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. 

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.  

Mythras Arrives! Plus Alien and The Electric State

 We did it! We started Mythras on Wednesday. The campaign setting is one I have used in the past for D&D 3.5 (some games I ran during the pandemic period), as well as D&D 5E and Pathfinder 2E. None of those were ever a perfect fit for what I wanted to do with the campaign, which was a fantasy allegory for the post-Roman collapse period around 450-550 AD. As it turns out, Mythras is a perfect fit.

I'm leaning in to story elements and beats that will showcase for the group the unique features common only to Mythras, Runequest and some other BRP titles. Stuff such as spirit combat and animism, the ubiquity of folk magic for those who wish to learn it, and a predilection toward humans as the norm with optional other species being exceedingly rare or exotic. The first combats will be design to teach the players in the group who are new to the potentially lethal vagaries of the Mythras combat system. 

Overall I am quite pleased, and this shift has distinctly energized my GM interest in a way that has been flagging for a while. 

On Saturday, my son will run another Alien RPG campaign as well! This one will use material from Building Better Worlds and will be a (presumably) slower paced colonization campaign, with less of the cinematic pacing. I am also excited for this, its really fun to play in my son's games, he has the GM's gift, and it is good to see that torch can be handed down to him. 

Further down the road I plan to run The Electric State RPG in the near future. This is a really intriguing low-key post apocalyptic alternate timeline setting, something Free League Games excels at. The ambience the game exudes is very tantalizing, and I am intrigued to see what I can do with it. After my son finishes his Alien RPG campaign, though. 

Interestingly, while googling for a link to the game I discovered there is a planned Netflix movie for The Electric State (here). Interesting....although from the trailer I see nothing about the virtual devices which are fairly important to the fall of humanity in the RPG, so I wonder how much the show will deviate from the source material. 

Evil Genius Games Loses the Plot and Joins the En****ification of the Internet with Crass Legal Threats

 Although I think it's a good 5E-based game design and I like the movie tie-in structure, this article on ENWorld has convinced me to bail on any interest in their products. If Evil genius Games is going to play this sort of game, then I think its safe to say they are already too far down the rabbit hole, and even if they were otherwise purely innocent, this effort to contribute to the modern day zeitgeist of attacking the press is pure garbage, and I will not support it. 

Reality Incursion

 Ah what a January! Grim flu ripping through the family (I was out for a whole week), lots of work catch-up, and no shortage of micro emergencies mixed in. The usual fun times.

I got a reprieve from my Wednesday group for a bit. My son ran two sessions of the Alien RPG using the Chariot of the Gods module, and it was pretty dang fun. He is 13, but already appears to be a chip off the old GM block, having acquired his dad's talent for improvisation and storytelling. It was a glorious adventure and everyone died by the end of session two, which is ironic as that mirrors the way many of my early scenarios went when I was the same age. TPKs were just a thing that happened back in the day, and while its arguable that Alien RPG's approach can make those more readily obvious, I would also argue that not having a TPK in The Caves of Chaos was fairly unusual....TPK was the usual default, especially the first round in.

I haven't been away from GMing exactly; I have now run two sessions of a Savage Worlds Supers campaign, using a blend of classic Supers rules with the Horror Companion for a more "Dark Horse/JLA Dark" style campaign, although in truth I found myself feeling less interested in restricting myself thematically in actual play and the scenario ended up feeling more heavily influenced by the likes of The Titans, Suicide Squad, Nemesis and other thematic elements. I'm not really trying to plot too hard on this one, I decided. Better to just let it all go where it will.

For returning to Wednesday I rapidly ploughed through all my dreams and visions of breaking away from D&D and have accepted that Dragonbane and Mythras are both game systems I would like to tackle, but I still don't reside in the right timeline or frame of mind to accomplish this at the moment. To do justice to either I need to find personal time to invest my energy in the systems,* teasing out what is needed to make them comprehensive campaigns catering to each system's strengths, and be ready to act as tutor to the players, and to do battle with the rules lawyer. I just ain't got that sort of energy anymore. Maybe at some point, or with the right sort of group (the nostalgic one I remember having 25 years ago would be a fine set of test subjects for such a game) but today? Today I need the thing that I already know too well. And even that thing, D&D, requires I spend a bit more time with it to learn the new incongruities and alterations to its recent botox treatment. 

Monster Manual 2025 will be out in like 2 weeks, anyway. Going to be interesting to see how or if it is a game changer for the play experience. 

*The problem is, I have some X amount of free time, but I have 25 things vying for control of it. When I sit down these days to use that precious 2-3 hours a night I have to enjoy something, the time ends up going to a mix of book reading, comic reading, maybe a video or two, and more recently some sessions in World of Warcraft Classic or Path of Exile 2 with my wife. The interest I once had in obsessively sitting down and crafting NPCs and materials for a game system like mythras while building out a campaign that leans in to the unique developmental ethos of the game world of the system just no longer grabs me like it once did. I don't believe this is even a case of "other things are easier," anymore, because I can easily spend hours crafting a campaign setting and scenario set for D&D; it's because I no longer crave that sort of synergetic interaction with rules systems anymore, I find it tedious and uninteresting. It is okay for me, I have accepted, to admit that maybe I have done this hobby too much for too long, and some of it now feels a bit old hat to me, a bit less interesting. That could change with time, or not. But my strength of interest lies in the world building and the storytelling, and the game system which lets me do that with the least amount of fuss is what I must roll with for now, even if I do find the "old me" occasionally surfacing and eyeing Mythras of Dragonbane hungrily, even for but a moment.

Death Bat's 2025 Predictions

 I honestly don't have too many for this year. I have a lot in my personal and professional life to worry about, and so paying attention to gaming trends is pretty low on my list of things right now, but this is a tradition, and I have a few minutes, so here goes!

The RPG Tabletop Predictions

1. D&D 2025 will do just fine

I expect that the game is now too big to suffer any real setback. The worst that could happen is old players churn out, and diehards move to alternative systems, but the game has enough popular attraction to simply replace any churn with fresh blood for Hasbro. That said, I do not expect them to get the virtual tabletop thing together this year, and if/when we see it, I predict a lot of AI will be in use.

2. Nothing else in the RPG sphere will come close to D&D's marketshare

Another low-hanging fruit prediction! I just don't see anything out there on the market or predicted that isn't more traditionally cottage industry/niche corner stuff. Everything will have its rabid fanbase, and the gaming community will continue to be crowded with lots of little tents for lots of little crowds.

3. The looming Tariff Wars will hurt game publishing

It seems like the rise of tariffs on countries where publishers go to save some money on printing will impact the hobby more than a little bit. Get ready for the possibility of $80-$100 hard covers, we could easily see that happen by the end of 2025. Some publishers will skew toward finding local printers, but that will still prove more costly. It is possible (likely) this will lead to game publishers aiming for smaller page count books to offset costs a bit by reducing content. 

4. 13th Age Still won't come out this year

I have no reason to suspect one way or the other, so I am just gonna call it: 13th Age in March 2026!

The Computer Gaming Predictions

1. The Industry will continue to implode as more Games-as-a-Service models fail

I think 2024 was a rough year for the video game industry if you work in it, and 2025 will be similar. The large AAA publishers are more risk averse than ever, and games-as-a-service models are becoming too high risk now, following flops like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Concord. I suspect that we will see AAA companies continue to flounder, and a lot of the energy will get picked up by the B rank and indie publishers for the many genres and styles of games people want but which AAA devs and publishers are ignoring because they can't figure out how to maximize their earnings on them. Either way, more layoffs, more studio shutdowns, and more chaos will fill 2025. 

2. Consoles and PC hardware will get more expensive

The aforementioned likelihood of tariffs imposed on China and abroad will lead to more expensive consoles and PCs. Local manufacturing will not be ready or able to fill the gaps. I predict 2025 is the year we all get real comfortable hoarding the hardware we already have. With luck Nintendo will get Switch 2 out the gate before tariffs impact their import costs, but don't count on it. 

3. 2025 Will be the worst year for new games

I think we're due for a really bad year of uninspired, boring, over-monetized and poorly conceived games. I don't think 2025 will be a kind year to the video game hobbyist and we will see a dearth of meaningful content. Any genuinely good games to come out will be impressive exceptions, and most likely from the B list and indie tier developers.

4. Bungie hits rock bottom in 2025

It's already hitting rock bottom, and I predict it is possible Bungie could find itself in dire staights and goes the way the Concord devs went if they can't pull Destiny out of its death spiral before their hypothetical GaaS Marathon product appears....and if it does appear in 2025 (I don't think it will) I predict it will tank.

Okay, that's my gloom and doom list for 2025! I look forward to hopefully being proven wrong on all counts, but time will tell.