Homebrew: Shadowdark Alternate Carousing Table and Nemesis NPC
Generating fun things for my weekly game
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When I can’t decide what to write about, my default is to start making things I find interesting for my weekly game. I currently run Shadowdark as the system of choice, though the physical book is still on the way, and I have really been enjoying it. I’ll have a full review of it and all reasons it is awesome and you should play it when it arrives.
Sometimes I will just subject my regular players to a system I want to try. Always looking for those big fun moments that make tabletop so much fun. In the experimentation there are always things that work and things that don’t. Shadowdark has been mostly things that work for our table, but I have always felt weird about one portion of the base game - Carousing. Out of the box it is still better than what 5E gives you for downtime, even with Xanathar’s Guide to Everything downtime is still wonky - but that is mostly because timeframes in 5E are difficult to track and difficult to enact and mostly detract from regular play. At least in Shadowdark the carousing has a purpose and it fulfills that goal well - Get players to spend all their money and risk their lives delving again. The way this is achieved is by giving the players XP and possibly ridiculously good rewards.
In a game that caps at level 10 and links xp to finding loot and not killing monsters, getting at that 2-6 xp plus possible goodies ia very enticing. Only a D8, but you get an increased modifier based on how much money you spend. Just that description is excellent but what I want to do is play with the negative effects of the table. In practice, the npc ally and the repeated loss of some % of your wealth because of the same problems over and over again are wonky. As a money sink I understand it, but as a fun thing in your game it falls flat for me.
I am planning to generate a number of these and see what the players think. This first one will follow the same XP curve as the original:
As the GM i’m giving myself some work to do with some of these, but that’s ok. Right now my players are centralized around the same town for about 15 sessions, so being kicked out of the one or two taverns in town actually creates alot of work for me. If I gotta work anyways, i’ll force myself to go deeper. I really like the “generate a level 0 character” thing to just have sidekicks around to become main line player characters. Shadowdark doesn’t really have sidekick rules or suppot supporting cast characters, but I think it’s fun.
A Nemesis NPC
Related to the between adventure carousing in shadowdark, one of my players had gotten himself an enemy and wanted to have a Nemesis character created for it. I am going to use the regular player character 1st-level characters but with a little cheating to assign rolls best for the character - I don’t think it will be fun to have a really crappy nemesis as it says something about you if your nemesis is so bad:
Nirev is an Elf ranger that I randomly generated on ShadowDarklings and made him level 3 to be on par with the character who needs the nemesis - If you play Shadowdark it’s a great resource - and imported it into Foundry.
I am considering having this nemesis find a magic item that makes killing him very enticing for the players, but also in leveling the character up he hit 17 DEX which is pretty powerful. I rolled up some NPC qualities from the Shadowdark PDF (pg. 125) and got - Gold Teeth - moves quickly - adored baby animals - Sounds like a weird ranger character to me. I’m going with this for his image:
We’ll see what happens once the player is introduced to their character’s nemsis!
Until next time.
What I Am Up To
TTRPG Reading: Flee, Mortals! by MCDM
Audiobook: On Writing - Steven King
Project: Almanac of Abominations Zine - System Neutral - Preorders are live!
Current Campaign(s):
GM - Shadowdark - Custom Setting (Giathos)
Player - Storm King’s Thunder - 7 Swashbuckler Rogue / 5 Bladesinger Wizard - In the finale! Dragons and Giants oh my!
Useful Things For Your Game
Spotify Playlist Add - Role: Baseline
Love the altertnate carousing table and Nirev. Going to put him in my solo campaign somewhere. Great post.