Shadowdark Setting Looks Set To Be 2025's First Million Dollar TTRPG Crowdfunder

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Just launched today, the new Western Reaches setting for the Arcane Library's popular Shadowdark roleplaying game (which itself raised $1.3M in 2023) has flown past half a million dollars in the first few hours, and looks certain to join the Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarter Club imminently!

[[Edit/Update--and it's done it! $1M less than 12 hours into the Kickstarter campaign!]]

2025 has been quiet so far this year on the million-dollar crowdfunding front. This new setting is a sandbox environment with new classes and ancestries, and various areas such as the Gloaming Forest, Djurum Desert, and Myre Swamp. It comes in two 200-page digest-sized hardcovers. Also included are new issues of the game's Cursed Scroll zine. The full core set will cost you $129, or $149 for a premium version, with fulfillment expected in December 2025.

At $670K at the time of writing, just 3 hours into the campaign, The Western Reaches is already the 7th most first-day funded TTRPG ever, having just passed 2024's Terry Pratchett's Discworld RPG: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork. It looks set to pass 6th place very soon, which is 2023's Ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms - A 5e Tome. Only five TTRPG crowdfunders (so far!) have ever hit the million-dollar mark on the first day. You can see the full ranking at the Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarter Club.

The Western Reaches are an unexplored land of fragile civilizations, majestic landscapes, and forgotten horrors that lurk in the dark.

In the Reaches, you could play as:

• A painted witch from the steppes hunting for the secrets to deeper magic
• An armored knight from the City of Masks guarding frontier villages from attack
• A silent monk from the mountains searching for the assassin who killed his teacher
• A scarred pit fighter from the desert looking to make her fortune outside the arena
• A quick-witted explorer from the jungle who can find any artifact for the right price
• A seafaring warrior from the northern isles who fights for the glory of the Old Gods

This sandbox setting is fast, elegant, and flexible in the signature Shadowdark style. You don't have to memorize lore; you'll discover it as you go. The world moves and grows with you as you explore it.

 

[Aldarc]

I just listened to an episode of Between Two Cairns where they talked about how Vancian spells in Vance were sentient demonic beings, expressed their desires to the caster whose head they were trapped in, and wanted to be cast.

Put those Vancian spells into a game, and now we've got something interesting happening. (No idea if Dying Earth DCC has this take on them.)

I'm now imagining a deck-builder system where the cards that you have in your hand represent the demonic beings that you have in your mind at a given time waiting to be cast as spells. When you draw new cards, that represents those other demonic beings making their way to the foreground of your thoughts to be cast.

 

[darjr]

I'd love to hear arguments about why people like spell slots.

One thing I do NOT alike about spell slots is that I don't particularly enjoy mechanics that are available X times per Y time period. The only real decision to be made isn't a decision but a guess: "How likely am I to wish I had this resource later?" And unless you know for sure this is the big boss fight at the end of the working day, you don't. You're just guessing.

I think this is why people forget they have Inspiration in D&D: you keep thinking, 'well maybe I'll get lucky and succeed anyway...' so you keep saving it for a more important roll, and eventually forget you have it. Which is why I have always played Inspiration the way SD uses luck tokens: it's a re-roll, it's not advantage.

SD spellcasting works a similar way, but now the psychology is reversed: sure, you might fail the roll and lose the spell, and wish later on that you still had it, but you might succeed, so you'll get it now AND later! At least for me, that makes it more likely I'll use a spell, rather than try to save it.

I like spell slots.

I love the idea of mages needing their tomes of magic, that they are precious and unique to each mage. Spells then are not like skills but like effemeral lore that can only be temporarily held by a human mind.

I like DCC and Shadowdark Magic, I don’t understand the spell slots hate.

 

[Parmandur]

I like spell slots.

I love the idea of mages needing their tomes of magic, that they are precious and unique to each mage. Spells then are not like skills but like effemeral lore that can only be temporarily held by a human mind.

I like DCC and Shadowdark Magic, I don’t understand the spell slots hate.

Wait, so more than one way to do things can be well designed and fun????

I am happy for Kelly, seems like this is a quality offering, though it hasn't really sparked joy for me enough to pledge (not clear to me what Shadowdark offers that I don't already get in DCC, the art style doesn't quite do it for me though I appreciate the quality).

 

[darjr]

I do find it interesting that a "distilled D&D" uses a roll-to-cast system instead of a Vancian casting system for its spellcasters. If an edition of D&D did the same, people would be out for blood.


I like that about Shadowdark. I'm just not the biggest fan of the spell mishap tables, which is one reason I am still not fully on board with the game.

Chuck the spell mishap tables. I was in a DCC game and it was almost like trad fantasy. Then I realized the dm had chucked the mercurial magic and fumbles.

 

[Von Ether]

I'm also fairly enamored of Dragonbane at the moment. I love the really flat power curves.

What trumps Dragonbane over Shadowdark for me is also more about the players at my table. I have one player whose comment about every "Heat water for tea" spell becomes, "We are 80% 'water.'" He's also like a dog with a bone about such things.

I don't mind Shadowdark's two sentence spell descriptions nor players getting creative with spells, but where that works to speed play at most tables, it would drag gameplay at my table.

Dragonbane's spell description his this player's sweet spot on detail and my sweet spot for still being short.

On that note if that player left, I could see me pitching something like a round robin GM/Western Marches thing using Shadowdark.

 

[Scribe]

(18K to go!)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I want her to go all Terry Pratchett and if she hits $2 million, she has to smelt meteorite ore and then forge her own Sword of Shadowdark and then pull it out at least once in any video, like Ginny D.

 

[darjr]

Did you say forge a sword out of melted hammers?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Did you say forge a sword out of melted hammers?

I don't know, maybe. I'm unclear on what a hammer is.

 

[Divine2021]

I found a thread from 2023 that states unequivocally that Shadowdark is just the next OSR fad and it won’t have legs. I got a good laugh out of that.