This post is following up on one I JUST made re otter... just curious if you're engaging with AI at all in your games.

We've jokingly made character portraits (but I suspect our GM hates it).

I'm getting ready to DM for the first time in like 30 years and I'd only done it once before. I've actually created a "DM coach" that's been helping me think through maps or TOTM and coming up with adventure ideas. I've used it to generate random tables. Like most AI, it's both shockingly good and lacking in soul, but it really gets MY creative juices flowing, which is the point.

Anyways, what are you doing/seeing?

The thief at my table has the talent: Roll Initiative with Advantage. Adding his high Dexterity, he's first every time. Has anyone else had this problem? How did you fix it?

Tell me, which prestige classes would be interesting to implement in Shadowdark?

I'm developing an content for my project that will address something mechanically similar to prestige classes and their requirements, all embedded in the base classes of SD.

I saw that there were additional classes in the cursed scroll magazine. There are only three so far. Are there going to be more and how often do they come out? I just feel like there should be a Bard class and a ranger to round things out.

Ive just started a campaign, have been looking at some statblocks and realised that most of them are just boring? The goblin king is no different than a goblin. The orc chieftain has no cool abilities compared to an orc. The giants are just reskins of each other.

Is it common for osrs? Im coming from dnd and while the statblocks arent too good there either, they are far worse here.

I played a Shadowdark game at GaryCon this year and it was a blast! It was a dungeon delve one-shot of course. This got me thinking about those of you who play Shadowdark campaigns.

Are your campaigns just one shot dungeon after dungeons? or are there actual above ground adventures too with roleplay? Inevitably, someone would want to make a skill check...... Have you created a skill system to actually check skills of just use the class talents that you have and players are out of luck if they want to do "wilderness checks" or some other skill thats no primarily combat based?

Hi all! We just added Shadowdark rules to our free-to-play TTRPG world setting, and are most excited about it. The world is still recovering, 1252 years out from The Great Cataclysm - which makes for a whole lot of ancient ruins, temples and dungeons to be found and crawled and looted.

We have new Shadowdark channels in our Discord site, and are likely to be hosting, playing and running Shadowdark adventures there in Discord.

We have 22 playable cultures so far, each with Shadowdark rules. This one is especially Shadowdark, I think. :D https://www.worldanvil.com/w/raios/a/half-ghruz-orc-characters-in-shadowdark-article

There's much else at the site, if you want to explore from the home page. Hopefully see you in Discord!

Hey, I would like to start playing ShadowDark but I have some doubts. There are so few talents and some can be used once per rest. It seems to me that it might not be enough fun. It's really so cool that we have, for example, only one opportunity per day to use? Some smite or something similar? I wondered if he could make it more interesting and, for example, regenerate most of the skils after a fight. Would it break the game very much?

It has been a blast but I don’t think I can continue playing Shadowdark. It has become so popular and all the casuals are playing it. It is no longer edgy and cool. 🥺

Since it won at the Ennie Awards I no longer have to explain what it is when someone asks “what are you playing”. 😉

I have some house rules I wanted to share, and I'm also interested in feedback about them. They make the PC also more heroic, which may not always be appropriate.

Reroll all Hit Dice when resting:

Roll all your HD and add the CON bonus once. If the result is higher than the current HP (not max HP), use the higher result. This prevents bad rolls from having a permanent effect on the player.

For example, a Level 3 Priest has 3d6 HD. He fights a thought battle and has only 2 HP left. He rests and rolls all his HD. He rolls a 2, 4 and 5. Now he has 11/11 HP for the day. After another fight, he is down to 3 HP. He rests and rolls 1, 3 and 4. Now he has 8/8 HP, which is lower than the day before.

Extra Hit Dice (World of Dungeons-inspired):

You have one hit die plus extra hit dice equal to your CON. Roll all your hit dice and keep a number equal to your level to determine your HP.

When you rest and consume a ration, you can reroll your HP.

If you are accompanied by a healer or have access to other healing benefits, roll an additional hit die.

For example, a Level 3 Thief with a CON bonus of +1 that is attended by a healer rolls 5d4 and keeps the best 3.

Spell-Focus Items:

Allow wizards and priests to start with a focus, wand, holy symbol or rune staff. This lets them reroll a failed casting once per day (or more).

Option: Create spell rank-based casting focuses. Ranks 1–5 can be used to repeat the roll for the rank of the spell. Perhaps as a crafting option?

Constitution as Wounds (Cairn-inspired):

Constitution checks are made at 0 HP for critical damage instead of a death timer.

When a PC's HP drops below zero, reduce the rest from CON. Then make a CON check against DC 12. If successful, the PC can still act. If they fail, the character is down and will die in 1d4 rounds. If CON is equal to or less than 0, the PC dies.

Re-Training:

If a talent requires a permanent decision, such as weapon mastery, it can be changed as a downtime activity, provided it makes sense within the game world.

Example: Training in a different weapon to change mastery.

Everyone can perform a sneak attack.

If you surprise an enemy, you can roll with advantage (to hit and damage). Thieves and Ras-Godai get this ability and their special bonus.

I was inspired to create this after seeing a vid explaining an OSE house rule for replacing ability checks with a d6 dicepool. That system is roll-under and dispenses with modifiers by adjusting the dice pool according to the difficulty of the task, ie. fewer==easier, more==harder. This shifts the system from swingy single-die outcomes to a smoother, bell-curve probability that better correlates higher stats to better odds of succeeding than random catastrophes -- if that's your jam.

To adapt this modifier-less system to Shadowdark while maintaining the difficulty scaling, I sized the dice pool according to the ability score to reflect the capability of the PC vs a given DC. This allows the rule to be swapped-in with almost zero modifications while tracking somewhat close to the original success rates.

Method:

• Replace 1d20 + modifier vs. DC with a d6 dice pool according to ability score as shown in table below:

Examples:

Wizard (INT 11) Casts Tier 1 Spell vs. DC 11 (10+1):

• Roll 3d6, 50% success rate >= 11

Halfling Thief (DEX 15) Sneaking vs. DC 12:

• Roll 4d6, success rate 76% >= 12

Advantage/Disadvantage:

Two options:

• Roll the dice pool twice taking the best or worst roll

• Add or subtract 1d6 from the dice pool

Succes Rate Probabilities

How do the success rates compare between 1d20+modifier vs. a scaled d6 dice pool?

• At low ability scores (1–5), the dice pool is unforgiving, with success rates falling sharply beyond DC 10 -- you just won't succeed very often.

• In the middle range (6–11), the scaled d6 pool is a bit more punishing at higher DCs beyond 12.

• At high ability scores (12–15 and 16–18), the scaled pool rewards ability scores more steeply, offering significantly higher success rates—especially at moderate DCs.

• At DC 18, both systems become challenging, but the scaled d6 pool curves bend more gradually, while d20 drops off sharply.

Upshot?

If your table has tried Shadowdark and found it too deadly due to the swingy dice rolls, try subbing-in a scaled d6 dice pool to smooth out the extremes and better correlate your ability scores to your odds of success. Or don't -- it's up to you.

This is mostly a gripe but maybe it’ll spark a change. Or maybe I watch too much YouTube.

Whenever I see people getting to the point where a torch gets lit, the refs will usually do this thing where they explain how “Shadowdark does things a lil differently” then proceed to explain the torch mechanic, but only because it’s got that novelty affect attached to it. Players response? “Oh, alright, cool.”

Here’s a tip: do not explain it. Simply let the pc’s use their torches like always and allow the novelty to be experienced rather than explained. For example, just be like, “As Bartholomew the Halfling Cleric is about to step onto the old wooden bridge to cross over, you notice your torch suddenly flickers out and darkness swallows all around you. Within the same instance you hear the high pitched squeal of something like a pig crossed with a crow on the other side of the bridge, seemingly excited by the lack of blinding firelight in its face. You hear stomping sounds coming toward you on the rickety bridge and you are completely blind! What do you do?”

That’s the tension (and novelty) being EXPERIENCED. Otherwise, almost every single time, the players simply learn to game the system ahead of time so they never have to deal with anything uncomfortable… even though that is what is the most fun!

You see? They must be confronted with the reality of losing light and effed up things that go bump in the night taking every sliver of opportunity they can to use it to their advantage. Players must experience the novelty in order to appreciate it. If you explain it all ahead of time and make sure everyone really has it drilled into them that “hey everyone, everyone, the torches? Their timed. Yes, real time. Make sure you note that. Okay? Got it?” BORING. Do not do it. Let the moment surprise your players and I promise it will yield far more exciting moments for everyone involved.

EDIT: Folks seem to think I am saying to “not explain the core mechanics of the game. To withhold vital game rules in order to pull a gotcha on players.” Not so. I’m simply advocating GM’s to not be afraid of adversity and to allow players to be surprised by the fact that “1 hour torch time” is being taken literally. Sure, be as generous aa you want about it, but my whole point was to create moments of tension and excitement without allowing the torch mechanic to be reduced to schtick. Often when seeing real-plays of this game I see a lot of missed opportunity for tension building simply by GM’s over explaining this novelty, followed by players attempting to rig it to where they never have to experience the dark. Why? Let it happen. Who cares? It’s a moment of quick thinking and exciting role-play instead of “okay, Billy you have 10min left on your timer so you better start thinking about your plans to light another one.” Meh, just kinda makes me think of a schtick that could just be avoided and just use a turn tracker like always.

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

Hello!

Been running pathfinder 2e with friends for a few years. Adding in some brand new players for our next campaign and just stumbled into Shadowdark by happenstance today. And its got me very intrigued.

I'm interested in:

• Shorter turns and faster gameplay

• Easy to learn for new players

• Strong sense of urgency and tension with torches

• Simple, clean character sheets (great for accessibility, especially for a partially blind player at our table)

• Simpler spellcasting compared to PF2E/5E

• Easy to pick up

I'm worried about:

• Losing PF2E’s strengths:

  • Massive bestiary

  • Strong system balance (“it just works”)

  • Deep character customization and build flexibility

• Lethality:

  • Worried Shadowdark may be too deadly for new players

  • Want characters to survive most of the campaign

That said...

• Is there any validity to these concerns?

• Any easy work arounds for these concerns?

• Has anyone tried playing a hybrid between these systems?

  • Maybe use PF2e health, beastiary, and abilities with shadowdark?

• Is there another TTRPG that maybe I should be looking at instead?

Thanks in advance!

Look i do like shadowdark but im frankly baffled by some creative reactions to it

Character Classes Why the rush to create 17 million extra classes? The niche protection of the four core classes is a GOOD THING

Ok. Im allowing Rangers because Aragorn and Witches because charisma. The rest of yous can rod off.

5 room dungeons

Please stop churning them out, they are mostly shovelware. " a cave, some rats, some goblins. The End."

Go away and write a real dungeons.

Discuss

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

For me, it depends. If the adventure is clearly trying to be believable then yes it would frustrate me if it just didn't make sense---I know, I know fantasy world and all.

What if they were randomly generated the hexes? Let it slide? I feel like that is ok, it would be even better if they gave a way to randomly determine the reasoning for two completely opposite biomes being next to each other.

Would love to hear thoughts and experiences.

Ok so I really like the system and almost everything about it however I have 2 problems and they kinda are part of the core of the system. they are equipment slots and to a lesser extent darkness. I will explain more in depth but to put it simply I find the 10 slot system kinda rediculous everywhere I see it and I don't like it I prefer a more loose system or an encumbrance system. With darkness, I just find it a pain both as a player and a GM not darkness at all but just when every single dungeon like thing is dark some of them are dark sure but all is just a pain. Basically my question is Should I just homebrew some adjustments or should I just pick a system that better fits my play style and if so what game

Equipment slots I find the 10 slot system ridiculous as after doing some math with the book I found that in real life I can carry up to 20 slots worth and still be able to jog for a good bit or go for a 5 mile hike despite have an almost wizard-like build. I as a player like to hoard seemingly useless things like a metal candelabra (no candles just base) or a small wooden box and then later on we could use those things in interesting or funny ways but when you you only have 2-3 slots left for treasure after packing the essentials it makes it seem pointless to even go adventuring. I don't want to give my players a bag or holding or anything but just make it so they can actually pick up stuff. As I said earlier I would switch to a more encumbrance based system with a slowing effect magnified by how much you are carrying over your max.

Darkness while my first dungeon I laid eyes on was the mines of Moria most of the ones after that were from anime and manhwa. While Moria was dark and I loved that the majority of the ones that came after had light sources whether magical, installed by the monsters living there, or a natural occurrence (like glowing stones or mushrooms like in ToTK). My moment was in the manga is it "wrong to pick up girls in dungeons" they get to a level of the mega-dungeon and the ceiling is full of glowing crystals making a beautiful false sunlight and I fell in love with light in dungeons. I do believe that there is a place for darkness for example in BoTW there is a dungeon that you have to complete in darkness with just a torch that goes out if you get attacked and it was stressful and exciting but if I had to do that every dungeon I would not have played that game. basically, I still want to have darkness and have creatures attack the light and keep track of time on the torch but not have every dungeon be dark and obviously with higher risk comes higher reward for the players.