Hey everyone,

I’ve been a GM for several years now, and my style tends to focus much more on roleplay, atmosphere, and player creativity than on optimized spell combos or crunchy mechanics. Because of that, I usually run a simplified custom system.
For example : i like to act the NPC and give my players the option to understand the psychology of this NPC and then talk with him to get through a situation. Like negotiating with a merchant who's narcisist and if the players compliments him he will be more friendly. All of this with no rolls.

That said, Shadowdark has really caught my attention lately. I’ve only skimmed through parts of the rules so far, but honestly, the artwork and overall old school vibe immediately pulled me in.

So I’d love to hear from people who actually play it:

What makes you love Shadowdark ?
What gives the game its unique soul or identity ?
What are your favorite aspects of the system ?
And maybe, what do you dislike about it ?

Do you feel it’s better suited for a particular style of play — dungeon crawling, emergent storytelling, narrative-focused campaigns, etc.?

Is there a specific mechanic or design choice that made you think: “Okay, this is genuinely a great RPG system”?

In short: is it really worth diving into?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and long live TTRPGs!

Hi everyone!

I'm new to this subreddit and wanted to introduce a Virtual Tabletop I've built for Shadowdark. We've used it for our own table, and now I'm opening it up for everyone else.

Our approach is system-specific Virtual Tabletops instead of the "one size fits all" model. The tool already knows what Shadowdark is: Torches, mishap tables, the dungeon turn, the spell-tier DC, and the d12 hazards. You don't need to spend time finding all the mods/addons to get started; it's just Shadowdark out of the box.

Here are just a few of the things this VTT has:

• Character creation wizard: Ancestry, class, alignment, background, deity, languages, talents, starting spells, all in one short flow. HP, AC, attack bonus, and gear slots are all derived for you.
• Level-up flow. XP-gated button on the roster, talent/spell/HP rolls walked through and locked once accepted.
• Torch & Lantern Timer that burns even when every tab is closed; refresh, and it picks up exactly where it should be. It also has an animation and a flame audio loop.
• Wizard mishap tables: natural 1 on a cast auto-opens the correct tier's d12 mishap modal for everyone at the table; caster or GM rolls it.
• Priest penance: Failed casting? Pick from holy quest, ritualistic atonement, or material sacrifice, with GP tiers wired up.
• Battle map with fog of war. Rooms, doors, edges, terrain stamps, drawings, text labels, pings. Each character's torch illuminates its own line-of-sight cone; party lights layer on top of it.
• Procedural dungeon generator. Tiny / Small / Medium room layouts with doors and corridors, ready to drop tokens onto.
• Dungeon-turn tracker. Crawling rounds alongside combat rounds, plus one-tap rolls for encounter check (1d6), starting distance, monster activity (2d6), trap table (d12), and the hazard catalog.
• Initiative strip! (honestly, this is amazing) d20+DEX for players, auto-rolled for enemies, active actor highlighted across every screen.
• Campaign Tools: NPCs, Quests, Locations, Journal entries, Lore wiki, and Enemies catalog. Every entity has a "Show to players" toggle so the GM curates visibility; everything syncs in real time.
• GM prep: NPC generator (8 tables), name pools (people / shops / taverns / towns / cities / dungeons), GM oracles (Adventure / Rumor / Something Happens / Traps / Hazards), and a searchable Quick Reference compendium.
• The GM Library is a browsable, searchable rulebook view of Classes, Ancestries, Backgrounds, Spells, Equipment, Deities, Titles, and Skill Tags.
• In character party chat that shows thought bubbles and emotes above portraits' heads and tokens.

And much more.

I'd appreciate your feedback on what works, what doesn't, and what's missing. To get in, visit https://members.shawnsvtts.com, create a free account, and you'll have access to the Shadowdark VTT free forever.

Happy to answer anything here, and feedback is the whole point.

Any experience DMs out there that have run Shadow Dark for kids?!?

I’m going to be running D&D day workshops this summer for age groups of 9 to16. I LOVE SD and I feel like it would be easier for kids to grasp vs 5e and better entry point as well as faster.

Except for the quick dying thing!

I’d love to hear if anyone has done this or recommendations from experienced DMs.

I would probably already give them higher amount of hit points and maybe give out luck tokens a little more often. But ANY feedback so appreciated.

Recently I thought about Skills. Some OSR games have them, some not. For people coming from D&D, this is something they find to be "missing". My group comes from WFRP and that game makes heavy use of a skill list.
But when we actually sit down to play, we don't really miss a Skill Table. It never came up during actual play, only as shower thoughts later.

So this morning I was thinking about something unrelated: How neat is that modifiers cap at +4. It means a difficult check (DC15) works out 50% of the time. Meaning, even if you're good at something, wether you can or can't do it comes out like a coin toss and is entirely up to luck.
Then I got to thinking how the chances of suceeding at something look like for other modifiers and came up with this:

https://preview.redd.it/cqnrhw4je92h1.png?width=523&format=png&auto=webp&s=710b9ab1716d6cdc84b44595e5f9d4d598d856e1

On an initial observation, a character who rolled +1 or +2 in something comes out as quite competent in those areas with good odds. On the other hand, characters should REALLY avoid tasks where they have -1 or -2.

Now the best part about this table is how advantage interacts with it. Players who rolled +1 or +2 now have really good chances of doing something. If you're in the +3 or +4, it's almost guaranteed you'll suceed at everything but the hardest tasks. And even characters who aren't suited for something (-1 or -2) have a decent chance to just wing it.

And when I said this out loud I remembered that classes, backgrounds and ancestries give you advantage on certain checks. And it clicked: you don't need a Skill table, because Modifiers and advantage already cover it perfectly and non intrusively. You don't need to level up skills, because when you level up and pick "add 2 to attribute" you're efectively throwing another 10% on a skill you're not trained with, but 20-30% on a skill you ARE trained with. And if the GM allows you to train into new skills, a simple line: "You're trained in Chicanery and Buffonery, gain advantage on checks related to it" is all that is required.
It's so simple and elegant.

And then, because Shadowdark is even more awsome the more you look at it, I noticed that the disadvantage table creates a very interesting interaction with the Darkness.
If you're at a disavtange, Easy tasks get a bit harder, but still very much possible.
Normal tasks get a lot harder, and create an incentive for the player to NOT be in that position/try to change something before attempting the check.
And anything Hard/Impossible becomes so unlikely it will take 100 pounds of rock-hard Luck tokens to pull it off.

And that's my favourite part of DM'ing Shadowdark. I don't need 300 rules and modifiers to convey dsomething to the players. "Okay, but you're rolling at disavantage" is enough for them to understand it's a bad idea. "If you do that, you'll get to roll at an advantage" is enough for them to search for different ways to accomplisht the same task.

It's something so simple and, for me, the best part of Shadowdark.

Goatmen

Cunning, tough, and dedicated to melee mastery, goatmen seek to prove themselves against all comers.

AC 14 (banded mail), HP 20, ATK 2 longsword +4 (1d8) or 1 headbutt +3 (1d6+stun), MV near, S +3, D +1, C +2, I +0, W +0, Ch -2, AL C, LV 4

Headbutt. Goatmen can slam their horns into the head of an opponent. On a successful attack, the target is stunned for a round.

Personal Honor. If a goatman accepts an obvious direct challenge, other goatmen present will stop attacking to see how the battle goes. So long as the Hero fights and defeats the goatman (alone), the others will respect it and withdraw from combat.

https://preview.redd.it/ibokp4gadb2h1.jpg?width=2062&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fdffc3a53ea17c6c35d22a3fc36c5ba766d04fa2

Goatman Champion

Masters of combat and driven for ever-greater challenges, goatmen champions seek out the best fighters to duel.

AC 16 (lamellar and buckler), HP 30, ATK 3 longsword +6 (1d8+1) or 1 headbutt +4 (1d6+stun), MV near, S +3, D +2, C +2, I +1, W +1, Ch +0, AL C, LV 6

Headbutt. Goatmen can slam their horns into the head of an opponent. On a successful attack, the target is stunned for a round.

Personal Honor. If a goatman accepts an obvious direct challenge, other goatmen present will stop attacking to see how the battle goes. So long as the Hero fights and defeats the goatman (alone), the others will respect it and withdraw from combat.

Big Irish AKA Sean Patrick Fannon

So the sleep spell reads: “You weave a lulling spell that fills a near-sized cube extending
from you. Living creatures in the area of effect fall into a deep sleep if they are LV 2 or less.”
Does this mean, since you’re always inside the casting area that you would also fall asleep? (Assuming that you’re not undead or LV 3+)

Edit: Thank you for the info! It extending from you instead of extending around you makes much more sense.

EDIT: YMMV! but I decided to add this to the spell description:

"of the same or lower level as the caster" this fixes the issue for me, sure it nerfs spell a bit, but still useful in many situations and it works both ways, evil priests etc won't be able to command higher levels PCs.

It has come up before in my campaign that this only Tier 3 spell does not have too many limitations.

TL;DR, spells too powerful for me at least, any ideas?

Last night's example, they faced (in Stonehell) off against Prospero, The Mad Jester from Monster Mondays, it was fun! :D But:

Priest cast Command "Freeze" successfully at once (he has pretty high bonus, so successfully casting it nor maintaining focus in later rounds) was not a big issue.

Right after Priest, the Wizard successfully cast: "Web" on Prospero. Besides not knowing if Prospero's Dazzling Orb, Got your Nose, Induce Fugue, Tumble were innate magical abilities or not? Could he still do them while "frozen" & webbed?... that was not easy to adjudicate. Also he was webbed by other character, the ongoing "freeze" command and priest casting it was that "directly harmful to the creature", bit debatable, and sorta moot since he was webbed anyhow.

---

Command RAW reads:

"Range: Far" "You issue a verbal command to one creature in range who can understand you. The command must be one word, such as “kneel.” The target obeys the command for as long as you focus. If your command is ever directly harmful to the creature, it may make a Charisma check vs. your last spellcasting check. On a success, the spell ends."

"Far" makes it powerful, as long as are in shouting range and creature can understand that language it works!

"Creature" makes it very powerful, afaik Creature includes almost anything that understand the casters 1 word command/language, so a: Storm Giant, Balor (=Balrog), or Ancient Dragon?! Who might have really high power level and 40 to 150 HP?

Should Command truly work as well and easily on them as on a small 2 HP Kobold?! Okay, some of those creatures will have a higher CHA score, but still, that does not come into play until the command is directly harmful.. players are clever enough to not do that.

That makes little sense to me. Nothing in the wording of the Command spell nor the Stats of the powerful monsters above would suggest they'd be affected any less than the little Kobold...

" If your command is ever directly harmful to the creature, it may make a Charisma check vs. your last spellcasting check" I also find that broken, last night after he was "Frozen" the Fighter tried to Battle axe decapitate Prospero, oc that didn't work (because Fighter doesn't have some special ability to decapitate and did ca. 10 dmg, not 40hp like Prospero has) but still, Prospero failed his Charisma check, still stood frozen for the next round, after being Battle-axed in neck,.. seems wrong.

Anyway, i'd love to hear your thoughts and how you use this spell or perhaps nerf it?

Sure, if all rolls go against players, it is not too powerful. But in practice, I find that it rarely goes that way = spell seems OP for me in almost every battle it is used that has only 1 to 4 adversaries, and I do not like using more than 5 enemies at a time due the slog/time waste/turns per round. But, using only one of them, was obviously part of what made this problem worse. But I like! using One Big Bad guy sometimes, this spell makes that really not challenging a lot of them.

Hello! It's me again from this post (link above)! Thanks to everyone who has replied here! It really helped me get a bit of perspective on how I was ruling things, and it helped me improve, especially with factions!

However, I still feel my players are having a hard time enjoying the game. It might just not be for them, even though we truly enjoyed the first session. But it's also true that the first session was mainly exploration with very few challenges (they got 2 random encounters, one at the very beginning and one at the very end of the session).

But yeah, I feel like my players are way too scared to do anything, and the game just feels too oppressive. Yesterday they kept saying things like, "Do we have to get inside this dungeon? Could we just not do that?" lol

A quick summary of yesterday's session:

I have 3 players, but one was missing yesterday, so I decided to run the Wavestone Monolith instead of continuing with the Lost Citadel.

1. Players struggled for an hour just to enter the cave/pass the waterfall (requires Dex DC 12). They failed 3 times and tried to swim below the waterfall (Str DC 15 and failed) before one of them succeeded, wetting almost all their torches in the process. They kept trying to pass the waterfall or swim with their backpacks on... Then they saw the statue at the bottom, but they didn't risk taking the gem on its chest. They thought about carving wood to make a long-ass tube to breathe underwater, but I felt it was too much. They tried to throw a rope to the other side of the waterfall/fog curtain to see if it hooked onto something, but they didn't have a grappling hook, and they were throwing the rope literally at the waterfall, so the waterfall was blocking it. Then one person finally succeeded on the Dex check, went to the other side, secured the rope, came back, secured the rope on the other side as well, and they finally got in.

2. Then they went up the stairs of the ziggurat, completely ignored the arch with the trilobites, activated the trap, both failed the Dex check, and fell into the pit. The PC holding the torch died from the fall damage, and the torch went out after falling into a puddle. The other one managed to relight the torch, stabilized the dying PC, and a leech appeared. Then the PC managed to climb out of the pit (he tried twice in his turn; from my understanding climbing is movement, so he sacrificed his action to move again. Was I correct about this?). The leech killed the unconscious PC, the other one failed the ranged attack, the leech climbed out of the pit, and killed the other player. TPK.

3. Then, with new characters, they found some soldiers around the ziggurat, fugitives. They warned them about the brain flayer and the trap on the fourth step of the descending stairs.

4. Once inside, they split up. One is still wandering around, while the other entered the room with the 6 nautiloid berserkers (room 8). I'm wondering if I should have told him he heard noises coming from the room before entering it. I just ran it as all of them becoming aware of each other at the same time. He then tried to run away, the berserkers chased him, and I made them do an opposed Dex roll to see who ran faster. The berserkers won and grabbed the PC (opposed Str check, which the PC failed). The berserkers were leading the PC to their boss when the player said he could bring more food/slaves for their boss if he were given the chance to leave the ziggurat alone. I ran with it, but the berserkers said he needed to leave them something extremely valuable as collateral. He accepted, gave them his +1 longsword, and got out.

We ended the session there. At the end they felt truly defeated. It seems to me the game is too heavy, too intense for them. Maybe it's not their vibe. It's not like they dislike it, but they feel like there's no real freedom, in the sense that they are just at the mercy of destiny. And they were also blaming the bad rolls instead of trying to understand what they could have done better (like asking more questions, inspecting the environment, and trying things, but I'd already told them exactly these things at the beginning of the session). I explained that there are layers of information, and what I say unprompted is just the superficial information — what their PCs notice at first glance. At the end of the session I told them about the arch, and that if they'd inspected it they probably wouldn't have died, because they kept blaming bad luck.

Also, death really takes a toll on them, and I told them that dying in Shadowdark is part of the game. I just feel they're too used to 5e. They say they enjoy Shadowdark, but the first session — which was really mild throughout — was their favorite one. In the other two, they just felt depressed at the end 😂

I think I'll try Pulp Mode next time to see if they like it better, or maybe I could give gauntlets a try.

Do you think I'm maybe too harsh or strict? Maybe I should just roll with whatever ideas they come up with until they get a better feel for the game.

Ah, I also feel like I'm schooling them. Every session I tell them what I think went well and what went wrong in the last session, and how I think they could improve by sharing the tips I find most important from the Principia Apocrypha and the OSR Primer. I also shared those documents with them, but I don't think they've read them.

I thought my players came up with a good plan to use what was readily available to them inside bittermold keep to defeat Mugdulblub in one round. I'm curious though if others think the adjudication on my part was too lenient or not since it seemed unlikely that this should have happened, but here's how it went down...

A group of four level 2 PCs found wrathbolt (the dagger that does d100 damage if you try to take it from its previous owner). Then they found the carved tentacle stalagmite, and were very curious about its function. So, when they tried chopping it up I ruled that the magic users could sense that it had a slight magical aura that went away upon desecrating it. My thought being that this was a sort of shrine to Mug., whose nearby presence was enough to cause this effect. After that they moved further west and found the floor to ceiling stalagmite/tight with teeth pressed into it, and started adding more teeth that they had collected. I ruled again that it was so close to Mug. that doing so was akin to worshipping it, and since it was only a couple rooms over I thought I'd allow it to start telepathically communicating with them. It answered in a few short words, and one of the questions they asked was what it wanted to be fed. I said something "new" and "different". Then they asked if there was anything it really didn't want to eat and I answered something that "won't dissolve".

The party backtracked a bit to the north and found the room with the illusory wall, and then the crypt with the glass coffins. They carefully opened a couple coffins and one awoke as a wight to attack the party. They defeated it. Then they went back up to the howlers to find a small empty ale barrel so they could fill it with the liquid that was inside the coffins. I ruled that the liquid was akin to formaldehyde, which I hadn't earlier thought of even being in the dungeon when I answered that Mug. wouldn't like something that it couldn't dissolve.

So, the witch in the party puppets the wight along with them while the wight carried the barrel now full of formaldehyde. They enter the room to find Mugdulblub, and offer to feed it something new and tasty. The witch puppeted the wight over for Mug to dissolve and when it crushed down on the barrel it let loose all the formaldehyde. I thought it was good plan and wanted to reward it so I ruled it did 2d10 damage, but now Mug's angry at them. I had previously established that it couldn't read their minds even though it could communicate telepathically.

Now its Mug's turn, and before it attacks it screamed in anger asking what that was they had fed it and why. The person who had the wrathbolt dagger answered that they had thought Mug would have liked it because it was new, and that they were sorry. Then that player put wrathbolt on the ground and said, "for the record. I'm just setting this down. It's a rare item of great magical power that is probably very tasty." So, I figured I would allow the ruse to work and Mugdulblub tried to dissolve wrathbolt, which I ruled was akin to trying to take it from its previous owner and they rolled the d100 damage and got 78, causing Mugdulblub to explode and shower the room with starry viscera and tentacle chunks.

So, that's how my level 2 PCs defeated Mugdulblub in one round. I think I was pretty lenient in allowing the final wrathbolt moment to go down like that, but they were having fun and using their brains to attack it in ways I had not predicted. And it was all in line with what I had established earlier. So, I wanted to reward that. They loved it, and for me, its fine, kill the eldritch space nightmare thing if its fun for them.

Curious though what others think of those various rulings. Too lenient or a good use of what was made available to them in the dungeon?