04/22/2024

Earlier this month, I got a chance to run a game of Shadowdark for my wife, my daughter, and her boyfriend. We went through a dungeon that I designed using the Shadowdark generator along with the dungeon generator in Five Torches Deep.

I made the dungeon in the one-page style. I printed out about 20 pre-generated characters. You can see the dungeon below.

The Good: The simple rules and character sheets were easy to follow. The simple monster stats made it easy to run the combats. The one-page format had everything there without having to flip through pages or books to find information. I had handouts for the magic items so the players could see what they had easily.

The Bad: The lower hit points did mean that 2 of the starting characters were killed during the adventure. I did forget to have the player roll the 1d4 when they went down to 0HP so that character might have survived the encounter with the ghoul (my bad).

I enjoyed the game and would play it again in a heartbeat. I would like to see how it runs for a campaign where the characters need carousing to gain XP to level up. I would also like to see how the character develops using the Talents gained at higher levels.

Keep on gaming!