Game Review: Shadowdark
A beautifully executed love letter to the game
Welcome to the Glyph and Grok - A weekly blog-letter exploring topics in the tabletop gaming arena. We explore design, execution, and culture relating to anything played on a tabletop. If you find this post useful, please share. For another Shadowdark Post - Check out: Alternate Carousing Table and a Nemesis NPC
Intro
It's finally here! My current favorite TTRPG Shadowdark has been delivered by The Arcane Library's Kickstarter campaign. I’ve run 20 sessions in a modified hex-crawl to put the system through some paces so let me break this game down.
Shadowdark tears away all of the barriers to the essence of the game that are currently in modern games that focus on heroic fantasy. Focus is shifted to bring exploration to the fore. Like many old school and new school revival/renaissance games, the player characters take the mantle of lower powered adventurers in an actually dangerous world that will end them if they are not thinking and learning while they explore their environment.
From both sides of the game master screen, the game play in Shadowdark is a “return” to a form of play that is simple to setup and run and dense with the experiences I find the most rewarding in tabletop role-play.
Layout and Physicality
One thing you'll notice about the style of author Kelsey Dionne is a concise utilitarian approach to information delivery. This style I thoroughly enjoy, though I'm sure some find it stark. As someone who's been using the PDF of this book to run a campaign for months, I am very excited to have the live book in front of me for quick reference.
The artwork emotes flipping through the pages of first generation D&D books in the best way. Black and white artwork immediately entices and terrifies with the grotesque form of the ten-eyed oracle on the front that takes my eye a moment to register what i am looking at, but it is so simply portrayed in a silvery reflective relief that it still feels strangely enticing. The pictures do not do it justice.
The binding is solid and stable and the outer cover is a tactile smooth matte finish. The A5 size makes it feel very portable as if you could sling it into a wizard’s spellbook pouch and take it everywhere. I’m looking forward to taking it with me to Gencon this year.
The Layout is simple and effective in all aspects. The sections of the book are marked with a coordinating simple black rectangle to make it easy to see even when the book is closed. Font and spacing choices all seem to be selected for high visibility and readability with the occasional artistic flourish. Monster statblocks and Spells are carved to the bone so you can lookup, read, and use any of these in seconds.
I must call out that it has a ribbon bookmark. In my mind, every TTRPG hardcover should do the same and it’s one of the things I love about Free League books when I buy them.
This thing is just a beautiful arcane artifact to have in your hands.
Gameplay and Usability
The first couple pages borrow from rules light publications to have double duty tables serve as immediate flavor to the reader. This informs on the type of game this book is designed to run and provides very simple reference during game-play.
Weapons, Armor, DC, Morale, Dying, Distance/Movement, Spell Focusing are all there in the first 3 pages.
This game sets out to do dungeon exploration justice, and to me it succeeds so well that this game has answers to all of the aggravating and weird complications that running dungeon crawls in modern heroic fantasy games. Through the combination of the following broad strokes this game delivers an excellent dungeon exploration:
XP is via finding treasure
Inventory is simplified to gear slots
Light is a finite resource needed to see, and there’s no such thing as dark-vision for PCs.
These simple tenets takes the bland and difficult-to-run dungeon crawling of newer heroic fantasy games and creates a tight and focused crawling experience that makes wandering monsters fun rather than a hindrance and exploring the depths of an adventure site over many sessions worthwhile to the players. All while incentivizing players to be smart and inventive dungeoneers.
One of the game-play styles this game lends itself to very well is open world Hex exploration where the exact makeup of the party could be different from session to session. Simple but complete rules for starting in a safe place, traveling overland to an adventure site, delving down to find some treasure, and making it back to a safe place is what you need and Shadowdark delvers everything for just that.
During the dark times of the COVID pandemic myself and two other game masters tried to run a shared-world 5E game with the intention of being able to interchange players between the play groups. 5E just doesn’t lend itself to that, it became impossible to do between scheduling and the type of stories that 5E is good at telling, there is just too much narrative attached to the specific characters in the party in order to provide character development and to have the kind of fun a heroic fantasy game can provide. We had a good time, but it wasn’t what we had set out to do.
Shadowdark on the other hand, can do this in spades. The game I have been running for 20 sessions now has been in the vein of “west-marches” style game-play where the player characters (and thus players) may change week to week, and they may not be exactly the same level, but they can get together, pick a thing, and go exploring. The game becomes the narrative that emerges from where they decided to go, what the roll tables throw into the mix, and what I decide to inject into the story from the environment.
It’s easy to prep, it’s fun to play, and I love it.
A Further List of Game Features
Simple characters and character sheet
Quick generation
6 stats
6 ancestries
4 classes (Wizard, Thief, Fighter, Priest)
Simple advancement - high variability between two PCs of the same class without worrying about piloting a complex loadout
Exploration in rounds
The torch timer - a slow burn of building pressure
Roll-to-Cast spells with misshaps (love that)
Carousing - baked in xp gain and money sink to keep the game moving
Random encounter
More can be found at the kickstarter campaign as far as salespitch:
Gamemastery
One of the major highlights of this book is the GM section. I still think the biggest weakness of 5E it is that the DMG is just not a good book for new GMs. By comparison, Shadowdark answers every immediate question one may have for running Shadowdark, and in my opinion has useful information and example for running any TTRPG.
There is a clear vision for what a GM of a Shadowdark game should be focusing on and there is a clear example for how the game is intended to be played by the designer.
If a player looks for a trap in the right place, they find it - no rolls - no passive perception weirdness. This book made my ability to run an exploration game better by 100x with tidbits like this that are not spelled out in other games.
Now, a GM can always nudge rules, which every GM learns in time, but I cannot stand when games just throw in the kitchen sink of options and say “Here, it's your game - just do what you want.” I much prefer this approach where there is a clear vision for running the game and the GM can decide what to take or leave themselves but everyone knows where “home” is for the game. It makes playing it simpler and faster, and it makes designing content for that game system so much better because you know when you're pushing the system into new territory.
Monsters, Treasure, and Spells oh my!
Monster Stat blocks are very simple and very easy to reference taking seconds to wrap your head around and be able to pilot at the table on the fly. This couples infinitely well with the roll-tables that may summon these creatures before your players so you can bring any creature before them and whether they decide to interact or not is zero required investment by the GM - this means you are focusing on the flow and the story at the table and not keeping a pile of rules in mind to pilot your baddie.
Designing your own monsters withing the Shadowdark framework is also simple and a section on how to do it is provided in the book at the cost of a couple pages.
In that regard, Shadowdark comes with just enough information and support to generate any kind of creature, item, spell, imaginable and have it work in the Shadowdark framework. This is further evidence that The Arcane Library is just trying to make a good product and invite others that enjoy it to contribute. Some games want to monopolize the ability to produce content for their game and bury the lead as to how to do it, this game does not do that.
Rolltables Galore!
There are just rolltables for every thing I could think to look for in a gamebook within; Definitely more than I originally expected.
D100 encounter tables for each and every type of environment; Monster Generation, Treasure Generation by level group, Hex Map Generation; Dungeon Generation; If you want to feel like a wizard pouring over a tome and producing magical effects to wow your players - This book feels like that.
Conclusion
I obviously enjoy this game and I am very happy with what i’ve received from the Arcane Libary in fulfilling their Kickstarter. This game is a loveletter to the fun of playing a tabletop dungeoncrawl and the indipendent production is filling a gap that larger companies have left in the market. I will be playing this game, or some variation of it for a long time, and I am excited to make content for it. If you get the chance to check out this game, do it.
What I Am Up To
TTRPG Reading: Death In Space
TTRPG Production: Almanac of Abomination System Neutral TTRPG Zine is accepting pre-orders. Goes to the printers this month!
Audiobook: The Hunger of the Gods - Bloodsword trilogy is super good!
Current Campaigns: Just getting back into it after holiday break. The town of Kinholdt has an outbreak of Yellow plague causing undeath and somehow there are demonic entities involved?! - Most of the party contracted the disease, but there is hope…
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