Shadowdark Campaign

Time for a new campaign.

The Swords & Wizardry Campaign ended earlier than expected, but the timing was perfect. It ended the weekend before my three weeks of vacation. I finished the campaign with the classic Against the Giants series, played as written. I expected the third installment (Hall of the Fire Giant King) would take three sessions. Instead, it was over in half a session.

Everyone seemed ready to move on from Swords & Wizardry. We all enjoyed it, but after three years, we were ready for a chance. So what is the new campaign…

This is a rule change, but we are still part of the D&D family. Shadowdark's roots in 5th Edition D&D are noticeable, but there are significant differences. Skills are gone and replaced with attribute checks. Experience is much more streamlined (10x level). Magic spells require a spellcasting check. Success means it can be cast, and failure causes spell loss until a complete rest. A wizard could cast a magic bolt every round until he fails a check.

We have played a few sessions, and I have found that the biggest challenge for me as a Game Master is the crawling initiative. Characters take turns to move as soon as they enter a dungeon. At first, I hated it, but now I appreciate it. It slows down the mad dash through a dungeon that players will do in a Roll20 map. I use dynamic lighting so players reveal the map on their own. They don’t need to wait for me to reveal the map. When we were playing Swords & Wizardry, I often had to stop them when they ran over a trap.

I have found that game preparation for Shadowdark is less stressful than for Swords & Wizardry. I am still figuring out the reason. I can be reasonably confident that one or two short encounters can provide a session of adventure. Writing Shadowdark adventures has proven to be very simple. Monsters are described in a few lines, and most do not have special abilities. Attribute checks can be used to figure out how characters will interact with the adventure. The monsters can be pretty deadly. I almost had a total party kill in the second session. Only one character survived. This is more indicative of the deadliness of OSR games to low-level characters. From what I have read on forums, Shadowdark has the same OSR issues with overly powerful characters when they reach higher levels.

I have yet to become an expert on the Shadowdark rules. I have read the rules three times and read some FAQs on the Discord. After 8-10 sessions, I will have a better handle on how it works.

The Campaign

I went back and forth on the setting for this campaign. I own a lot of published settings, and I wanted to save a lot of effort and use a published one. In the end, I went with a homebrew based on a novel. The book is “Guardian,” published in 1980 by Thomas F. Monteleone. I have always loved the prologue to the book, which is a travelogue of the World. Guardian is a science fantasy novel set in a world after an apocalypse destroyed a First Age. The implication is that this is Earth after a nuclear war. However, the map of the world does not look like the geography of Earth. I had to make changes to allow the standard Shadowdark ancestries (elves, goblins, half-orcs, dwarves). I do want to make it human-centric. I do not plan to include so many humanoid ancestries (hobgoblins, bugbears, etc.) Having orcs and kobolds is enough. Humans can sit in for most adversaries.

I have made the session reports quick summaries. The session reports in the previous campaign were growing into short stories that took a long time to write. I have also decided to use a more straightforward art style for the images to speed up the story art.

A First Age War Machine in the Ironfields