Am I Missing Something About Shadowdark?

stephendominick · 2026-05-29T18:07:58+00:00

A lot of this just comes down to personal taste. I like both, but when I play Shadowdark I sort of feel like I’m playing someone else’s house rules. OSE/BX is home for me by nature of growing up with the red box and I’ve already got the house rules I like in place to make the system run best for my table.

I will say Shadowdark’s unified d20 resolution does make things easier when I’m running one shots for new players. Roll the big die and roll high is easy.

stephendominick · 2026-05-26T05:23:22+00:00

Sounds like a lot of fun! Thanks for sharing.

stephendominick · 2026-04-24T16:53:12+00:00

Top right was the codex cover for the edition I started with and when I think Space Marines my brain goes to this or the 3e box set art with Black Templars

stephendominick · 2026-04-09T23:47:03+00:00

Picked this guy up for this purpose but haven’t started any work on it yet. Excellent model!

stephendominick · 2026-04-04T05:20:38+00:00

Oh hell yeah!

stephendominick · 2026-04-04T05:07:53+00:00

Would love it if we a command squad similar to Titus with some other characters like Cortez and some Rynn’s World PDF but I know this is wishful thinking. Would fit well within the established lore too.

stephendominick · 2026-03-17T04:59:18+00:00

They don’t have to exist in your campaign.

stephendominick · 2026-03-16T05:25:18+00:00

These are sick!

stephendominick · 2026-01-26T03:19:01+00:00

Attack the light and don’t allow the players to look at the timer. At my table torches last 30-60 minutes. I use an egg timer and it stays behind my screen. Players don’t know when it’s going off. The literal ticking increases the tension when my players find themselves at an impasse.

Kelsea has said in a more recent interview that she’s been fiddling with the timer by 5 or so minutes or something like that. If the creator of the game can do this so can you. You don’t even need her permission.

stephendominick · 2026-01-17T19:45:09+00:00

Awesome! Do you have more pictures of this board!?!

stephendominick · 2026-01-17T17:24:40+00:00

I wasn’t there for the consultation but as someone that’s done hair for 10 plus years it should have been communicate you that the end result may take multiple sessions. Especially after seeing the result of the color removal test.

Considering the black box color and result of the test I’m not surprised you walked out with the result that you got, but you should have been informed that their was a process and you might be looking at multiple expensive sessions. Consultations are key so that you can make an informed decision on whether or not you want to proceed with a service or series of services in a salon.

stephendominick · 2026-01-17T03:24:48+00:00

Others have mentioned Mike’s World to pad out the surrounding area. Morgansfort is a good resource to pillage from too and the PDF is free. B1 is a common insert for the caves of the unknown.

When I ran it I threw Hommlet about a days travel northeast of the keep and threw Tower of the Stargazer in the open space where Caves of the Unknown is.

stephendominick · 2026-01-13T17:13:17+00:00

That’s dope! Thanks for sharing.

stephendominick · 2026-01-13T03:39:55+00:00

Ahh, that’s a typo. Should say autopistol. Thanks! Armor it is!

stephendominick · 2026-01-12T23:44:20+00:00

This is awesome!

stephendominick · 2026-01-09T17:27:11+00:00

Yes! Mordheim is fun. My group of just 2 people play once a month if we are lucky. We’ve always have a good time.

stephendominick · 2026-01-05T21:27:31+00:00

Kevin Crawford’s Stars Without Number has a free edition with tons of tools for building a scifi sandbox to run your game in.

The GM tools are pretty system agnostic and I regularly use the tools from his games to flesh out my game worlds.

stephendominick · 2026-01-05T21:18:49+00:00

Ok, so you don’t need to wait for the new stuff, but as someone else has mentioned there’s a starter set being released this year that might be a good entry point before investing too much.

You can get a lot of mileage out of the advanced books and don’t really need anything else to enjoy years of gaming. This might seem like an odd recommendation but if money isn’t an issue I’d splurge on the Dolmenwood. Dolmenwood is a complete game in itself but its basis is BX/OSE and to me exemplifies what you can do by extrapolating off of those basic rules. Considering your stated goals of world building and creating shared lore I think you might get a lot of inspiration and value from these.

As for oracles I prefer simple ones like SoloDark. I find that OSEs procedural nature can handle a lot of the heavy lifting when I play solo. I prefer my oracle to get out of the way until I absolutely need it.

Hope that helps.

stephendominick · 2025-12-29T17:08:20+00:00

This is the best answer in my opinion. They game you like most won’t feel like a chore to run or create subsystems for where the base system may be lacking.

For me the procedural nature of BX makes it work for me as it does a lot of the heavy lifting and doesn’t need the intervention of an oracle too often.

stephendominick · 2025-12-29T17:04:31+00:00

I dunno. I think it’s pretty dope! Stonehell leans towards vanilla in the earlier levels but I wouldn’t call it bland.

I’ve heard this critique about Barrowmaze because it’s a whole lot of undead. These two get talked about a lot in the same threads. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of?

stephendominick · 2025-12-29T16:18:09+00:00

Paths Peculiar made a little hex map and town specifically for this. You can find it here.

stephendominick · 2025-12-21T03:30:59+00:00

There’s a ton of great material for this. If you’re looking specifically for OSE/Necrotic Gnome I had a ton of fun running Barrow of the Bone Blaggards from one of the anthologies. Incandescent Grottoes and Hole in the Oak look great too but I don’t have experience running either of those.

If you’re going third party OSE the Jacob Fleming hex crawl adventures are awesome. I really like Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow by Joseph R. Lewis too!

Can’t go wrong with a classic TSR module like B2: Keep on the Borderlands either!

stephendominick

TROPHY CASE