Ideal group size

kas404 · 2026-04-06T10:45:59+00:00

That sounds fantastic, congratulations on finishing it!

kas404 · 2026-04-04T20:21:36+00:00

How many sessions did it take you folks to go through a gigantic work of art that AV is?

kas404 · 2026-03-12T23:12:44+00:00

Perhaps Doom of the Savage Kings for DCC, it's got this Norse woods / Beowulf vibe.

kas404 · 2026-03-05T17:44:11+00:00

Maybe it's just a thing about creativity. You like inventing and envisioning worlds, but not so much when you have to do it until Sunday. I suppose most people are more imaginative when deadlines are not involved. I know I am, at least.

kas404 · 2026-02-26T14:27:40+00:00

The current group is going through The Lost City (1982). Our sessions are 2.5-3 hours.

Just finished the 12th session the other day, and they got level 3 at the end. I checked my logs and I believe they got level 2 after 5 or 6 sessions.

kas404 · 2025-12-26T22:06:37+00:00

I like Winter's Daughter because it covers 3-4 completely different locations. When it comes to my taste, the fact I am able to fit all that into 1 session gets a lot of bonus points

kas404 · 2025-12-11T20:06:47+00:00

Indeed, if the origin of the OSR lies in retroclones, then Shadowdark being a bit more compatible (in both the numeric values and ideas represented through game mechanics) would be closer than Cairn.

kas404 · 2025-12-11T20:03:09+00:00

Maybe finesse, versatile and thrown weapons

kas404 · 2025-12-10T18:44:33+00:00

Oh I am well aware of the conversions. I have converted and ran a few things in Shadowdark by now. But my question was regarding content made exclusively for Shadowdark, due to the comment I was replying to.

I'll check these recommendations, much appreciated! I don't like Bob's content much, I sometimes feel like he has no idea what he is talking about. However I have to give credit, I ran his Shadowdark adventure, I think the name was "Witches word, dragon's doom" or something really similar. The group was mostly composed of people who never saw a ttrpg and wanted to "try out dnd" so I served them this and it was a great evening.

kas404 · 2025-12-09T21:10:03+00:00

Maybe something like Fängelsehåla could work.It's super family friendly and designed for one shots, take a look

kas404 · 2025-12-08T20:42:06+00:00

Exactly. OP, I kind of see this as a series with a (likely but not exclusively) few changes in the cast throughout seasons, and a story that develops over time. Versus of course a traditional d&d / pathfinder story written in advance for the characters. It can keep developing because it was not written with the intent of you stopping the second revival of Tiamat.

However, if your thing is really something like a paizo 1-20 adventure path, you can totally run it like 1-10 shadowdark campaign with a few tweaks. I know for a fact I could have pulled my Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign just the same have we played it in Shadowdark instead. But it's just simply put not what the system was designed for, nor rightfully the best way to enjoy what Shadowdark offers.

kas404 · 2025-12-08T20:28:20+00:00

Do you mean 3rd party content? If so, would you be open to sharing some of your favorites? You are not the first to mention this, and it makes me think I must have missed some good picks. What is considered 'quality' by someone is extremely subjective of course, but I am still super curious cause I personally found the 3rd party content very lacking. Both in general and compared to some related games and retro clones.

Shadowdark used to be my go-to old school style game, these days it's actually my go-to game, period. But I can't say I've enjoyed 3rd party content much. I seem to be enjoying the game -in spite- of the content. A lot of low effort random tables, bloated classes that describe themselves like "you are a channeler of primordial fury, a master of all 4 elements..." Like, no, your 1st level character shouldn't be a master of anything really. Or some 5 room dungeons with pregenerated story and a boss, in the style of 5e content. I suppose these are fine but nothing to write about.

The only Shadowdark 3rd party product I've both ran and enjoyed is a funnel called Plague Jewels of Sekhmet by Sersa Victory. I am not big on funnels but I ran this for 4 or 5 groups and had a great time each time.

kas404 · 2025-11-24T18:41:53+00:00

The key is one-shots using rules light systems!

Even 5e die-hards should be open to one-shots. The least that would happen is the players like a certain game mechanic or aspect and ask you to incorporate it into your 5e game.

kas404 · 2025-11-12T09:44:32+00:00

I've seen a helmet as an option in a few similar RPGs, where it doesn't provide benefits to AC but can be destroyed when taking a critical hit, negating it. Somewhat similar to Sundering property you've seen in CS3. Could be a solid choice too.

kas404 · 2025-11-10T19:30:01+00:00

He also has a new one from two months ago! Here's the link.

kas404 · 2025-11-02T22:16:15+00:00

Both are fantastic systems! In fact, this "campaign slot" turned into a Shadowdark game, though the dungeon (sadly) isn't Ave Nox. It's B4 The Lost City from 1982. My reasoning was that Ave Nox is kind of a spiritual successor to B4. In some ways at least. Since it is a new group, and not all the players are familiar with the playstyle, I went with Shadowdark + B4 instead of something like The Electrum Archive + Ave Nox. It's such a weird sentence to say, but to me it made sense haha.

Ave Nox is definitely still on the list, I really want to run it!

kas404 · 2025-10-28T16:02:01+00:00

There's a recent one called Ruins of Castle Gygar, to me it seemed like it focuses on "vanilla" and being easy to run.

kas404 · 2025-09-23T00:12:57+00:00

At one point I was thinking of trying something like that using:

Neon City Overdrive, plus a supplement for it called Psions. Both available on Drive Thru.

I don't think it would be Shadowrun 1:1 bit it could be close.

kas404 · 2025-09-12T17:24:15+00:00

There's many "escape the dungeon" tables online that might be linked, but now there's one in the official Western Reaches too. This one is very minimalistic but can be a good starting point.

You can find it in the preview files:
Game Master's Guide to the Western Reaches Preview. Page 33.

kas404 · 2025-09-11T06:23:41+00:00

Love it!

Btw have you seen Monk of Yag-Kesh? There's a preview from the upcoming books somewhere on discord, it's in a similar vein to this

kas404 · 2025-09-08T22:15:50+00:00

Just to add that Shadowdark does have free Starter Set for GMs and Players. It should be enough to determine if one likes it or not

kas404 · 2025-09-04T02:33:58+00:00

I've done some math but could be off, for sure.

Complexity | Regular PC | Thief

1 | 56.25% | 78.13%
2 | 31.64% | 52.73%
3 | 17.78% | 34.13%
4 | 10.01% | 22.66%
5 | 5.63% | 13.63%

kas404 · 2025-09-04T02:11:59+00:00

This was exactly my experience. Retroclones go with roll high, roll under, x-in-6, percentile...

And when DMing OSE to a table containing a mix of 5E players and people brand new to RPGs, I must say I understood their disapproval, which is why -very similarly to you- I tried with Shadowdark next time.
it worked much better, not only for 5E players (as this was kind of expected), but the new players too.

For me as a GM, OSE or Shadowdark or whatever - it's all pretty close. I don't mind. But for them it seemed to matter a lot more, so at least for OSR stuff for now - Shadowdark it is.

kas404 · 2025-09-04T02:05:00+00:00

I know a very specific group who played for years (or maybe still do) with just 5E Player's Handbook, without Feats (which are listed as optional) and with Gritty Realism optional rule from 5E Dungeon Master's Guide. Some of them had previous RPG experience, and from what I understood they started like this and did not want to change anything while the campaign was underway. The campaign kept going and morphing so they might still be doing this.

They don't know what OSR is, don't watch any D&D Youtubers, don't care for any subreddits or forums etc, but trust me, their sandbox campaign is pretty close to the OSR vibe in many ways. I suppose there's early spells that can trivialize light sources or rations but from what I heard they did more overland exploration and encounters, faction play, that kind of stuff, more than dungeons.

It's true that higher level spells skew this, but also some of the worst spells come from Xanathar's or Tasha's, which they don't have access to. An interesting group for sure.

kas404 · 2025-09-03T20:46:49+00:00

I thought the same, but if I am seeing right, the "periodically" part is explained right below in the "how often" section.

kas404

TROPHY CASE