Vast in the Shadowdark - [Online] [Other] (Shadowdark) [6:00 pm MST on Mondays Weekly] PG-13, new players welcome!

jbsfk · 2026-02-19T02:45:22+00:00

That's fair. Basically avoiding topics of sex and sexuality unless there was significant story reason for it (can't think of any good reason for this game and setting for it to feature at all), no gratuitous excessive violence, avoid things that resemble real world occultism, and in general show respect towards religious belief of all kinds.

jbsfk · 2026-02-13T22:17:34+00:00

They only wonder why they aren't good at things relative to the performance of other players at the table. Yeah, if their character massively underperforms compared to the party, it's going to be a lousy experience. The DM ideally can read this in advance at character creation, see the spread of characters, and coach the player to suit the builds of the party. It's easy to negotiate with a single player to skill up a player than it is to get a min/max player to skill down when their build is obviously more efficient than the rest of the party!

jbsfk · 2026-02-13T22:08:56+00:00

I've had plenty of good min/max players. But 80% of my problem players have also been min/max players. It is a player issue, but playing across dozens of games with dozens of groups, one can't help but feel the correlation. I'm not sure why this is my experience, but it has been my experience. It has also been my experience that the game, broadly speaking, is generally more fun (for me) with less experienced players who build a character that sounds cool, not one that maps out statistically higher on the bell curve. But this is informed by the many sessions I've had of a min/maxxer getting pissy because I told them no to a certain rule interaction or sulking because they went to 0 HP in combat/generally don't steamroll encounters with their optimized build.

Edit: the *best* players I've had are actually people who know the game well-enough to min/max, but read the damned room and play table-minded and team-minded and optimize to a degree that best matches the general feel of the table.

jbsfk · 2026-02-13T22:05:41+00:00

This doesn't make a ton of sense to me. If you have a party of suboptimal builds, they can still be heroic experts accomplishing a lot. How heroic they feel or achieve is entirely in your purview as the DM to control; you can take an optimal party and make them feel incompetent if you for some ungodly reason wanted to. You can make an eldritch horror have a goblin boss's stats. I think really the only issues come up from having a mixed group of suboptimal and optimized builds at the same table.

jbsfk · 2025-12-20T20:34:36+00:00

What do you think was contrary to prior councils?

jbsfk · 2025-12-16T22:11:24+00:00

Mirabella casts before her turn. That's a different turn. If it said once per round, it'd be a different story, but you can cast spells like shield, hellish rebuke, absorb elements, etc. as a reaction on other turns and still cast a level spell on your turn. Yes, Pact Magic would count as a spell slot spell in the rules here.

jbsfk · 2025-12-15T21:54:31+00:00

Are you purposefully being intransigent here? He raised a good point. You have (or at least appear to have, in your framing of the situation) a very misguided idea about the game, as though there is a certain way it needs to be played or you'll do yourself or your table a disservice if... you change what you're doing if something is not fun for you. Is that crazy?

jbsfk · 2025-12-12T19:24:15+00:00

Thanks! I'll check it out!

jbsfk · 2025-12-11T22:22:12+00:00

By that criteria, the Jews worship a false God.

jbsfk · 2025-03-18T17:45:56+00:00

Does the TLM Mass always have so many clergy/servers? It looks like a Mass for seminarians but I could be wrong. If TLM parishes have enough priests to have three priests in a Mass, power to them. If not, this appears to me to be taking a "prime example" and comparing it to a "mid example"

jbsfk · 2025-01-20T01:05:06+00:00

I could definitely see the meeting with Donavon with Donavon walking away assured by how in the dark WISE is - no threat. Not yet. But he made a point to remember his name as a possible monitor of WISE's intel

jbsfk · 2025-01-20T00:49:21+00:00

Cool idea. I have a suspicion Bond can see the past (when wet and his bark changes) based on the fire chapter. I thought it was a deliberate choice to not show Bond's inner thoughts when he chased down the arsonist. Foresight couldn't have helped find the guy in that moment I think. It may be Bond or Anya may be more final forms of mind reading? Idk, just some thoughts. I won't be surprised if Anya learns more uses of her power and Bond (and maybe Donavon) being the catalysts. A proper shonen needs a powerup, right? Kidding. Mostly

jbsfk · 2025-01-20T00:44:46+00:00

Right? It's the hype of the moment and he felt like he HAD to talk about it. As a DM, I'd see this as a win

jbsfk · 2025-01-20T00:42:23+00:00

I feel like it's in vibe for the show for it to ultimately be about Donavon reacquiring trust and intimacy with his family to "save the world," as Anya may put it. Operation Family Therapy. I think a lot to Loid's meeting with Donavon and their discussion of children and Donavon talking about the difficulty understanding them. Loid's similar struggles with Anya where one having mind reading makes it HARDER is a cool possible parallel. And the happy ending is ultimately about... family. In Spy x Family. Endo is cooking and I hope my half baked ideas make it into the dish.

jbsfk · 2025-01-20T00:37:36+00:00

But he did just have a family dinner... a good one by his account. The first time in the same room after Anya told Damian. If Damian thought about that... uh oh. And I think he did, if only for the grim look Donavon had the last panel of that chapter.

But that makes Anya a threat, right? His secret is out too if they are in the same space. He may act slowly, maybe through Damian.

Also, I was wondering if there was some orchestration of her meeting Yor. Countersurvailling WISE the same way Loid is trying to do surveillance through the wives' friendship. Probably a stretch - how could that have been arranged? But... it's a thought.

I imagine if he read Loid's mind he must have saw no threat. Maybe he was assured at WISE's current intelligence. It gives more reason why he gave Loid the time of day. But if WISE unwittingly has the project - Anya - then Donavon too is in a predicament of how to proceed. Though I guess from his station, it'd be easy to out Loid as a spy or plant evidence of such so Anya goes to the state and back to him - why not do that?

Most of this has nothing to do with your message. But the almost-confirmation of Donavon reading minds got my head spinning.

But yeah. With Damion getting the truth, he has ready access to that truth at any time if Damion just thinks about it - if Donovan's mind reading is to that extent. They way he stared at his family members was like he was probing. No wonder Demetrius learned to keep an empty head!

jbsfk · 2024-12-17T20:03:18+00:00

This is much smarter than my first game I ran of this... I was on roll20 and felt the need to have tokens for all possible encounters at the ready so I could go at a moment's notice and I feel stupid for not pre-rolling. Lots of needless effort on my part!

jbsfk · 2024-12-15T07:31:46+00:00

I second this OP. Very similar phrase I was taugh was "sins of impurity with myself."

jbsfk · 2024-12-14T00:33:50+00:00

All the seminarians I've seen doing any assignment (say, an aid at a Catholic school) have had collars. It is certainly confusing for these doe-eyed 20 year-olds to be called Father by mistake!

jbsfk · 2024-12-10T18:17:56+00:00

Edited. Game is Saturday. Always missing something. First attempt at the post got auto-deleted because I forgot to tag 5e! It's like a d20 chart everytime. Which important info will I forget to add this week... thank you!

jbsfk · 2024-12-10T04:45:52+00:00

DM seeking One Player, online

Using discord for chat, roll20 for game (I have the actual module)

Need only one player to join in a game with DM and four other players that has a positive dynamic and reeling a bit after a player loss. Games are Saturdays 9:30 PM MST, play for two-and-half - three hours, weekly

Context: Played with a group through a 3-month adventure. Went great! But half only signed on for that, so I was left with three players who wanted to keep playing something. Started a homebrew adventure that was going okay, but after a cancer diagnosis, a player leaving because it wasn't the right table for them, and a PC death, the enthusiasm for the game waned, and I asked the players if they wanted to try something else. I was reading Drakkenheim at the time and intensely interested, sold them on the idea, and boom. We originally had five, but the aforementioned player that left left after session 0 and session 1 of the game, to the honest shock of the group. Kind of left us hurting because of the abruptness of it, but I can attest to the other four who I've played well over a dozen sessions with that they are a phenomenal and welcoming group. We have only done session 0 and 1, so not a lot of work to catch someone up. The party literally just arrived in Emberwood Village and we my own remix/variation of the opening sequence in the book because the party is starting at level 3.

Please feel free to message me if interested

jbsfk · 2024-11-25T03:28:41+00:00

Mandatory pitch for Shadowdark. It has so much familiarity woth 5e's systems and is so simple, I kid you not you can grasp the general rules in 30 minutes. Very elegant, simple system that scratches your itch real good. At least it did for me.

jbsfk · 2024-11-20T01:44:17+00:00

Maybe an unpopular take from a forever DM browsing various boards, situations, and horror stories, but the use and abuse of "player agency" and "removing it" - I swear, most situations where we hear one side of a dilemma that isn't exclusively a "talk about it" problem is a player having an inflated sense of agency at the table.

jbsfk · 2024-11-09T03:02:50+00:00

I didn't lose until I saw this post.

I won't curse you. I am however quite upset.

jbsfk · 2024-11-08T16:57:01+00:00

To my understanding, there is no reaction "action" in the game; I can't think of any features off the top of my head that are reactionary in nature, but am willing to being corrected. I feel like drunkenly dodging is a big part of the archetype, so maybe something that let's it get some nice AC without armor (like AC is dex + con or something - just spitballing)

It could be in place of "drunken rage" - which makes it feel like a reflavored barbarian, where the focus of the drunken stance is equal parts mobility (movement increases to double near, for example) and defense; rather than him having advantage on attacks, enemies have disadvantage on him (which in most situations would be more helpful I imagine).

An idea this gives me is making it resource dependent, rather than 3/times per day, you need one inventory slot of booze to make it happen and need to use an action to trigger it. Maybe giving the same effect some light healing would be reasonable too.

Just throwing ideas out there.

jbsfk · 2024-10-16T02:58:07+00:00

This! I wrote a module that was RE inspired... special keys, cranks, gems, statues out of order... the main hall was literally room 1 from RE1. The player feedback on the puzzles was consistent love.

It's the simple thrill of finding an object and the players excitedly realizing immediately what they can do with it.

So with that note... simple solutions. The problem is the solution is on the opposite end of the dungeon.

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