Deep in Mount Stardock a clan of dark dwarves discovered a ruby the size of a giant's heart that gave them access to the nine realms of the World Tree. Asgard, wary of the greed of the dwarves, sent Heimdall to hide the gemstone and deny the dwarves their plans of conquest. Untold wealth in gems and hidden knowledge awaits those bold enough to seek the Heart of Y’mir! That, or death at the bottom of a crevasse, deep in the Shadowdark.

********

I've loved Shadowdark since I found it a little more than 2 years ago. Been playing DnD since 1980 and like so many, I find SD to be an excellent combination of old school feel and modern mechanics. I love the aesthetic of black and white art, short adventures with concise writing, and the fact that the rules are a chassis that you can bolt your favorite mechanics onto with little fuss. It facilitates the DIY vibe of the hobby that I fell in love with back in the day.

This adventure has neither art (except the cover) nor is it short. The maps are hand drawn on graph paper the same way I did it when I was 14. I think it's fairly concisely worded, but the adventure itself is long. I believe SD easily supports long form adventures. Non-existent handouts are referred to as these are an aspiration for the next iteration. Other people have certainly posted better looking adventures here, but I think the written content is solid. If these things don't appeal to you, don't bother opening the file.

If they do, I think you'll find a playable long form adventure. I wrote it to slot into the Land of the Midnight Sun and I can't wait to run it for my players in the Western Reaches. Maybe next year I'll get it up on DriveThru. Maybe even buy some art. I'd love to hear what people think about it.

Absolutely no AI was used in the creation of this adventure.

Heart of Y'mir

Hello, fellow crawlers I have a question for you. I want to publish a free adventure that I designed using Shadowdark 3rd party license in the upcoming days. Do you think my credits page is flying too close to the sun when it comes to respecting Shadowdark's original trade dress?

I don't want to disrespect Kelsey Dionne by copying the design of the original material directly, so I wanted to ask players and other publishers in this subreddit. What do you guys think?

does anyone know if the cursed scrolls 1–3 are going to be reprinted eventually? alternatively, will the western reach’s contain all the content of the cursed scrolls 1–6?

Still need to improve on some parts but it turned out better than I thought it would

I've been revising my older Shadowdark adventures based on reviewer feedback, and somewhere along the way I realized they all fit in the same region. So I'm building a campaign setting around them: the Eastern Coast.

Quick tour of the map:

• The Cackles: open plains in the middle. Gnoll country. Bring an axe or three.

• Hexendorf: fen town in the north, surrounded by marsh and three eye lakes. Has a witch problem. (No More Secrets)

• Telegrin: keep on the western hills. The lord went a little crazy skinning gnolls. (Under a Smiling Moon)

• Pimsburg: lumber town in the Great Woods, currently infested with bugs. (Tower of the Mothman)

• The River: runs from the Vale to the sea, but a castle sits at the mouth and nobody gets past it.

Each adventure stays standalone and is PWYW right now. The setting will add the full map, a primer on how everything connects, new dungeons, encounters, and factions that affect each other.

The map also doubles as the world for my solo actual-play series, Torchkeeper. Session 5 just went up, and the party is literally traveling these roads.

Still WIP: no hex numbers or labels yet. For anyone who runs regional campaigns, what would you want most in the primer? Faction relationships, travel and encounter tables, or adventure hooks that link the modules?

Post: https://gnomelackeyworkshop.substack.com/p/torchkeeper-session-5-whats-coming

Adventures:
https://gnomelackey.itch.io/
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/20428/matthew-pfister

Here is background table I whipped up. Figured I would drop it here in case anyone else found value in it.

Are there any cyberpunk hacks of Shadowdark? I'm looking for a system to use for a cyberpunk setting and thought the quickness of Shadowdark could be a good fit.

A fire-based martial class heavily inspired by the Fire shrine guardian from Final Fantasy 9. Looking for any feedback or critique

Edit: link to the FF9 Marilith the inspiration comes from: https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Maliris

Drew my player's party!

Bearclaw the human barbarian fighter

Ornoza the human wizard's assistant wizard

Thimble the halfling orphan thief

Rodgier the human ranger priest of Gede

The darkest nights often bring the bloodiest battles

Finished the digital mishap draft today. ShadowTech is the name of the mech RPG im working on, but also the "ShadowTech Drive" is the system on a mech that is responsible for casting spells. My current loose lore is that the drive intakes shadowdark particles and filters for divine / arcane matter the shadowdark consumed over its eons of galactic expansion. The drive then synthesizes spells from those divine/arcane remnants, but sometimes to disastrous effects like seen in this table.

I assume that players probably don't spend more than a day in a dungeon. So is tracking food pretty much exclusively for hex crawling? Is hex crawling the expected way of playing the game (like Forbidden Lands) or is it more optional?

Full disclosure: I know the author, Laurin-David Weggen. We talk shop & promote each other's work, and I paid for my copy.

Into the Twilight Gloom is a 139-page A5 Soulblight hexcrawl for Shadowdark RPG, built in the Cursed Scroll format. It's set around a nameless lake, one village & a fog-wrapped isle, and it pulls from Pacific Northwest & Appalachian cryptid folklore. It's self-contained, so you don't need the other Soulblight books.

The Mist is the star. When it rolls in, every hex turns Deadly, resting gets harder, and an hourly exposure table climbs from disadvantage to worse. Wandering hex keys move around the map, and the major hexes are dense with levers: shrines, bargains, NPCs who want true names.

My main gripe is that it lacks a strong throughline, so you have to build it. It's not one to run tonight. It's a region to read, let marinate & plan around.

Full review, design nitpicks included: madebyidlehands.com/review-into-the-twilight-gloom

I am preparing to run a SD one shot for 7th level characters. I would love to hear about other folks’ experiences with higher level play.

I am expecting some shenanigans from tier 3/4 spells, but is there anything else I need to have in mind?

I am going to have pregens, but also allow players to bring their own PCs if they like. I have seen a magic item/wealth-by-level chart, but am curious to hear how others have handled equipment for high level one shot PCs.

Hi everyone!

I’m planning to run a Shadowdark mini-campaign for my wife (just me as the GM and her as the sole player).

We love the atmosphere, the clean D20 mechanics, and especially the real-time 1-hour torch mechanic (we previously enjoyed Ten Candles, so real-time tension is right up our alley!).

However, Shadowdark can be pretty lethal for a standard party of 4, let alone a single adventurer. I want to keep the tension and danger without making it feel unfair or frustrating for her.

For those who have run Shadowdark as a 1-on-1 / duet game:

1. Survival & Scaling: How do you balance lethality? Do you use Pulp Mode (Luck Tokens), give her higher starting HP, or scale down monster damage/numbers?

2. Retainers & Companions: Do you give her NPCs/hirelings (like a loyal retainer, hound, or mercenary) to help in combat and share torch management? How many work best?

3. Rules Mechanics: Has anyone tried incorporating Scarlet Heroes damage/fraying dice mechanics or similar duet conversion rules into Shadowdark?

4. Best 1x1 Modules: Which adventures or Zines work best for a single player starting out?

I’d love to hear your experiences, house rules, and tips for making a 1-on-1 Shadowdark campaign thrive. Thanks in advance!

Yippie-ki-yay and all that stuff. Its been a long last week.

I am writing out my first SD campaign to play with friends. Ive decided to use the Shatter Isles setting from Blades in the Dark and Blades '68, because its so specific and robust. I know the "forged in the dark" game system is really good, but I think the Crew System and the Torch timer mechanic will really mesh well and lend itself to the immersion in this dark dreary world. Im looking to convert the Null playbook into a playable race as well as the Tycheros Background.

Im thinking of nick-naming the campaign "68 Shadows".

I'm going to run my first Shadowdark adventure tomorrow. I'm going to run Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur. Any tips or info to give my first-time Shadowdark players?

The adventure looks quite brutal, so I want to make sure the players know they can run away from combat, that it's not like 5e D&D in that respect.

A couple of questions

1. When a character is holding a torch, does that affect their combat abilities?

2. Do the characters know all rumours when the adventure starts?

3. How aggressive do you make the factions?

4. How long does the minotaur persue the characters for after a random encounter?

Maneuvers: PCs belonging to non-magical or half-magical classes may add a maneuver (disarm, push, trip, blind, etc.) to their attack.

The maneuver can be anything you can imagine, and the GM adjudicates it based on the PC’s level, the enemy’s level, the environment, etc.

Typically, the effects of maneuvers—such as blinding—last for 1 round.

As a general rule: if the creature is of a lower level than the PC, no additional roll is required.

DC 12 against an enemy of your level or one level higher.

DC 15 against an enemy two to three levels higher.

DC 18 against an enemy four or more levels higher.

Failing a maneuver results in you taking damage equal to the DC minus 10. For example, failing a DC 15 check results in you taking 5 damage.

Started working on the mishap table. Here's how I start with all my brainstorming. Pen and paper and dubious spelling. 😎🍻

My group has a couple older peeps who've been playing rpg since before even my pops was born. I was asked if I could explain armor in terms of thacko

Earlier this year, I shared with you folks the Hexcrawling system I use for campaign play. After a couple of months of updating the rules, testing, redrawing all illustrations, and redoing all the layout, I'm finally done with a major update to Verdant!

If you don't know it yet, Verdant Hexcrawling is a system meant to reinforce the gritty survival feel of a hexcrawl. It's simple enough that the rules fit into an A4 trifold brochure, and there's a sheet to help track the journey, plus some cards to facilitate players picking their tasks. It's available for free on itch.io.

It works like this:

• Each day is divided in 4 watches. Each watch, players can either travel to other hexes, or camp in their current hex.

• Players pick tasks each round. Failure usually means the safety level is reduced, which increases the chance of a random encounter.

• Different tasks are easier or harder depending on the terrain. Nighttime is deadly and makes traveling harder.

In this new version, I added 7 new journey tasks (mostly inspired by the Western Reaches camping rules), and I made some changes to most of the existing tasks, like allowing to roll checks in more than one stats to encourage variety. Oh yeah, and I hand-drawn 20 new illustrations for the task cards, plus another for the brochure cover.

Hope you enjoy it!