Treasure should be a reward in itself. I never understood the idea behind giving Exp for treasure. That is so.... "capitalist" (for a lack of a better word). It really feels as far away from my understanding of fantasy as I can possibly think.

Glad you did this video-adapting OSR content for Shadowdark is not as difficult as people think it is, so I'm glad to have a good example of how to do it to refer people to!

My understanding was that the main way to get a significant reward of XP was through Carousing (it being the main gameplay loop)?? And that the XP scale of Oaths in CS3 corresponded to the XP quality chart in the base game. Ie Worthy 1XP, Mighty 3 XP, and Legendary being 10 XP.

Yup, the first half of the memo is this ain't Final Fantasy. You don't get XP just for stacking corpses. But you do get XP for treasure, for really getting into the game, and for doing clever/fun stuff. Reward your players for playing well!

You're a godsend for that Word template alone. Thanks!

I really like Shadowdark. My XP system instead of being based on gold is based on all ability check rolls: crits grant 2 xp, fumbles grants 3 xp. To me it just makes more since to reward XP based on Ability score rolls.

I think the two oaths you are describing are quite different, the oaths in cursed scroll #3 are Oaths you swear, while an Oath in the core rules that you get XP for are oath sworn to you, basically quest rewards such as being promised a title or something

Ugh... you're totally missing the point of Shadowdark. Once you start metagaming the mechanics to figure out how to exploit them just go back to playing 5e. Shadowdark is about playing old school style not exploiting the margins of game mechanics.

Reward the play you want to see. I have my settings history tied to XP. The PCs happen upon a ruined library, they look through the tomes and find one of interest. Once back to town they can study (instead of carouse) and get XP and learn about the location of a wonderous object or the weakness of a powerful enemy. Like a shadowdark description. I distill lore into bite sized nuggets. They are always on the hunt for more.

You are a champion! 👻

Any plans to do (In the Shadow of Tower Silveraxe, Through the Valley of the Manticore, The Scourge of Northland? I can tell you from personal experience the second one is amazing and would be great to get other adventures of his in system's like Shadowdark.

Excellent recommendation!

Lord Percy is a retired adventurer in disguise, a level 10 thief who won his lordly title at a poker table when he cheated at cards.

@Night Noon Games tried to sign up for the mailing list to get Attack The Light #0 zine, but it send a link to a different zine.

I’m about to actually GM for my soon to be 5th grade daughter and, possibly, my wife. My original choice was the Fantasy Trip since I played it endlessly as a teenager. However, I’m going with Shadow Dark. The rules a simple and to me much, but not all, of the game’s subject matter is relatable. The new monsters, twists and turns will only add to the game’s appeal as I see it. I actually assumed you going to mention a super hero role playing game. Not as interesting to me, but super relatable to most folks. I know I’m in the minority there, but Champions was a great game-maybe my favorite. Again, my recommendation is pretty dated. Going on memories and I was never the GM.

Appreciate your work!

Nice I’m running that for October!

Great suggestion!

I played Hero Kids with my nephews and they loved it.

EZD6 has become my go to game for introducing people to TTRPGs but I think Ghostbusters as an introductory setting is a stroke of genius so I might need to figure out a way to combine the two the next time I've got someone new at my table

Thanks for exposing me to this. I might add it to my game of Knave. As someone who already likes Ironsworn, yeah oaths are cool :P

I just got into Shadowdark last week and stumbled onto your videos. Thank you for the video, rad stuff.

Totally gotta check out castle Elkenstone! Thanks for making the conversion!!

This is good stuff brother! Can't wait to play it.

10:51 that Charisma bonus of 22 on Samantha Mapleton!

Thanks!

Nice vid!

Some of the characters I turned down because they had no 14+ scores but had multiple 12-13 scores could have kicked some arse as Roustabouts...

Thanks for the video! About the math, I think the chances of you successfully casting Trance while having a luck token are about 94%. Lemme explain my reasoning: iirc, using a luck token lets you reroll a die, and the seer adds a d6. To *fail* casting Trance means you have to fail both the first try and the luck token one. Failing the first try has a chance of 35/100, while failing the second one has a chance of 21/120. Failing *both* tries is the product of the chances, which is 35*21/(100*120) = 0.06125 or 6.125%. So the chance of *not failing both* (i.e. of having a success on either the first or the second) has a chance of 100 - 6.125 = 93.875%. Given that a natural 1 has a 5% chance each roll, basically your odds of casting Trance while having a luck token are just a little lower than not critically failing a normal check.

The Roustabout... Had a long discussion w/ a friend recently. My take is this can be a very flexible sort of class. A whole party of "wanna-be" adventurers that never travel far but deal with the everyday sort of bad guys and search the boring local caves - only to be local heros and find cool stuff others never bothered to plunder. Small time heros maybe, but still the table play can be quite exciting for the players. So everyone can have a spare couple of Roustabouts in their folders for those times that not enough of the regular party are available and still have great game time. Parties of "spare parts" players who all want to play on this or that date but don't want to commit to a complex campaign. I think the Roustabout can be a very fun and intersting class to incorporate.

Always appreciate your content. I especially like you "buld" videos with process demo's on the rolled paper. Please keep the content coming. Will be re-listening to the SD solo play today and a couple of others over the next couple of days.

These are great rules but getting players to embrace them is easier said than done. The amount of issues I've dealt with from players had been insane.

Great video! Do you have gum in your mouth?

Thanks for the fun solo series! Inspired me to start my own solo TTRPG series. Please keep it coming 🙏

What level “Assistant Librarian” tho?? 😂 Congrats Michael. BTW @JPCoovert sent me here. 👍🏼

I kinda did this in my most recent campaign without noticing. Both for a blessing and for clever thinking. In the first instance, one of my players solved a riddle related to a god of knowledge. They did it in a great fashion, including some of the lore within the dungeon, so I was impressed. My plan was to award them with a Luck token, but I was so amazed I wanted to give them more, so I gave them all a point of XP. In the second one, we were about to start a session and one of my players said: "We should look in this room for secret doors." I was puzzled but tried to hide my surprise, since there was an actual secret door in that room. After one round, they found the secret door and I asked my player why did he know there was a secret door. He answered: "Well, I have been keeping track of the layout and all of the other floors have a circle shape, but this one does not, so there must be a way to connect them." I was so amazed by his clever thinking I wanted to reward it, so, again, I gave them all 1 XP. I think the best thing to take away from this is you can use your gut for awarding XP. If your players do something that you want to encourage or that made your day, just award them XP.

I love how I used your exact character creation rules yesterday, and am now watching this today going “Well this feels familiar…”

If I'm not bad (at maths and at checking with AnyDice afterwards), I think that with a +3 Modifier to your Wisdom: when you burn your luck token which gives you Advantage on the roll and adds 1d6 to the roll of Trance which needs a 11 or more to succeed, you have a 96.21% chance to have that 11+. PS: Formula I used on AnyDice is: output [highest 1 of 2d20]+3+1d6 And then I checked for At Least 11

I asked Gemini what the odds are (youtube experiment). It said there wasn't enough info, but did note at 5:01 you said you are good with the math. :)

Gimme the math!!!!!!!!!!!!°11

Sent here by DexSavedan. Thought your answers were great.

Glad to see your videos!