The Creeping, Menacing Insatiable Allure of Shadowdark

Fair disclosure: I was aware of Shadowdark as one of the D&D-alternates that spun out of the OGL kerfuffle, but I sort of ignored it because it sounded like yet another variant on the OSR market that is currently bloated with tons of perfectly good (and occasionally not so good) game systems out there. So Shadowdark to me seemed like just another variation on that theme.

Well, I finally got Shadowdark, primarily because some of my gamer cohorts locally have been playing it and the stories I have been told got me a bit intrigued. I am still waiting for the hardcopy, but I have blown through the PDF of the rulebook (it's an easy read/absorb) and I now know the following:

1. My initial assessment that it was "yet another" entry into the OSR space was accurate;

2. And despite that, Shadowdark accomplishes something much cooler and more unique through its specific approach.

That approach I would boil down to the following key points: first being that it is hyper accessible and accomplishes a minimalist approach to OSR design while still being rooted in a contemporary D20/5E design chassis. It runs like a stripped down 5E, sure, but it feels like classic OSR, which is really key here.

Second, the writing style, in being minimalist and to the point, is incredibly unassuming and provides a measured framework for the sort of GM or player group that wants to do their own thing. The evocative black and white art contains some of the best AD&D 1E era callbacks in terms of style and feel I've seen in any RPG. This is a common trick in the OSR scene; Dungeon Crawl Classics, for example, has been operating on a style designed to remind people of Erol Otus and the old Judge's Guild modules for ages now; OSE relies on an art style that feels old while being more closely inspired at times by Adventure Time, which itself is a cartoon that seems to rely a bit on false nostalgia. Other OSR titles often lean on "amateur" style art just to get that 70s/80s feel. 

Shadowdark, however, gets very nice, evocative black and white art with a clear "white on black" underlying theme. The art is amazing, honestly, and for some reason immediately reminds me of certain old books like the Fiend Folio and a lot of the early AD&D TSR art in general. The sparse, to-the-point text is meant to get out of the way. While I will continue to forever miss the level of depth older Monster Manuals put into providing interesting details on monsters, Shadowdark is primarily aimed at getting you a set of tools to use for what you want. In this regard it also kind of reminds me of Tunnels & Trolls, though mechanically it is very much derived from D&D.

So I had the PDF for a day and I already really want to play this. I also snagged the first three issues of the supporting zine, Cursed Scroll, as well as some 3rd party content on Drivethrurpg. There's a lot of new classes and content in the magazines, but the only complaint I have is it's commingled player and GM stuff, which means if I want to run a module in one issue, but my player wants to play a new class in that issue, then I have to control access a bit or trust my players not to read beyond the point they shouldn't go. Which...I suppose....is also very old school!

Anyway, I have oddly high hopes I can get my group to try Shadowdark because its 5E DNA is evident, but its old school charm is incredibly pervasive. This is the first OSR style product I've bought that genuinely reminded me of the old days, and its lack of presumptiveness about how it is to be used (beyond being for hard core dungeon delving....or, to use their terminology, "crawlers") is a huge asset for me; there is literally no sense in this book of an authorial overtone (a common problem in OSR titles), nor is there any sense of corporate meddling as you see in WotC. The book is unabashedly what it is, which is a way to dive deep into dungeon crawls and have fun. Exactly what I needed to restore my sense of excitement in this genre, in other words. 

Macuahuitl RPG - the Aztec Experience 0E Style

 I actually have a copy of Macuahuitl already, made by The BasicExpert, and it's a great book especially if you A: Like Mesoamerica as a concept space for fantasy adventures; B: like it enough that you will appreciate an authentic attempt at representing the setting from a historical view (as opposed to, say, making a product which is inspired by but otherwise not actually reflective of the Aztec culture, like Maztica or the Frog God setting); and C: you also love White Box style 0E inspired adventuring.

So when I discovered on a random post unrelated to Macuahuitl that there was a very nice embossed black cover print, I had to order it! You can find it here. 

Mythras By Session Three - Glory to the Ranged Combat

 Much of session 3 in Mythras involved some exploration of a mysterious hidden elven passage (thought to be Elven, then they realized it might once have been until kobolds (see the kobolds in Book of Schemes, lovely little bastards) occupied the passages. The group ended up having an interesting long range battle with a gang of orcs pursuing an escaped prisoner later on, which helped teach everyone how ranged combat works, as well as reminding us that a bow takes 2 action points to reload, and also get some proper range on experimenting with charges. Also, when you spend an AP to evade you go prone, another thing we were forgetting before.

Mythras has a lot of entertainingly fiddly bits, is what I am saying. But its good, because you realize just how much depth the system offers for a surprisingly well modeled realistic combat experience. It shines a hard light on just how gamified and artificial combat feels in modern D&D style games these days.

An odd thing has happened to me, though. As I am diving deeper into rekindling my old brain cells remembering how to play Mythras and Runequest, I am suddenly developing a really intense craving to start playing GURPS again, too. GURPS is the only other system where you can portray highly accurate combat with the appropriate level of lethal gravitas. I like systems where the best way to survive combat is to avoid it, but if you do plan to go into combat.....do it smartly, and take advantage of all the resources you have to stay alive. GURPS was a darling of mine for so many years, and I unfortunately really got out of sync with running it, I think the last time I actually ran a game was.....hmmm....2013 or 2014 maybe?

Anyway, this is all good. 2025 is shaping up to be the year I get back to the game systems that make me think, and give me a discreetly different and interesting experience from the popular conventional games out there. 

The Ever Changing Gaming Prospects for 2025

So! The conundrum set off for me by my dislike of the design direction of the current edition of D&D has led to a close evaluation of options. It has led me down the following path:

Mythras - So I am actually running Mythras on Wednesdays now, which is not much of a stretch as I have run Mythras on and off over the last several years. My goal this time is to maybe, just maybe, stick with it for longer than a short campaign. We shall see; the problem is that my intrigue at the style/approach Mythras offers is often occluded by the more conventional approach D&D and Pathfinder take; or put another way, sometimes deep simulationism and verisimilitude are not as fun, long-term, as slightly gamified fun can offer.

D&D 5.5 - One of my friends sort of talked me into giving it a try, to look at the good options and maybe hold judgement on the bad bits until I see how it plays at the table (and over time). I decided this is a possibility, if I run a campaign that is new, built ground-up on the implied expectations of the new edition. I did devise a decent campaign outline so far, but I am still not feeling overly motivated to run D&D 5.5; my theory is that secretly, maybe even almost unconsciously, I am just really burned out on it all and this is as good an excuse as any to take a break. 

Dragonbane - I want to run this but I feel like it needs an expansion rulebook to hold long term interest, and I am regularly thwarted by my players' threats to roll all mallards. 

Pathfinder 2E Revised - this actually looks like the best overall prospect to me for continuing a D&D-like style of play without all the finnicky expectations of a new edition that foundationally change the core feel of the game. That said, Pathfinder 2E Remaster has its own special issues, not least of which is trying to figure out what monsters have been arbitrarily renamed or remastered into analogous replacements (e.g. gnolls now being kholos and such). But, aside from that, and my general irritation at may little design decisions in the system, it is still shaping up to maybe be the best choice for me. Except, of course. for.....

Tales of the Valiant - So it's basically D&D 5E, but with some nice revamps, and its main problem is not offering enough player choices (yet). But that aside, it is sort of the default no-brainer for me to continue gaming with. My group does seem deeply interested in D&D 5.5, but I think if I push hard enough I can get them to at least give this a shot. 

In digging through my collection I also found a few choice relics that I would like to play but which often get neglected when time to plan something comes up. Specifically:

Swords & Wizardry Revised - this lovely remaster of the S&W Complete rules, now with two additional rules/monster tomes filled with new content and classes are really my favorite iteration of the OSR (aside from OSE). Alas, my only problem with running it is that I am just not sure I could get most of my group to tolerate going to back to an old school state of mind. Last time I ran it (and OSE) I find about half the group would rather sit out a few sessions than bother to play an OSR game. Yeesh!

Forbidden Lands - I was really enjoying reading up and learning the intricacies of this Year Zero Engine based game and in looking at it again I realize it would be a fascinating experience to play. All I need to do is figure out how to "make it my own" in the sense that its default world assumptions are not always in alignment with what I want to do with it.....note that this is the exact same problem I now face with the new D&D books, they have shifted away from D&D as it has existed in prior editions (though maybe not as extreme as FL in terms of the implied world assumptions), but who knows, maybe I could find time to absorb the default setting and figure it all out as it is intended.

Cypher System's Godforsaken and More - Cypher System is a great game, and easy to run. I love a lot of it mechanical elements and focus on story. It has a good series of sourcebooks for supporting fantasy play. Maybe I should consider looking to it for my D&D-likes. It certainly is flexible enough to support the campaign settings I want to adapt to whatever system I pick.

GURPS Fantasy and Dungeon Fantasy - I have never been overly keen to run Dungeon Fantasy because it is essentially taking the core strength of GURPS (its generic, universal flexbility for realistic gaming) and wedded it with D&Disms. If I want D&D dungeon delving, there's always D&D. Same problem with Classic Fantasy for Mythras. But there is regular GURPS and the Fantasy sourcebook (and Magic). It's main problem is one of scope and work; I'd need to put a lot of effort into building stuff out for a game, and at my age I no longer have the time and interest to deal with GURPS's level of fiddliness (Mythras is on the edge of my tolerance level). But! I used to run GURPS all the time with a fairly low level of prep, though usually for modern day or SF games. Maybe I can find a happy middle ground here. Worth thinking about at some point.

Savage Worlds - With the Fantasy Companion and the Pathfinder for Savage Worlds books this would seem to be a no-brainer, but for various reasons I can't quite pinpoint easily, I was finding myself less than satisfied with the system in a recent Supers campaign I ran. I think the sense of gravitas and engagement with the mechanics were not there. Almost....dare I say it....too simplistic and swingy for my tastes, although maybe also my fault for picking a genre (comic books) my group was not terribly into or familiar with. The net result was disppointing, at least to me. So maybe doing fantasy with SW is actually a better bet as the group is most definitely more familiar with this genre and the system in that sense.

Okay! So enough pondering on this for now. 

The Long Term Plan: Parse out the Desirable Content Over Many Books?

 In an interview with Jeremy Crawford it was revealed that evil drow in the classic Forgotten Realms style will be statted out and represented in the upcoming Forgotten Realms books this year. I realize now that one should never attribute to malice, politics, or corporatism what can be best attributed to simple greed: and parsing out desirable content over many books is a tried and true method for WotC to motivate players to buy more books, especially someone like me who might not have been that inclined to buy in to Forgotten Realms, a setting I generally have nothing to do with. In fairness, I sometimes buy these books for fun reading and to mine for ideas, but I always run my own settings. At least one of my worlds has classic evil drow in a conventional AD&D sense, so a book with thematic content like that later this year would be a nice grab, potentially. 

Either way, its making me reconsider what they are up to with the new edition and its selective absences. Will the upcoming starter set adapting from Keep on the Borderlands include orc stat blocks as foes? I bet it will now. Will the next Eberron book lean hard into Zendrik drow? It must! So maybe WotC hasn't overlooked just how integral some of these themes are to their own IP. 

I don't know that it will derail me from enjoying some alternatives to D&D right now, and I still think they made a serious mistake not including any rules on customizing humanoid NPC statblocks by species (something that the 2014 rules absolutely provided for). For me as an older D&D fan its rough when you have played a game which made the nature of beings such as drow and orcs important enough that I have worked to add depth and meaning to each version of them in my multiple game worlds, such that its noteworthy if I choose to exclude their inclusion (such as how Realms of Chirak has no drow at all). To then have a core ruleset which provides essentially no real support for such iconic monsters/species is just...weird. But if they plan on making them a focus in the upcoming FR books, then it does suggest that the real goal here for WotC is to make as much money on book sales as they can by parsing out the content across titles, counting on the hardcore to buy it all. Alas, they know me too well. 

The Good News: Tales of the Valiant Is A Good Choice

 Having ranted a bit about my descent into grognardism, manifested through the appearance of a carefully distilled Monster Manual 2025, I gotta say: I am all for, like 200% for what Kobold Press did with Tales of the Valiant now. So much so that I think I'm going to let my regulars on Saturday know that it will definitely be The Next Game (after my son concludes his Alien RPG campaign, which could well be in 1 or 2 sessions given how difficult it is for him to resist sending us into the lair of the xenomorphs). 

I am honestly very glad that Kobold Press published Tales of the Valiant. and that it seems to have enough general support for them to keep up with it. There seems to be a bit more headway on 3PP providing specific support for the Black Flag/TotV format as well, which is much appreciated. Tales of the Valiant is not perfect (it has some issues with how to resolve a half elf or half orc character, for example, trying to cheat on how that would work in the racial/cultural options it provides for; and if you are a fan of smallfolk then good luck getting a more nuanced take on halfings vs. gnomes) but at least they leave it up to the game group as to how you choose to approach drow, orcs, duergar, deep gnomes and so forth.

This will allow me to continue to enjoy a game which I feel at least leans into the story tradition the game supports and has established for decades; and D&D 5.75 can be the edition for a new, younger group of gamers who might also be shocked to read the Lord of the Rings and discover just how cruel and vicious this Tolkien guy is in his racist portrayal of orcs. ;-)

I am aware this sounds like an old grognard ranting at a bygone age and a uppity youth. I just turned 54 this week, so I guess I'm part of that crowd now. Gah!

The Monster Manual 2025 - The Book That Finally Broke Me

 So if you hang out on forums such as ENWorld you are probably reading the lengthy forum discussions, which almost entirely revolve around the absence of drow, orcs, duergar and the many, many other curious changes in the new Monster Manual. I have the book, and at this point my son who also has the new book has even used it in his middle school game. I have been somewhat reserved in my comments about it because I don't want to steal his thunder in enjoying the book, and he can draw his own conclusions. For me, the book is a curiously divisive exercise in what it looks like when this generation's version of Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD) happens to no longer be filled with good Christian moms worried the game is teaching demon worship to their kids, and is now instead filled with a different crowd that is worried it is teaching racism by allegory and the notion that portrayal of a thing (such an innately evil race) is tantamount to acceptance and belief in such a concept in the real world. It is, from my perception, precisely the same scenario that TSR faced in 1989 with the release of their sanitized version of AD&D 2nd Edition, designed to remove "problematic elements" that were perceived as causing issues for the potential buyers and players. 

So in 2025 history is now repeating itself. For me, I am disappointed as there are actually some neat things in the new 2025 MM, and some really good artwork. I'd like to use this book.....but the absence of so many old friends (foes) that are a staple of many campaigns, and the interesting and often nuanced complexity that can come with orcs, drow, and other species that lead to good storytelling as well as the exploration of the human condition through decided nonhuman beings drawn from myth is now deliberately limited, under the pretense that someone, somewhere, may be offended.

So for me, this has made deciding what to play going forward suddenly much easier. I am now looking to Mythras, which I am running Wednesdays as my go to game. Tales of the Valiant, which has a few issues but one of them is not the lack of drow, orcs and duergar, is suddenly looking like my best bet for a modern 5E experience if I want it. Pathfinder 2E managed to be both nuanced and respectful and STILL include orcs, even if they decided to retire conventional drow is still better than what WotC has done. Dragonbane, Forbidden Lands, regular old BRP, the OSR movement, and more exotic fare like Mork Borg are all out there, and all worth my time. D&D 2025? Maybe not so much anymore. The game feels like it is now aimed at the contentious, self-censorious young adult writing crowd, and I guess that's fine, I'm the old guy who would like a more interesting and mature engagement in my elf games, so I have no problem looking onward to other things. D&D, it has been fun, I'll miss you. Maybe I'll go back and play some classic 3rd Edition again, and remember the good old days when the point of the game was to have fun fantasy adventures and not try to find hidden allegories for the evils of the modern world embedded within.