Shadowdark Shadowdark General Thread [+]

[Velderan]

Link to it and all past monthly monsters in case anyone is missing any of them.

 

[Xenolith234]

Well....I don't think it can't be done, but I do think there will be tradeoffs, and you may end up having to make alterations to the system you're converting to in order to retain flavor.

Again without knowing much about OSE or Dolmenwood, I do know that Dolmenwood has its own playable species, and I'm guessing each of them has more features than the single feature given to Shadowdark ancestries. When converting, what kind of choices do you make? If you strip them down to a single feature are you losing "flavor"? What happens when parts of the adventures explicitly invoke the features you are leaving behind? Is that lost flavor?

It might be blasphemy, but…what if you just give the SD ancestries the same features as in Dolmenwood? Will the game break?

I’m genuinely asking because I haven’t done any homebrew for SD, but if those extra features are mostly ribbons, I don’t see a problem with it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It might be blasphemy, but…what if you just give the SD ancestries the same features as in Dolmenwood? Will the game break?

I’m genuinely asking because I haven’t done any homebrew for SD, but if those extra features are mostly ribbons, I don’t see a problem with it.

Shadowdark ancestries typically get one thing of consequence, a language or two, and then maybe ribbons.

I would have to see the Dolmenwood races, but if they get more than one thing of significance, they will instantly be better than the Shadowdark ancestries. If I were converting Dolmenwood, I would just end up homebrewing conversions of the races and classes, just to keep things from getting weird.

 

[Bill Zebub]

It might be blasphemy, but…what if you just give the SD ancestries the same features as in Dolmenwood? Will the game break?

I’m genuinely asking because I haven’t done any homebrew for SD, but if those extra features are mostly ribbons, I don’t see a problem with it.

I mean, sure, that works. But Kelsey didn't give ancestries a single feature because she's lazy; it was an intentional design choice. So you would be altering a feature of the target system in order to retain flavor. It's a tradeoff.

Multiply that by what I imagine are many such choices, and I'm left wondering why one would bother to port rather than just playing OSE.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Multiply that by what I imagine are many such choices, and I'm left wondering why one would bother to port rather than just playing OSE.

OSE has to hit and saving throw tables, which some of us hate.

But the alternative is converting a lot to make it work in Shadowdark. (The monsters, I suspect, can just be run more or less without changes, once you've decided what the various saving throw types map to in Shadowdark.)

 

[Bill Zebub]

OSE has to hit and saving throw tables, which some of us hate.

But the alternative is converting a lot to make it work in Shadowdark. (The monsters, I suspect, can just be run more or less without changes, once you've decided what the various saving throw types map to in Shadowdark.)

Oh, to be clear, I'm all in favor of a Shadowdark port. I just meant, rhetorically, why go through all the trouble if in the process of retaining all the original "flavor" you end up with something that misses the point of Shadowdark? If I were doing the conversion, I'd sacrifice the flavor of Dolmenwood and keep the flavor of Shadowdark, as it were.

 

[renbot]

Just ran my 4th session of Shadowdark (a modification of Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur) and my players and I have enjoyed it more each time. Wanted to thank the contributors to this and other threads for the advice and encouragement. Next stop: carousing in the City of Masks!

 

[Reynard]

Musing on convention game options: So I am wtill thinking about running "Power Lunch" the corporate portal fantasy thing, but I am also considering a convention West marches thing. I am thinking of bring a big, almost blank Hex map and let the players for every session explore however they want. I have done similar things for my multi-session events in the pst. in recent years, i sort of moved more toward story focused things, and would not mind getting back to an emergent game. For example, i had great success with Return to the Isle of Dread a few years ago as a pure sandbox game.

Is West marches Shadowdark a good choice for a 3 or 4 session convention "campaign"?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I just had a terrible FLGS experience with what I'm sure the DM thought was a sandbox Daggerheart experience. If you are going to let players go whatever direction they want, put something adventure-shaped that would last for a good portion of the time slot allotted in each hex.

My plan for Shadow League is to start with fleshing out a starting town and running Temple of the Serpent Kings, and making sure everyone knows they need to be out of the dungeon by 9 p.m., otherwise bad stuff will happen to their characters. I want to maximize adventure time.

My home group got nine hours of play out of the tomb, which I think will likely turn into 12 with people being new to the system and trickling in after the start of game time, etc.