Google search, they come to this thread and see it's a player's book. That is, until Schwab fixes the description on DriveThru and adds meaningful titles to his products to tell people what they are.

 

[Njall]

Assuming enemies use the same mechanics? But even so, you would have no concept of how to build encounters.

Well, sure, you can't playtest combat encounters. But you can still review a game's mechanics regardless, i.e.: are the magic rules to your preferences? How do people feel about the ruleset, compared to SotDL? Do you like the paths and/or ancestries presented?
That's still reviewing the game, it's just not an in-depth analisys of the game's balance (which yeah, isn't something that can be evaluated right now). .

 

[The Soloist]

I was asked about D&D's staggered release approach, so that's why I provided those examples.
I assure you there are games with far fewer resources than Schwab that have provided much more to get started. (Shadowdark being one of them.)

And I wonder how many of those people know they're getting an incomplete game?

My whole point of this is to make sure people coming here see that it's only a player's book. If they do a Google search, they come to this thread and see it's a player's book. That is, until Schwab fixes the description on DriveThru and adds meaningful titles to his products to tell people what they are.

You've been repeating the same stuff for 8 pages now. It's frankly obnoxious at this point. It's time you live up to your forum name and retreat from the thread.

 

[Zehnseiter]

I was asked about D&D's staggered release approach, so that's why I provided those examples.
I assure you there are games with far fewer resources than Schwab that have provided much more to get started. (Shadowdark being one of them.)

And I wonder how many of those people know they're getting an incomplete game?

My whole point of this is to make sure people coming here see that it's only a player's book. If they do a Google search, they come to this thread and see it's a player's book. That is, until Schwab fixes the description on DriveThru and adds meaningful titles to his products to tell people what they are.

I am quite sure that people are aware that this is just book 1. The index is in the drivetru preview. Also most people will google a game first to do minimal research before shelling out money for it.

Give me a moment to google something (base research so to say)....

Shadowdark 13.249 backers 1.365.923 Dollar
Shadow of the Weird Wizard 4.289 backers 411.555 Dollar

Yea I would expect that the Shadowdark authors have more resources available. Not the other way around.
It is a a single book OSR game....a large percentage (depending on how much the authors change) of the game was written decades ago.

And before anyone misunderstand this. This is no insult from me on Shadowdark. I plan to buy that book myself when it arrives in printed form. It looks very nice.

 

[mamba]

Weird Wizard cannot be reviewed until the other book is released

you cannot evaluate balance, but you could talk about the design differences compared to SotDL, the mechanics, … all kinds of things

 

[Shardstone]

We could talk about literally anything in Book One instead of talking about how we need Book 2 to fully play it. Like cmon man, the dude is doing most of the writing himself. Him releasing Book One now is to get at least a LITTLE capital from people willing to be patient as he works on Book Two. Do we have to bust every author's balls that's working on a shoestring budget despite losing two father figures and his best friend/co-writer? How unforgiving.

I was asked about D&D's staggered release approach, so that's why I provided those examples.
I assure you there are games with far fewer resources than Schwab that have provided much more to get started. (Shadowdark being one of them.)

And I wonder how many of those people know they're getting an incomplete game?

My whole point of this is to make sure people coming here see that it's only a player's book. If they do a Google search, they come to this thread and see it's a player's book. That is, until Schwab fixes the description on DriveThru and adds meaningful titles to his products to tell people what they are.

 

[The Soloist]

I decided to buy a copy of the rules. The first thing I will say is that the final character sheet is much better than the one I saw on the web. It had all the important info placed as if on a circle in the middle of the page.