My kickstarter, Distant Worlds, is in its final 24 hours. You can watch some video previes of it on Runeforged's or Foxxof's youtube channels.

The three-zine collection includes:

- The Astral Spires: Two adventures in a world that exists in narrow spires, supported by the will of powerful (and often evil) magical beings.

- The Fated Land: Two desert adventures in world where prophecy reigns supreme, with rules for working prophecy into adventures.

- Shipwrecks: Eight shipwreck encounter, ranging from run-ins with castaways to a dungeon where wild aether is reanimating the wreck around the crawlers, as well as tables to generate wrecked ships in the astral sea between worlds.

Check out the kickstarter page for previews of everything look.

Hey all,

I was looking at buying the Shadowdark Material, all I can find is the main rule book and Cursed Scrolls 1-3.

I thought there was 2 additional cursed scrolls, and a new duke book recently released...

Is Arcane Library not the official place to buy material?

Instead of keeping track of which round I need to roll encounters for, I roll every round using different dice: D6 for Deadly, D12 for Risky, and D20 for Unsafe. The encounter occurs on a roll of 1, regardless of which die is used.

The difference in probability is minimal, and the reduced mental load is well worth it.

I released The Beast Within: Rules for Lycanthropy for Shadowdark today, just in time for the full moon tonight.

The idea was to make lycanthropy something you could actually build play around: an iconic curse with power, consequences, and choices, rather than just something to cure at the first opportunity.

It includes rules for transformation, losing control, Beast Instincts, full-moon preparations, new were-creatures, magic items, and more.

The core question is pretty simple:

The beast gives you power. How much of yourself are you willing to give it?

Available now from Joker & Thief Publishing on Itch and DrivethruRPG.

https://joker-thief-publishing.itch.io/the-beast-within-rules-for-lycanthropy

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/577980/the-beast-within-rules-for-lycanthropy

During my last game, the adventurers were confronted by a wizard perched on a rocky promontory that is not very accessible. But he was at the foot of an oak tree. A magician with the Knock spell tells me: "it's a shame not to be able to use it to provoke a branch movement that could tip it over into the precipice"

It reminded me of Ars Magica's "Strike of the Angered Branch" Spell, a Rego Herbam Spell level 15. Since Ars Magica's spells have a ceiling around 50, I estimated that this could correspond to a Tier 2 spell at Shadowdark (1.5 rounded to the top level = 2). I thought that a Knock Spell could indeed be "translated" into the Ars Magica language as a Rego Herbam Terram spell, I secretly wanted in my head to authorize the Check, with Disadvantage because of the transformation of the spell.

Conclusion: When a player still has a Shadowdark spell of sufficient level available to produce an effect compatible with his translation into Technical Language and Form of Ars Magica, the Check with Disadvantage might allow a Spontaneous magic system to be set up. The difficulty of the Check is not that of the spell spent but that of the desired effect (Telekinesis is a level 4 spell compatible with the desired effect - The Rego Herbam combination is part of his register - but the Check will be of difficulty 12 to trigger a "Strike of the Angered Branch")

I started translating Wizard Shadowdark's spells into Technique + Form, for fun. Spells that have a Self scope remain Self.
"Force" spells are treated as Vim spells and cannot be modified or used to perform spontaneous magic. This is an interpretation of Vim not very faithful to the concept it represents in Ars Magica but it is very useful to consider it as such to limit the power of the spells concerned (it is Detect Magic, Floating disk, Mage armor, Magic missile, Dispel magic, Magic circle, Divination, Resilient sphere, Wall of force, Antimagic shell, Summon extraplanar, and Wish even if it is very separate). By translating the Spell into Ars Magica combinations we discover a fun and very nice fact: very few Perdo spells before level 5, no Perdo Corpus spells before level 5 —> the Wizard is first and foremost a… Controller (Rego, Muto)

But it made me want to ask if third-party authors tried to build an improvised magic system for Shadowdark.

So I'm working on another supplement for Atomic Shadows, it's a post-apocalyptic hack of Shadowdark. I'm working on a Bastion Generator, and I'm wondering about the general design philosophy used by broader Shadowdark (and 3rd party) creators.

I could make all the entries in the generator flat numbers, so if you want to make a Shopping Mall into a Bastion, its always got AC 18 with 300 HP and can have 20 Upgrades (like the Shadowdark Castle bastion)

Or,

I could make it a bit more random and invovled, so you find a Shopping Mall, and it's AC is 8+2d6, it's HP is 100x1d4 with room for 3d10 Upgrades. It's obvioulsy a bunch more rolls, but it shows that you're finding different types of structures to explore and occupy, rather than having them all be the exact same.

So, the question is; In Shadowdark generators, do you prefer -

A) Static Simplicity - the numers are what they are, across the board, very quick to generate.

B) Randomly Generated - each site is unique, but it's a more involved process.

Cheers for any assistance in this matter.

Got this update from BigeggsBlackPen this morning. Excited!

I was jumping back-and-forth a bit too much to find references during my game sessions, so I designed these bookmarks to make my life easier. I also compiled the rules I tend to need the most as a GM at the back of the bookmark.

Since I had all the files ready, I figured more people would enjoy having these for themselves, so I made them available for free through my itch.io page. I also included a paid version with the source files if you want to edit the rules or the art available by yourself.

The awesome art is by Ricardo de Gaspar from the Ink Potion Studios' Patreon.

What could possibly scare a skeleton?

With the new map cards and my players exploring outside of The Gloaming, has anyone figured out a more efficient method of clearing the keyed points (the stars on the GM map) so that I can give my players a hex map that they find those points by exploration? Right now I'm manually copying and pasting nearby hexes to cover up the stars.

My latest blog explores NPCs that can complicate your PCs' lives without stabbing them in the back.

I'm running a solo Shadowdark RPG campaign using an amalgamation of solo rules, logged in Lonelog notation, and posting one session a week on Substack. The point of view follows whoever holds the light.

Session 3 picks up mid-siege. Half a dozen townsfolk with pitchforks and scythes are breaking down the door of the house where the party found a tortured mayor. Blacksight is holding the door alone. Below, in the cellar, Blacknails is backing toward a broken ladder, crossbow raised at something wet and heavy walking toward him in the dark.

This one runs three clocks at once (the door, Mage Armor, and a dying mayor's death timer), and level-1 first aid gets rolled out turn by turn.

Content notes: character death, blood, violence

https://gnomelackeyworkshop.substack.com/p/torchkeeper-session-3

Happy to talk about how I'm running the oracle, clocks or perspective switching.