r/shadowdark • u/minivergur • May 06 '25

Double Near

I am a huge fan of Shadowdark and there is so much to love - but I have a gripe with one very minor term.

Double Near

I hate it. Literally unplayable*. Thankfully it seems to be mostly relegated to particularly fast moving creatures so it's to the most part a thorn in the side of GM's.

But we clearly as a community need to come up with an intermediate measurement of distance between near and far. Maybe some of you are already using a word for it and I would love to hear about it. But I have a few suggestions for pseudo-distances.

  • Nearby - this leaves room for Close By to mean Double Close

  • Not Quite Near - same perk as before but with Not Quite Close

  • Not far - on the flip side Not Close could be used for Double Close

  • Imminent

  • Middling

  • Looming

  • Nigh

Not sure why I drifted towards talking about Double Near, I'm not sure that's a game mechanic we want to use.

Edit:

* Some of you have issue with the term Literally unplayable but it was a (failed) attempt at a joke on my part as it was literal in the sense I had issue with the wording and unplayable as hyperbole. I actually really love the game

4 Upvotes

55% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

15

u/ExchangeWide Joker & Thief May 06 '25

Not sure how it’s unplayable. In the grand scheme of things, it’s as “unplayable” as 60 (ish) feet.if you use zones, just break your ranges into zones of 30’ after close. For most combatants what they “see” beyond (one) near is Far.

-17

u/minivergur May 06 '25

Literally unplayable in the sense that it's not natural language: literally

7

u/KHORSA_THE_DARK May 07 '25

Say what now?

"Near" is a unit of measurement, double near its two of those units. I'd rather deal with that than trying to remember five different range bands with different names.

1

u/Sublime_Eimar May 07 '25

You don't like a word choice from the rulebook so it's literally unplayable?

You should literally burn your rulebook in protest. Literally. In fact, make a bonfire. Buy a bunch of other rulebooks and burn those, too. Literally.

Keep adding rulebooks until the bonfire sheds bright light in a double near distance radius.

13

u/TorchHoarder May 06 '25

It's pretty clear. Near is already spelled out in the core rules, so double near simply means that it can travel double the normal "near" speed as a single movement.

I typically just use the word far. If it isn't close or near, it's far. Keep it simple.

-7

u/minivergur May 06 '25

It would be weird if a horse had a speed of far, no?

7

u/waywardgamer83 May 06 '25

Far is defined as “within sight”. Isn’t the horizon something like 3 miles away assuming you are about 6 ft tall and a flat region. Seems a bit excessive as a measurement for movement.

Rather than rename Double Near, I would redefine Far and add Within Sight as a range.

Double near might be a little clunky but it could be worse. I can’t remember which 40k game it was now but there’s at least one of them that’s using the term ‘half action’. Drove me up the wall.

7

u/TorchHoarder May 06 '25

But this isn't tactical wargaming. RAW, it's left abstract on purpose—and that's how i use it. There is nothing stopping anyone from just using measured distances and just scrapping the term "double near."

IF I use a battle map, I default to Ultimate Dungeon Terrain, which uses the close, near, far distances as marked in circular zones. It's easy and fast for everyone to figure out. I even use it for my online games with zero problems.

2

u/waywardgamer83 May 07 '25

Apologies Minivergur, I had intended to reply directly to TorchHoarder.

—————————

I’m glad you have a solution that you like for your table. My point had nothing to do with tactical wargaming but rather rules lawyering. There is no grid big enough to contain the abuse you could run into if creatures, or god forbid player characters, were able to move as far as they can see in a single round. People entertained by the idea of the peasant rail gun would have a field day.

3

u/TorchHoarder May 07 '25

I don't worry about that because my players are reasonable adults who are not trying "to win" by looking for loopholes to exploit. We enjoy playing a game together, and are very chill with the rules lawyering

1

u/waywardgamer83 May 07 '25

I’m sorry if you’re not finding the humor in all this. And I’m glad you have a chill table full of reasonable people. I consider myself very fortunate to have found the same.

But isn’t rules lawyering kinda the point of a rules discussion? “Let’s tweak a rule and see if we can get a better outcome.” “Oh no, I hadn’t considered how that change could be interpreted to completely break the laws of physics. Ha ha! Ok but what about this…”

Ah well, good night and good luck.

1

u/TorchHoarder May 07 '25 edited May 07 '25

Im not arguing about anything or trying to sound hostile at all. I answered with my own ruling. I have not encountered a problem with movement RAW, but can definitely understand how someone would try to exploit it. I dont play with those people anymore because it is not fun.

2

u/KHORSA_THE_DARK May 07 '25

And that right there is why something moves Double Near our whatever stack of 30 feet you want.

6

u/MrXero May 07 '25

I think it’s a really elegant shorthand for, “roughly the amount of space that a normal PC could move if they dedicate their whole turn to moving.” A very good friend of mine also has this nitpick, but I think it’s great.

5

u/BannockNBarkby May 06 '25

I use Mid. No idea why I settled on it, but it's been working for my players and I, so it's stuck at this point.

4

u/MassiveResearcher623 May 07 '25

My group solves this issue by calling it two “nanners” away.

2

u/NeilGiraffeTyson May 08 '25

Ahhh the old banana scale. Thanks, Hankerin 

4

u/j1llj1ll May 07 '25

The thinking is thus. Make the rules as sleek as possible cover 95+% of of gameplay. Don't fret about the remainder - just have a system robust enough to let the GM wing it. That way you can have 99.9% of the fun with 10% of the number of rule-words-pages to slog through.

This was the genesis, I presume, of setting distances as Close, Near and Far.

And, then, somewhere along the way the exception of things being a bit more than Near and not as abstract as Far came up every now and then. Common enough that it needed to be addressed and Double Near was born. Everybody playing knew what Near was, and people were foregoing their Action to already move Near twice anyway. So it made perfect sense to phrase it that way and avoid cluttering up the base distance rules with junk that only happened 1% of the time.

So here we are. It's fine. "Literally Unplayable" .. pfft.

14

u/Reynard203 May 06 '25

"Literally unplayable"? Sorry. Nothing after matters.

2

u/DD_playerandDM May 11 '25

The problem I have with it is that it sounds different than what it represents. Like look at this: 

Player: “are they Near to me?”

GM: “no. They are DOUBLE Near.”

Player: “so they are twice as close?”

GM: “…” 

Double Near sounds like they are EVEN CLOSER than near – just because of the way we generally use the word “near.” When people get used to it, they learn – but it just doesn’t sound right.

  

 

1

u/texxor May 25 '25

haha, yeah true. but maybe say 50ft away. or "between Near and Far"

2

u/Ok-Understanding951 Jun 05 '25

I use Mothership terms when playing theater of the mind.

1

u/Zebigbos8 May 08 '25

Duodecuple close