Cursed Scroll 1: Reactions

Now that I’ve looked at Cursed Scroll 3, it’s time to go back to the beginning and work through them (I’m hoping that Cursed Scrolls 4, 5, and 6 are out soon too). This first volume of the Shadowdark zine is titled Diablerie! 

Like Cursed Scroll 3, it starts off with the hex map for the Gloaming setting, along with a handy reference sheet of random encounters and rumors. I would definitely print these two pages off for my GM screen if I were running the Gloaming (incidentally, I’ve been listening for over a year to Mike Shea of Slyflourish’s prep show where he has run a full Shadowdark campaign in the Gloaming. Definitely check it out as an example of how to employ these mini settings in a long term campaign). 

This scroll offers not just two, but three completely new classes for Shadowdark; the cursed Knight of St. Ydris, the Warlock, and the Witch. These each have interesting mechanics, and the warlock features interesting patron talents that augment your regular class talent table. This provides some interesting abilities based upon your patron. I like how the patrons have specific names and descriptions grounded in the setting. The witch also has its own unique spell list with a lot of options. 

The Gloaming hex crawl includes twenty-five detailed locations, out of a total 176 hexes. There’s lots of material, and plenty of space to wander around in a campaign here. Plenty of creepy, witchcraft themed locales that you could also steal for your own settings if desired. An additional fourteen stat blocks provide more interesting Shadowdark monsters—including two of the patrons from earlier in the zine, which provide additional examples of high level Shadowdark villains that you could reskin or use to design your own.

The zine concludes with the first level Shadowdark adventure the Hideous Halls of Mugdulblub. This is one of the adventure locations in the Gloaming, and contains more info the ooze patron Mugdulblub. It’s another example of the concise descriptions that give a GM the minimum they need to run an adventure.

The Gloaming doesn’t speak to me as a setting the way the Isles of Adrik do in Cursed Scroll 3, but there’s definitely material of value here and fun themes. If any of these sound interesting then Diablerie! Is definitely worth picking up.