Shadowdark Shadowdark General Thread [+]

[EthanSental]

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[Keldryn]

I'm thinking of running this soon...

Did you play theater of the mind, maps & miniatures, VTT, or something else? I just ordered two Chessex Megamats and going to draw out the entire dungeon. Also ordered a couple dozen black, silk handkerchiefs to cover it with to create a fog-of-war effect. First time trying to run a large dungeon like this, hope it works out!

Ultimately, I mostly ran that dungeon TotM (and continue to run Shadowdark that way). I'll typically sketch out the rooms on the player's map as they explore (it's too tedious to narrate room dimensions and all the back and forth involved in that).

I initially started with drawing the map on a Chessex mat and letting the players draw their own map based on that. Originally, I was planning to use 3D terrain.

I have hundreds of 3D printed dungeon tiles (Fat Dragon Games), but it's so difficult to replicate existing maps with them, particularly when a dungeon map has multiple "loops" that need to line up correctly. Many sessions in, and I still haves used them in my Shadowdark game. Players can cover a lot of ground in the dungeon quickly, which requires a lot of pre-built sections (as it's way too time consuming to build with individual tiles during play). Even with hundred of tiles already printed, I'll run out before building even a third of the dungeon.

One thing I found with using the battle mat is that the maps in the Cursed Scrolls 'zines and in Scarlett Minotaur feel really cramped when you draw them out on 5' squares and actually start putting minis down. And this applies to many old-school adventures. I've been running Shadowdark as an open-table Western Marches sort of game, so I've had anywhere from 2 to 9 players in a single session. The maps have a lot of 5' wide hallways and 20' rooms, and the believability really falls apart when you make a physical representation of that and shove 6+ PC minis into it (not to mention any monsters).

Taking a cue from video game design, you really need to build the physical layout to support the gameplay if you're going to use a physical representation of the environment on the table. As opposed to drawing a map based on what makes sense or based on realistic proportions, and then trying to create a battle map from that. This approach worked really well for me when using the 3D tiles in a 5e game that I was running previously.

Shadowdark movement and positioning is all pretty abstract, and combats move pretty quickly. Overall, I prefer how the game runs as theatre of the mind, as the focus on the game is on exploration and not set piece battles.

 

[Reynard]

Shadowdark movement and positioning is all pretty abstract, and combats move pretty quickly. Overall, I prefer how the game runs as theatre of the mind, as the focus on the game is on exploration and not set piece battles.

I tend to run it TotM until a big combat, then break out the TacTiles.

I also leave mapping to the players. If they don't care, neither do I, but if you gotta run...

 

[Fenris-77]

Well, it can be more whimsical. You probably want to keep your thumb on the scale and prevent it from going full body horror, which the later randomized depths of the garden tend to do. It and the Stygian Library ("It's based on the library from Discworld! How dark can it be?") both eventually get pretty bleak, if players keep going further and further into the weirdness.

The bonus for short-form games is that you're unlikely to get that deep.