Too much Text in RPGs vs. Not Enough Text

 In 2026 I finally realized that the tabletop RPG market appears to be heavily weighted in two directions: those games of enormous page count, laden with a density of information; and on the other side of this curve is a veritable mountain of tiny, often zine-shaped games filled with what can only be described as a strangely minimalist approach to content. 

I feel like there's probably a line to be drawn from how RPGs used to be, and how for many people the barrier of entry was finding the time and energy to read hundreds of pages of material to get familiar with a game or setting to run it, and today, where you have games like Mork Borg where 90% of the game experience is interpreting the surreal art and parsing out tiny nuggets of rule or setting data. 

The interesting question is maybe not whether minimalist game systems are a response to the older style of dense, text- heavy games, but rather: is the market for more "information lite" game systems and text actually a sign of changing times? Even dense tomes like the newest 5.5 edition of D&D are actually rather information light; these books use less of the page with a bigger font to convey less information per page; just look at the D&D 2014 race write-ups to the 2024 ancestries for a fine example. Or take the 2014 DMG, which is packed with stuff (both to its betterment and its failure) compared to the briefer and lighter 2024 DMG. 

There are plenty of games where word density and system or setting depth is important; just witness Pathfinder 2E for proof this is still a thing. Cyberpunk Red, Shadowrun 6th, Coriolis, Call of cthulhu, Mythras, etc....there are plenty of these sorts of games, the "old guard" if you will out there and in circulation.

But then we have some games where the line is crossed: Shadowdark is what got me thinking about this notion in the first place. I mean, Shadowdark is a minimalist spectacle where you get the Big Fat Rulebook experience with a torrent of supplemental material, but the actual result is a shockingly low word count, a system that appears to be allergic to exposition or setting depth, and a paucity of rules content that borders on a sort of weird art. 

I was going to argue that Old-School Essentials is more of a middle ground here, given it is a precise retelling of the original B/X D&D system, and it really is....but all that demonstrates is that the idea of "rules with lite content in presentation" was also a thing in the early eighties. Indeed, one need only remember the myriad titles of Fantasy Games Unlimited to remember that this is actually a very old concept. So if oneis trying to ascribe the current wave of minimalist RPGs exclusively to short attention spans of modern crowds, I think that is probably not true, because we had plenty of games like this back in the day. What is true now is that the density of informtion in current rulesets is even skimpier and more graphically dependent than the many old FGU games ever were, though.

On the other hand OSE is a great example of how even a famously simple ruleset that has been presented in a somewhat minimalist fashion (B/X D&D editions) later evolves into something much more dense and complex (D&D Rules Cyclopedia). Indeed, for fun just read through the original Basic Set (Otus edition) D&D book, then contrast it with the OSE book (which is probably of the same word count, but manages to organize the information much more efficiently) then contrast the two with the much more elaborate and denser combat rules section of the Rules Cyclopedia. Same game....but just now with more density and more use cases being documented. 

Lately I have been a bit torn about the fact that I definitely fall in to a more old school camp when it comes to how I like my rulesets, dense and thick with too much information, vs. the fact that a game like OSE is so wonderful in its concise get-to-the-point approach of design, and then Shadowdark, which I love because it is designed to reduce complexity that could get in the way of jumping right to the part where you play the game, but perhaps at the expense of making its rules tomes and supplements anything more than utilitarian outlines that feel like a Cliff's Notes edition of D&D. 

This means that....if you are still in a corner of the hobby where part of the experience is reading and figuring out these rulebooks and their systems, then a game like Shadowdark really doesn't offer much to you.

Ah well....I guess while I mull that conundrum over I shall just resume reading the latest batch of Mythras books I just got (a Fioraccita supplement, Mythic Venice, and several third party modules I found on drivethru that I finally took the plunge on). Mythras is unquestionably in the old school camp of "there is no such thing as too much information." 

Or maybe I will read through some of my Mothership books....despite being definitely part of the zine scene where the "rules lite, informtion lite" era of gaming has been flourishing lately, a nontrivial number of Mothership books are actually super information dense (albeit for scenario and setting content), but in a tricky way where it disguises this density through the medium of contemporary short-form module design. 

I guess the one thing I can say for sure is: there's definitely something for almost everyone out there!

The B/X D&D Tipping Point

 I spent a fair amount of time accruing both Old-School Essentials books and Shadowdark books over the last couple years, and vascillating between which system I generally preferred. OSE because it is more of an emulator? Shadowdark because it is more of a focused modern experienced in retro sheep's clothing? OSE because it's got a blend of B/X D&D and AD&D mechanical elements, or Shadowdark which is brutally honest in its desire to focus on dungeon crawling and loot acquisition? OSE for its quaint retro-graphical aesthetic that suggests artists influenced by Erol Otus, or Shadowdark with its stark black.white/silver design ethos that reminds me of those full-page black and white splash images in the AD&D manuals?

Of course, in the midst of this I managed to almost completely rekindle my AD&D 1E collection, thanks to a lucky find at a game store out in Roswell. That alone was enough to get me mulling over pulling off a classic AD&D style campgin, but also somehow not quite as motivating as I might have imagined. There was a piece of the puzzle missing for me....and last month Wizard of the Coast finally completed that puzzle with a print on demand edition of the Basic D&D book, with the Erol Otus cover. They Expert set was already available, but hard to use that without the Basic set, you know? And finding halfway decent copies of either book for less than an arm and a leg on Ebay is hard to do these days.

So now I have the proper B/X D&D set, and this is what I was missing. While I did favor AD&D 1E back in the day for the more flexible character options, I actually consulted with the B/X rulesets, a lot....like, all the time, because when the DMG or PHB was proving to be inscrutible to my young gamer mind (this is specifically the time when I was around 10 years old to about 14) the B/X rules allowed for simple clarity. My favorite recollection on this was combat, starting with initiative and surprise. Clearly and simply explained in B/X, a sharp contrast from the nightmare exposition that Gygax laid like a trap for the unwary in the DMG. 

Sure, we noticed all the differences in the two systems, but back then chalked that up to being "here's the basic/expert version of the rules....there's the advanced version of the rules....mix and match until you get something that works and everyone understands." One thing I did not do back then was run either B/X or AD&D in pure form, at least not until I was high school age (around 15 and up) when I by that time was familiar with more complex systems, and began to study AD&D and B/X for what they were as unique games rather than complimentary sets. By that time I was playing Palladium Fantasy, Runequest, Tunnels & Trolls and even eventually GURPS 1E with more regularity. In my fanzine publishing days I had a spurt of interest in treating B/X D&D similarly to T&T, concocting material for the game as written, including solo adventures. It was a fun exercise in working within the boundaries of a system rather than finding ways to break it. During this time and right up through my college years I continued to buy B/X (and later bECMI) sourcebooks and modules, even if I mostly used them with AD&D 2E by then.

Anyway, fast forward 35 or so years to the present, and my interest in B/X D&D is rekindled with the new print on demand edition. It's a compelling third contender in the arena where the young whippersnappers OSE and Shadowdark have been duking it out. For one thing, a lot of the material I have on my shelves aimed at either OSE, Labyrinth Lord or other B/X retroclones is pretty compatible with original B/X. For another thing, a shocking amount of classic B/X material has made its way back into POD, meaning I have also managed to begin restoring my collection of modules, including many I never managed to snag back in the day.

This is not an unusual thing for me; I have a habit of "rediscovering" B/X every few years and looking at it on its own merits, a sort of "what could have been" had I not dived into AD&D instead of B/X early on. My entire Pergerron, the River Kingdoms of Anansis campaign setting actually started as a creative exercise in desiging a campaign which assumed only the character options, magic and monsters of B/X and source books were available for the world design.* Now I am feeling that creative urge to do something new within the boundaries of B/X again....but this time I am older, have less time, and am growing more fussy with overly rules-laden systems which is leading me to appreciate the more streamlined qualities of B/X even more. We shall see! I have ideas.....I will likely post them as they come here. This new venture may or may not cannibalize from OSE and Shadowdark. 

*Technically the first shot of Pergerron started in Magic World, but then became the basis for the B/X iteration. Now Pergerron is a weird D&D 5E/Cthulhu hybrid mashup, so is distinctly its own thing.

Evaluating a Game by it's Third Party Output

 A short post today....because better to post a bit than not at all! While digging through stuff to keep my sanity amidst the long and arduous work days I noticed that my current OSR/Indie darlings....Old-School Essentials and Shadowdark, to be specific, have a metric ton of output from third party publishers online. Shadowdark is measurably immense in the volume of content out there, and just browsing Drivethrurpg.com led me down a rabbit hole and I suddenly have like twelve new books ordered and on the way. OSE is not much different, either.....it's slightly obfuscated by having an identity that is shared with B/X D&D and all the other retroclones it is in direct competition with, but it also has a serious volume of output from the 3PP corner of this hobby.

BRP, to contrast, gets a modicum of love from some very obscure angles in the 3PP space, most of which is actually dominated by the Miskatonic imprint for 3PP from Chaosium and almost all of that is for Call of Cthulhu and not BRP. 

I have a working theory that the more energetic a support base a game has is dependent on just how easy it is for the fans and interested authors/artists to 1: generate content with the rules in question; 2: get that into a presentable PDF/POD form; and 3: the extent to which those 3PP feel that they retain creative control in this process. So the less creative control a 3PP feels they have, the less likely you are to see a high volume of support. There's a 4th factor at work here, too: if a game has enough of a following it will generate 3PP output, regardess of the other factors. This may explain why Pathfinder 2E has a modest but noticeable amount of third party content, but only from those who love the game enough to write for it and also don't mind the vagaries of the ORC license, which I have heard some differing opinions on. Meanwhile the third party output for 5E remains sky high; but the latter is probably driven by creators who also like making money and know that, even today with 5.5E as fractured as it seems, it is still the top dog in town and will sell the most product. 

Anyway.....just some thoughts. Now I must continue to peruse the dozen or so new Shadowdark books (and a few more OSE books) I snagged. 

Cataloging the Indie RPG by Style and Genre

 As I sit here, I am supposed to be studying for some rather onerous testing exams for licensing (work stuff), but it's taking dozens of hours to get through the study process, a thing I have not had to do in some time now, and at my age its just damned tedious. So I am taking a few minutes' break to clear my mind and chill a bit. In doing so I am staring at a giant stack of various indie RPGs, loads of which are pamphlet sized, and almost all of which are 5X9 format in some form or another. 

My plan to write about this in February has been curtailed so it will bleed in to March now, and maybe even April if my busy non-fun RL schedule keeps up. But I can say this: indie RPGs really do seem to fall into a few distinct style categories, and those categories have some characteristics worth noting if you're trying to figure out what style suits your taste. 

The first style category I'll call "utility," which is to say: the book's author(s) value utility and function over everything else. Both Shadowdark and Old-School Essentials are excellent examples of this category. Some other games manage to fit this bill as well, though it may not be so obvious. Old Skull's publications (such as Screams Amongst the Stars and Running Out of Time) are also very utility driven, with the goal being to get the most useful content to you in the limited pages available. Less indie but definitely worthy of mention for this category is Savage Worlds.

Main Traits of Utility Games: ease of use; clear and concise rules; no authorial overtone or assumptions about expected behavior in play

Best Example of A Utility Game: As I wrote a few weeks back, Old-School Essentials is just amazing for its pragmatic, utilitarian approach to codifying the definitive OSR experience. A close runner up deserves to be given to the insanely no-nonsense Shadowdark. 

The second style category I'll call "Atmosphere;" this means the game is focused heavily on conveying its world, thematics or genre to you, and the rules are focused on conveying the atmosphere with as much energy and effort as can be afforded. Such systems are usually loaded with mechanics designed to build out on a specific style of genre. Mothership is a quintessential example, with its atmosphere being SciFi Horror, usually on haunted ships and space stations. Mork Borg is eschatonic fantasy steeped in the graphical interface of Swedish death metal. Orbital Blues is all about replicating a highly distinct blend of Firefly meets 1970's aesthetic style science fiction. Death in Space is about a collapsing spacefaring society that is grimy, dirty and maybe also facing an eschatonic end times. Heroes of Cerulea is about an NES 1988 era fantasy world ripped straight from the earliest era of JRPGS. 

Main Traits of Atmospheric Games: rules built to enforce the rules of the game's universe/genre; thematics designed to enhance and promote the tropes and expectations of the setting

Best Example of an Atmospheric Game: Mothership, of course! With Orbital Blues coming in a close second.

The third style category is a big one, and I will call it, "experiential;" for lack of a better word. These games are providing you with a set of rules and a setting, often closely tied together, with the intent of providing you a unique experience or take on otherwise well-trod genres. Such games are noteworthy for diving in to corners of fantasy or weirdness, often going a bit off the rails, and it can be clear at times that the gameplay loop involves heavy improvisation on the part of both the player and GM (if the game even supports a GM!) Land of Eem, Into the Odd, Outcast Silver Raiders, Troika!, Ultraviolet Grasslands, maybe Liminal Horror and Cairn, can all be said to fit this category. Such games might feel a bit like roller-coasters riding through strange worlds. Some are settings only, such as the Painted Wastelands, Ronin or Vast Grimm which hack other systems into their own weird universes.

Main Traits of Experiential Games: a strong focus on the weird/unusual, emphasis on random generation and improvised play; often focused on very niche and sometimes cartoonish imaginings of their universes

Best Example of an Experiential Game: So many choices, but I feel I have to give this to Troika!, a game which defies easy interpretation for many, while still being so interesting I can't stop trying to figure it out. Runner up could go to any, but I feel the Painted Wasteland (my current favorite OSE setting) has earned it.

The final style I will label "Graphical;" any game in which it appears that the artist is as important to the process as the author or anyone else. Indeed, you might find that the game itself is less of the point than purchasing the cool book full of neat art. Not quite indie, but sort of in this ballpark I feel you could put The Electric State, along with some noteworthy titles like Ultraviolet Grasslands, the Painted Wastelands, CBR*PNK, Cy-Borg, Mork Borg for sure and all its other spin-offs, and amazingly weird and difficult to parse out products like Ballads of Oread. If Exalted Funeral published it, then it might have some lineage in this department. Don't confuse, "Looks cool," for being in this category, though; I would suggest a key component of games in this category is that you might better imagine them as coffee table books than something you can actually figure out how to play!

Main Traits of Graphical Games: they are really interesting tomes to look at (assuming they come in a conventional book format); they are often hard to decipher, or you can tell that the author was playing second fiddle to the artist

Best Example of a Graphical Game: Mork Borg!!! It's a puzzle to decipher for many. Runner up: Ultraviolet Grasslands

Okay! So with all that out of the way, time to get back to some real work. I'll finally (hopefully) talk about some of the newer games I've picked up here in the next few weeks soon.

Old-School Essentials vs. Shadowdark - Battle of the Retro OSR Giants???

 As I assembled all of the many half-size tomes I have on the shelf, realizing I had bought a disproportionate number of books (and booklets, and brochures, etc.) for a few games in particular (Mothership, OSE, Shadowdark, Mork Borg and to a lesser extent Liminal Horror), I started comparing the crop of Shadowdark books to the Old-School Essentials tomes. I've run a couple campaigns or multi-session adventures with both systems, though not as yet been able to commit to picking one of them for a long-haul. In many ways these two games are extremely similar, at least in terms of their overall goals, but in other ways they are surprisingly different. Here's a few of the more interesting differences I noticed, with the caveat that I won't talk specific rules too much, because both systems are mechanically quite different. Anyway:

Design Goals:

OSE: it's goal is to create a retroclone emulator for Basic/Expert D&D and the Advanced version gives you the tools to bolt on an AD&D style experience. It's not restricting itself exclusively to true emulation, though it does so surprisingly well, and expansions and 3PP content offer a really diverse array of interpretations of fantasy powered by OSE (Planar Compass, Kalinga Plateau, The Painted Wastelands and Dolmenwood being the four I am most familiar with). A lot of weird settings get the OSE treatment, though other weird settings seem to gravitate more toward the Into the Odd mechanics. I think it depends on the depth to which the designers of a setting want to plumb the rules; Into the Odd seems to be the preferred choice for player groups that are extremely shy of mechanical depth, while OSE ends up attracting a broader range of interest for those who want an old school mechanical feel, but are inspired by weird art, themes and interpretations of fantasy that may have been popular in their style but were too "out there" for D&D's early era shepherds (TSR).

Shadowdark: It looks to me like Shadowdark's core intent, which was to provide numeric compatibility with older editions of D&D as well as D&D 5E resources, ended up really being about creating a tightly defined set of rules for a very specific style of play: dungeon crawling, completely unapologetic, with all of the traditional bells and whistles, or at least those as perceived through the lens of a new age of gamers who love the notion of what D&D was without having actually been there. Most of the Shadowdark players I know aren't picking it up because they want a reasonable facsimile of original D&D or B/X D&D, but rather they want a D&D 5E experience without all the clutter. For this reason Shadowdark has a lot of interesting but weird little rules that are designed to streamline the experience, but also trip up older gamers or those used to early D&D (such as the way leveling works, or the way magic works) and don't in actual play feel very old school. Shadowdark is to OSR what a modern computer game that touts its amazing pixels s being Playstation One era style graphics (while being totally better looking than the actual original PS1 games of its time) are like....simulacra.

Winner: OSE wins by a slim margin, because it really is closely backward compatible and very customizable within a time-tested framework of rules. But Shadowdark is its own special beast, and if you think of it as being like the RPG equivalent of Hero Quest, its role makes more sense.

Rules Presentation:

OSE: OSE's core strength is that it's the most pragmatic, no-nonsense presentation of a OSR ruleset I have ever seen. There is no authorial intrusion, there is no empty chit-chat, there is precisely as much flavor text as is necessary, no more and no less. It's incredibly clear and well-organized (across all its rulebook iterations), and finding what you need is a breeze. So Necrotic Gnome's core presentation was to make OSE very, very user friendly. This is a huge plus as I see it; when I pick up this book and browse through it, I find myself urgently interested in playing it, which is something a lot of RPGs out there fail to accomplish. 

Likewise, adventure design for OSE is concise, driven by necessary information only, and laid out in a clean and to-the-point format designed to make GM prep smooth and easy. OSE has borrowed heavily from the indie zinerpg scene to manifest a module design approach which works incredibly well, and I feel like even Wizards of the Coast has noticed this and tried some half-baked attempts to emulate this with recent books (such as Forgotten Realms) recently.

Shadowdark: Shadowdark seems interested in brevity almost to a fault. Many rules are explained with the barest possible amount of information, often leaving the players and GM to parse out the implied results of what are in general basic rulings. This work against it at times if you are reading it from the perspective of one familiar with older D&D editions or the OSR movement, as Shadowdark is a modern game in OSR clothing, which means you can't assume anything with it. Shadowdark's communication style is so brief that it can be bothersome to people who prefer a more comprehensive or detailed explanation of mechanics, and also requires at times a lot of GM adjudication due to the lack of guidance it provides. This contrasts with the OSE rulesets in that OSE usually conveys to you the exact amount of information you need, while Shadowdark conveys the minimum amount of information....an important but subtle difference. 

On the other hand, Shadowdark's module design is heavily influenced by the Indie zinerpg scene, as is OSE. As a result, the actual modules for Shadowark are often using identical approaches to conveying necessary information in modest bites, and this leads to a sense that you could easily use Shadowdark modules with OSE and vice versa, just swapping out stat blocks as needed. 

Winner: OSE again, because it's friendly organization and "just the right amount of detail" approach to information makes it incredibly functional as a table resource. Shadowdark's brevity and bare-minimum approach to explaining anything will work best when you really are preferring a lot of interpretive freedom, though. It's almost a tie as I see it, but for my own personal tastes: OSE hands down.

Graphical Design:

OSE: OSE's art is an homage to B/X D&D and AD&D of the 80's. It's got a vaguely fetishistic approach to reimagining Erol Otus inspired artwork, and often relies on artists like Peter Mullen to accomplish this. I like it's approach more than with Dungeon Crawl Classics, which does something similar but often leans into a Retro 70's Kitsch aesthetic of a time that only existed in the doodles on the back of your High School textbooks (or so I imagine, as I was 10 years old in 1981 so I am definitely a product of the 80's rather than the 70's, when I was a little kid).

That said, OSE leans on a lot of art styles across many tomes, and some of the best and weirdest art manages a style that feels to me like "Erol Otus, if he was responsible for Adventure Time." So it's got a wide range within its deliberate aesthetic.

Shadowdark: Shadowdark is heavily focused on white-on-black aesthetics and a art style that feels divorced from B/X D&D and firmly rooted in AD&D 1st edition. It's art style is surprisingly uniform, across even third party publishers, to the extent that I think out of a couple dozen Shadowdark books I have, only one or two even bother to use real color at all....I haven't seen the 3PP design guide, but maybe there's a style guide somewhere they have to follow.

The good news on this is that Shadowdark books all look like they are part of a set; you can tell a Shadowdark book just by looking at it most times. The even better news is that a surprising amount of this art is actually really cool and evocative. The downside is I have also noticed a disproportionate amount of AI generated art in third party Shadowdark books, sometimes bad enough that it impacts my desire to even consider using the book (as is the case with Gammadark, the post-apocalyptic hack of Shadowdark, where the AI art is basically just "We have Warhammer 40K At Home" armored troopers in every other image). Luckily (so far) this does not seem to be an issue for the core books coming out of Arcane Library, though. 

Winner: Tough call! I will say Shadowdark for its stark white on black design aesthetic and imagery that feels very, very old school to me while still being quality art, but OSE is also very good at this, so its almost a tie. The third party content is more disappointing with Shadowdark, however, as too much AI generated art detracts from the books that use it, whereas that does not seem to be a problem with OSE's third party content at all for some reason.

Actual Play:

OSE: So I ran a bit of OSE a while back, a fun little campaign that ran for several levels and took advantage of one of my own campaign settings, mixed with some published modules, including maps from Trilemma Adventures (one of the greatest dungeon map books ever next to Dyson's works). It ran smoothly, it felt very old school even with using lots of third party content to "upgrade" it to some modern conventions in terms of the fantasy options available, and it was very fun. I don't think it felt terribly like the actual experience of playing AD&D I had back in the day, mainly because the core B/X emulation at the heart of OSE is just not as complex as the actual AD&D experience as it once was, but we all did have fun. I recall some of my players, far too enmeshed in modern game design, actually sat out the campaign for the most part. My own experience as a GM was pretty satisfying, though, and the play experience was not marred by 30-45 minutes of rules lawyering and lookup as tends to happen Every. Single. Session. with pathfinder 2E. Fun enough that I am now thinking about running a new OSE campaign soon, this time using The Panted Wastelands campaign setting.   

Shadowdark: I ran a short campaign last year.....a lengthy dungeon crawl, really, also set in my oldest campaign world (Lingusia), but not really using too much of it. We had fun, it was an entertaining system and its interesting quirks (including deciphering the level/XP process, the way magic casting works, and the disparity of power creep between the core book and sourcebooks) wasn't overly bothersome. It felt like a game system that wanted to just be played and get all the micromanagement out of the way, unless it involves light sources. It clearly works best for very dungeon-delve heavy gaming, although some soucebooks try to expand on wilderness delving and a few even dare to entertain using it as a "full featured" RPG though never enough to make one feel like Shadowdark would be a proper substitute for long term campaigning. I know its a style and feel preference, and Shadowdark may just be a little too simplistic for my own tastes; I know of at least two groups locally that play this game all the time, and abandoned DCC for it. For me....I kinda like it, but only maybe enough to crib some content from it for use with OSE, which really is the nicer overall product. That said....if I didn't feel like diving deep into the OSR experience and just wanted a fast play dungeon crawler for a session or two with tons of randomization, Shadowdark is pretty well the best option out there. In a sense that puts it next to Mork Borg, a system which I love running in spurts but never for long term campaigns. 

Winner: I have to give it narrowly to OSE as I really enjoyed running a couple campaigns with it and want to do more. But I also enjoyed running Shadowdark, even though the system itself often felt janky a times....but both are eminently playable. Because I prefer slightly more granularity in my OSR experience though, and also prefer the broader compatibility of OSE, I will give it this prize for being more playable.

Conclusion:

So, overall, for what I need at least I find OSE simply works better as a more well-rounded D&D OSR experience. Shadowdark works well as a pickup and play game for a session or three, but for me at least lacks the depth I need to feel like it is more versatile. OSE is on the edge of what I consider "acceptable" for versatility, but it is lovely because its close compatibility with older editions of D&D means if I really wanted to I could just hack the proficiency system from AD&D 2E into it without any fuss or muss, stick to descending AC for flavor, and grab a copy of The Night Below or Queen of the Demon Web Pits and run it pretty much as-is. I'd need to do some hacks on these modules to get them to play nice with Shadowdark, by contrast. As for adding rules from older editions, I could do that with Shadowdark, too.....but with OSE it feels like that is an option I can take if I want and its intended to work, while with Shadowdark it feels like I'd be defeating the point of the system's deliberate brevity, and also would probably find it easier to weld the 5E skill system onto Shadowdark instead of the AD&D proficiency system and kits and such. 

So! I'll talk various products on these over the next few weeks or so, including Shadowdark....which does have a lot of good sourcebooks out. I may be looking at them from the angle of "How can I get this to play nice with OSE?" though, so there ya' go!

January Gaming Review

 At the end of 2025 I predicted I would play a lot of Starfinder and Pathfinder this year because I am getting stuck in my ways. That is half right; I would say that is true, but part of my ways include being fickle and annoyed with the systems of choice. Right now, after the last month of running both Pathfinder and Starfinder each campaign is hitting a story arc conclusion which means I could comfortably take a break and try something else for a while....or keep going to the next story arc. 

The problem with Paizo's two systems is that they work best with a serious time investment in absorbing the rules and really meshing yourself in an understanding of the mechanical elements of both the structured intention of play and the possible emergent play. This is a problem when you have tiny slivers of time in your daily life to actually devote to preparing for such elaborate game sessions; one can run games off-the-cuff or with a mildly structures campaign arc as I tend to do, but its a rough ask in a game like Pathfinder where a GM should plot out scenarios to include suitable downtime, or to consider carefully the wide array of magical items that could eventually be distributed as useful loot by the level-based mechanics of the system. If you don't take the time to do this, your game can rapidly devolve into loads of encounters mixed with roleplaying that may (at least to me) feel like stalling before the next set-piece encounter. 

Sometimes, in fact most of the time, I really prefer a more relaxed emergent gameplay element. I love game systems where I don't necessarily have to think about every encounter in advance, and so systems where random encounter tables where the element of chance plays an important role are quite appealing. I love random treasure table options because it is never that fun to me if you simply have zero chance by the system as written of getting an amazing magic device just because you're not the right level for it. You can technically break the mechanical design of Pathfinder by granting higher level magic items as loot, but the system starts to creak at the seams when you do this, and it creates power disparities that are evident in play. 

Indeed, with Pathfinder and Starfinder I have at least a couple players who are often absent, but by the rules as written their characters need to keep leveling up even if they are non-participatory for a session or two because the game design is so tight that it really can't handle PCs of varying levels very well. This has always been a bit of an issue in D&D and its cousins with level-based design, but it was generally handled better in prior editions; PF2E and SF2E both only really work well when everyone is on the same page in terms of level and power.

I have also complained about how Pathfinder handles skills in the past. While I have mellowed on this (or more accurately, just gotten used to it), this continues to be a rough spot for the players who often want to do something interesting, only to be told by other rules lawyers at the table that no, in fact, you cannot do that because you lack the requisite skill feats and such for it. This is a severe drag on the players' creativity. My last pathfinder session only had the old veterans who know Pathfinder very well, and they had a good time because everyone was sympatico, but the absence of the players who want to think out of the box was noted by me, at least, as a sign that they may not be showing up because its hard to have fun in a game system that needs that fun to fit neatly into the mechanical box and is not into the creative expression elements. 

That led me down to the rabbit hole of realizing that as a GM while I can run the mechanically rigorous system, I would really rather be running a game system that was neither mechanically rigorous nor so procedural; a system which actively encouraged creative expression and emergent gameplay. Obvious systems exist for this purpose: Cypher System comes to mind, but any game system which encourages this style of play will work. Shadowdark, for example, and even Tales of the Valiant, which offers plenty of randomization and does not lock content such as magic items behind level-based mechanics. 

A good example of what I am talking about: my level 1-4 range group includes players who want characters who have skills that let them tinker with and make or install augments (magical and cyberware stuff). But actually doing this seems to be rather heavily gated by a range of skill, feat, and tool requirements that are incredibly difficult to achieve at these levels, even though a majority of the augments are meant to be for this level. It also requires parsing out multiple different sections of the book to get the full picture on this. It is, in short, complicated.

To contrast, imagine doing this in Mothership, Savage Worlds, Traveller or Cypher System: it is essentially a non issue, and the absence of structured mechanical prerequisites means that the system itself can breathe a little, and let these things happen more organically according to the needs of emergency gameplay and story.

So yeah....I think for February I really need to think about some alternative systems that fit the play style I am more in the mood for. 

February Plans: A Return to the Indie, OSR and ALT-RPG Scene!

 While doing a lot of reorganizing in my home office and study I realized I had a metric ton of small brochure and zine shaped RPGs and sourcebooks, predominantly for Mork Borg and Mothership, but Shadowdark came in at a close third, followed in no special order by Cairn, OSE, Swords & Wizardry and sundry other weird abominations, including one of my latest favorites, Outcast Silver Raiders. 

In short: the indie RPG zine-scene is thriving, and it is often blending in interesting and weird ways with the OSR scene thanks in no small part to Old School Essentials and Shadowdark, which is admittedly less OSR and more "5E, after you take a weed-wacker to it." 

So, for February I am going to focus on a medley of the choicest gems to have arrived from this otherworldy dimension of chapbooks, fanznes and weird art experiments that exist like mynocks on the fringe of the giant ship that is the conventional expensive hardcover RPG scene. Should be a blast!

In no particular order I plan to dive in a bit on:

Outcast Silver Raiders (the coolest blend of grimdark, weird and OSR yet)

Cairn Boxed Set 2E

Liminal Horror's latest offerings and where its Kickstarter is at

What's up with Mothership stuff lately

Mork Borg....is there no end to the flood?

The Tenth GM Inspiration: Techniques used in Modern Indie Modules

The Tenth GM Inspiration: Techniques used in Modern Indie Modules

Last blog talked about how I use round outlining (as I call it) to work out scenarios and even whole campaign ideas. This time around I wanted to talk specifically how that technique is in regular, constant use in the indie RPG scene right now, and its a very effective way at creating and running ready to go scenarios. The most effective examples of this technique are found in Mothership modules, specifically the trifold brochures which are an extension of the one-page module designs that started becoming popular a decade or two back (from the One Page Module contests, AAW games adventure-a-day and more). The Mothership modules (and there are also Mork Borg, Cairn and other modules of similar nature) are generally built around packing an entire session (or more) on two pages, which can then be folded as a trifold module. This forces the author of the module to maximize their use of space. 

One way to do this effectively merges the module description boxes, the map and the adventure path all into a single mixed graphic....the Haunting of Ypsilon-14 is the first such module for Mothership, and an excellent example of how to execute this (I do a deep dive on it here). Each area of the haunted space station has a quick series of bullet points on the salient elements of the area to be explored, and line/arrow links showing you where in the space station you can then go to from that location. Some extra page two text covers NPCs, the monsters and encounter timers and events. I managed to get three or four sessions out of this module, it's that good.

These modules my design work best for GMs (Wardens in Mothership) who are accustomed to improvisation, because the space limits mean you will inevitably have descriptions or events that cannot be covered; the design is meant to force emergent gameplay, and a GM running a module in this design would be best aided with a notebook on hand to take notes as you expand upon the module as you go, to keep your plot and detail additions consistent.

Doing this for a homebrew is actually a great exercise in thinking about what the core conceits of the scenario should be. You also don't need to limit yourself to a one or two page format, though that can be fun as an exercise in creativity and design. That said, look to systems like Shadowdark, Cairn, Mork Borg and Old School Essentials for examples of how this concept is expanded upon into multi-page modules that are still, at their core, using the "what matters most in this area" conceit of tight design with outline-focused dungeon design. 

Observations on Running Three D&D-Types At Once (D&D 2024 vs. Shadowdark vs. Pathfinder)

 Running Shadowdark back to back with Pathfinder and D&D 5.5 has been an interesting experience. I have observed the following in running what is essentially 3 "D&D likes" at the same time:

1. D&D 5.5 has some nice (small, but nice) improvements on monster design...subtle, but makes a difference in actual play. Monk still feels very broken; you have to want, as DM, to design the encounter to actively kill the monk to have a chance of doing so. In running the game I am still hauling older books with me to fill out missing content in the newer edition, which is annoying. Overall though its still D&D 5E, just now in a slightly more abbreviated edition. I concede that it's fun....but maybe a tad long in the tooth. I now think D&D benefits from a bigger reset with new editions. This was not a big enough reset.

2. Pathfinder is proving the most enjoyable in terms of pacing vs. rules complexity; it falters only when player familiarity wanes (so a player with their act together progresses quickly; then a player who does not know what they are doing stops the game on their turn...stuff like that). I have adjusted to the system well enough, and feel like this is proving to be my "comfort zone" for a D&D-style game right now. I appreciate that it is easy to build a challenge for PCs in PF2ER that feels meaningful. My biggest gripe with the system these days is adjusting to all the modified content, stuff that is still there, but was "scrubbed" of old OGL references.....think kholo vs. gnoll, for example. Search the Monster Core for the Brain Collector! He's hidden away in there. Stuff like that.

3. Shadowdark feels simple....almost too simple....but as a result it's rules get in the way the least; the pacing of the game feels much smoother and faster than its more robust cousins as a result. Shadowdark also cleverly removes most "get out of jail" spells and effects from the players....truesight and feystep type stuff which can turn in to convenient "bypass encounter" mechanisms are simply absent from the game. The GM can include this stuff if desired through treasure and boons....but entirely at the GM's discretion.

This is, all in all, too much D&D-like for me to run all at once, even if I am enjoying all three games. I am now, in consideration of how much I am enjoying the rules pacing in Shadowdark, once again looking to another rules-minimal system: Cypher System, for a future non D&D-like game. 

Doing Too Much Gaming - Bad Time Management Theater

 I don't know why, but it seems easier for me now to get too many games going, even when I can arguably state I have less free time....or, in some cases, a need to value free time in which I am not doing anything in particular if I want; you know, things like reading, watching a show, going for a hike, cleaning the house, stuff like that. "Downtime" one might say.

So lately I've been wrestling with the fact that I have a periodic Tuesday night game online a friend GMs, the Wednesday night live game I have been running since the dawn of time (more or less), and the Saturday night game I have run on and off again for ages....and lately have been managing weekly due to my renewed interest in Pathfinder 2nd edition. Then there's Friday night: for a few weeks I experimented with playing in a local Pathfinder group which washed out due to GM health issues. The remaining players talked me in to running on that night, and I elected to run Shadowdark. It was fun! But then the common problem with RPGs rears its ugly head: weekly sessions. Repeatability. Time consuming dedication to a routine. I shoulda offered a one-shot! My bad.

On Wednesday I complicated things even worse by winding down Mythras and resuming D&D, now shark-jumped right to D&D 5.5. It's actually been perfectly fine; despite some elements being weird, I rather like most of the oddball little changes I've encountered so far, and some of the more subtle changes in monster design do make the newer monsters stand out as a bit tougher. It's hard to kill the monk, but you can do it with a bit of tactical consideration, so I no longer think the new monk is "that" powerful...just sometimes, in encounters not designed to overwhelm the monk.

But the point is that A: after stupid hand-wringing about design differences in the new edition it is all clearly just more nonsense sprouted by the Internet Machine, and the new edition is functioning just fine (even if I have to edit my orcs and drow in from the earlier iteration of 5E for now); and B: yeah, I didn't just double up on the D&D experience, I tripled-up on it, running D&D, then Shadowdark, then Pathfinder each week. So now I am at risk of burning out on too much D&D-like gaming again, and also not getting enough of the other non RPG fun stuff done I would like to do (which is mainly keeping up on my reading but hey, that takes a lot of time, too). 

There used to be a time when I could run two games a week (really, back in the day I only ran a weekly game on Wednesday and a bi-weekly game on Saturday) and it was just fine. What the heck happened??? I need to figure out a way to get this all under control. At bare minimum, I need more time to prep for the games I do run; Tuesday night should be my time to prep for Wednesday and Friday night my time to prep for Saturday (unless I am taking the missus out for the evening...although the missus was showing up to play Shadowdark so I guess that counts...?) Honestly, I know it all kind of went off the rails post covid, as that is when the addition of online gaming, the need to fill time with "things to do" made VTTs viable, leading to a tendency to overfill time with gaming. Newer games do admittedly need less prep time, too; back in 2010 when I was running Pathfinder 1E I really did need about as much time to prep as the game itself could take; and as many GMs may recall from those editions, it took some time to learn good shortcuts, tricks and techniques to reduce the GM workload; not so with the new D&D, new Pathfinder, and Shadowdark...these games reduce GM prep dramatically. 

Ah well....first world problems, I guess ...and honestly just the sort of problem to worry about when I'm avoiding a glance at my 401(k) retirement fund these days ;-)

 

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.....

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.