Reaction: Shadowdark RPG

The first thing that struck me about Shadowdark is how readable it is. Clear, concise, to the point text. Larger font, easy to see. This spare style defines not only how it is written but also its rules. Shadowdark manages thread the needle of maintaining a gritty, dark feel with modern rules. 

The black and white art underlines a definite old school aesthetic, although the mechanics eschew that influence, focusing instead on how to capture the feeling of deadly and difficult play while remaining a rules-lite RPG with modern elements that will be very familiar to players and GMs with 5e play experience. (Also a bold move to make the cover your own beholder equivalent but not copyright infringing monster...much like Flee Mortals last year! I love it!)

The changes and emphasis are very much focused on the structure of dungeon crawling and hex crawling, with encounters generally resulting in combat or a social interaction with a monster. Changes to emphasis this gameplay structure include things like moving in initiative order in the dungeon (something which the GM in the first game I ever played did, but which I've never seen since). Truly making light matter by removing darkvision for all characters certainly helps ratchet up tension, particularly with the possibility that the light can go out, triggering a potential encounter.

The game is also easy to explain, built largely on the chassis of D&D, but also easy to pick up. As someone who has introduced eight players to 5e this year, I can see with one read-through that Shadowdark would be far easier on a GM to introduce to new players. The official character generator website enables you to create new characters for new players with just a few button presses, and export it as a .json if your VTT of choice supports imported character sheets. No need to take a half hour "building" a new character if one dies. Even doing it by hand according to the directions in the book should take less than five minutes to roll up. Additionally, the free quick start guide is all the rules your players need to get started, making it easy to freely share the materials even with digital players.

I'm looking forward to trying out Shadowdark, hopefully even just for a one-shot in the relatively near future. I'm not sure about the viability of the game for a long-term campaign mostly due to the fragility of the characters (a heroic fantasy game this is not). This issue is something Mike Shea of Slyflourish has noted repeatedly in his now six month long campaign. However, I do wonder if Shadowdark would be a good system to use for one of the mega-dungeon adventures, like Dungeon of the Mad Mage or the infamous Rappan Athuk. While deadly, they both seem like locations that would certainly draw new "crawlers" into the dungeon in search of riches. And they frankly suffer less from an inability to have long character arcs or much metaplot. After all, life seems to be short and cheap in the shadowdark. 

In order to have a long form, metaplot driven campaign it would probably be best to bind the group together via a patron or organization, enabling new characters to be interjected into the existing group when old ones die, but maintaining a largely consistent set of motivations (This system actually seems like the type of grittiness you would want to run a Black Company-inspired campaign. Although MCDM's Chain of Acheron campaign took much inspiration from that series, it was more heroic fantasy than the gritty, dark fantasy source). A healthy sense of self-preservation and creative problem-solving that avoids head-on approaches even into higher levels would probably be necessary to keep characters progressing through higher levels too.

The book and system are a tour de force as a creative and artistic work, with a bold and distinctive vision of play that I hope players and GMs will continue to support for many years. We need creative but accessible games like Shadowdark to strengthen and grow the RPG hobby and spur inventive design over the coming years.