Here comes the dark, doo-doo-doo-doo
Here comes the dark, and I say
It’s alright
–with apologies to The Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun
Actually, it is quite a bit better than alright; it is quite good. Shadowdark is a relatively new RPG from The Arcane Library that just finished up a Kickstarter in late March (and is still taking late backers as of when this post was published). There has been quite a bit of buzz about it. You can google to find news and various reviews about it (here’s one from Questing Beast). The game is billed as a blend of modern mechanics and old school sensibilities; fast, elegant, and intuitive. I backed the Kickstarter based on the work that the designer, Kelsey Dionne, had done with 5e adventures. My groups have played a few of them and I’ve enjoyed running them…clean, easy to use, and imaginative.
I’ve more or less read through the Shadowdark core rulebook a couple of times now. I find rulebooks for most games to be a bit of a chore to read. This one is very easy to read and actually a bit fun to read. It is clean, easy to read, and, like Dionne’s 5e adventures, imaginative. Based on these reads, the game appears to hit the sweet spot for me. The rules aren’t bloated. Characters are largely about what you make them while playing rather than the mechanics and abilities on the character sheet. A lot of the design elements align with what I want from a D&D style game. It also looks like it would be super easy to ignore any elements of the game that we find that we don’t like.
Not quite ten years ago, I put together a little boxed set to pay homage to the original D&D sets. I wrote up some rules of a streamlined D&D style game in three little books: Rats & Ratlings, Mice & Magic, and Gods & Gophers (all to play off of our rodent theme). Along with the booklets, I tossed in some retro-dice and a Fat Rat Games stamped pencil into a box set and gave them to the players as a Ratmas gift (Fat Rat Games’ version of Christmas). After all these years, one of the players came across their pencil right after I finished my first read-through of Shadowdark. A new game that looks great to me and harkens back to the older editions AND a player finding their pencil from my “retro” boxed set. If that isn’t Fate telling us something, I don’t know what else would be.
Our Friday night game was going to be a Savage Worlds sci-fi game. Not anymore. Fate cannot be denied, right? Isn’t that pretty much the definition of fate? We began our Shadowdark game this past Friday. It took us a little over an hour to roll up characters (yes, you roll characters rather than “building” them). I think it only took that long because we were online and no one else has the rulebook or had downloaded the free quick-start rules…mainly needed to look up gear and spells. Plus, we had to roll stats a few times…no one had a 14 or higher on the first few rolls and so got to re-roll per the Shadowdark rules. I’m sure it will go quite a bit quicker the next time anyone needs to roll a character. More than one player commented on how it was fun to roll their character and discover who they are as you roll. Music to my ears!
We then jumped right into an adventure. We started playing The Hole in the Oak from Necrotic Gnome, written for Old School Essentials. I haven’t “converted” anything ahead of time. I’m just adjusting as needed on the fly and so far there hasn’t really been a need for any adjusting. I do plan on adjusting the treasure to more reasonable (at least to me) levels. I’ve talked with most of the players since the session and they’ve all said that they really enjoyed it and enjoyed the openness of the game rules. If they keep it up with these sort of comments, I might swoon!
We haven’t established a setting. That will come as we play. I just shared that they were heading for a tiny hamlet called Oddgoat and had heard of a strange two-headed goat with constant flames between its horns, the hamlet’s namesake of course (why yes, I have recently read the comic Delver). Rumors also hold that a strange door recently just appeared in the cellar of one of the homes here. It opens into The Dungeon. We’ll keep building on all of this. We’ll also keep building on the the idea of The Dungeon, a living dungeon from the Delver comic. It very much jives with (if not inspired by) the notion of a mythic underworld common to a lot of older D&D as well the newer stuff, including Shadowdark, taking a lead from those older editions. This door is an example of that mythic underworld/living dungeon bubbling up to the surface. Beyond the door was a woodland clearing with a large oak tree…cue the adventure and some of the weirdness yet to come.
We haven’t established any backstory for the characters. That will also come as we play. One player’s character is an elf wizard who rolled soldier for their background. She decided that her character had come across some strange/supernatural stuff as a soldier, took up wizardry to learn even more, and came to Oddgoat because of its namesake and the rumors of a Dungeon door. The goblin priest’s player decided that their character (banished background) was told to come here by their god or goddess…no other details and still working on who their deity actually is. The halfling thief (with a wizard’s apprentice background) stumbled across the hamlet while on the run and knows about the Dungeon as a result of her background. Our fourth player missed the first session but should be joining us this next session.
Since that first session, I’ve decided that we’re going to use the maps for The Midsummer Lands from Dyson’s Dodecahedron for the campaign map. I’ll just stay one step ahead of the players as we build out the setting. Cool map aside, setting is less important than what happens at the table during play.
It is only one session so far, but I’m already quite pleased with Shadowdark, how it played, and the positive feedback from the players. I wonder if they’ll still be positive if there is a TPK. Gasp!
