Shadowdark Shadowdark looks so good!

[kapars]

Not sure about damage but Con does affect hp. In Kelsey's video on how to roll a character, she mentions that even though her wizard has a 6 Con, the negative modifier won't bring the starting hps below 1. Maybe later levels are not affected? I don't have the QuickStart yet.

That poor poor wizard though.

CON is only added at level 1. Most things don’t add modifiers, Magic missile does d4 only. This simplifies things for new players as it is one less thing to look up.

 

[Jahydin]

CON is only added at level 1. Most things don’t add modifiers, Magic missile does d4 only. This simplifies things for new players as it is one less thing to look up.

Most importantly, it makes rolling high during character generation less important.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Oh, and what's Grizzled Adventures?

Another OSR game by the makers of Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures. Instead of being about young heroes who grew up together and set out to save their village, Grizzled Adventurers is about elderly adventurers who've been doing this for decades and now, even though they might have to bring their canes and hearing trumpets with them into the dungeon, are still going.

While Beyond the Wall and Through the Sunken Lands (the sword & sorcery game from the same folks) use playbooks for each character, GA deconstructs that with a single playbook that explains how each of these characters met, past adventures together and rivalries and grudges they developed over the years. The playbooks all resemble those in Powered by the Apocalypse, but they create characters that greatly resemble AD&D characters. My players have enjoyed bickering about decades-old grudges as they adventure; it's a really evocative system.

Building characters in these games via the playbooks is half the fun, but each game also has rules to procedurally generate adventures. The GA adventures section creates a two-hour dungeon adventure in about five minutes. The past two I've run have been shockingly successful, due in part to the writers drilling down on the classic themes, while still bringing in a lot of creativity. (Fighting goblin or skeleton hordes as a swarm was really effective in the two adventures I ran.)

Going from building characters to completing a satisfying adventure has taken my players about three hours total the last two times.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Not sure about damage but Con does affect hp. In Kelsey's video on how to roll a character, she mentions that even though her wizard has a 6 Con, the negative modifier won't bring the starting hps below 1. Maybe later levels are not affected? I don't have the QuickStart yet.

Yeah, it only affects first level character HP. She wants hit points low.

 

[Jahydin]

Finally got a chance to read through the quickstart and love what I'm seeing.

I might have missed it, but I didn't see any guidance on how to narrate/bookkeep traveling the long and winding dungeon corridors?
Mechanically it seems important, since labyrinth-like hallways seem to be a prominent feature of the game and light is tracked in real time.
Narratively, I've always struggled making them interesting. Usually, it's, "you twist around a long hallway for about 60ft until you reach a fork..."

From her gameplay videos, it looks like she draws out the entire dungeon and lets them move miniatures around it. I think I might do a more Gygaxian approach and narrate, "you go 5 ft. west, 10 ft., 15ft, 20 ft, and come to a fork..."?

Everyone's thoughts!?

 

[Jahydin]

@Whizbang Dustyboots
That sounds awesome, thanks for the rundown!

Sounds like another game to add to the tablet...

 

[darjr]

Shadowdark RPG Live AMA

Ask Kelsey all your questions about Shadowdark RPG in this live AMA!🦇 Check out the fully-funded Shadowdark RPG Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/pro...

youtube.com

 

[Jahydin]

Shadowdark RPG Live AMA

Ask Kelsey all your questions about Shadowdark RPG in this live AMA!🦇 Check out the fully-funded Shadowdark RPG Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/pro...

youtube.com

This is too much fun! Thanks so much!

 

[CubicsRube]

T

Worth noting: The screen doesn't have any game stats or rules on it. It's all random generators, like NPC names and the like, making it useful for pretty much any fantasy roleplaying game.

That actually sounds very useful.

 

[Jahydin]

Oh no, she gets full credit for sure. I was just making a tongue in cheek post.

If it makes you feel any better, she said during her AMA the Questing Beast plug was paid for.

So if you wanted more exposure...