Shadowdark RPG - First Impressions

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This week we take a look through the Shadowdark RPG by Kelsey Dionne, a wonderful bit of OSR (Old School Renaissance) game design that absolutely smashed it on Kickstarter not long ago.
The final book, besides looking and feeling great, does an excellent job of taking a 1980s-era B/X D&D chassis and giving it a bit of 5e feel that should help players new to the 'old school' playstyle feel right at home. The presentation is excellent, though if I had one small concern it would be that some sections like the Time and Crawling sections may be initially confusing, if viewed from the perspective of someone not already familiar with that era of gaming. I get the feeling that a new group approaching this without the help of a player or GM already experienced in that area might struggle slightly more due to the game perhaps assuming some degree of familiarity with certain basic OSR concepts (e.g., gold = XP, actual rules for dungeon turns, etc.).
Players used to 5e will find a lot of new challenges here -- B/X-era play had a very different flavour, with most of your XP coming from loot rather than monsters, player death being relatively common, tracking rations/torches being a big deal, encounters being neither automatically hostile nor balanced, and so on. The vibe of the game is more gritty and more scary, as each expedition into the Shadowdark feels (and is) terribly dangerous and yet full of potential riches and rewards. Just mind those rival adventuring parties who may be out there with the same ideas...!
On the whole, this book does an excellent job overall of introducing its players to the OSR feel of properly dangerous adventuring, and it's certainly a game I'll try with my group, which has a fair few 5e players in it. Great work from Kelsey and her team!
For those who want the OSR experience coming from the other direction -- i.e., 5e made into OSR rather than OSR made 5e-ish -- check out Into the Unknown (preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/p..., or Five Torches Deep (www.fivetorchesdeep.com/).
If you enjoyed this review, please consider helping me keep this very expensive hobby going by donating at my Ko-Fi page here: ko-fi.com/djthorsilver
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Опубликовано:

9 янв 2024

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Комментарии : 9

@simob7862 4 месяца назад

Love this, really glad this is returning

@Beholder-RPG 5 месяцев назад

I really enjoy this game and it's very open for adaptating a setting and creating your own. Thank you for your clever and useful review.

@djthorsilver 5 месяцев назад

Thanks for watching! Glad you enjoyed it :)

@user-pc5ww8fh6d 5 месяцев назад

Shadowdark, only downside is 80 bucks is 80 bucks. I printed mine through my fav professional printer, and got an 8.5x11 I expertly hand bound myself (having book binding skills is cool). And a lot less than 80 bucks. They haven't reinvented the wheel. But this wheel is a great deal better than a Hasbro wheel. A truly one book game. I have so many D&D editions and D&Dish designs, but this is the one being played. It's not Forbidden Lands and it is not Warhammer FRPG 4th edition. Also remarkable products. But some people are D&Ders and some are not. If you are a D&Der, this is hard to beat.

@iremainteague5653 6 месяцев назад

Very interesting. I have been thinking of running a game in the osr style for a little while now. 5e has been my bread and butter for a couple of years now. There are a lot of osr rules systems, though. How do you choose? What is your favorite osr system?

@djthorsilver 5 месяцев назад

There's a tonne of OSR systems, to be sure. There's an option out there for everyone at this point. I tend to prefer the B/X clones/spin-offs, like Old School Essentials and Shadowdark, but some of the 'new old-school' stuff like Mork Borg or Troika is fun too and brings modern design ideas to the old-school framework. I think it depends what you want to do within the OSR world, and how rule-light you want things to be, and also how DnD-esque you want them to be. If you want proper old-school DnD with MUCH better presentation and yet total compatibility with new and old B/X modules, get Old School Essentials. If you want deeper, darker dungeon crawls and a bit of modernisation over regular old B/X, get Shadowdark. If you want total madness and unbelievable amounts of cool modules and hilarious spell failure charts, get Dungeon Crawl Classics. If you want rules-light, classless, and elegant, get Knave 2e... I could go on, there's a lot of options :) Poke around the OSR sub-Reddit for some good recommendations.

@sunsin1592 6 месяцев назад

Yawn. Underwhelming recycled house rules. Not a single original thought in the book.

@djthorsilver 6 месяцев назад

Let's say I accepted your premise here (I don't, for the record) -- this is an OSR game, where every system is 0e/1e or B/X + house rules, essentially. Heck, Old School Essentials Classic is basically B/X with better layout, but it's still a great thing to have and deserves a place on my shelf. In other words, if you're looking for hot new mechanical innovations, the RPG genre specifically devoted to resurrecting the past in a more user-friendly form may not be the best place to look. There are certainly interesting rules-light OSR-related games out there (Into the Odd, Knave, Black Hack, Troika, Mork Borg, Whitehack, etc.), but that's not really where Shadowdark sits; so maybe take a look around at those games and support those creators.