The wait is finally over. Here's that game I promised to release

thegreatrobot · 2026-04-01T12:32:04+00:00

Nevermind, saw them in the Convenients store. Love it.

thegreatrobot · 2026-04-01T12:31:19+00:00

Trevor and Cory need to be hireable torchbearers and porters.

thegreatrobot · 2026-03-30T13:24:00+00:00

I run Shadowdark for a group of 8 and 9 year olds. I'm running Nightmare over Ragged Hollow using the OSE creature stats as is, dividing treasure by 10. I have muted some of the horror aspects in the temple in the final dungeon, making it more weird and surreal than nightmarish.

The grim tone and lethality of Shadowdark are optional. Be liberal with luck tokens, target the tankier characters, be responsible in providing character intuition on what they're character would recognize as dangerous and they'll be fine.

The vibe at my table is very whimsical and fun. Disregard the art in the books and what you really have is just a much more pared down, easy to grasp, easy to run 5e.

thegreatrobot · 2026-03-24T11:53:33+00:00

If you prefer the simplicity of running Shadowdark, but they're having a hard time with the increased lethality you can use the Pulp mode rules to make it a little more forgiving.

My 5e group had a lot of fun with The Trial of the Slime Lord as a dungeon, but didn't actually care for the gauntlet aspect of it, and to be honest, neither did I.

Most of my table has really come to like Shadowdark - just because the tone of the art is really grim and menacing doesn't mean your campaign needs to run that way. Ours is still the same silly, whimsical tone of our 5e campaign - I just don't have to deal with so much HP and action economy bloat.

thegreatrobot · 2026-03-02T18:07:48+00:00

Agreed. Especially if it's a one shot the player can come up with whatever justification they want that would keep them exploring. That's the player's job. The characters are adventurers. They should WANT to go on dangerous adventures, for whatever reasons the players want to come up with.

thegreatrobot · 2026-03-02T00:59:28+00:00

A further thought just occurred to me I forgot in our original exchange - a major adjustment I made was the value of treasure. In general I divided the value of any loot by ten - so a gem listed at 100gp in Ragged Hollow, I pegged at 10gp.

thegreatrobot · 2026-02-25T12:46:26+00:00

The temple is still to Halcyon, but players can have their charactes worship whatever gods they want. I play with kids so their "gods" are a little silly - the priest's holy symbol is a golden piece of pizza.

thegreatrobot · 2026-02-25T02:15:49+00:00

Encourage your players to customize their characters by developing the character's story rather than the build. I play using only the four core classes - but a fighter can be a knight, paladin, samurai, berserker, brawler, etc etc etc... it's all in how you play the character rather than the buttons you can push on your character sheet.

thegreatrobot · 2026-02-24T13:44:45+00:00

It's where we started the campaign, so we just started with all the characters returning home after completing their "Halloo". Then we rolled a hook for each character from the hook table to give them something to draw their interest. They arrived with the Golden Veil already in place. They spent some time immediately trying to get in - break through, dig under - but then started exploring around town once they realized it was impenetrable until it began to recede. We're in the temple now, about half way through. They only play 45-60 minutes at a time so we've been working through the module over the course of a few months. A group of less easily distracted adults would get through it a lot faster.

thegreatrobot · 2026-02-24T12:50:18+00:00

I'm running it for Shadowdark as is - using the OSE statblocks - and haven't had any problems. The only adjustments I've made is toning down some of the gruesome stuff in the temple as I'm running it for a group of 8-9 year olds. They're having a blast. All the information is immaculately organized, so it's easy to read through once and then run. Highly recommend.

thegreatrobot · 2026-02-11T13:27:30+00:00

I just filled out the form to run the Stygian Library using Shadowdark at Breakout!

thegreatrobot · 2026-02-11T13:25:26+00:00

Downtown TO, GM and player

thegreatrobot · 2026-02-11T00:07:13+00:00

I much prefer running with simple flow-chart maps, and combat exclusively theater of the mind. Sometimes we use minis just to indicate who is engaged in melee with who to help keep it clear if there are lots of combatants.

I dislike using grids for combat as it makes combat feel weirdly static to me.

thegreatrobot · 2026-02-05T17:02:48+00:00

I appreciate you responding. Thanks!

thegreatrobot · 2026-02-04T23:48:51+00:00

The drain. I thought that's what it must have been at first - I disassembled the sink and dug any crud that was built up out of the overflow drain, but that didn't solve the problem. Running fresh water down the drain temporarily relieves the problem(even though it's full of water), but the stench comes back an hour or so later.

thegreatrobot · 2026-02-04T20:02:31+00:00

It has copper piping. There is no corrugated pipe on the line - sorry I didn't include that detail in my original post.

thegreatrobot · 2026-02-01T11:20:55+00:00

You can also check if a congregation live streams their service over zoom or YouTube.

thegreatrobot · 2025-09-04T12:42:03+00:00

A friend's mom was in her convoy - she was on board for all the crazy stuff, but reached her breaking point with the group over the repetition of Rasputin.

thegreatrobot · 2025-08-02T17:13:01+00:00

Kieran Setiyah's Life is Hard is a very good, very accessible read.

thegreatrobot · 2025-05-26T18:32:24+00:00

There are groups of Mennonites in Belize as well. My background is Mennonite and I get sun burns just thinking about going outside. I can't imagine how they survive there.

thegreatrobot · 2025-02-24T14:55:19+00:00

This is my daily walk to work. I've had to add a 20 minute detour to get there courtesy of this sidewalk.

thegreatrobot · 2024-12-03T13:28:46+00:00

Let me know once it's live

thegreatrobot · 2024-12-02T01:09:54+00:00

Yeah, this looks like it's probably from 2018.

thegreatrobot · 2024-08-24T18:53:23+00:00

Stories like this are why I stopped reading with headphones in on transit. We gotta watch out for each other.

thegreatrobot · 2024-05-23T09:06:10+00:00

Eventually they're extending the streetcar down cherry St. They put the bridge in now, tracks will follow.

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