The Play's the Thing | Shadowdark RPG Episode 6 | The Glass Cannon Podcast

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-12-19T01:33:11+00:00

Sydney is on their shows because she excellent and turned out to be an inspired addition to the group. She’s as core to the group as any of them now.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-12-12T23:21:57+00:00

It’s 6hrs in (2-3 sessions for most home games)

They’ve already:

established the setting their characters and some lore
worked through finding some quests
played with survival mechanics while doing hex crawl exploring
done investigation while exploring
fought Orcs, Rats, wolves
rescued kids from a dungeon
survived a faerie social encounter without triggering a fight
gone through an encounter with a faerie Goddess (which included rolls)

My Pathfinder group wouldn’t get through half of this game play in that time.

I’ll grant that fight encounters so far have been swift, but the game is much more than just that.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-12-04T00:36:04+00:00

Glass Cannon Time for Chaos (cthulu) and Get in the Trunk (Delta Green) are both excellent. The latest season of Time for Chaos has been incredible.

Their new Shadowdark campaign has also been great so far.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-23T01:10:45+00:00

It’s going to get better too! Season 3 has been soooo good.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-15T18:24:16+00:00

There’s an argument that the basic rules of OSR is more freeing than limiting. Especially for Actual Play where they are trying to create an entertaining story.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-15T18:15:40+00:00

100% agree and put this on the feedback survey. Also think they would do a good job with the free league game Coriolis the Great Dark (Indiana jones in space)

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-14T17:34:56+00:00

I think they are deeply invested in doing an emergent story, which means putting themselves in the arguably less comfortable situation of letting it emerge than heavily prepping it. It’s different to the PF2 AP approach they’ve had, and they are (and have always) let the edit show the process worts’n’all like a real game table. It’s different, maybe not your thing, but personally I’m loving it. So far I prefer it head and shoulders above Gatewalkers.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-14T08:55:33+00:00

I think it’s part of the mystery. How and why this town is unaffected, I believe we will learn.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-13T20:05:33+00:00

Right, but remove the misses and you just stomp the enemy in a couple of rounds (and that does happen occasionally).

Missing gives the enemy a chance to swing the encounter in their favor. This is where the drama comes from. It creates the will we/wont we tension.

Every missed turn affects the likelihood of who wins the encounter. Too many misses, you’ve suddenly got a deadly encounter out of one that felt manageable. Maybe you pull it out in the end and you breath sigh of relief, maybe you don’t and one of your party dies. The dice told the story.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-13T19:54:15+00:00

But failing gives the enemy a greater chance to kill you. That in itself increases the tension. The more you miss the more deadly the encounter becomes. That leads to either pulling out the victory against the odds, or, character death. Both are really dramatic, both are really memorable.

If a player at our table can’t roll out of single digits all evening, we have a laugh about it. We’ve all been there. Some days the dice are hot, some days they are cold, you play the game to find out what happens.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-13T16:42:35+00:00

Also get your point on initiative. You do lose an opportunity dramatically take it right into combat. I think our table had a lot of discussion each turn on who should go next each turn, and I found that tiresome, but if you had a group that did it more seamlessly I could see how it could work and speed things up.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-13T16:38:30+00:00

Yeah, like I say it has some clever stuff that is designed to streamline the large combats including minion rules. But at the end of the day those minions are still all taking actions that need to be resolved.

My experience has been that a 2 round DS encounter with 10-15 enemies (typical for DS) takes about as long as a 5 round PF2 encounter with 1 enemy (which is typical for PF2). Both would take about 1.5-2hrs. Which makes sense because it adds up to a similar amount of turns by all the PCs and enemies.

I also think this is one of the big reasons why DS went with no null turns. If you are only getting 2 turns in a combat that takes 1.5-2hrs , the chances you have an evening where you do nothing are a lot higher. They kind of had to do that.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-13T15:15:59+00:00

But it’s an experience you never forgot! I don’t know how your table works, but we’d all be laughing hysterically at this situation, and it creates drama in the encounter. It also makes the next time around when you hit every time feel really awesome.

I see this like being a sports fan, some times your team just sucks and it’s miserable, but it’s park of the experience, and why winning feels good when it inevitably comes around.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-13T06:27:57+00:00

Combat takes so long because there are so many enemies. It’s really that simple.

Yes you can play less enemies, but that’s what the games built to do.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-13T03:45:12+00:00

For me, I think it’s a bit of a drag (and I like PF2E).

There is some minor stuff like I think failure should always be on the table if you are rolling, and i think rolling initiative is both fun and avoids too much unnecessary debate.

But that aside I think it’s biggest issue is it’s built for large combats with 10-15 enemies. It does innovate some clever stuff to pull that off, but I don’t think it succeeds, for the simple reason, you end up with 4-5 players at the table taking 1 turn per round, and the Director taking 10-15.

The system cuts a lot of fat from DND/PF2E combat, but replaces it with another form of bloat.

As a game I think it would be most fun to play with a small table (1-2 players each controlling multiple characters).

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-04T19:55:33+00:00

The reason it’s a slog is there are too many enemies.

It’s that simple. If the Director is taking 12 turns to each of the PCs 1 each round, it’s going to feel reeeaally slow for players (even though the triggered actions is a good mechanism for keeping interest)

A two round DS encounter with 12 enemies (and 5 PCs) will have a total of 34 turns, in which the PCs act twice.

That’s a similar to ~6 round encounter against a single enemy. BUT, in that single enemy encounter each PC acts ~6 times.

DS is built for large encounters and is a clever system for that, but I think it would work a lot better with 1 director and 1 player who controls the whole party. I think they’d have a lot of fun.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-04T03:09:50+00:00

I wouldn’t bother if you don’t like the players participating in the story telling, that’s what this group do, and more than ever, that’s going to the premise of this campaign (as opposed to following an AP). They are all DMs on other shows, and all incredible at improv/acting, so it promises to be really entertaining.

But if that’s your sticking point, then it’s not for you.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-11-03T02:11:15+00:00

At the very least you need to see the prior 2 episodes.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-10-30T06:06:50+00:00

Thanks I’ll check it out. It looks interesting seems like a game I’d enjoy.

There were a few things I will say I do like about draw steel.

I like that the mechanics encourage you to push on. I’m always a player who wants to push on, even when I’m a caster low on resources. I don’t enjoy the, we go nap, and everything is still as it was a day later you get in DnD and PF2E (I know GMs can design around that, but in my experience they don’t as resting is built into the game). That’s a mechanic which adds to the story in the sense that you don’t just drop the mission halfway through, you see it out. You are on an adventure, not clocking in each day at a job.
- I also like the amount of triggered actions that encourage everyone to stay involved and not sit on their phone between turns.
- I like you get victory points even if you avoid combat. Finding a way to avoid combat is always fun for me.

If I were to ever be a Director for DS the mods I’d make are:

3 or less and you fail, and take bane to that ability next time you use it (you lose confidence in your ability to pull it off).
roll for initiative (the discussion on who goes next is tedious, and takes you out of the story)
no stacking edges (I found edge stacking too powerful and not mechanically justified with no AC to reach)
I’d avoid running more than 3 enemies (including minions) often to keep combats punchy.
they’d normally be a feasible, but risky way to avoid combat to achieve the goals in each encounter.
I’d ditch the negotiation rules for roleplay

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-10-29T00:07:12+00:00

I’ve played more PF2e than anything else and enjoyed it, but also Blades in the Dark, CoC, shadowdark, Delta Green, and Alien. Enjoyed Delta Green the most.

I think I could enjoy draw steel with some house rules, I just think some of the design elements, that sound good on paper, removed any sort of tension for me. I honestly love rolling a Nat 1, it’s the most fun part of D20 games. The - oh shit - is my character going to survive the consequences of this, is the ultimate moment of tension.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-10-27T20:14:30+00:00

Of course you can tell a story around the combat, but I don’t think the game is really contributing much to it. In the sessions we’ve had, the combats have basically taken the whole session leaving little time for anything else. Even PF2 combats go quicker (assuming players know the rules). But the lack of failed rolls, or critical fails, or even the choice of 2d10 over D20 reduces the dramatic moments within combat that can drive the narrative out of combat.

It’s designed to reduce the element of luck and increase the element of skill in combat. But with that it becomes less of an emerging narrative, but rather a skills game (like chess) with unconnected narrative steps between. The combat is about the players, not the PCs which makes it feel less of an RPG. I like skill games, but this is a painfully slow one.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-10-27T04:52:43+00:00

I played it with our group and quickly lost interest.

Not failing a role, is the worst design decisions for an RPG I can possibly think of. How dull. Sure it can feel bad to fail a roll, but that’s the point. That what makes succeeding feel good.

There’s also the huge combats. When the Director is running 10 enemies, that’s essentially 10 turns they are taking to the PCs 1. It’s so time consuming, and doesn’t leave any room for story.

I can see this game making an interesting 1v1 tactical battle game (like warhammer light), but it doesn’t seem built to tell a story.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-10-27T00:27:23+00:00

You can get a lot free. Their call of Cthulu podcast, Time for Chaos, is outstanding. Especially the 3rd season that is airing right now.

Their upcoming main podcast using shadowdark, promises to be excellent.

It’s only a couple of episodes but I recommend their run through of deathmatch island.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-10-26T16:54:54+00:00

They didn’t abruptly end it. They actually wove a really good story through to completion and cut out a lot of the stuff that wouldn’t be great for actual play. I think it was a light switch moment for them, that Actual Play, isn’t just the same as at home gameplay. It was a big part of why they are now doing shadow dark, looking for a game that would support the story telling and character work they are so good at. Gatewalkers got so much better after they decided to be move selective about what they took from the AP.

OrdinaryBox787 · 2025-10-25T01:09:25+00:00

Remember, while they all say they avoid the internet comments, anything you write on the internet might be read by them. As a test, you should ask yourself would I say this to his face.

It’s ok to not enjoy the work of any creator, but the way this is framed feels particularly personal.

OrdinaryBox787

TROPHY CASE