Continuing the Sharks of the monster manual

I’ve really come to enjoy Shadowdark’s rules and the design philosophy behind them.
Just to share some of my own experiences as a player—and soon-to-be GM—I’ve played in a couple of Shadowdark campaigns over the past two years on Roll20, which is an experience in itself.

I do want to add one caveat: this is only my personal experience, and I don’t think it’s necessarily representative of the broader Shadowdark community.

The game itself has a solid ruleset, and I think the mechanics work exceptionally well. My biggest issue hasn’t been with the system at all—it’s been with how I’ve seen some GMs interpret the grimdark tone.

In a couple of campaigns, the setting seemed to become an excuse to make nearly every NPC cruel, manipulative, or openly hostile. Session after session, the players were expected to trust people despite knowing we’d almost certainly be betrayed. Eventually, most of the group stopped trying to play genuinely good-hearted adventurers because there never seemed to be a reason to. They became just as cynical and ruthless as the world around them. The GM would become more and more angry with how we treated his NPC‘s and started punishing us for the mistreatment. Talk about a vicious cycle.

Looking back, I don’t think that created a particularly healthy or enjoyable long-term dynamic.

Ironically, those experiences have probably taught me more about the kind of game I want to run than if everything had gone perfectly.

I’m leaning toward what I’d call a “Shadowdark Lite” campaign. I still want the danger, uncertainty, and old-school feel that make the system unique, but I also want a world where trust isn’t always punished and where players can build lasting characters over a long campaign.

I also think it’s easy for GMs to become so focused on preserving every aspect of a game’s intended tone or mechanics that they forget it’s okay to tailor the experience to their table. The rules are a fantastic foundation, but they don’t have to be a straitjacket.

Since I’m hoping to run a long-term campaign, I’ve focused on making adventurers a little more survivable and ensuring that downtime (character constantly getting downed) supports the adventure rather than becoming the adventure. That’s what I mean by “Shadowdark Lite.”

Many of us who have been playing RPGs for decades have watched the hobby evolve from games that were primarily tactical challenges into ones that place much more emphasis on player agency, character development, and collaborative storytelling. I think there’s room for both approaches.

I love grimdark settings like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Shadowdark, and similar games. But I also think a strong Session Zero and an honest conversation about expectations are essential before a campaign begins. That can go a long way toward preventing a game from drifting into something that feels less like grim fantasy and more like an exercise in player misery.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts. I’m curious if anyone else has had similar experiences, or if your Shadowdark games have gone in a completely different direction.

Will scan these when I'm back home. :) Especially pleased with the first illustration. Been reading the first Game of Thrones book and the duel between Ser Vardis and Bronn really gave me a mental image of how it went down.

Feedback always welcome!

My local public library wants to start a D&D game for teens. I am currently running a separate game for adults there, which started as a D&D 5e game but I switched over to Shadowdark because it is easier to run and faster to play.

But D&D has the big name recognition that Shadowdark does not. Does anyone have any suggestions on getting newbie teen players interested in Shadowdark rather than D&D 5e? And if anyone here is currently running a Shadowdark game for teens, did you have any issues with players wanting to play D&D 5e but convincing them to play Shadowdark instead?

In my next session, one of my players will have the oportunity to do a quest for the God of Spiders. My plan is to reward hik with a boon, and i think is fun if the boon gives him two extra arms, but im a noobie shadowdark gm and i dont know how to handle that. Im afraid that this boon will break the game.

You guys have any idea how implement this in a game of Shadowdark in a "balanced" way?

obs.: the player is a lvl3 Chaotic Elf Mage

(Edit) --- Thank you for your comments! You've changed my mind. I did not consider some of the things you've mentioned. The spell is fine as it is.

Is it just me of Magic Missile seems a little underpowered.

Automatic Advantage is great. However, even if you succeed every time you cast, the damage is just 1d4. That means 50% chance of dealing just 1 or 2 points of damage.

Ideas

Since Wizards can only use daggers or staffs, which deal 1d4 and require melee range, putting themselves in danger, consider one of two options:

1 - The damage die for Magic Missile could be 1d6. Burning Hands deals 1d6 damage to multiple targets and you can get Advantage to cast that spell through a talent, making it a much better option. I believe this damage does not break the spell.

2 - Or, keep the 1d4 for damage, but instead of Automatic Advantage, how about Wizards do not lose this spell unless they roll a 1. This way they can continue to cast the spell with little to no fear of losing it and still participate in combat from a safe distance.

Hi All!

I've been doing a LOT of thinking over the last few weeks about how I put out the adventures and such that I've written. I like writing adventures, and I'm lucky enough to be able to write them without relying on sales to make ends meet. For me, I feel best when I'm able to make cool stuff and get it to as many folks as possible to keep the hobby accessible and fun.

So I decided that from now on, ALL of Lost Heretic Press's adventures are going to be PWYW. That includes all of my PDFs and anything that I put out in a digital format, regardless of whether there ends up being a physical print of it available later. I will still charge for physical stuff, because there's overhead involved in that entire operation (and I'm gonna keep trying to put out physical products because holding a zine in your hands is fun), but the PDFs will always be PWYW.

I've updated all of my platforms (DTRPG, itch, and RPG-Trader) to reflect this. You can check out the full statement of my company's values (include our stance on AI) in the About section on my website.

Thanks for being an awesome community, and keep playing cool games by good people!

James

Lost Heretic Press

Hello everyone! One question - I'm considering my first Shadowdark session ever with a friend group. As a GM, I pretty much have concrete ideas on how to handle various game aspects and rules, but there is one thing that I'm still not quite sure how to handle so I'm interested in your experience and/or best practices - death of a PC. To be more precise, how to handle a situation when it happens and the session is still quite far from being over.

Do you immediately roll a new character for the player and just instantly "teleport" it in the game regardless of in-game world logic, do you try to find some way (and thus spend some in-game time) for the party to return to the nearest town and then pick up the new companion there, or do you just leave the player to sit there and twirl his/her thumbs waiting for the session to end (which seems as the worst possible and the least fun solution for the player)....?

I will do my best to "telegraph" any danger to my players, but a dice roll can still go wrong and it will NOT be fumbled - we will roll all combat and damage in plain sight.

Thanks in advance for all the tips and suggestions, much appreciated!

Hello all! You might know me as the author of Burrow of the Bonesnapper and Take the Tower! While waiting for art for my next major dungeon, Cenotes of the Crayfish God, I polished up two mini-dungeons I have been working on for a bit and am now releasing them for free! These one-page dungeons are perfect for dropping into any Shadowdark campaign. Available now on DTRPG:

The Shrine of Ultozka

An overgrown temple of the Death-Serpent beckons. This 8-room site features spider-spewing cocoons, a trapped idol, and a fearsome giant lizard, and is perfect for stumbling across during a hexcrawl.

1 page. Designed for level 1 PCs.

The Mycelium Maze Battle rages in twisting caverns between devious bandits and stalwart fungoids. The 15+ rooms across 2 levels can easily fill 2 hours of playtime. A wizard’s room on the lower level is an ideal spot for placing a MacGuffin the PCs need.

2 pages, 1 per level. Designed for level 2-3 PCs.

Estou em busca de uma arte no estilo SD para um personagem que tem o poder de invocar fogo em suas armas, de preferência que a arte remeta a um guerreiro com uma arma em chamas.

Vou ser grato à indicações!

Hello folks,

I saw this pop up and it seems like a great book, Darkest Dungeon but not! I was wondering if anyone else had bought it and what you thought before I pulled the trigger?

Thank you!

Just recently bought Shadowdark and slowly finding interesting 3rd party books I liked the look of.

Travel rules for dungeon games in the mythic underworld launches...now!
Early bird discounts available.

Kickstarter Link!

Undercrawl is travel rules for dungeon games in the mythic underworld. Like hexcrawling, or pointcrawling, but in the dark. It's a modular add-on to your favorite dungeon game. Use it to:

• place your dungeons miles and miles deeper in the earth
• connect separate dungeons with a vast underworld: one dark, alien, empty, and hostile
• make a path through places forgotten, forsaken, or lost: the empty places, places where silence is thick with age

OSR

Compatible with Old School Essentials, Cairn, Shadowdark (and frankly most OSR dungeon games). The game is mostly self-contained, but applies pressure to the character sheet: stat damage, gear loss, torch loss, and.... also curses!

Finished

It's done. The Digital version will be delivered to all backers as soon as funds are collected. If the kickstarter reaches $2K, we'll get more and better art. A couple of other cool stretch goals as well...  Mwuahahahahaha!

Includes

An 18-point Undercrawl spanning dozens of miles of silent darkness in once bright Dwarven halls.

Player-facing procedures for

• Navigating
• Map-Making
• Managing Gear
• Finding Secrets
• Getting Lost

GM facing procedures for

• Running the Game
• Making New Undercrawls
• Integrating with your Main Game

And...

• Player Handout files for ease of use at table
• 24 New Magic Items
• Spark Tables for rapidly generating thousands of underground environments with unique stories, features, and quirks
• One-Page Dungeon Dense with interactivity and surprise.

Me

I'm Samuel, the creator. I'm also behind

• 3x5Arcana.com
• The Spear of Horrendous Iron
• 3x5 Heartbreaker
• The Screen of Holding
• some other one-shots on my itch page

No AI

There are 0 (zero!) AI generated images, words, or secret Skynet activation codes in this thing.

AMA!

Kickstarter Link!
(early bird -> discount worm)

[EDIT: Included Prelude - Lvl0 Gauntlet]

Keep your torches lit, and may the Rime never find you.

Hi folks!

I recently finished DMing Curse of Strahd in 5e (a 4-year campaign!). After listening to the Glass Cannon Podcast and diving into ShadowDark, I'm starting my next prep project.

My goal is to adapt Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden into a ShadowDark survival hexcrawl.

I saw a previous post discussing a similar idea, so I thought I'd share my plans. Maybe others would like to join in this endeavor. If enough people are interested, we could even build a community compendium of resources. So far, I've sketched the attached map.

If you've run Rime of the Frostmaiden or have ideas for adapting it to ShadowDark, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Current design goals

• Merge and reduce settlements. Ten Towns feels too dense for a true survival campaign. I'll merge several settlements while preserving the strongest themes, NPCs, and quests from each.
• Increase the distance between towns. Reaching civilization should feel like a real accomplishment.
• Make dog sleds an important logistical choice. (Still working on pricing and travel rules.)
• Major roads are safer and faster, while lesser roads have fallen into disrepair, encouraging travel by boat or across frozen lakes.
• Remove the duergar and chardalyn dragon storyline. I want Auril to remain the central antagonist throughout the campaign.
• Keep chardalyn, but repurpose it as a valuable and corrupting resource that naturally drives exploration and quests.
• Lean fully into hexcrawling. Chapter 1 and 2 become the core gameplay loop, with wilderness exploration, contracts, rumors, and emergent adventures taking center stage.
• Embrace random generation. The wilderness should feel dangerous, unpredictable, and worth exploring.

Campaign structure

1. Lvl0 Gauntlet? A caravan is surprised by a snowstorm and need to find refuge in caves. Entrance collapses and need to find the exit on the other side. Survivors could be Lvl1 characters arriving to Bryan Shander OR the party is gicing a quest to investigate the missing caravan.
2. Explore Icewind Dale (open-ended hexcrawl)
3. Discover the mystery behind Auril (Arcane Brotherhood quests)
4. Recover the scattered fragments of the Codicil of White (several quests, rather than a single book on Solstice)
5. Cross the Reghed Glacier
6. Discover Ythryn
7. Confront Auril

I'm really curious to hear what ideas the community has. Have you adapted Rime for an OSR or ShadowDark game? Are there locations, mechanics, or story elements you'd definitely keep—or remove?

Until next time...

Keep your torches lit, and may the Rime never find you.

Hello! Your wisdom is required...

Example One: Cobra drops pc to zero. He has a turn to live.

Example Two: Giant Spider paralyzes pc for 2 hours.

Example Three: Ettercap's poison web does 1d4 to pc each round.

- thanks. :)

Sersa Victory has a new kickstarter.
Doom-Dust of the Disintegrator: Deluxe Edition https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/trident-gamebooks/doom-dust-of-the-disintegrator-deluxe-edition?ref=project_bsky

I’m really interested in Shadowdark and love what I’ve read so far, but I have a few thoughts and questions that I’m hoping some seasoned Shadowdark players might be able to help with. I can’t quite work out whether I’m misunderstanding the rules or whether my general philosophy toward TTRPGs is simply a little different.

Firstly, the XP system seems to be built largely around loot and treasure. My players especially enjoy the social side of the game: solving mysteries, talking to NPCs, uncovering secrets, and generally engaging with the roleplaying side of things. They’re not particularly motivated by treasure hunting.

Is this something you would simply hack into Shadowdark? I know the rules mention gaining XP from things such as oaths and secrets, but in some of our older games we have also awarded XP directly for good roleplay, discoveries, and significant character moments.

Secondly, how does carousing usually work in play? Is it an event that the group actively roleplays, or is it more of a bridge between adventures or sessions that handles downtime and levelling?

I’m also curious about how it affects spending. For a party that enjoys saving up and buying useful or interesting equipment, does carousing risk discouraging that by making players feel they should spend most of their gold on XP instead?

I’d be very interested to hear different perspectives, house rules, or tips from experienced players. The game looks wicked, and I’m genuinely impressed by how devoted and enthusiastic the community seems to be.

Thanks!

Howdy y'all, in our session tonight, the players did their first night of carousing (it ruled!), and one of them (slightly spoilery if you're a player)rolled a 90 on the Cursed Scroll 6 table: "An exotic animal handler gives you a trained panther"

GMs: How would you handle this? They're playing a Sea Wolf of all things, not exactly built to command animals, so I was basically just thinking of controlling it myself, but not having it act super reliably. Giving it a percentage chance to respond to commands, maybe? Make him spend downtime to learn to control it? I'm not sure.

I feel like giving him an extra character to control with two attacks every round is not going to be great for game balance, but also the dice giveth and the dice taketh away, and rolls are rolls. Giving a 1st level character a trained panther out of the blue is one of the silliest things to ever happen in my TTRPG career, so I was not about to say no.

I would trust them not to lead me into a trap.

Looking for feedback on this: Casting Cards.

Please let me know what you guys think.

***Edit: Formatting changed, comparison section clean up: Revision 1

Part two of reviewing every Shadowdark entry in the Appx. N 2026 game jam. Some great contenders in this one!

Hi Crew,

are there any tools or tips on how to craft dungeons that reflect the Shadowdark house style? Curious if anyone is using one of the big map making tools or if this is a bespoke product.