After really enjoying my first experience with Shadowdark, but not feeling like I’d gotten the full experience yet I jumped at the chance to do another one-shot with my regular group playing through Empire of the Ghouls. It was an alternative while one player was absent.
This also marked the first time I ran combat in Shadowdark. I was cautious, because I didn’t want to simply destroy the characters and my veteran players are very capable, regardless of RPG system, so my experience was probably skewed, but I was surprised how resilient first level characters are. The fighter was rolling well, which helped when I rolled an Oni as a random encounter for them. I was very concerned that one would be a TPK, especially as it immediately used its fade ability to become invisible. The fighter managed to hit and deal 16 damage. They totally wiped the floor with level zero spiders too. So I think I’ll need to try the system a few more times to truly become comfortable with the encounter balance.
The session resulted in some interesting new information on the setting, including that the town near the Barrows is called Direfield (the adventurers needed to rest). Additionally, the King and Queen appeared to worship four elemental spirits named Terrara (Earth), Aurelia (Air), Pyron (Fire), and Aquor (Water).
The adventurers also resolved the central tension, deciding to wheel the chair (helm that allowed the monarchs to travel to other worlds) out of the tomb and build a cart to take it to Uquance, the City of Mages to see if they can find an artificer to repair it. Looks like I have another serialized scenario if this group ever tries Shadowdark out again.
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