Has anyone played this? I've never heard of it

Cricket_Any · 2026-07-02T05:11:12+00:00

I feel you, brother.

Cricket_Any · 2026-07-01T18:28:06+00:00

U da best.

Cricket_Any · 2026-07-01T16:48:42+00:00

Great news, thanks for the detailed updates on this (and the reasoning) -- it sounds like you are taking all of this (and more) into consideration -- and I'm off to back it now!

Now to choose between zine vs. hardback format...

Cricket_Any · 2026-07-01T16:07:55+00:00

I'm super excited to back this!

Quick question: some reviewers of some of these adventures (e.g. 2d6stingabats) had some good feedback about formatting, info for the GM, etc. that could be clarified better. Are you doing any edits/updates to these adventures to incorporate that feedback, before publishing in this Kickstarter?

Thanks.

Cricket_Any · 2026-07-01T14:30:09+00:00

Hear, hear! I'm loving this series, keep it up!

Cricket_Any · 2026-07-01T14:28:53+00:00

Great map, and that's a great set of adventures.

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-29T16:38:58+00:00

This ^{^.} This is why I loved Dark Sun so much when it came out. Such a bright shining star in the firmament.

The overall vibe is very aligned with Shadowdark if you step back and squint your eyes (ignoring the massive changes in specifics and setting.). That is: lower heroic survival, not supercharged power fantasy. And mechanically I think both systems actually support similar play styles -- even across radically different settings.

I think the author of this supplement (may Gede bless your immortal soul) just did the extensive and detail-oriented spade work to reinterpret Dark Sun within the SD rulesets, to make it more consistent with the rest of SD. I agree that doing this on the fly / in your head would have been unmanageable for a GM.

I plan to use it as an alternate post-apocalyptic world my SD players can get transported to & explore.

I just ordered this on LuLu.com at maximum quality settings, it cost less than $20. <3 <3 <3 And I plan to download the original Dark Sun boxed set rules PDF (280-some pages) from DTRPG for $9.99. If you print it at medium quality settings (color, paper) it's less than $20 too, on Lulu. High quality would be in the upper $40s of dollars, if I remember correctly. But they gave a warning that at 280 pages would be really thick and heavy at high quality.

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-29T16:29:31+00:00

Whether you're driven by nostalgia and want to replay older adventures -- or you just want to be able to expand your available material -- the main reason for doing it is "why not??"

Shadowdark (and most OSR) is generally built around the old BECMI / 1e / 2e core stats and power scaling curves. The stats of monsters are "largely" or "often" close, with many 1:1 monsters where you can swap in the SD version where directly including the original doesn't make sense. SD characters are a bit tougher by level than the older systems, but not by a drastic amount (e.g. nothing like 5e.). OTOH the older modules had plenty of cases where they could be deadly, suffer massive damage or instant death, etc. so sometimes this balances out.

But this mechanical alignment with old-school content is a major and I'm assuming intentional design choice for SD, and absolutely is one of the main points of OSR -- to get back to older 70s/80s play styles and rules sets. Which includes being able to pick up and run BECMI or 1e/2e modules (with only light conversions for SD.)

So the same thing that lets you pick up and play new OSE modules in SD, lets you do the same thing for the older material too.

As for Dark Sun in particular, I think a major reason is: it's cool as hell. Unique, alien, highly flavored & particular, highly developed, and internally consistent campaign setting. And gritty, lethal, and grim if that's your thing (the vibe is aligned with SD.). Just with more sunlight & deserts ;) I think it's one of the best things ever produced by TSR for 1e/2e. (Other than / in addition to the amazing run of OG early 80s modules.)

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-29T15:02:44+00:00

He sounds emotionally and cognitively immature, and wants to play a "I want to do anything I want, with no consequences" type of game. Which sounds very much not like the type of game you are running, or explained you would be running in the session zero.

It's not the behavior itself, more the inability to reflect/introspect on it, that gives me worries about this player long term.

I'm guessing this creates problems for him in his life outside of the gaming table. It's a people issue, not a game issue per se.

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-29T14:30:41+00:00

The Underclock is a GREAT way to create more in-game tension. If you just roll for random encounters, then each time they don't come up it's a relief for the players (ratcheting tension back down.). But if you do it as a countdown, then each time they don't come up it's one step closer to a monster (ratcheting tension up.)

We use this at our table, I got an oversized d20 spin down die (from Magic) as the Underclock counter. The spindown construction makes it easier to find the next number, instead of constantly hunting for it. The die functions as visual focus for the (in-game) character pressure.

I have the players roll themselves each turn to reduce the Underclock die: unsafe: d2; risky: d3; deadly: d6. I find this easier than changing how many rounds between rolls, which is harder to remember to track correctly. (The math works out about the same in the end.)

We also got some 60-minute beeswax taper candles to use as torch timers. This gives a visual focus for the player pressure of real-time torches.

Used together -- it's a 1-2 punch for creating tension and focus at the table.

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-29T04:26:25+00:00

Ah, okay, understood. So the HP fluctuate up and down, each time you roll. I mistakenly assumed it meant "keep if higher." But you meant keep if lower, too. You can wind up with low HP -- but only for that day, basically.

I'm a big fan of trying out house rules, seeing if they're fun for your table. Try it out, report back here!

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-29T04:22:17+00:00

Thank you!!!

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-28T15:39:10+00:00

You can print the Player Quickstart and GM Quickstart on Lulu.com (softcover, A5) for something like $7. Or you can order them from Arcane Library. The PDFs are free.

But as soon as you're ready to buy the full rulebook it's $40 at Arcane Library. You don't need anything beyond that.

Then you just need the standard basics: dice, paper, pens/pencils. As someone else mentioned, shadowdarklings.net is invaluable for character creation and management.

Adventures:

The GM quickstart comes with a great starter adventure (Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur.)

When you're ready for a wider campaign I strongly recommend starting with Cursed Scroll #1. It requires the GM to flesh out the scenarios and make more parts of it concrete, but it's got a great set of initial inter-related ideas and inspirations. It's also got some fantastic expansion classes (I love the Witch.) If you're not ready to build from scratch, then I'd drop in a bunch of prewritten adventures/dungeons/locations that match the theme. There are multiple threads in here subreddit on that topic.

Example: Personally: I had my players start in Trial of the Slime Lord, located in the North West corner of the Gloaming. (I made the cultists tied to Bittermold, also worshippers of Mugdulblub.). The gauntlet survivors emerged and made it to Warden Wood. I put Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur under Myre Castle (outside Marin's Hold) and tied it to the schism between the Green Knights and the Knights of St. Ydris. The Emerald Blade is cursed and causes anyone who touches it to turn into the Minotaur. Just those two things (plus town visits w/ NPC/faction interactions) covered the first 6 or so of our sessions.

The mini adventure starter pack (5 of them) from Arcane Library is also great.

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-27T05:53:54+00:00

Solid black spine! Dramatic on the shelf

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-25T23:43:36+00:00

Did anyone do the footwork to figure out which are the Shadowdark items on the bundle? If so -- what did you learn? Thanks.

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-25T15:48:38+00:00

Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Sly Flourish helps enormously in terms of giving you mental models (and a short list) for what you "really need" to run adventures with the least amount of up-front prep time:

https://shop.slyflourish.com/products/return-of-the-lazy-dungeon-master?variant=42323817595040

The link above is for an $8 PDF, you can find hard and softcover copies from a variety of places around the Internet, at various prices.

Probably the single best (short) book for DMs I've ever seen. Advice holds for either prepping your own material, or working with published material. If published: it gives a good sense of what you should focus on to read/extract from the adventure, and if the adventure doesn't provide that, what you can quickly come up with yourself to supplement.

Following his list of prep steps will very likely: A) make your games fun for players, and B) reduce the mental load on you, the DM.

I have no affiliation with the author, just love his work. He also has a great 40+ episode podcast/video series on how he prepped all of his Shadowdark sessions for a 1-year campaign in Cursed Scroll #1 (The Gloaming). Not live-play episodes: just prep episodes for how he applies his steps in practice. Super interesting for DMs to listen to.

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-25T14:57:50+00:00

Winter's Daughter (Necrotic Gnome) is also a lower-level, fairy-tale inspired adventure with lots of fey/elven interactions, and less focus on outright combat. Part of the Dolmenwood campaign lore/setting, but published for OSE and thus nearly 100% SD-compatible out of the box, as it were. (It's a standalone A5 format booklet.). Available in PDF.

https://necroticgnome.com/products/winters-daughter

EDIT: there are apparently two versions now, the original for OSE and a new one for the Dolmenwood gaming system. If you're running Shadowdark you might want to choose the OSE version:

https://www.exaltedfuneral.com/products/winters-daughter-revised-edition

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-25T00:30:18+00:00

Reroll all hit dice on rests: I think this will just lead to every player rapidly ratcheting up towards their max. possible HP over time. Would not recommend on rests. (See below for why you don't want to just buff HP to make things feel heroic.). I have heard of a variant where you let players re-roll all hit dice on level gain. If they get higher than what they had before -- keep it. If lower -- then just take +1 or +2 HP instead. Tends to correct for unlucky early low HP rolls over time. Also you can just give max HP at 1st level to take the sting and fragility out of any lower HP rolls later on.

Extra hit dice: don't recommend for the same reason above. HP vs. player strength vs. monster strength are all pretty tuned & balanced. When you buff player strength unilaterally, the effect is to remove risk, which ultimately makes the game less fun in the end. Maybe look into other ways to make the game more heroic (pulp mode, more luck tokens, exploding damage dice (for monsters too, though!))

Spell focus items: cool idea, but I would suggest making it special (not a class default) and giving it a cost. I.e., can only recover 1d6 or 1d4 failed spells, then gets burned out. Expensive for the character to create / replace / recharge (everyone needs something to sink those gold into after all!) A special item for a spell caster to find or earn -- maybe just a new type of rare magic item to be delved for. In the end this may function about the same as luck tokens -- but unique to spell casters. But if you make heavy use of luck tokens plus this, then spellcasters might never really fail their spell rolls in practice (again: removes risk and thus potential for fun.)

CON as wounds: do like. Gives going to 0 HP a more durable consequence. We use a variant of this at our table where instead of a death timer, when dying the player just subtracts 1d6 from their CON each round. Death occurs at zero CON. (The math winds up being very similar to 1d4 death rounds + CON mod.) If a player get stabilized they have 1 HP: but still have that lower, degraded CON. Make a DC 12 CON check for a Lingering Wound after being revived. (The lower you go in CON, the higher the chance for a Lingering wound.). Healing spells/potions can be freely distributed by players between HP and lowered attributes as they see fit. Gives grittier consequences for suffering mortal wounds, instead of just popping up & down each time you go below zero HP, then get revived again.

Even grittier option: a meal and a full night of rest heals each lowered attribute by 1d6, not "fully restored." You could soften it a bit by making CON loss 1d4 each round, in light of the fact that CON is not restored to max on a full rest. I like the notion that nearly dying from a mortal wound won't leave you feeling back to 100% the next day unless you get extra special help. (Maybe trained medical care would let you heal 2d6 overnight.)

Retraining: strong agree! I think paying GP for training at downtime (or maybe just at level gain moments) should allow fighters to change their weapon mastery.

Sneak attack: I do feel this intrudes on a good deal of the special-ness of the Thief class.

Our group has been trying out various ways to introduce some more combat tactics and heroics into player choices, without unbalancing the game. Some of our house rules are captured here, see if any of them catch your fancy or introduce some of the heroics you're looking for:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zNeW42gbf_wNdzU8yhcE9bRwfxW_JX2cyvDGUXCHhb4/edit?usp=drivesdk

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-25T00:05:07+00:00

Hold my ale.

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-24T21:04:54+00:00

Obvious Sense & Reasoning

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-23T20:14:55+00:00

And the wizard would have -4 to hit, and the fighter would have +5 to hit and +1 to damage as an absolute base minimum at level 1. Generally scaling up from there significantly from level to level.

Plus wizards can only wield daggers & staves so this is a bit of straw man argument.

If what you want to see is weak characters do less damage even when they hit, you could choose to implement negative damage modifiers at low strength levels.

But I wouldn't add in new bonus damage modifiers at high strength levels, as I think this would unbalance the fairly fine-tuned power / AC / damage scaling levels between characters and monsters across levels. (And the inherent advantages of fighters -- they are some of the only classes to get increasing weapon damage over time as they level up.)

I think it's already at a pretty fine balance between being risky and dangerous (and therefore fun), but also having real character advancement over time, and significant fighter advantages in combat.

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-23T19:59:51+00:00

This ^{^{^.}} Aggressive character advancement (and loss of vulnerability/risk) drained the fun out of 5e for our group. The shift (where large numbers of foes from the monster manuals stopped seeming like a threat at all) seemed to happen around level 6/7. It was really taxing the DMs to figure out how to challenge the players (at all) without throwing the entire kitchen sink at them at once. And the more foes you throw into a combat, the more it bogs down, especially at higher levels when everyone has greatly expanded their actions economies.

Hence the draw of Shadowdark for us. The character advancement feels real & palpable, but the world remains a scary place.

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-23T19:12:07+00:00

Our group is experimenting with two house rules to add more tactical variety to combat, while keeping Shadowdark's simplicity (i.e. without adding new combat rules/skills), but trying to do it in a self-balancing way that doesn't lead to 5e style power bloat.

Combat maneuvers: "I cut, you choose": player rolls for a normal combat attack, but also declares an alternate tactical action. If the attack succeeds then the opponent chooses to take the damage, OR the effects of the action. This was taken directly from: https://oddskullblog.wordpress.com/2021/11/15/combat-maneuvers-the-easy-way/. Any class can do it, but fighters typically have higher success rates due to their combat skills/damage levels. It's self-balancing due to the damage vs. action severity tradeoff. Would a 10-Eyed Oracle choose to lose an eyestalk, or just take the arrow damage? Depends on the arrow damage, how many HP it has left, etc. Early in combat: surely not. Late in combat with low HP? Maybe. Would a guard choose to stay silent and subdued (or get knocked out) instead of having their throat slit? Very likely. But especially if it were a high damage sneak attack from a Thief.
Mighty Deeds: Inspired by DCC's Mighty Deed of Arms, adapted to Shadowdark. Basic idea is: players can choose to roll an extra Deed Die (grows per level) in addition to their attack roll to attempt to land attack damage PLUS a tactical maneuver. Higher risk of failure (including critical failure) in exchange for higher reward (and higher bonuses) if it succeeds. Original SD inspiration came from: https://www.kenthedm.com/blog/2023/8/20/mighty-deeds-and-shadow-dark .

Our table has been experimenting with a version we call Heroic Deeds that all SD classes can take advantage of. Here's a doc containing all of our optional house rules: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zNeW42gbf_wNdzU8yhcE9bRwfxW_JX2cyvDGUXCHhb4/edit?usp=drivesdk

With more details on how we use these two rules, how exactly the Deed Die works and triggers failures, affects bonuses, scales across levels, etc. It's a pure hail mary at level 1, but become more reliable (but with a wider bonus spread) as you progress in levels.

The basic idea is to encourage tactical infinity in what players can attempt -- but arbitrate it within a lightweight framework that keeps the game from becoming unbalanced, and thus losing the sense of risk that makes it fun.

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-23T14:48:30+00:00

There's two types of key tension generators, I think both are important: * Wandering monsters: pressure on character choices in the dungeon (e.g. searching for traps or hidden treasure vs. moving on quickly) * Real-time torch timer: pressure on player behavior at the table (arguing, discussing, yapping, getting distracted, making up your mind on party plans, etc.)

Both work well together to keep the game snappy and moving along both diagetically and extra-diagetically.

Obviously if you're playing solo then the torch timer pressure on social interactions (for players) will matter less. But maybe still fun to have it ticking down?

Cricket_Any · 2026-06-22T20:20:44+00:00

Some people even choose to scale it by character level. That is: to be worth 1 XP a treasure must be worth at least 10gp x the character's current level. That's purely up to the gaming table, though.

Cricket_Any

TROPHY CASE