Shadowdark Session One - Things I Learned from Actual Play

 I ran Shadowdark on Friday and can now safely make a few comments on its from an actual play experience. Here are my observations:

The rules are minimalist in design

I was surprised time and again at how brief and mechanically simple the rules were. There's a lot of buried "implied mechanical intent" hidden away in the rules, and while Shadowdark has a veneer of D&D and OSR all over it, this means despite looking and feeling like you are playing an old school version of D&D, you definitely can't make any assumptions about this edition of the rules from older editions (or even 5E); if you do, you will get tripped up. You can house rule.....but I suggest playing it straight for a few sessions before making any assumptions. Even the one house rule I brought in to play I am unsure was a wise idea.

There are some interesting approaches that are counter-intuitive to 5E and OSR design

That last observation leads to this one. Here are five examples of design in Shadowdark that is counter-intuitive to what your brain might tell you the rules should do:

--You don't start with max hit points (you roll), and you only add CON (maybe?) the first time, not every level

--Classes don't have auto-progression on to hit at all; it's gonna happen (sometimes) with talent rolls

--You don't add stats to damage (STR and DEX), just to hit rolls; damage might be added to your roll, but only as a class feature

--Monsters have no hit dice; I didn't notice this until I was in the thick of it

Leveling up is not what you might think

When you level up, your XP counter resets to zero. So if you are level 1, gain 12 XP for the session, and level up then you are now level 2 with 0 XP, and you now need 20 XP to get to level 2; this is not immediately clear from reading the book, because your learned experience from prior editions is telling you otherwise; and the incredibly brief rules-minimalist instructions do indeed tell you how it works in the book, but it took everyone at the table a minute or two to figure this out (but not the young players who did not have older editions burned into their memories)

XP through loot and prestige awards is deeply engrained and informs play

The XP mechanic is a deliberate throwback to AD&D, where treasure begets XP, but it does away with XP for combat and encounter engagement (traps, puzzles, etc.) more or less entirely. I am sure not everyone plays it this way, but I am for the sake of seeing how it leads to the flow of advancement. It means that the GM needs to keep this in mind; a stingy GM is not only withholding loot, he's withholding advancement. Luckily, advancement includes things like ephemera such as titles, deeds, land grants and promotions; anything in which the station or social ability of the characters might improve is considered an award in this system; in thinking about it, a group could fight an ogre and kill it, discover no loot, but then tell the tale and have a bard carry on their deeds on song thus spreading their reputation far and wide as monster slayers....and the song would be what gets them XP, which is an interesting approach. 

The "Cast a spell until you fail" mechanic is a fascinating limiter

So in Shadowdark you have spell slots, and you can keep casting spells as long as you keep making your caster checks. Once you fail, you lose access to that spell (and fail to cast it) until your next morning's preparation. It's a clever bit of book-keeping reduction and also allows casters to be useful until their luck runs out. I kind of wish I had conceived of this method back in the AD&D days, when I disliked Vancian magic so much I wrote an entire spell point mechanic to allow for more fluid spell casters in play. 

The game really wants you to go into dungeons with torches

I actually tripped myself up at the start of the game, focusing on perhaps more plot than Shadowdark demands or needs. Next session will lead quickly to a dungeon teeming with issues (and treasure), but yeah, to contrast with my Saturday Pathfinder game (yes, I ran two games this weekend) where everyone spent half the session in a complex mystery following leads, interviewing suspects and eventually getting into a brawl when the right (wrong?) suspects were caught up to, that game would have in Shadowdark terms been considered a bit of a wash, especially given how Shadowdark's entire focus appears to be on "things happen, preferably in dark and dangerous places." There's a reason it has the torch timer mechanic....although I did feel like its loose effort to identify what ancestries (or monsters) could see in the dark was a step too far in the simplification of things for me. Some third party supplements have added drow in as playable ancestries, for example, but then fail to address whether these drow would in any universe not have dark vision? The Shadowdark book suggests some things are better suited to moving about in total darkness, but seems to hand waive it off to the GM to determine what those things are. It's perhaps a slightly better approach this way than, to contrast, 13th Age's assumption that light doesn't matter at all unless you want it to, but still - I find it interesting that some of these "we do D&D differently" RPG approaches seem to double-down on light levels being a bone of contention that must be simplified or stripped out in some manner. Shadowdark's approach of saying "light totally matters, and nothing can see without it" is a fun approach to simplification, though. 

A lot of Shadowdark is spiritually reminding me of how Tunnels & Trolls plays; mechanically its closer to D&D, but the net result of its design choices (talents in classes, for example) and focus on dungeon delves (minus the treasure = XP mechanic, which is deeply antithetical to T&T's approach) really remind me of my old days with T&T.

Okay, more observations soon as we continue with Shadowdark! 

A Case Study in AI Art in RPGs and Why it Poses Problems - Gammadark

 I write this from the perspective of a author and small publisher who produced works that required art. Back when I was filled with a lot more energy and oomph than I am now (and more free time, too) I had some pretty large projects that needed a decent look to them. I juggled this through a series of techniques, all of which are legitimate approaches when your base project funds are close to $0, and your expected return could also very well be $0:

1. It's who you know! Lean on family and friends for free art (or yourself if you are so lucky as to have enough talent to draw something that isn't gut-churning to an unknown audience)

2. Royalty Free art! There's a lot of it out there, from free old pieces that exist in the creative commons to art packages that require a small one-time payment and a credit in your work. I bought a bunch of these back in the day, and the main problem (at the time) was that a lot of other small publishers did the same, so there was a period where you could see a lot of royalty free art getting churned through various products. That problem seems to have diminished with time, however.

3. Minimize the need for art! This is not ideal, as people like seeing art to break up the text, and being able to demonstrate some of what you are writing about in a meaningful fashion is very handy, but on occasion "no art" is better than "really, really bad art." I have a range of sample books from back in the day where I can point to them and say, "Yeah, we never played this game because the art was a total non-seller to my group." An art free version would, in those cases, have been preferred.

There is also item 4, the nuclear option:

4. Buy some art from a real artist! This is the point at which you have decided your vanity project is worth some investment, even if you have no guarantee that it will ever lift off or return a profit. You may, at best, have the glorious satisfaction of pointing to an art piece and being happy that your book has such a cool cover or something similar Case in point: my Realms of Chirak book for D&D 4th edition (yeah, someday maybe I'll post a 5E update....some day....) by Simon Tranter was well worth it, even if I didn't end up making a return on the book good enough to warrant the investment. I would totally do it again, just because Simon is a great illustrator, and managed to capture exactly what I wanted for the cover. 

Since the days of 2010-2012 when I did most of the self-publishing the market has changed in interesting ways. For example:

--the rise and fall of royalty free art packages; I think a modest number saturated the market for a while, and people eventually moved away from them;

--The rise of Deviant Art and other art spaces where new and aspiring artists could be contacted by aspiring self publishers for reasonably priced artwork; usually presumably followed by a "fall" as the arists become more popular and command higher prices;

--The rise of Kickstarter, where all prospective gaming projects seem to dwell these days, chiefly because if you go to Kickstarter and don't take that opportunity to factor in the actual cost of real art into your project then you are doing it wrong;

--The rise of higher demand for quality art in products. Let's face it, the market is now saturated with high quality content in terms of appearance; getting away with lower quality or lower cost art is much harder these days, and usually requires special branding (read: marketing yourself as OSR) or at minimum learning how to repackage poor/low quality art as being a deliberate cool style option, actually (see: everything related to Mork Borg, ever) by expanding your graphic design/layout skills;

--And, of course, AI generated art is now a thing. A very contentious and rocky thing that will readily lead to metaphorical fisticuffs for many people.

This is what has happened with a book I just picked up called Gammadark, an RPG expansion for the Shadowdark RPG. It uses a lot of AI generated art (using Midjourney) and the creator has expressed sentiment to the effect that he has no budget for art, and is hoping to build up a budget for the future. My thoughts on this are that he probably needs to be more cognizant of the market and how the prospective customer base will react to a product that is essentially 90% AI generated art. But....he's already produced the book, and while I find no issue with the game itself (it's a perfectly fine add-on to Shadowdark for a Gamma World-esque game experience), in studying the book I realize that there are several other reasons to criticize use of AI art in a project like this besides the "think of the artists" component (which is a perfectly valid criticism in and of itself). So, here are my observations:

AI Art is Still Derivative: the immediate item I noticed is that many illustrations in the Gammadark book look oddly familiar, but not in a "I have seen that illustration" sort of way, but rather, "I have seen other illustrations that Midjourney likely used to borrow ideas from," sort of way. The power armor and robots all look suspiciously like Warhammer 40K space marine armor, for example. The many mutants in the book often feel like they reflect some other source without specifically being that source. So as I look through this book, I find its art, by being typically derivative as most AI art is, lacks a specific identity that I can pinpoint. It doesn't even do Gamma World art well, because to be fair I suspect there's not enough Gamma World derived art out there for Midjourney to absorb and build a style from (and also, most Gamma World art historically can be traced back to a small handful of real artists, many of who had their art re-used from edition to edition).

AI Art is Hard to Replicate and Has A Stigma: Here's the conundrum: you have a vision for what power armor in the world of your game looks like. You input lots of descriptions into Midjourney until something pops out that is close enough to your vision to count. Now you have a single illustration that works. Later, you get better at your trade and maybe have some money to buy real art from an artist. Problem! Your vision of the power armor or mutant or whatever has a single image from an AI source to go on. The new artist likely doesn't want to replicate that look, because its solidified from an AI piece that might be borrowing or extrapolating from other real pieces of art; it fails from an AI replication perspective, at least for now, because AI art generators aren't good at consistency (though this problem may eventually disappear). You may even have a hard time finding an artists who will accept a commission from you because they know you used AI art before them. So now you have to find an artists who doesn't care, and be ready for their vision to deviate from what you have created using Midjourney. 

AI Art Often Informs the Text Rather than Being Informed: Another problem is where you keep trying to get a certain look, then just give up and go with whatever is closest in vision. Maybe Midjourney and other AI art products are getting better and more precise, but I bet that a nontrivial number of pieces in Gammadark were actually written to reflect the illustration rather than the other way around. I bet a lot of art in the book is there with text because the art was close enough, and other items go without an illustration because nothing could be found that worked. In a way this is an old problem; using royalty free art packs will lead to the same issue, but usually you then leave your text alone and simply let the illustration fill space. In AI art, you may suffer the temptation of generating some AI inspired text to go with it. This, I can say as an author, is a big no-no. You will crash and burn if you allow AI generated text too much room in your product (which I interpret as any room; can you tell I am a writer and not an illustrator? =) )

All of these issues are hassles that I think you can solve by simply not relying on AI generated images, or maybe doing a small percentage of AI images. Some other books I bought for Shadowdark recently clearly have a couple pieces of AI art in them, but 90% of the text is human-generated art, with the one or two AI pieces standing out as a result; they feel less like the publisher was saving cash on them, and more like the specific pieces were chosen precisely because they did meet a core illustrative goal not otherwise achieved by the low-cost artists the rest of the product used. 

Gammadark, alas, uses so much AI art, and at times its text reads suspiciously like it has some AI generated elements, that I think this is a bad sign for the publisher to start off this way. I am not done with my read-through, however, and will discuss in more depth in a Part II.....

Tablet News - It's Been A Hot Second: Boox Palma 2, Lenovo Tab M11 and Kobo Libre Color 7

 I used to post my experiences with various tablets, and as some may remember I am among the vocal and distinct minority of those who tend to favor Nook as an online ebook resource over Amazon. Well, much has happened in the last few years, and here's how it shook out:

First, Nook continues to be a viable option for ereading, but their Nook Glowlight 4 and 4 Plus are the only readers really worth using. The Lenovo Tablet exists, and the latest iteration may be fine, but I opted instead for the Lenovo M11 Tablet for my ereading due to its larger form factor and the fact that it rather nicely captures a decent graphic novel (read: color) reading experience at a budget price. So I have a Nook Glowlight 4 Plus but it's mainly for reading before bed, and the Lenovo M11 Tablet is pretty much my go to reader when it comes to the large ebook graphic novel collection I've accrued on the Nook.

Amazon shot itself in the foot recently when they removed the ability to download separate copies of your library of books for storage elsewhere than an Amazon device. This impacted dedicated ebook readers, but normies and casual ebook fans won't likely notice or care about this change. The reason is simply because if you view ebooks as content to consume, or you only buy a few and see Amazon as just fine to trust on managing your library of licenses, or you are a Prime subscriber and don't own most of the content you read anyway, then this change impacts you in no way whatsoever. But if you have a lot of purchased ebooks and don't like the notion that you are merely licensing ebooks as opposed to buying them (and only recently have online vendors been forced to acknowledge this distinction more clearly) then being able to offload them somewhere was pretty important.

If you just want out of Amazon but don't have a Kindle, one place you can support authors without as much draconian Amazon antics is at bookshop.org which aims to provide a venue for physical and ebook sales for indie publishers and authors. So far its slow growing, and its not a one-stop-shop for all your reading needs unless you are extremely particular in what you read, but I have found a few good books over there so far. I do not think bookshop has a dedicated device, but their app works fine on all my android devices so far. It's still nascent in design, and could use some more features, but they are getting there.

For those who are trying to escape Kindle and Fire hardware, there are a lot of interesting choices out there. I gave away my Kindle Fires and regular Kindles, all except for the two I love most: The Kindle Notebook (lovely device) and the Kindle Oasis, which has the best form factor for reading ebooks on eink that I have found to date (until I got in to Kobo and Boox, that is). I continue to maintain my Kindle ebook collection, but I am no longer purchasing books on Amazon unless there is simply no other way to get it; so far I have had no problems finding what I want to read on Nook, of course, and my new other favorite store: Kobo!

Kobo produces a 7 inch color e-reader called the Kobo Libra Color, which is very close in comfort and form factor to the Kindle Oasis, which I love. It's a color ereader, and now that I've experienced e-ink in color its hard to imagine sticking with black and white (but see my comment on the Boox Palma 2 below). Kobo's only problem is it is, like Amazon, locked to their store so I can't load Nook or Bookshop onto it. That said: for a dedicated reader, I find it excellent. Similarly to Nook you can offload books using Calibre, although I haven't tried yet, and also similar to Nook the DRM issues are variable and publisher-specific, so not all books are DRMed. Kobo does seem to want to be a mini Amazon, however, pushing a monthly subscription services that unlocks books, but similar to Amazon's Prime service, the majority of those free reads are not really worth reading, sorry to say. Kobo does manage to keep some excellent competitive pricing and I did join their basic membership for the product discounts, it works similarly to Barnes & Noble's but applies to all ebooks. 

Simultaneously with getting the Kobo I picked up the Boox Palma 2, which is an ereader in the shape of a phone. My first thought was....no way this will be as good to read on as a dedicated ereader, and it will just compete with the unenvious task of using reading apps on my phone, right? Despite this, a lot of reviewers spoke positively of the device and so I decided to check it out. Now I see why they like it....it turns out the size of the Palma 2 (very slightly smaller than my Samsung S24 Ultra phone) is far and away the most comfortable weight and grip for reading on the go, and its small size makes it as easy to carry around as a phone. It's black and white e-ink is crisp and sharp, and its a regular android device so you can load any apps you want on it (but with the caveat that its screen refresh means don't bother with loading anything that requires a decent frame rate, like videos). So I can have the Kobo, Nook, Bookshop and Kindle app all loaded on the device. It even has sound, so I also have the Audible and Chirp apps loaded for audio books. Of the devices I have, I've been using Boox Palma 2 more than any other simply because it is so ridiculously convenient. 

Boox Palma 2 is not ideal for reading comics and graphic novels, and I wouldn't recommend it. If your eyesight is bad, it may not be a good choice because while you can (as with all readers) increase font size, with such a small screen it may become an unpleasant read if you need a really big font. I do not have that problem, thankfully, though I may keep it on a very small font and then just drag out reading glasses, myself. 

All told, my pleasant surprise at how handy and well designed the Boox Palma 2 is has motivated me to seek out one of their larger models, specifically their own notebook color version. I'll talk about that when it arrives. My hope is that it will act as a decent alternative to the Kindle Notebook, which is eminently practical in its effectiveness at being a stylus-based note taker (I use it for gaming regularly, and found it easy to design entire maps on it). 

I did look at one option which I ruled out: reMarkable makes some really nice notebook style tablets, but they are not tied to the android ecosystem and do not let you load apps. I believe you can directly load books onto them from a source such as Calibre, but that's not how I have my collections set up, and so reMarkable sounds like a more expensive and less convenient option for a certain kind of person, so I decided not to check it out.

So this is where I am at in 2025: I have a mess of gadgets (I didn't even mention the Samsung galaxy S9 Ultra, which is really a notebook style PC masquerading as a tablet) and enough variety that I can feel comfortable scooting away from the Amazon ecosystem with no impact to my reading experience....and indeed, I am finding that by embracing Kobo and especially Boox, my overall ebook enjoyment has only improved. I will also give a shout out to the Lenovo Tab M11 as the best full color standard tablet for reading (especially comics and graphic novels), that is also by far the most affordable for its class. Ebooks may become the default for reading going forward as the publishing industry across the board is rocked by the tariff wars, so I can at least know that my embrace of this medium may allow for me to continue to pick up and read the books I want without inflated prices. 

Mythras Core vs. Mythras Imperative

 Last week our Mythras session ended with more confusion on certain rules, and a need to brainstorm solutions. Some clarity came from the Mythras reddit, but overall the group (and myself especially) were frustrated at interpreting some of the book's rules. 

While researching in anticipation of the Wednesday night game, I discovered an important fact: Mythras Imperative, the latest edition, had all our answers fairly clearly spelled out. In fact, I dare say it had all the clarifications and errata we needed, right there. Does Blind Opponent work that way? Can you use an improvement point on a skill more than once at the end of the session? When you heal up, are you still considered to have a serious wound if you go above 0 HP? etc. etc. 

Sometimes its not a case that the Mythras Imperative book is clarifying something, too. Rather, its more concise approach makes the information needed a bit easier to locate. It is, by virtue of its more focused design, easier to navigate. I hope there is a plan to eventually re-write and refocus Mythras Core, which I have found could benefit a lot from a cleaner, more precise presentation on many rules. 

A great example of how this could be done is to look at Open Quest, and compare, say, how Open Quest defines spirit combat. While OQ is designed to be a more streamlined and easier version of the same game system, it does so in many cases less by simplification and more by simply structuring the rules in a clear and unambiguous fashion. As a result, spirit combat in OQ is fairly simple to understand, while spirit combat in Mythras, though far more elaborate in presentation, is not necessarily any more complicated....it just feels that way as the core mechanical conceits are embedded in a lot of expository discussion text. That text is absolutely fine, but partitioning the mechanical process in a way that clearly states it rather than obscuring it within the more interesting (but less mechanically useful) discussion text would be a better approach for clarity's sake, and for making the rules useful as a reference. 

So for the Wednesday night game we shall be relying on Mythras Imperative to answer all rules questions except those explicitly not covered in the book. I am still going to show off Open  Quest and suggest that maybe it would be a better fit for the group, though. I personally find that the granularity of the Mythras specials system is hampering in play, and slows down narrative coherence. Unlike other systems where this is a similar issue (Pathfinder skill feats, cough), where I can mitigate or ignore such system elements, it is really hard to ignore the Mythras specials system as its core to the game's combat mechanics. Advice from other Mythras players and GMs I know has been that most people eventually just gravitate to the obvious ones: bypass armor, max damage, called shots, impale and leave it at that. Though, with that said, I am sure that if you play long enough this all gets to be old hat eventually. We'll see.  

Pathfinder 2E Remastered Returns to the Live Table

 After some interrogation last week my players indicated for Saturday night game a return to Pathfinder 2E was their preferred option, so here we are! I was finding it a bit tough to get motivated at first but that changed when we decided to pull PCs from an older Roll20 game, and in doing so I realized I had all the work done for a lengthy series of scenarios in a long campaign. I love when I discover stuff I had forgotten I wrote up! Saving literally everything I have ever written proves handy.

As it turns out, Pathfinder was a pretty smooth and fun play experience. We are all pretty familiar with the system, as I started running PF2E campaigns when it first came out, and all of the players in my current Saturday group were in the level 1-20 campaign I ran from 2019-2021, and are veterans of some other shorter campaigns. I think that I set PF2E aside when the Remasters started coming out for the most part, with a couple false starts on Roll20 before I just gave up for the time being (for some interesting reasons having to do with player personality issues). 

Now, coming back to the game table for PF2E Remastered, I realize that this really is the most entertaining way to play this edition. It's ridiculously easy to run the game as GM; PF2E has clearly been designed with ease of use in mind for the guy behind the screen. The complex minigame on the player's side of the table is an interesting journey for all involved, but once you've gotten familiar with the quirks of the system then it becomes easier and easier to appreciate, I would say. 

I still have some quibbles with it, but at this point I will tolerate my irritation at the skill system (which I wish was more robust and flexible like the older PF1E skill system) as it is far easier to accept this than it is the many weird and off-putting design decisions in the new edition of D&D 2024/5. So for me, at least, this is a lovely way to get back to the D&D-like gaming I enjoy without it being D&D exactly. Which is funny, because that is exactly what PF1E did for me and my group many years ago. 

Also, a side note: running Mythras for several sessions really hammers home how much easier PF2E is in terms of combat mechanics. The fascinating aspect of Mythras combat is just how dirty and deep it can get, but it does so by requiring a lot of book-keeping on every creature, and the constant popping of specials rapidly wore out my group (I have suggested to them that we should do Open Quest instead). So Wednesday this week I am going to run one more session of Mythras, and then suggest to the gang that we try Shadowdark next, or convert our Mythras PCs straight over to Open Quest. That will let us have all of the murderous intent with far, far less tedious book-keeping to keep track of how many specific limbs have been impaled or hewn from bodies.