Shadowdark Review after 31 Sessions

[@ToddPutnam]

Great review. My group voted to switch to Shadowdark from 5E mid-campaign mid-campaign and we haven't looked back. As the eternal GM, I can say adventure design and game prep for Shadowdark is significantly easier, while still resulting in a better white knuckle adventure experience where the players feel like they really earned their victories. Few fights are push-overs with the low hit points of SD. I've sold all my 5E books and now have an inspirational library of D&D B/X, 1e and DCC boxed sets, modules and monster manuals. Everyone should play whatever system is most enjoyable for them. For me, the Old School feel combined with the fast, easy, modern mechanics keeps my Shadowdark sessions easy to prep, fun to run and exciting for my players.

[@Living4Crits]

First off just gotta say that I love your terrain builds! Keep em coming! Totally agree on adventure design. It’s a piece of cake coming up with adventures and encounters on the fly, and converting other old school materials is a breeze!

[@Curratum]

Reading this is heartwarming.

[@ScottBaker_]

Glad to see you are still going strong and having fun with Shadowdark. Thanks for the update.

[@Thraxis]

I've been running a bi-weekly game online with some friends that played 5E before and we are all loving it, Shadowdark is great for quick prep and DM'ing on the fly and really meshes well wit my style of running a game

[@NemoOhd20]

Thanks for the video. Fellow SD backer and Ive played a few times. I really love the fast feel and it gives me nostalgia for D&D basic editions of the 80s without all the clunky and hacked together mechanics we had. People sometimes say "it isnt for campaigns" and I just chuckle. I know people who've been playing BX campaigns for decades with about 1/3 the rules of SD. If you can give up the slog of "the tactical" (Warhammer lite) and the fact that you invested 1/3 of youre retirement fund into miniatures and dwarven forge, you are ready to walk into the Dark.

[@RadiantPathGaming]

Great video. Yeah, I'm loving Shadowdark as well. Been running it for several sessions now. My players are loving it as well. I doubt I'll go back to DMing 5E anytime soon. I'm in love with Shadowdark too much ar this point. :)

[@atomicjess76]

ShadowDark Sun sounds amazing!

[@tc0930]

Nice video, Judge. I particularly like your description of the elements that combine to make Shadowdark good. You do this around the 23:30 mark. I have played nearly 20 sessions and just started running a campaign last week. I think 3 of my players are new to the game (but not RPGs) and they really like it.

[@Living4Crits]

Thanks so much! Glad to hear from someone who has also run a bunch of sessions. The campaign play really does have a LOT of staying power.

[@bobbycrosby9765]

I definitely like both systems. I use the core mechanics of DCC with the surrounding mechanics - the stuff DCC is silent on - from Shadowdark. Encumbrance, dungeon crawling, hex crawling, light modifiers, etc. It's kinda funny that it's called Dungeon Crawl Classics, but there's no rules for dungeon crawls. In some respects it's unfortunate that DCC has such a strong central module system. It seems like many in the community focus mostly on that. I think DCC shines in campaigns, where spellburn is an actual tradeoff.... sure you nuked the final boss, but now you gotta face random encounters as you get out and back home with a useless wizard. For the charts, I having tabbed binders so I can flip to any table I need in a second. I also give players any relevant tables, including spell printouts.

[@rontalkstabletop]

Nice review! I'm loving Shadowdark as well. I have a 2-player campaign I dubbed "Exile and Thief" which takes inspiration from Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and Conana stories.

[@Living4Crits]

Are you running in Lankhmar itself?

[@Living4Crits]

Also, THANK YOU!

[@hawkthetraveler6344]

I'm 20 minutes in and have no idea what you think Shadowdark does. Every comment would have been the same comment for 5e. When you say 27 sessions is that 27 one-hour after school sessions or you've been running a typical 4 hour session once a week for 6 months? I am not hearing WHY you felt this was so good for that.

[@agrayday7816]

Welcome Back! Did you back Shadow of the Weird Wizard?

[@Living4Crits]

I did not. I still feel like I have a lot left to do with shadow of the demon lord still

[@Ashmoleon2006]

i'd just heard about this wednesday 7/24/24 and was talking about it with my traveller group 7/25 and pulled the trigger on it and bought the pdf and hardback and i gotta say im pumped about it

[@dukeragnvaldr]

Good video. Excellent comparisons between game systems. First part is repetitive. I recommend listening from 7:45. You’ll miss nothing.

[@FilmshooterOH]

Thanks for your review. I'm trying to get my group to give Shadowdark a try.

[@Living4Crits]

Fingers crossed for you!

[@perfectmachinegames]

Hey James. It's Ryan. It's been awhile. I am running two games right now: D&D 5e (which I hate and I cannot wait to end so I can get rid of the books) and Old School Essentials which is the D&D Basic/Expert rules cleaned up and made clear. I prefer OSE over D&D and I am glad to see that you are playing something you enjoy.

[@Living4Crits]

If you hate 5e, you do know that you can stop right??? ;)

[@perfectmachinegames]

@@Living4Crits Yes, I just have to convince my group to switch to a different system which is what I am working on right now

[@henriquecanalle2630]

Great video! One question... how the fact of not having saving throws affect the game?

[@Living4Crits]

@@henriquecanalle2630 even if they aren’t called saving throws, making dex con and wis rolls to resist things still feel entirely like saving throws.

[@henriquecanalle2630]

@@Living4Crits but imagine a sleep spell...it simply just work?? There is no notation on resistance in the spell description..

[@Living4Crits]

@@henriquecanalle2630 that’s correct mostly for pc spells. But read the monster entries as an example. Iron golem poison breath, dc 15 con check. Or the Archmages death bolt. Enemies dont make saves as often and I think this is to speed up play.

[@obi-rob7261]

If possible, can you let us know how your Dark Sun conversion goes.

[@Living4Crits]

Our first session was today and it wen't really well! Party is an Elf Thief, Dwarf Fighter, Half-Elf Bard, Half-Elf Ranger, and a Halfling Cleric of Fire. If you join the Arcane Library Discord Server, I have some links in the SD Creator's Forum to the google docs I'm working on.

[@obi-rob7261]

Awesome, heading over!@@Living4Crits

[@Acmegamer]

Fascinated by your comment about DCC Rpg slowing down. We've felt at least for the first six or so levels that the characters just kept getting more and more powerful. With a lot more potential for high end spell results, mighty deeds and backstabbing becoming more and more powerful.

[@Living4Crits]

Are you not having the same slow down of gameplay? I feel like all of the charts and results can drag out combat in the later levels.

[@Acmegamer]

@@Living4Crits It definitely can. What we do is print up those spells (charts) that our characters have. If a player is having his character cast a spell or use an ability that uses one of those charts they have them at the ready. If you don't do that then game play does indeed slow down. Three ring binders with your character in them followed by their inventory and spells makes for faster play.

[@weirdguy564]

Well, my games of choice lately have rules lite, and character customization. Dungeons and Delvers Dice Pool, and Olde Swords Reign, and Mini-Six Bare Bones. D&D-Dice Pool doesn't use the D20, doesn't have insane hit point inflation (fighter starts with 5HP, ends with 8HP), and armor doesn't make you harder to hit, but is extra hit points. Dice rolls are rolling many dice, pick the best two, beat a target number. For example, a dwarf fighter with 1D8 strength, 1D6 melee skill, the soldier racial background gives you a 1D4 for hammers, and fighter talent of Slayer gives a 1D4 for using two-handers. Roll all four dice, pick the best two, that is your roll. Olde Swords Reign (which is free to download I might add) is more traditional D&D rules. At first it seemed boring as you only had four races, and four classes found in most D&D clone RPG's. However, you get to pick Feats, and those can make it very destinct. I could have a fighter with Weapon Mastery when using an Axe, Beserker rage feat, but also a feat for using a single level-1 spell once per day. Mini-Six (also a free game) is actually a continuation of the old Star Wars D6 rules from West End Games. The game is actually simplified from the old WEG days, such as only 4 stats instead of 6, and a new combat system that has you pre-calculate your defense rolls as an average, eliminating half of the dice rolls in order to speed up gameplay. It is actually a setting agnostic system, so you can do any genre, not just Star Wars. It still has a knock-off Star Wars setting, but also has knock-off settings for Willow, Firefly/Serenity, and even 1970's Cops and Robbers.

[@navigator6974]

I backed that kickstarter too and love the book and feel of it all. Still havent played yet, but cannot wait. My old group scattered so I gotta find a new one. :) do you play a homebrew campain in shadowdark or do you play modules? Any good ones you would recommend starting out?

[@Living4Crits]

For Shadowdark I run my own adventures mostly, or convert old basic D&D adventures. The Pits of Bound is a Shadowdark adventure series that I've run a few of, you can find it on DTRPG. Recommended!

[@PetesDracolich]

Judge James! I miss you man! Drop some comments on my community posts, I’d love to hear from you & chat about games. DCC rocks! TC & I hope to see your videos soon.

[@DirtyBertie]

Tremendous waiting for the physical edition to pick this one up

[@mavfan21]

I love the simplicity of Shadowdark, but I want it to be a little more Heroic. I like PCs that you'd want to watch in a show, doing cool things. Not superheroes, but not barely better than a town guard. I'm trying to make SD be that system for me. The upcoming Dungeon Dwellers by Reaper seems to fit that gap between OSR and 5e/PF2e games that I want to play in.

[@Living4Crits]

Makes sense. For me I think DCC still scratches that itch.

[@RPG_Bliss]

@@Living4CritsI’m excited to start DCC. My players characters just survived the funnel and made it to level one. Well….half of them survived 😂

[@arphod]

We run gritty grimdark for the W. You'll be blessed to see level 3. But you earned it, and all 19 other players know it!

[@gudkarma1]

Thank you for the review and look after a decent amount of play. I am glad you got back into budo. がんばってください。

[@Living4Crits]

My joints sometimes question my return, but slowly are getting used to the activity :)

[@brentnorton1602]

We use the deathbringer dice. Everyone gets a die per lvl, but home ruled it where lvl determines how many a character can use at one time. No, the wizard casts fireball on the BBEG and everyone hand in their dice to add to the damage.

[@russellfishes]

Yay, for BattleTech and ShadowDark too.

[@PH_Dungeon]

Nice video. It’s good to hear from people that have significant experience with the games they are talking about

[@Living4Crits]

My videos may not be edited or well thought out, but I've definitely played the games :) Thank you!

[@delrey28]

Brilliant. I really like your content! And I couldn't agree more about the AL community.

[@Living4Crits]

Thank you! Yeah, the Arcane Library server is just an amazing place, not just for SD, but for all of RPG'ing chat.

[@TimBaker]

It's great to see you posting new videos again. 😊

[@michaelmullenfiddler]

I have a question, but just real quick: a bit of background. I am not a 5e player, but most friends are. I dont want to commit to buy tons of the 5e rule books, companion books et al, but i might want to make one of their extended adventure path modules--like that one set u der Waterdeep--as a central "plotline" in a larger campaign, but i dont want to use the rule books. Can Shadowdark be used to play adventures written for 5e? (Without TOO much work by the game master aheadvof time)

[@Living4Crits]

I'm probably not the best person to ask this question, but maybe someone else here in the comments can? Are you in the Arcane Library discord server? Only reason I'm saying this is because my experience with 5th edition is limited to a single, very short campaign that I ran in Ptolus a couple years back. So I never got around to running a full 5e adventure path. My guess is that you'd have to tinker around with some of the power scaling, especially with hit points. In 5e, if memory serves, you get your con bonus for HP every level, and Fighters get d10 hp, Clerics d8, thieves d6, etc. In Shadowdark, CON bonus is only at 1st level, and those classes all step down a die step for HP, closer to basic D&D from the Red Box era. So, story wise, you could probably do an adventure path but it might be a lot of work. Personally I think it's easier to port the older, basic D&D and 2nd Ed stuff over.

[@michaelmorrissey5631]

I will say YES. Though there obviously is some work involved to convert it is not that much really. Monster and NPC hit points are much higher in 5E and they tend to have more special abilities, but it’s easy enough to glean what to leave out, the basic elements of the stat blocks are mostly identical to Shadowdark’s. I have not myself run 5e material yet but I did help my friend who is new to DMing with some quick conversions for a game he was running (that I was a player in) and it worked out great. Just familiarize yourself with the adventure and have your conversion notes handy. It should be smooth sailing from there, good luck and have a blast!

[@LordOfFlies]

How do you handle carousing with children?

[@Living4Crits]

We've introduced other real games into our Shadowdark world that they play as board or card games "in the game." For instance one week with carousing the party played Three Dragon Ante. And then this past Friday we played Tsuro, and they gambled with their party's funds. So it felt a lot like playing Triple Triad from Final Fantasy 8, or Gwent from Witcher 3, etc

[@Elighght]

Just ran my first Shadowdark game this week. Super cool!

[@Living4Crits]

How did it go?

[@Elighght]

@@Living4Crits Really well. I ran Jordon Thompson's Isle of the Bleeding Ghost. Only three 1st level PCs BARELY survived

[@slashdash846]

New Video!

[@EricVulgaris]

battletech and osr stuff? nice!

[@Living4Crits]

They're part of the holy trinity of my gaming.

[@ravenshadowz2343]

I took my players up to 9th and 10th level in DCC at that point, it was not fun to run it any longer at that those levels. I'm hoping Shadowdark will not have that happen at 7th - 10th level. I enjoyed this video very much. I still love DCC though, I would prefer the levels to stop at 5th level.

[@Living4Crits]

I'm now up to 43 total sessions, and 32 in our campaign. The PC's are 7th level, and we lost one last night to a failed die roll and a fall to their death. The game is still pretty fast moving, even at this level. I too still love DCC, but I'm beginning to think that Shadowdark is a better system for long term play. I'm working on ways to mod things over 10th level so that we can continue our campaign into 11th level and above.

[@ravenshadowz2343]

@@Living4Crits, that will be interesting to see your results at higher level, thank you for your comment! :)

[@testtest648]

@@Living4Crits I've played in a few DCC games, I definitely like Shadowdark more.

[@RPG_Bliss]

I think at some point you retire those characters and start back at level 0 or 1.

[@kevinkingmaker7395]

31 sessions is an endorsement in itself.

[@Living4Crits]

By months end I will have a 50 session update

[@CScott-wh5yk]

Great comparison to DCC… thanks for sharing

[@TravisWilliams_]

I haven’t dove too deep into Shadowdark but from what I’ve read it’s still too much like 5e, which I hate. Maybe I need to dissect it further but it didn’t grab me initially.

[@Living4Crits]

I didn't much care for 5e either, and only ended up playing it 7 or 8 times over the 9 years it was out. But Shadowdark just hits different as the kiddos would say.

[@dylanhyatt5705]

Aikido is so cool and great for health - my instructor is 72 and fit as a fiddle.

[@Living4Crits]

It's been wonderful getting back on the mat

[@dylanhyatt5705]

And emergent campaigns my favourite - Shadowdark is perfect for it. Unfortunately my players prefer in-depth tactical depth (PF2e) and D&D4e @@Living4Crits

[@Living4Crits]

@@dylanhyatt5705 I played a LOT of 4e back in the day. My longest campaign to date was a 100+ session, 30 level 4e game from 2009-2012. Great memories.

[@dane3038]

Whatever. The OSR community just needs to find a ruleset and stick to it. I'm over this OSR flavor of the week BS. I wonder what we will supposed to go buy next week? I'm sure it will have B/W ink art and be "so exciting". Meanwhile, the last game that was "so exciting" is collecting dust. I'm being harsh because the Community needs to wake up to what the OSR industry has actually become.

[@Living4Crits]

Not sure what you’re talking about here, but I’m pretty sure we should all just be playing what we want to play. As per collecting dust, I’ve been playing DCC for nine years with several hundred sessions of playtime. Honestly I don’t care about any “osr industry”. I just want to play some games and occasionally talk about them. I’m fortunate enough to have two weekly groups so very few games collect dust on my shelves.

[@dane3038]

@@Living4Crits You know what I'm talking about. As to why I chose your channel to winge about it, even I don't know. Wrong target and I apologize. Still, the comment gives Creator XP, so...

[@testtest648]

I've been running a Shadowdark campaign for 5 months. my players and I are loving it. As far as "flavor of the week" goes, you will never escape that in the OSR community as it is first and foremost a creative community. People are constantly innovating and exploring new ways to play or run games. It's one of the things I love about it. I incorporate features from other OSR games into my shadowdark campaign. : )

[@swordsnstones]

i hear you with regards to not needing another fantasy rpg, i started with adnd back in 81 and was away from it in the 90s until 2019, so im now back in head fisrt and the amount of info out there is almost overwhelming. 5e is just too much superhero video game mechs style play for me, Shadowdark is awesome but really just a tweak on adnd/or odnd, so ive done some writing for myself and come up with my own game guide based on dnd/knave/icrpg and my own approach to combat mechs...i believe this is the beauty of this game world, being able to play what you want how you want without any worry about if you are following the "rules" as you would in a board game or video game. If you are curious about my homebrew game guide let me know and i will email it to ya, [ just need yer email ] ive tried posting the link here and youtube is calling me a spammer so they can bite me :)