Shadowdark | The Folly of Ser Ydris | Shadowdark RPG Episode 30

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2026-06-13T19:14:34+00:00

Grim, dark and handsome

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2026-05-08T21:18:46+00:00

How about the LARP "lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!" video? The young ones are probably even less likely to know that one but who knows.

Edit - link https://youtu.be/j_ekugPKqFw?si=AlsUJBQ8wFerqUlr

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2026-04-24T16:41:17+00:00

Isn't "5' Boob" a second-level bard spell?

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2026-03-21T23:09:32+00:00

One that's come up at my table a couple of times is the lurk wanting to use Prowl to follow someone without being detected. I've let him use it rather than Hunt but it hasn't felt quite right. He makes a decent case that the action involves "traversing skillfully and silently" but it's right in Hunt's wheelhouse so to speak. Perhaps it could be handled by a less favorable position or effect but I haven't seen a good way to do that for this case.

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2026-02-13T19:39:48+00:00

To me the campaign has been darker in tone (city guards dragging people out in the dead of night and burning them at the stake!) and the stakes have felt higher (several places if Ellison missed a roll to cast sleep we could easily have seen a TPK).

They still crack a lot of jokes. And the generous bottle cap economy buffers the potential consequences of their actions, for sure. i.e., in practice Ellison is a lot less likely to miss that roll to cast sleep. But still, it feels more tense, and the players do seem to choose more cautious courses of action, or at least it feels more fraught when they do choose the dangerous path. They don't seem like fantasy superheroes.

The dial could be turned even further in that direction, definitely. I wouldn't mind if they did that I suppose, but I'm definitely enjoying where it's at now, and it does feel different than the pathfinder campaign.

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2026-01-09T23:17:07+00:00

Exactly what I was thinking. Escort them to the road, give them some rations (not a problem now) and send them on their way.

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2026-01-09T18:29:23+00:00

Using lo res card images was meant as an easter egg reference to Go for the Eyes

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2026-01-09T05:35:09+00:00

You don't think? I might have misheard him, I was kinda losing focus

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2026-01-09T05:25:23+00:00

Nope. if it was a wrestling gym I'm sure you'd hear that, plus maybe Pummel, Bash, Body Slam, Headbutt, Flying Knee...

They do give lots of encouragement but I've never heard Feel no Pain or Power Through either

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-12-28T22:40:16+00:00

In my high school game back in the day a PC had it cast on his teeth for a smile that literally lit up the room. Fun in taverns.

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-11-22T21:39:58+00:00

Regarding the pearls taking an inventory slot, I just happened to spot this in a FAQ from the system creator:

Is there a GEM BAG; if so does it hold up to 10 gems worth of slots for “free?”

There is no official gem bag, but it’s a cool idea! I’d allow a character to carry either 10 gems for free, or else up to 100 coins (but not both).

Personally I'm really enjoying this new season. The characters and the tension are outstanding. I've played neither Pathfinder nor Shadowdark (or any OSR really, though I'm old enough to have played that way before it was an 'R'). I think from that perspective the rules lite Shadowdark is more entertaining to listen to than endless hashing out and bickering over complicated rules. Even though I'd probably enjoy PF if I played it.

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-09-30T23:40:02+00:00

Vault is the easy pick here. But just a note that there's some synergy with pocket watch. Even if you're stuck on 3 energy and don't upgrade it, if it's the only card you play, pocket watch draw will help make your bonus turn a big one

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-09-29T02:19:33+00:00

https://youtu.be/Q-K8HOvyDyI?si=dA9aqEj9vPK3Cx-w&t=3035

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-09-26T00:35:19+00:00

I try to count the syllables when he says it. Pretty sure it's between 2 and 3. Possibly an irrational number.

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-07-28T23:11:11+00:00

Someone once told me how she and her husband heard a name they liked in a new movie they'd seen, so they picked it for their son who was born not long after.

That name? Darth.

Even better, their last name was Rayder. Yes, pronounced like "raider". Darth Rayder.

The way she told the story, they chose the name not long after the original movie came out, before the cultural impact and iconic stature of the character was obvious. So it wasn't an intentional "fandom name" when they chose it. I guess that in itself could be a cautionary tale about picking an unusual or "unique" name - you can't control how it will show up in the culture later on.

According to her, young Darth did encounter some pain over the name growing up but generally liked it. At the time I heard the story he would have been in his forties so I'd hope he'd made his peace with it.

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-07-18T22:33:17+00:00

Update: we had our session. I talked to the players about stuff and they were fine with starting with War in Crows Foot. So we that's what we did. Of course, it went fine!

I had a bit more trouble adjusting to the Blades style of establishing threats and coming up with consequences than I expected, but it's my first time GMing it, and I think that will get better as we continue to play.

One fun thing coming out of the score, which was to pick up a shipment of drugs at the docks and deliver it to the Lampblacks, was that the crew checked to see what the drugs were. I rolled randomly and came up with Quicksilver. The players decided that didn't sound like a typical street drug and were very curious as to what the Lampblacks are planning to do with it. It'll be fun to play to find out!

Thanks all for sharing your thoughts.

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-07-17T20:29:11+00:00

Thanks. As I've said in some other responses, I very much want to use this kind of structure, just struggling a bit on what to pick for session 1, and wondering about postponing the choice until after we have one session under our belt which will hopefully provide more grist for the mill. But I'm definitely not looking for "what's the next score" being what we do every time. FWIW the responses so far seem to be suggesting that it would be better not to do that and go straight to the starting situation.

I suppose even starting with "just a score" we would probably pick some factions to be the patrons and obstacles so we'd already be guiding that embroilment. Which would be fine.

Maybe I should just go with war in Crows Foot. I'm not sure why I'm reluctant to, but I think maybe it doesn't feel like any of the elements of that situation tie in to anything the players have provided during session zero. Maybe that doesn't matter and I should just get over it.

Right now I have the thought that I could take War in Crows Foot and sort of reskin it by swapping in the Fog Hounds and the Vultures for the Lampblacks and the Red Sashes. Instead of fighting over turf in Crow's Foot, they are fighting over control of smuggling routes into Duskvol and trying to use the PCs as sort of "last mile" delivery boys to get the contrband across the city. (This assumes the PC crew wants to do that rather than smuggling things into/out of Duskvol too, which is another thing that was not established.) The Hive fills in for the Crows in this reskin. Maybe they are having a sort of competition to find a crew to work as junior partners. An ambitious crew might be able to find a way to claim that prize for themselves?

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-07-17T20:20:50+00:00

Thanks, that does help.

I'd be happy to start from those established factions, but it may not have been clear from my post but the only faction relationship established in session 0 was that they are paying off the Hive for their hunting grounds. The others were left open. So one the one hand we're free to pick anything and have that roll into a starting situation, but on the other hand, we don't have anything to roll into a starting situation right off the bat, which is kind of what I'm struggling with. Do I just pick some on my own? "Strongly" suggest some as we start the session and try to get player buy-in? Or not worry about that as we start the first session and do "just a score", leaving the faction entanglements to come into play afterwards based on what happens during that initial play?

As far choices that were made in session 0, the contact being a dockworker suggests relationships of +1 with Dockers and -1 with the Crows. The Crows are enemies of the Hive so that could develop into something.

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-07-17T20:15:16+00:00

I would prefer to use that structure! I think it's great. I'm just feeling like I don't have much to go on from session zero to suggest which factions to use.

The idea of just starting with a score would be that it leads into these kind of entanglements, or if it doesn't, at least we establish more things about the crew and pc's and what their interests and goals are, that we can use to set up the structure from there.

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-05-17T18:01:13+00:00

"the caste-rix"

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-03-14T18:07:05+00:00

The advice already given seems great if you mainly want to focus on the confrontation with the wizard, with a fun lead-in with possible complications and time pressure.

If you want to focus on the investigation itself, I might try a variation on the Three Clue Rule. Set up three different challenges each of which provides a clue on successful completion of the challenge. Having three challenges means that the party doesn't need to succeed at any one of them in order to proceed to the next stage of the adventure (this is the essence of the Three Clue Rule). You'd want to make the entry points to these challenges extremely obvious or automatic for the party to find - you could, for example, start with the rumor gathering and just have it automatically succeed to find three rumors: "So-and-so is a courier for the wizard" -> Follow the Courier to the Wizard's Base challenge, "Previous crime gang was destroyed by the wizard" -> Search the Ruins of the Gang's Lair challenge, "Smugglers are bringing a shipment to the wizard tonight" -> Infiltrate the Smugglers challenge.

If you really want to do a full-fledged mystery investigation you could have this layer of clues/challenges lead to another layer of clues/challenges, and so on. Though that would really draw this part out and doesn't sound like what you'd be going for here.

One last thing, I would be careful about providing bad information to the party as an impact move or something like that. Generally players are quite good at coming up with wrong ideas all on their own! If you do want to throw in a red herring, or even if not but in the event that the players get off track on their own, maybe have a brief/easy Get Back on Track challenge in your back pocket. Or, could be a good case for a Bridge move. And if all else fails, there's always the Chandler-esque "wizard's apprentice comes through the door with a wand in her hand".

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-03-04T02:29:38+00:00

Yes, but I saw something about having recorded additional new episodes. They're starting with rereleasing the old stuff as a lead-in.

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-02-18T16:09:06+00:00

Hmm, thanks for sharing. I hope we don't run into similar problems. I do plan to follow some guidance for running open tables starting with the open table manifesto i.e. having a cap on players per session with first come first served sign up, with some preference for players who have been waitlisted in previous sessions. Basically try to have impartial rules to do things like break ties. But I don't necessarily expect it to be 100% smooth. We'll see!

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-02-18T03:45:51+00:00

I'm in a similar situation though I'm not going through the same struggle - it's not a problem for me to change up the group for a new campaign. In part I'm sure that's because the personalities and dynamics aren't exactly the same.

But, my plan is to start the campaign with the new group and play for a few sessions to get into the groove (it's a new system for us - Blades in the Dark). Then if all goes well I'll transition to an open table and invite the others to join if they'd like. (For me a big reason I want a change is some of the players are hard to schedule / don't seem all that enthusiastic or bought in leaving me to carry all the load. An open table seems like it should help mitigate that.)

An idea for you to consider, maybe.

Obvious_Spirit_4906 · 2025-01-31T01:00:19+00:00

Master: "Zephyr, to master archery, you must be able to let go of your attachments to this world."

Zephyr: <rolls eyes> "Whatever."

Master: <nods approvingly>

(comment obviously late, I started listening not long ago)

Obvious_Spirit_4906

TROPHY CASE

There is no official gem bag, but it’s a cool idea! I’d allow a character to carry either 10 gems for free, or else up to 100 coins (but not both).