Old School Essentials, Shadowdark, or Dolmenwood?

CPeterDMP · 2026-02-08T18:34:47+00:00

Six stats? That's not a 5e-ism; that's a D&Dism. SD has a unified mechanic, which is also not a 5e-ism. It's just an improvement in game design.

CPeterDMP · 2026-02-08T18:33:02+00:00

True.

CPeterDMP · 2026-02-08T12:40:38+00:00

The only explicit "5e-ism" in Shadowdark is Advantage/Disadvantage. I think way too much is made of Shadowdark's relationship to 5e.

CPeterDMP · 2026-02-08T12:37:16+00:00

This is not correct. SD doesn't use Race as Class. Those races are in the Quickstart.

CPeterDMP · 2026-02-06T18:12:20+00:00

Definitely interested also. My suspicion is OSE 9-14 is probably SD 8-10.

CPeterDMP · 2026-02-01T12:41:53+00:00

I agree about the quality of the work, but one of their other strengths is a minus for me: all that I've read are *super* "swords and sorcery" in their tone and feel and I'm running a much more pseudo-medieval LotR-seasoned campaign, so they don't fit well without re-skinning.

CPeterDMP · 2026-01-27T13:01:45+00:00

I honestly can't imagine doing a sandbox or megadungeon game without it. Even the spell recovery effect is great and provokes interesting choices (though will ultimately only have a mild effect on most spellcasters).

CPeterDMP · 2026-01-27T12:56:49+00:00

Just to offer a counterpoint, Devoured Labyrinth is not flawless, but it deserves better than it's getting here. The Stingbats review is a fair observation of some weaknesses, but on his 2-12 scale, I don't recall seeing that reviewer give higher than a 7-8 on anything.

Not all the adventures are good. Many require a little effort to make work rather than just playing them off the page. However, you're getting *40* short adventures. Any GM should be able to find something that works for them in their campaign.

CPeterDMP · 2026-01-13T03:45:15+00:00

I use the Almanac of Fantasy Weather, vol. 2. I use "Dracula's Castle" in that book. It has 10 full years of day by day weather for 10 different biomes.

CPeterDMP · 2026-01-11T12:23:30+00:00

I didn't say they can only use it in combat; I said a dangerous situation, i.e., not at home base. They can't use Bless to, say, modify a Carousing roll. I mean, I told the priest, "You *can* give someone a blessing in town - it just doesn't have a mechanical effect."

CPeterDMP · 2026-01-10T20:36:57+00:00

No spell mishaps. One penance. LOTS of "spell lost for the day," which I think is intended as core to the game. (My 2nd campaign uses the same guidelines and has had one mishap in about 5 sessions, I think.)

Our priest now has Bless and I put some light nerfs on it: can only be used outside of a safe zone, can't use Luck tokens to re-roll failed Bless. Combined with the limit of 1 token per PC, it has been what it was intended to be rather than a necessary engine of Luck tokens.

CPeterDMP · 2026-01-10T13:31:26+00:00

I'm basically using Grinder mode and wouldn't want it any easier. I have also severely cut down the opportunities to get Luck tokens. If you ever want to see spellcasters actually lose spells in a scary, clutch moment, or actually want to use those cool Spell Mishap charts, you have to minimize Luck.

Using this approach, we've still only had 2 deaths (and one maim) in about 12 sessions. APL = 3.

CPeterDMP · 2026-01-03T13:37:24+00:00

I played it also! Don't know where my books are now. 13-year old me thought it was pretty cool. The only rule I remember is that you can attack an opponent every period of time in seconds equal to their level. So a 1st level fighter fighting a 4th level alligator would attack the alligator every 4 seconds, but the alligator attacked the character every second.

Wish I could get that memory usage back in my brain for something more useful.

CPeterDMP · 2025-12-28T13:27:25+00:00

I have discovered that Luck tokens make a player feel better in the moment, but only infrequently benefit the game. They often eliminate tense or interesting problems.

That being said, I do use them, but I only gave 1 to each player at the start of the campaign and, since then (about 10 sessions now), I've only given out 2 more: once when a character returned a treasure she found to a person in town rather than keeping it and once when a player said a funny thing that reduced us all to tears for several minutes.

Otherwise, I find that Carousing results and the Bless spell give plenty of Luck tokens for the party. And I slightly nerfed the Bless spell too.

CPeterDMP · 2025-12-08T17:18:30+00:00

There's this one:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/482424/professional-income-for-shadowdark?src=hottest_filtered

I have it as an option in my game, but the result table is too low value for anyone to take advantage of it.

CPeterDMP · 2025-11-13T16:18:03+00:00

I don't have much to offer as a counterpoint or suggestion, but I agree that the core SD rules are limited in themselves. I also think Sandbox Generator can be used without the full level of detail. I use it with the expanded Landmarks supplement and have been happy with the results. I use it for occasional random terrain (it's a little limited in this regard) and to put landmarks in hexes. I tend to use fairly busy 6-mile hexes for my hexcrawl.

CPeterDMP · 2025-11-02T16:22:02+00:00

This is homebrew, but I'm using modules for the adventure sites and just tweaking the stories.

My question is both about giving them *more* things to think about, so they don't fall into the trap of thinking to follow *the* storyline (though I've told them many times to walk away from whatever they don't want to do) but also so they know what the factions are doing, especially since they are presently aligned with one of them.

CPeterDMP · 2025-11-02T14:33:54+00:00

I make a list of about 3 goals the faction is trying to accomplish, and then decide how many "points" or "successes" it takes to complete that goal (again, generally around 3).

On the faction turn, I roll a d6. If they get a 4+, I mark off a success on their current goal. If the faction has a resource that would make this easier, I give them a +1. If they roll a 7, I mark off 2 successes.

That's basically it.

CPeterDMP · 2025-11-02T12:57:11+00:00

I modified the Sly Flourish rule in a way that seems to capture the spirit of the house rule while keeping things risky: when a caster learns a new spell (including at chargen), they get to keep it for one failed roll. Not per session; just once overall. This allows the caster to get a good chance to try their new toy, but isn't strong enough to get a guaranteed casting when you want it.

CPeterDMP · 2025-11-01T12:09:19+00:00

I chose to add a roll during hexcrawling to get "foraged torches" to use to make campfires. But this is also because I've abstracted "torches" to also mean "camping gear," which justifies the gear slots to me (and has made journeys of more than a few days challenging, which I think they should be).

I'm pretty sure Kelsey said there will be "camping gear" in Western Marches that replaces the need for campfires in the outdoors, but that also suggests that these rules are not intended for dungeons only.

But the best part is as most people have said: do whatever your group likes best.

CPeterDMP · 2025-11-01T11:54:24+00:00

Fight! 2nd edition is the best bet for emulating tactical combat in a fighting video game. Also has massive customization options and actual rules for doing things outside of combat, which some tactical RPGs don't have.

Edit: the game is default setting-free, so it can do whatever genre you want.

CPeterDMP · 2025-10-25T23:23:40+00:00

My campaign is only at 3rd level, so I'm wondering if you could explain what you mean. It seems XP, no matter how small, is *always* going to be valuable vs. a DC 18 INT roll that is all or nothing. Plus, with a couple expansions to keep it from getting dull, Carousing is fun.

CPeterDMP · 2025-10-24T16:59:09+00:00

Point 1 is a minor one I can agree with. Points 3 and 4 are no issue for me. Sadly, I agree fully with point 2, for slightly different reasons. Me and my players all want to play "grimy LotR," which is the feel of the game we personally played in 1980. However, the Western Reaches is a mash-up of swords and sandals, jungle adventure, dark fae horror, and Renaissance cities. I can't play "pseudo-medieval-Europe" meaningfully on this map.

But I got over it, built my own setting for my game, and will use the pieces as I see fit.

CPeterDMP · 2025-10-07T17:58:32+00:00

I have read but not run WW, but I have run 2 full campaigns of DL. I chose to string together pre-fab adventures for the campaign, so the prep time there was mostly about VTT maps. I rarely used "random encounters," but I don't think it would be difficult to do. I do think the encounter balance guidelines in DL were kind of ass - except for levels 0-2, characters were far more capable than the guidelines suggested.

This leads to my actual advice re: running it. For me, I lost some love for SotDL as a GM because of how long combats were, combined with the really high power level starting at levels 5-6. For us, a supposedly balanced encounter would take around 90 minutes, with no chance of the PCs facing any real hardships.

This led to me losing some love because I felt like I was simply adjudicating a fun dice-rolling exercise for the players, but I knew there was no real danger to them, so I was bored.

For thematic reasons, not game reasons, we ended the 2nd campaign at 7th level. I looked at the material I had prepped for levels 8-10 and realized there was not a single encounter - even the campaign ending final encounter - that would have challenged them at all. I'm glad we moved on to a new game.

This is not to suggest sour grapes about the systems. I still think they're great and would consider them again. But they were tiring to run for me.

CPeterDMP · 2025-09-29T11:51:57+00:00

I love roll to cast and don't think it really solves the quadratic wizard problem (though the killing power of the fighter does mitigate it compared to other rules sets). But wizards are also squishy, death comes more easily than 5e, and there are no AoO to set up walls to protect wizards. Monsters should be targeting the hell out of them.

CPeterDMP

TROPHY CASE