​A ‘zine (with dungeon) by Logen Nein, level 3-4.
Written for Heroes of Adventure
  Another one of these, neat. As before, this cute little ‘zine is one ambitious fellow’s attempt to make a Dragon Magazine for the niche AI-driven tradgame system Heroes of Adventure, ten pages outlining in this case a !notEgypt region of deserts, a hex flower with encounter charts, a new magic school (mind magic), a little twenty-room dungeon, jinn and a scarab magic item, some Thri-Kreen with the serial numbers filed off, and a homework assignment in a region map without any details. As before, I’m going to focus on the dungeon, the rest is hit-or-miss again but basically fluff.
  …and once again I’m not going to have much to say about the story of the dungeon, titled The Ashen Halls. It’s a dwarf ruin that’s been taken over by “Forces of Chaos”, a single nod to sandy outer environs the only thing that really matches the faux-Egyptian theme of the issue but that’s fine. Map is once again adorable, maybe even more adorabler than before, with more complexity than the last time Mr. Nein came across my desk. Anyway, it’s a ruin, there are monsters in it, clear out the monsters and loot the treasure, what more are you looking for in your evening?

  Art style aside, what I liked about the map was some decent flow for a single-level minidungeon, the loops are almost obsessive but there’s some good work with portcullises that show rooms before they can be accessed (or else clever players can sequence-break) and secret rooms/passages are well-done. Stairs up and stairs down are briefly described as ending in dead ends but also give the chance to add more level(s) as desired, which is classy. I liked some of the evocative language in the room keying, although the age-old objection “why I am just stumbling in onto the scene” still applies. I like that treasure is often hidden well.
  Which smoothly segues us to what can be improved first, which is give us treasure, loot, artifacts, etc pre-rolled. I know the system you’re writing for has a mania for tables, procedural generation, and so on, but this is a prewritten module, you should give us details on your loot results. Similarly, monster numbers aren’t given but are assumed to be in “number appearing” from the monster manual (or, awkwardly in one case, “2x # appearing”), which is understandable but also BAD. Traps are a little more of an edge case, but I don’t love that they’re also on a d6 table for every time a “T” is encountered on the map. Final improvement, which is another symptom of that somewhat rote dungeon stocking philosophy, is to link risk and reward a little bit more. The rooms tend a little high on just slugging match fights without clever ways of profiting against the monsters or nasty tricks, it’s a bit more hacky than would be ideal.
  I thus figure the best use case is to seed onto a map in a Heroes of Adventure campaign, sandy desert optional. It’s an okay one-shot too, but there’s more homework left on the table than I, at least, would be comfortable with publishing. At least it’s not a blank region map though.
  Final Rating? **/***** feels a trifle kind but by no means unfair. It’s something that’s enjoyable I’m sure but I don’t feel like it’s complete, sadly. 

​  Once more into the breach, dear readers. I’m on a self-appointed mission here to dive deep into the very successful Shadowdark system. Last time, I looked at the player side of the game through the lens Dave the Priest. This time, I’ll be covering the GM side of the game, which has some very odd organizational choices let me tell you. There’s some genuinely decent advice in here, mixed with what I can’t help but feel are filler charts. Which, for a semi-indie product like this where printer costs must be a consideration, feels…odd.
  When Shadowdark is advising the GM, it does a pretty good job; Game Masters are enjoined to make challenging, interesting, and scrupulously fair dungeons and adventures for their player characters, while rooting for their players to succeed. Light notes about setting a dark tone flow into dark tactics about attacking light sources very well. A single page offers up “modes” for different styles of game, which include stuff like death immediately at zero, XP-for-monsters, and a “pulp mode” that hands out whole handfuls of luck tokens. I’m at a loss for how well the hypothetical doe-eyed naif picking this up as Baby’s First RPG can run a game using this book, but for the actual target demographic, it’s solid.
  At this point, I have to pause and give a nod to who I think is embracing this game system with such wild enthusiasm. It’s been billed as an “old school game with new school mechanics”, but who Shadowdark most truly appeals to is dungeon masters who are suffering. I have no idea how consciously the game is designed for this, but it’s almost perfectly fit to address every complaint 5E DMs make. They complain about immortal, entitled player characters who quote from their 20-page backstories while theatrically indulging in puffy-inflated-sumo-suit combat with monsters designed to look scary but not actually raise stakes. These DMs hit reddit and comment threads waxing lyrically about how much of the rules burden has been passed off to them while players get countless goodies. Maybe that’s unfair, I don’t know, but that is the message I’ve heard from burned out 5E DMs. Shadowdark strips down a lot of the puffy cruft from 5E while maintaining a lot of the mechanical smoothness of “modern D&D” that players (and 5E DMs) seem to crave.
  On the other hand, there’s another complaint I hear from OSR-adjacent DMs who have issues recruiting. This isn’t nearly so loud or persistent a complaint as what I hear from the 5E side, but there are definitely some OSR guys who are having issues filling tables with their AD&D or B/X-lineage systems because of the perception by game-shop-goers or online casuals that TSR-era D&Ds are mechanically clunky or awkward. Once again, this isn’t my personal experience, but I’ll believe them that that’s their own experience. Shadowdark’s mechanics are designed to be more “modern friendly” than anything stained with the whiff of THAC0. The hype train is part of the offer package for these DMs, if you’re trying to recruit a table of players who don’t live and breathe this stuff, the money passed to your Questing Beasts and other such channels for exposure is only more helpful. Genius marketing and genuinely filling in a perceived need for these two demographics.
  All of this to say that Shadowdark isn’t hurt too terribly by having some gaps in its rules, those will be spackled over with the DM’s own previous system knowledge, either 5E or OSR. The semi-mythical complete newbie who’s bought this book to run with his four middle-school friends would be in a bit of a lurch at times, but that’s okay…he’s a myth anyway. Nonexistent customers can’t be hurt. The real customers will be very happy with the game mastery section.
  The dog not barking, of course, is overland travel/domain/hex/city/social adventuring. There are next to no rules for how to run a hexcrawl, or a political campaign. Poking my head out of the book for a minute, I expect the new Western Reaches Kickstarter is devoted almost entirely to making up this lack, at least for outdoorsy hex stuff.
  There’s an enormous amount of page space devoted to random encounter tables, each a d100 with 52 entries that go from “somewhat to concerning” at 01 to “random boon” at 100. The details aren’t enough to really spin out a great encounter, but they’re less minimalistic than the old school of “4d20 beastmen” so that’ll help comfort some DMs. Hope you got the PDF once you’ve made that roll though, because there’s no index in the bestiary. 

​The Manual Monstrous
  Monsters in Shadowdark are mostly old standbys, sometimes renamed to avoid licensed IP. Their statblocks are generally simple, showing AC/HP/Attack(s)/Movement/Stats/Alignment/Level (which is hit dice, the HP is the average roll but game masters are invited to roll their own should the fancy strike them). Wonky little monster illustrations aren’t common but will be inspiring/useful when they do come up.
  Occasionally, a special high-level “boss monster” will be given a full-page spread. They’re nice and impressive specimens with very high hit dice and nasty abilities, accompanied by a large illustration. The blinded Beholder on the Shadowdark cover is one of the nastiest customers, with no rules for henchmen/hirelings it’s going to be a nasty 4v1 fight even at level 10. Monsters don’t use the precise set of PC spells, but rather have custom spells...up to ten of them in the case of the Legally Distinct From A Beholder Eyeball Boss Monster.
  Building new monsters is a little handwavy but there’s enough guidance for a confident and experienced GM to make something, and the book enjoins us to compare to something like an elephant to make sure power is in the right ballpark. Rival NPC parties aren’t precluded by anything in the system, but neither is there any guidance provided for making them using player class chassis.

  As is my wont, I scrolled down until I found the ogre entry for my baseline. A Shadowdark ogre isn’t given much of a description, but because the customer base comes with their own trope baggage, that’s fine. It’s a level 6 bruiser with low armor but 30 hit points and a pair of massive 2d6 greatclub attacks, I definitely wouldn’t want to tackle it at level 1 on anything like a level playing field, but a dedicated archer in a good position would certainly be able to defeat it, so that’s pretty standard. Given character hit points and the low AC improvement rate, even level 3s would probably find the ogre a real threat. It’s a standard-issue ogre, in other words, but one that makes me a little suspicious about the underlying math assumptions of the system (it’s assuming four PCs as normal, and says the ogre thus should be an average threat for an APL 2 party).

​Real Treasure is the Loot We Stole Along the Way
  All those monsters, by default, gain us nothing for being defeated. Character progression is from accruing treasures and boons, per the chart…and so the back fifth of the book is devoted to loot. We have massive d100 tables divided out into four tiers. We have detailed tables for magic items, along with special properties and quirks. We have item creation rules. We have consumables tables. We have an extremely brief thumbnail about blessings and boons. We have absolutely nothing nowhere that helps us narrow down the vague gold-XP connection beyond that tiny chart. I’m trying not to be annoyed by this, because this is almost just milestone leveling with extra obscuring steps.
  That’s not the only progress in a D&D game though, the other way characters gain power is through the items themselves, and those are actually really good. There’s a whole custom/named magic item “bestiary” that’s formatted almost exactly like the monster section. The items are varied and the first part of this book where I’d really endorse the product for use even if you’re not going to play the system itself. Obviously there are plenty of old standbys like a cloak of elvenkind or a flying carpet, but there are also fun things like a three-item regalia dedicated to Memnon, the god of chaos that all get boosts if worn together.  Good design there, I just wish I knew how much XP each bit was worth. 

Putting It All Together
  I’m not going to become a proselyte for the Shadowdark system. I’m happy with what I already run, and I think I’d feel a lack of crunch. However, I’m not the target audience for this system. Do I think it’s good for the target audience? I think it’s perfect. So good for Arcane Library there.
  A note on hype: As with any time when there’s a huge new Popular Thing, an answering backlash rises on social media from highly opinionated grognards that boils down to “Popular Thing sucks”. As a fellow highly opinionated grognard, I get it, trust me. In my weekly trawl of the freebies offered up by itch.io, it gets a little overwhelming to see every other adventure written for Shadowdark. But I don’t think you should worry about the system; it’s not competing with your Old Thing. Shadowdark is ideal for either a suffering 5E DM sick and tired of the system’s abusive players, or else an old-schooler who wants something a little more streamlined, with mechanics designed in this current millennium. Arcane Library’s delivered something pitch-perfect for those two large demographics. For them, the system feels like a tremendous breath of fresh air. The largest gaps in the core system needed to make it a truly complete TTRPG, namely outdoor hexcrawling, downtimes, and the domain game, are hopefully all being added in the new Kickstarter. I wish them all the best of luck.
  By all means, disagree with me, talk to me about it. How's your own experience with the Newest Hotness of Two Years ago treated you? I'm here or on Twitter to yell at.

  Welcome. We’re back in the saddle from part one of this system review, which you really ought to read first. We’re talking about building characters, though, so maybe it’s apropos to ignore all background and math calculations and instead flip directly over to character building.  Goodness knows that’s what the players will do. I’ll bumble along making my own guy as a lens here.
  First of all, our intrepid adventurer is directed to roll stats, 3d6 down the line. I will be using the first optional rule in the book and reroll if there are none 14 or higher, so that mercy is appreciated. My first garbage roll gets discarded, the second is STR 15, DEX 7, CON 8, INT 11, WIS 13, CHA 8. Oh nice, the classic “fragile fighter” array. Or a priest I guess. Wish I had a way to modify stats, but that’s up to talent rolls now.
  I’ll pause here and give an approving nod; the game has rules for 0-level characters. These poor jobbers are just stats, ancestry (the Artist Formerly Known As Race), a single hit point, and a few random bits of starting gear. I love this for campaign-starting gauntlets where each player is handed a stack of characters and may the odds be ever in your favor. I’m less impressed with the evolutionary argument that this yields better characters in general, those stats don’t improve your single-hit-point odds all that much. Still, nice idea.
  My own character is destined for greatness, though, I’m starting him out as a level 1. Ancestry is our next choice; they’re all pretty light in terms of game mechanics but that won’t stop people from really, really caring. Because that’s Shadowdark’s Whole Thing, nobody has darkvision. We have six options:
-Dwarfs, who are the same as all dwarves everywhere. +2 base HP, and roll HP with advantage each time. That’s pretty nice.
-Elfs, who are the same as all high elves everywhere. +1 bonus on ranged attacks and +1 bonus on spellcasting checks, very good.
-Goblins, who aren’t evil but they are green and fierce. They cannot be surprised, which feels…situational?
-Half-Orcs, who are the same as all half-orcs everywhere. +1 to melee attack and damage rolls, you know the deal.
-Halflings, who are all Bilbo Baggins. They can turn invisible for 3 rounds once per day.
-Humans, who are all diverse. They get an extra class talent roll at level 1, which is potentially huge.
Of course I’m going to be Normal Guy, so in this case I pick human. Welcome, Dave the human.
  Next up we have classes, our classic Big Four: Fighter, Priest, Thief, and Wizard. You instinctively know what they all do:
-Fighters fight, wear good armor, and kick heavy things. Archers and stab-men both find their expression here with Weapon Mastery, and a d8 hit die means that they have a chance to survive a few hits.
-Priests fight, wear good armor, and warp the nature of reality by magic spells. Yes, the fighter should feel a little sad but he can console himself that the priest is only rolling a d6 hit die.
-Thieves suck. They also backstab, so once per combat (at best), innumerate players can get excited by rolling a lot of dice. Advantage on sneaking, lockpicking, trapfinding, climbing…d4 hit die. Get wrecked.
-Wizards cast spells. I know that’s like what priests do, but they cast a lot of spells. Tons. Another d4 hit die class and no armor allowed so wizards are going to die in droves but keep chasing that dream baby.
Dave, being both strong and wise, will dedicate himself to the priesthood. Now’s the time for him to roll talents (twice, being human). Talents vary per class, priests get the following:

​I’ll roll twice, getting 8 and 10. So, “+1 on priest spellcasting checks” and “+2 to STR or WIS”. I’ll sink that into WIS, bringing Dave up to a 15. That’s solid, being able to add +3 out the gate helps. But now we’re on to the rest.
  I roll hit points. It’s a 3 on the d6. Add CON or +1 to the roll at level one, so Dave is up to an amazing 4 hit points now, with a 75% chance of surviving a single goblin hit. Incredible.
  The next steps are fluffy, picking background and alignment. Background has no strict mechanical benefits, but “work with the GM to determine if your background provides you situational advantages”, so special pleading time. I don’t care, so I roll a d20 and get 14. Soldier. Dave was in the army, that works. Alignment is next, one of Law/Neutrality/Chaos, and matters slightly more for priests. Dave is the lawful servant of Saint Terragnis, good enough. There’s a smart thing the book does where two of the nine gods of the baseline setting are “The Lost”, so That One Player can get excited about inventing his very own special deity. 
  Our final step before going to die in a hole to a dire rat in a single hit is outfitting Dave with his gear, his budget is 2d6 x 5gp…so 40gp. Leather armor, shield, mace compensates for Dave’s clumsy -2 DEX to grant an AC 11 and after that he loads himself to max with backpack, rope, rations, torches, flint and steel, crowbar, and a grappling hook. Gear isn’t weighted strictly, but ranked by slots, with each character carrying as many slots as strength stat or 10, whichever is higher. Simple, it works okay, but I’d love to see a poundage conversion somewhere in there.  Still, Dave just needs to pick his spells and we’re ready to go now. Which of course will be a whole other thing…

​Magic of Might and Heroes
  I’ve already spoken about the oddball roll-to-cast spellcasting system Shadowdark opted to go with, but what about the spells? There are five tiers of spells, unlocked at every odd level. The names won’t surprise anyone who’s played anything in the D&D family of games and are pretty self-explanatory. Priest spells are typically healing, divination, restoration, buffs, debuffs, and a few save-or-sucks. Wizards own nukes, AOEs, mobility, illusion, battlefield control, protection, and utility. All your favorites are here, just adapted to the system’s math.
  As expected in a relatively rules-light game, a fair few spells are a little ambiguous in their effects. Restoration, for example, is a touch to end a “curse, illness, or affliction of your choice” on the target. Does that include petrification? It’s not explicit one way or another, and there’s no definition of what an “affliction” is (at least I think, there’s no index, which is annoying)…so how is that resolved? There’s no Stone to Flesh, so otherwise all those monsters and traps are save-or-die. Fireball, a good midlevel baseline spell, explodes in a “near-sized cube” for 4d6 damage. That’s about a 5E level of ineffectiveness against anything big, but hey, there’s no save for half. Actually a lot of spells where I’d expect a save are instead just “persists as long as the caster makes the checks”. Stuff generally lasts for X rounds, where rounds appear to be variable based on combat vs. exploration taking place. It’s okay.
  Scrolls and wands are classic loot and they won’t surprise anyone with how they’re implemented here. Both require the caster to have the given spell on his list, although it doesn’t have to be in that individual’s spells known. Roll to cast as usual, scrolls are used up either way, wands return to use the next day after a spell failure, only breaking on a natural 1. You’ll be excited to know that critical wizard spell failures inflict a mishap table roll for scrolls and wands too, so give your wizard a Wand of Petard to hoist himself with.
  The most notable omission from the lists is any kind of Raise Dead option. If your PC dies then I hope you like being the lowbie because Dave’s new career is pining for the fjords and pushing up daisies.  

​Being Dave
  So by dint of luck or a concerned GM fudging die rolls, you’ve survived your first adventure and are on your way up the ten-rung ladder. How does this game actually play?
  Basic rules don’t represent any massive departures from D&D, particularly old-school D&D. Distances aren’t explicit, with “Close” being within 5ft, “Near” up to 30ft, and “Far” being within sight. I guess this is okay, but it does mean some awkward phrases like “moves double-near” crop up. Initiative is pre-rolled and rules-as-written seems to be strictly adhered to even during exploration, but once combat starts it’s a pretty standard sequence. TIME RECORDS are not STRICTLY KEPT because turns/rounds are a little fuzzy just like distances, and are used in variable ways depending on combat/dungeon/overland. The big selling point is the vaunted “real-time torches” rule…a torch lasts for one hour in real time, which is assumed to be an hour in crawling time, except when it isn’t. Feels gimmicky, but sure.
  The mechanical rules are relentlessly focused on delving in dungeons (ruins, tunnels, tombs, etc). Barely anything is given for overland journeys, no mules and carts here; towns are places of assumed safety and resting overnight restores full hit points and stat damage, which means not need for living expenses or training or property or anything else. Death is at 1d4+1 rounds after being brought down to zero. The only downtime rules given detail are carousing rules (spend gold for extra XP along with possible other boons/banes) and a detailed gambling game. I don’t see my players ever wanting a dice-based betting game but the carousing for XP is a fine fit.
  Characters advance fairly linearly, just needing 10XP per level to level up, with XP resetting to zero each time. So, to hit level 1 you need 10XP, level 3 needs 30XP, and level 6 needs 60XP. By default, XP is rewarded by the GM (it’s in the Game Mastery section) for “valuable treasures and boons they earn during an adventure”. Once more with the fuzzy avoidance of definite numbers, there’s a little table that gives examples for what treasures equal 1XP, or 3XP, or whatever, but that’s a gut feel thing. Wealth-by-level guidance is given at least a little bit, which is better than 5E ever gets, but the lack of definition hurts. Interestingly enough, getting XP for killing monsters is an optional rule. I’m not quite sure what the expected leveling speed is here, a 0th-level character is supposed to level up “after the first adventure”, but assuming 10XP per level you’re looking at a very long slog there at the end, whereas if the guidance in the little chart is given then you’re looking at incredibly quick level-ups even at the top. Vibes-based level-ups without the ugly word “milestone” getting thrown around.
  How will Dave’s adventuring career look, then? By Shadowdark core rules, Dave is spending his days in dank dark holes every day, resting comfortably in inns at night (occasionally spending excess gold not spent on regaining spells lost to natural 1s on carousing rolls). When he finds loot, there’s a mother-may-I moment with the suffering GM to see how many XP it is worth, but with the table rolls provided it seems like Dave will cap out at level 10 in about 30 sessions. The odd level-ups with new spell tiers and talents are way more exciting than the evens, but that’s how it goes and Dave’s player still wanders off without a dopamine level-up inducement going forward. Hearing how these actually go nobody in the last three years has actually played Shadowdark in a campaign this long, so Dave’s safe. Should be some fun one-shots over a three-month period.
  But how is this playing on the other side of the table? Next time, we’ll look at the Game Mastery section along with Monsters and Loot. After all, Dave is at the mercy of not one but two players here…

  Well, this is going to be something else. I’ve done a deep system review in the past, but the systems under examination couldn’t be more different in terms of TTRPG community impact. Heroes of Adventure ultimately charmed me with the one-man-show aspect and its DIY freebie heart despite the AI-sanding and somewhat generic building. This one…this one is tackling the biggest TTRPG system in terms of online hype in the world right now. I’m going to review Shadowdark.
  As of right now (March 2025), the Shadowdark official campaign setting/rules expansion/handy method of flipping off WotC/fan set Western Reaches is achieving staggering success on Kickstarter, breaking the original’s $1.3M in the first couple days. Those aren’t big numbers in some industries, but in the RPG space, where roughly infinity monkeys typing on nearly infinity typewriters release approximately infinity supplements for free daily, that’s a lot of dollars compared to the average ($n / ∞=$0).
  I have no play relationship with the Shadowdark system, but we have met many a time on the field of battle during Crapshoot Mondays…itch.io loves to write for that system more than any other. The sheer glut of content means there are quite a few stinkers out there, but there are some decent adventures made for the system too (and I was positive about the quickstart adventure). I certainly don’t recoil in horror when one floats up in my net. I’ve not heard anything about the rules that fill me with glee or excitement, but the devoted fanbase seems to find a lot of enjoyment from it and they’re out there actually playing games, so I’d call myself a friendly outsider. Let’s dive in and see how this rulebook works.

Book Basics 
  First of all…I’m a cheap Southern boy, this is the .PDF version. Charity makes me assume that the printed booklets are objects of staggering perfection, and I think the digest size means they’ll hold nicely. Information density is low, though, because of the massive amount of black-and-white art this puppy comes loaded with. Still, it looks clean and margins are generous. I’m not paying for print costs, so…sure thing.
  Art quality itself is…uneven. Some pieces are great and inspiring, some are a bit wonky and awkwardly placed. Your mileage may vary, however, and all of them are better sketch artists than I am. This is not an art review.
  Sprinkled throughout the book are cute little in-universe-relevant comments from a cast of iconics, like “Iraga, the half-orc priest, to Creeg, human wizard”. This is something that Dungeon did back in the day with their illustrations and it’s a cute enough idea. I’m not sure about the practical value but game writers need to have fun too. Also of dubious practical value, the book has random tables of fluff scattered throughout, like a d20 table for character names, or a d20 of dungeon adventure titles, or d100 tables loaded with extremely bespoke random encounters for different terrain types.
  As we’ve apparently all collectively decided is the correct order of operations, the core book goes in a sequence of Player info (Characters and Gameplay)-> GM info (Gameplay and Game Mastering)-> Monsters-> Loot (Treasure includes magic items here). Logical, because the players, being gremlins, will be diving in to rolling their PCs immediately anyway, and putting the loot in the back gives you half a hope that they’ll have wandered away before looking at the goodies. An SRD would help but that’s probably not going to maximize sales. Fine setup for a core book. 

​Green Visor Analysis
  I’ll start the next post by going into characters, but the first mechanical thing I look at with these system reviews is math. Everyone is interacting with the world with 1-to-4 through 1-to-20 random number generators, so it’s important to form a baseline here. The rulebook quite rightly tells you that absent pressure of either time or danger, trained individuals just automatically succeed at what they do, without the elegance of take 10/take 20. That’s a hugely important note, but given these games are largely focused on the moments of pressure, a lot of dice are getting thrown here. How likely are we going to be spending a lot of table time in failure? As a game system that claims ancestry from both D&D 5E and “OSR” (meaning Basic/Expert), there are definitely some cracks that show up.
SIDEBAR: The Genius of Take-20
  D&D 3E was oft-maligned for its enthusiastic “everything has a DC” approach to skill checks, ability checks, and darn near everything else-checks, but it was unfair when critics noted something like “crafting a horseshoe is DC 12, so a blacksmith with a +4 fails at that basic task 40% of the time???” The clever rule that the game used to overcome this was “take 10” or “take 20”. Without pressure or danger, any character was assumed to be able to avoid rolling, instead acting like he’d gotten a 10 on a d20 roll. So that smith is taking 10 in his day-to-day life, crafting anything DC 14 or under without a risk of failure. If a character was otherwise unconstrained and could take twenty times the normal amount of time on a task, he could instead “take 20”, meaning with careful and meticulous work the character would instead act like he’d received a 20 on his d20 roll for a given check. It was elegant and it all fit within the 3E “everything is math” rubric very well. Unfortunately, most players and game masters never used it, so it was largely neglected and forgotten.
  The first thing to note is that Shadowdark is mostly an ability-check system, not a skill-based system. Much like with any other D&DDNA-system created after D&D 3E, tasks are performed by rolling a d20, adding in bonuses, and seeing if a difficulty class (DC) is met. Easy tasks are DC9, Moderate DC12, Hard DC15, and Legendary DC18…and mostly, the bonuses are just whatever the appropriate stat gives. The 5E DNA means that every 2 stat points are a bonus breakpoint (so 16 is +3, 11 is +0, 7 is -2, etc), which combines pretty brutally with the B/X DNA’s “3d6 down the line” ability score generation method. The method means that average scores are 10.5, although there is an optional rule that allows rerolling if there are no stats above 13. Moderate tasks are thus being failed over half the time for over half the “heroes”. In addition to having standardized stat arrays, 5E at least has a moderately scaling proficiency bonus for skills. Shadowdark characters are Assumed Goobers when under pressure.
  Then I went looking for the THAC0 tables and I didn’t see anything. Then I looked for Base Attack Bonus progression and I didn’t see anything. Then I looked for at least weapon proficiency scaling and…
  Nope. Outside of the randomly-rolled “talents” that happen every odd level, the only to-hit improvement a level 10 character sees over a level 1 character is given by magical gear. That’s tight. Tighter than even B/X. Let’s look at how a 13-strength fighter with weapon mastery (+1/+1 attack/damage with a select weapon) hits, say, a goblin (AC 11). Nice, that requires a 9 on the die, so 60% to hit the very weakest enemy. Now let’s assume he’s managed a +3 weapon and to hit a +4 talent every time he can (+strength, or +1 to hit). If he’s swinging at the weakest dragon (black or green, AC16), he’s now up to hitting on a mere 7. Great, he’s 10% more likely to hit. Only swinging once per round still, by the way. Now Mr. Priest rolls up with a 18 strength. Level 1 priest is hitting the goblin on a 7. If Priesty McPriestpants doesn’t hit a single +1 hit talent as he levels (which he probably hopes, because BOY HOWDY does he want the spellcasting boosts), just the weapon, he’s swinging away at level 10 hitting the dragon on a 9. Only a 10% success swing, and he’s also only swinging once. I’ve seen more failure-biased systems out there, but it’s a very constrained curve.
  Damage scaling is likewise underwhelming. By my reading, strength isn’t boosting damage, only accuracy, so the best scaling we get is conveyed by the fighter’s weapon mastery (adds an addition half of level to damage). So Fighter the Exemplar hits with his trusty longsword at level 1 for 1d8+1, which means he’s killing a goblin (5hp) in 1-2 hits. At level 10 with a +3 weapon he’s at 1d8+9 (assuming magic weapon + adds to damage too, we need Tribal Knowledge for this). The Weak Dragon (58hp) survives 4-5 hits from the fighter. On the other hand, the fighter with d8+CON hit points gets gacked in a couple goblin hits (d4), while the dragon (2d8) needs about five hits to kill him…which is about the same number of rounds since claw/claw/bite is retained in a three-attack-per-round routine. We’ll dive deeper into this when we hit the monsters but basically, we seem to be following the “puffy hit points” power curve of 5E pretty decently. Spell damage is low too and keeps on this curve.
  I’ll get more into magic next time along with characters, but the math of magic casting is…whew. Both caster classes (priest and wizard) can cast infinite spells per day…if they succeed at making a casting roll. The DC for a spell is 10+spell level, with only the WIS or INT bonus helping normally. Thus, your level 1 priest with a 14 WIS is succeeding at casting his DC 11 cure spell only 60% of the time, and that success rate increases even more parsimoniously than to-hit. Whiffing on a spell is annoying, you lose access to it for the rest of the day, but what’s really punishing is that on a natural 1 casting roll the caster critically fails. For a priest the spell access is lost until “penance is performed” which sounds very wishy-washy but it boils down to a direct gold donation to your deity, scaled by spell level. That’s fine. The poor wizard, though, has to roll on a mishap table, which has results from “blow up slightly” (probably kills you at level 1), to “open up a black hole” at the max tier with…undescribed results. Have fun figuring out that one, game master. Please note again that critical failures aren’t rare, they happen exactly 5% of the time you cast. This is a shockingly gonzo/DCC/WFRP addition to an otherwise very cautious game.
  Mitigating all of this math is the nebulous luck token, and the occasional 5E-ism of advantage/disadvantage. Advantage isn’t quite as easily achieved as it is in 5E, but where it is gained (by the 5E method of special pleading, typically) it’s the usual nice benefit. Luck tokens are gifted for about the same set of arbitrary reasons as 5E’s Inspiration but rather than granting a roll-twice-take-best they’re instead a free reroll. Which is helpful sometimes, but ironically increases the odds that Mr. Mage blows himself up (because you know he’s going to reroll every failure he can).
  With that overview complete, next post we’ll cover the player-facing side. Until then, don’t roll any 1s…

​A dungeon by Keilan Faganello, levels eh
Written for Shadowdark
  Sexy vampire,
  I’m fallin’ in love.
  So just bite me baby,
  And drink all my blood. 
  Oh, I thought this was supposed to be Shadowdark, but apparently, we’re veering into recreating White Wolf from first principles. Eight pages, elevenish rooms, it looks like a dungeon (pulp magazine inspiration version), but it’s mostly a Demon: The Lustening story about a sexy devil abducting maidens with a ton of backstory and a complex social setup and a sweating Shadowdark Standard Format that’s kind of straining to work with the story. AI art but it’s decent, AI map and it’s not.
  In addition to the aforementioned sexy-but-respectful devil there’s also a saint in this tomb who is disapproving and harsh and just like dad when he wouldn’t let me wear fishnets. Also there’s a weird cryptkeeper who is half vampire, half weak good guy, zero precent sexy because he keeps one eye closed. Also there’s a sacred blue-flame lantern that’s needed to progress past illusions. And also there are imps and lesser demons who are just SO IN LOVE with the sexy devil that they wear the skulls of his previous dead maiden prospects (who are being killed by the keeper). And also there are sad friendzoned heroes wandering around killing everyone because they’re Nice Guys/simps. I wish I was joking.
  Okay, some of that stuff is decent. What I liked is that blue lantern that reveals illusions in the crypts, that’s a fun mechanic. The imps wearing skulls thing is macabre but also funny, there’s something there with real potential. I like that the saint-ghost and the keeper have unique spells that can be granted/learned, “spells as loot” is an underappreciated axis for treasure. The fact that the dungeon entry is only openable on the third night of the week is good, giving eight hours to explore or else everyone is stuck for a week, that’s a nasty meta-trap that’s really strong. I like that there’s an overpowered undead-smiting sword available but it’s hidden behind the protection of a fake sword.
  What can be improved first and foremost would be to slow down the standard formatting zeal and break down NPC relationships a bit first, the situation with a curse rotting all spirits within the crypt and the semi-vampire keeper trying to cheat the devil can be sussed out by careful reading but it’d benefit from summarization. I’m okay with randomly generated maps but when you have multiple branches the solution is not to make sure there’s a McGuffin piece buried down every branch which requires 100% completion before you can advance, that’s just a linear railroad with a couple extra steps. A little more time spent making the backstory visible to the PCs in play, and also useful, would go a long way.
  The best use case for this one is to use as a quick one-shot to try and transition your Shadowdark groups to VtM or vice versa. It’s a workable enough dungeon in its own right but the “devil is actually a good guy, saint is a mean jerk” base assumption will play havoc with traditional worldbuilding. Fits perfectly with whatever the kids these days like though I guess (and these days means “90’s punk”).
  Final Rating? **/***** because it’ll be a fun enough delve, but just like the illusory walls, it’ll get a little transparent if too much cool blue light is shone onto the details.

A dungeon by Danger Is Real, levels diegetic
Written for Cairn
  I try, I really try, to not pay attention to who’s writing these things when I’m in the midst of my Monday Crapshooting. I recognized this one, though, Danger_Is_Real’s top-notch Legacy of the Black Mark was the very first contest adventure site I reviewed, and it was one of the final eight that made it into the compilation, and it was great dungeon to run too. So when I see that name making a one-page dungeon for Cairn, of all things…it’s like hearing that nice, stable, and friendly family man two doors down turning out to have committed multiple homicides in the past. Beyond the system, this slightly chaotic-layout module is ten rooms, easy enough to grok, no major complaints.
  Story of the location won’t shock anyone, there’s a cave in a forest (dark and gloomy flavor) used by druids (cursed flavor) to sacrifice villagers to a dark woods-demon. Also there’s a pair of harpies, a little bit telegraphed but not all of us will understand the Morse Code. I’m a little confused about the flavor of the area, which is natural cave->artificial rooms (with metal doors) that still have trees in them->harpies in a cave? There’s at least an effort here in making the map loop in ways that matter and the secret doors are present, so it’s ticking more boxes than most Cairn “dungeons”.
  I’ll kick off what I liked with an unmarked secret passage, the side-cave has a smoky wall on the side opposite the fire beetles’ nest, it’s a chimney that can slip down to room 4. Traps are classic, stuff like a falling boulder at the top of some stairs, love that. Good set-pieces in general, with dryads from tortured trees menacing in one room, a barricaded pair of adventurers, and the final horned lord fight around a massive evil tree surrounded by sacrifices’ skeletons that get continually animated every round.
  What can be improved first is to make the environment more consistent. That’s not really about fuzzy “feels”, so much as the discordant notes making the choices of where to go harder to determine for the players. The lightness of the Cairn system is also fighting against the clear desires of the dungeon to have deep fights and interesting poison/damage tracks…which, also given the generous loot tables, actually makes me wonder if this was initially written for a more standard system and then adapted. All of this is secondary to the biggest improvement: Give us some cursed druids like the title promised. Zero druids to be seen. It’s an insult.
  Okay, okay, the best use case here is still to play this as a perfectly enjoyable one-shot or adventure site, in an actually functional TTRPG system ideally. No elements to steal but it’ll work fine in most campaigns, and if it doesn’t, then shame on you for not having evil druids. Just like shame on this adventure.
  Final Rating? **/***** but both stars are happy and having a perfectly fun night of D&D. I’ll probably use this. Just annoyed at all the homework I need to do to make this workable. 

  I recently played in a Star Trek Braunstein run by Jacob (@stee_blackbend), an IRL friend who's also in my West Marches campaign. I'd only heard of the game type casually before, but I've played a lot of Forum Werewolf in the past, so why not? Jacob asked me if he could write a guest post about the game type, and it was certainly a good time as a player (even though I died). So, here's Jacob:
What is a Braunstein?
I use Braunstein to refer to the subgenre of gaming, while a specific Braunstein game would have a specific name, ala Trekstein, Travellerstein, or Starstein.
They are inspired by David Wesely's Braunstein 1-4, which featured an 1800s town and a Latin American Banana Republic as settings. Later referees ran Brownstones, a series of Braunsteins set in the Wild West.
The central element that defines a Braunstein is that every player is operating with their own goals and with independence.
A Braunstein is a wargame in that each player has defined assets and is opposed by other players, and an RPG in that every player has a character who they are in the game, along with the freedom of action in an RPG that's not part of a wargame.
For example, Captain Kirk and the Klingon Captain both have their separate goals, and are acting independently of each other to accomplish them.
The heroes AND villains are played by players. The GM is a true referee, as they maintain the rules as the players match wits against each other. A Braunstein is different from an RPG in the same way that a multiplayer video PVP game is different from a single player video game.
It's chaotic. It's said that David Wesely considered refereeing his original Braunstein as a complete failure, until his players eagerly asked for another.

If you've played the party game Mafia or Werewolf, this is essentially the RPG version of that, as you have the Sheriff trying to root out the werewolves, the doctor trying to keep people alive, and the werewolves trying to kill everyone. Only now the Sheriff can have a gunfight with a werewolf, the werewolves can wire the town hall with a kill switch, and the doctor might be running drugs on the side for fun.

What is Trekstein?
A Star Trek Braunstein set in The Original Series era.
The Enterprise commanded by Captain Kirk and a similar Klingon ship commanded by Captain Kor both arrive in orbit of Nimbus, a planet poised between the borders of the Federation and Klingon Empire, and attempt to sway the planet to join their interstellar governments.
Nimbus has recently had dilithium discovered on it, and access to it was a large part of the goal of getting Nimbus to join their planet.
The game began just as the Klingon and Starfleet ships dropped out of warp, and would end when Nimbus decisively decided how to be affiliated.

​(Thanks to a neat Traveller tool, I was able to create this hexmap of Nimbus that I could project on a 3D sphere)

The Setting:
Original Series Star Trek, in a sort of nebulous time, probably during the main series.
All the action was contained within Nimbus System, which contained one planet.
A Braunstein works in a cycle. Players plot and execute their plots, often for a while of relative quiet. Then things come to a head and there's explosive conflict. Then everyone goes back to executing their plans. It's a bit like a Mexican standoff crossed with a tea party; everyone's talking and doing stuff, but everyone knows anyone could draw and fire at any time. To keep this tension up, the play area needs to be small enough that the players you have bump elbows some, which is why Trekstein was set on a single planet, besides most Star Trek episodes being set on one planet.

The planet Nimbus was ruled by a collection of people who the title of Duke. For any planet-wide politics, they'd all gather together to vote. Besides that, every Duke had complete autonomy in their respective dukedoms.

Player wise, there were three factions at the beginning, four at the end:
Starfleet
Klingon
Dukes
And lastly the Gorn

I ran into my first major issue before the game began: no one joined as a duke. In fact, I only had three players. Having come from a 20+ player Star Wars game, I'd expected to have too many players, not too few.
The major focus of the game was originally going to be all the player dukes getting wined and dined by the Klingons and Starfleet while the dukes schemed.
I considered cancelling the game at this point, but instead decided to write up six dukes myself that I'd play. My concern was that my inner bias would sway me into letting one side win unfairly.
At this point I ditched my original idea of the dukes using Mongoose Traveller 2e to create a character, and the Klingons/Starfleet using pregens from Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant (a fanmade Traveller hack). We ended up exclusively using Star Trek Alpha Quadrant.

The starting dukes:
Khan - the villain of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
- Goal: become King of Nimbus.
Gorbin - a Cardassian running a Galactic Jurassic Park
- Goal: Gain more exotic predators for his park

Harry Mudd - the con-man from several TOS episodes
- Goal: Get rich
- Goal: Control the majority of the Dithlium trade on the planet.
- Goal: Get his wife Stella of his back (in the show, she sends private investigators out into space after him to get what's owed her)

Cyrano Jones - The trader who provides the Tribbles in The Trouble with Tribbles.
- Get richer and don't die

Hando Rolo - a knockoff of Lando Calrissian who ran the massive Casino Risa.
- Make a deal for Nimbus that benefits him the most.

Alcar Dovan - a retired Starfleet captain who became a great hunter. He was trying to drug and hunt players for sport.
- Hunt the most dangerous prey.

When I began, I was using a turn system that was supposed to be tied to days. This is a solid way to make sure everyone puts in their actions, and that time moves forward reasonably.
We made it to turn 2 before I realized it didn’t make sense and ditched it.
From then on, I handled player actions as they came in and it made sense. If Kirk wanted to leave where he was and go shoot somebody, but Kor was somewhere in a conversation, I’d resolve Kor’s conversation before I moved Kirk forward, so Kirk wouldn't end up forward in time from Kor. (this is important, because Kor could shoot someone at any moment, which would impact what Kirk wants to do)
Boot Hill talks of taking week or so long turns, and then pausing time for sessions. Since my game was purely play by post, there wasn't a difference function-wise between session and turn play. We had one long almost session where everyone involved in an encounter was online at the same time, but that's the closest we came to a session in the traditional sense, as the game was just moving forward as it happened.

The Starfleet and Klingon players quickly began visiting different dukes to sway them to their side.
As the game went, two large subplots emerged besides the Nimbus political allegiance main plot.

The Alien Bioweapon
The Klingons had a goal of discovering the rumored bioweapon on the planet and then obtaining it without the Federation hearing of it.
At some point, the Klingons were told that if they got rid of a monster in the Caverns of Despair mountain range, a duke would join them.
They went there and encountered a sealed lab filled with alien horrors. They managed to fight them off and reseal the lab. (purely for the fun of it, these were the Xenomorphs of Alien/Aliens)

Later, Harry Mudd (Player) convinced Alcar Dovan the Great Hunter (NPC) that his greatest hunt laid in that same mountain range; after a few terrible rolls, Alcar Dovan and his hunting expedition were slaughtered by the alien horrors, which they accidentally released.

This led to the slaughter of a mining camp by the aliens, with the Gorn, Klingons and Starfleet all beaming up and down to try to rescue some miners.

The aliens vanished into the earth, and only resurfaced later as they dug underground towards Hando Rolo's Casino Risa.
The Klingons found out about this early, and they managed to beam a heavy fighting force to the Casino and hold off the alien assault.
Captain Kirk was unaware of the aliens closing in on the casino, and was busy with a highstakes poker game with several dukes when the alarms of the casino began blaring, as heavily armed Klingons began appearing all around the casino. Since it was a Braunstein and Kirk only had information from his perspective, what was the Klingons saving the casino appeared as the Klingons launching a surprise attack on the casino.

The issue of the origin of the aliens was a hot topic, with Klingons and Starfleet both writing up propaganda articles blaming the "bioweapon" on the other side during the game:

After the Battle of Casino Risa, the aliens faded back into the ground and out of the game. Who knows what they're planning now...

The final subplot was The King Khan Crisis.
Multiple dukes warned and asked players for help dealing with Khan. Nobody ever pursued it, and Harry Mudd decided to sell large amounts of dithlium to Khan.
So as the game approached the end via the dukes preparing to vote, Khan publicly declared himself King of the entire planet, revealing he had dithlium warheads ready to fire.
After Duke Mudd tried to double-cross Khan, Khan launched an onslaught of nukes, one of which landed directly on Duke Mudd's town, vaporizing him and his possessions.
Duke Mudd’s final moments, from an in-game black box of camera footage:

Mudd’s player later clarified: “I would like it noted that Mudd was not wishing for Stella out of nostalgic love. He wished she'd be at Ground Zero because it's the only way to be sure.”

Starfleet and the Klingons joined together to launch stealth and outright attacks on Khan's city, and eventually captured him. They did vaporize multiple blocks of his city though.

Before the aliens burst onto the scene, the Klingons and Starfleet joined in a debate broadcast to the people of Nimbus. This is when my players truly amazed me, as they sparred back and forth with LONG political arguments:
Part of a Klingon message:

Part of a Captain Kirk message:
​The PR part of the game played a big role in determining the finale.

After the defeat of Khan, Duke Hando pushed to reform the government from balkanized dukedoms to a republic of sorts, with him as President and the other dukes in various roles. Duke Gorbin was strongly in the corner of the Klingons. If the government hadn't been reformed, Starfleet would have won immediately at this point. But since Hando had to have every duke on his side, he offered the Klingons free trade, and control of Khan's old city, redubbed as Qapla' City, to be settled and run by a Director of Klingon Tourism (a job Commander Korax accepted)

Below are the exact goals for each faction/character, along with a review of how they did.

FEDERATION:
Starfleet has issued these orders to the crew of the USS Enterprise:
1. Get Nimbus to officially agree to join the Federation. - PASSED
2. Gain mining rights to the planet's dilithium crystals. - PASSED, via trade
3. Don't let the Klingons gain access to the planet's dilithium crystals. - FAILED, as they have trade rights
4. Don't escalate into an open armed conflict with the Klingons as that would violate the Organian Peace Treaty. - PASSED
5. There are rumors of dangerous tech on Nimbus. Gather data on any potential dangers to the Federation. - PASSED
So 4 goals accomplished.

EMPIRE:
You have been sent to Nimbus to accomplish the following goals for the glory of the Empire, as issued by the Klingon High Council:
1. Gain control of the planet's dilithium crystals. - HALF-POINT, as you didn’t gain complete control
2. Convince Nimbus to officially agree to join the Empire. FAILED
3. Don't let the Federation gain access to the planet's dilithium crystals. FAILED
4. Don't escalate into an open armed conflict with the Federation as that would violate the Organian Peace Treaty. PASSED
5. There's rumor of a powerful biological weapon on the planet. Locate and acquire it without the Federation learning of it. HALF-POINT
So the Empire accomplished 2 whole points

DUKE MUDD’S GOALS:

Your Missions:
1. Get Stella off your back, permanently. - PASSED
2. Become filthy rich. - FAILED
3. Gain control of the dilithium crystal trade on the planet, and don't lose it in any deal with the Klingons or Federation. - FAILED
2 and 3 are arguably accomplished, but potentially failed if Mudd had continued living. 1 is certainly accomplished.

GORN GOALS (this was the Gorn Captain from the episode “Arena”, banished from his homeland for his defeat at Kirk’s hand, and hoping to regain his honor =):

1. Kill Kirk or the Klingon captain to prove your strength in melee combat. - FAILED
2. Take control of Nimbus for the Gorn Hegemony – FAILED
(in the Gorn player’s defense, he was mid-game volunteer to play what was supposed to be a throw away character, and he played him with so much depth that he ended up not being homicidal enough to win)


Lessons Learned/Thoughts
- Lower crunch rules work well for Braunsteins. There are two major schools of style for a Braunstein:
A. Leaning into wargaming, with tracking location and time strictly. More rules heavy typically.
An example would be each player being the Chief of an orc tribe.
B. Leaning into the Werewolf/Mafia facets, where it's much closer to a standard RPG, but with everyone playing their own faction.
An example would be Trekstein.
If you're doing B, lighter rules or just focusing on using the core rules of your game is advised. For Trekstein, most things were standard skill rolls. I choose to accept every non-opposed roll as a success if it was an 8 or more, for sake of ease. This tended to make players succeed a fair deal, which is fun. It's fun to be overpowered because you've worked the situation to your advantage. One still died despite this.
There were many times I ruled on what Star Trek tech could do; I went with Star Trek novel logic; if it would probably work in a Star Trek novel, I ruled it would work here. Captain Kirk's crew was able to successfully remove chestbursters from impregnated civilians, proving that Star Trek tech is far better than Alien tech.

- Things will NEVER go as planned. And you'll scratch your head that you thought X and Y would be a good idea. So don't be afraid to change things up midgame if it's not working. Easy enough for me to say, since I ran this play by post over time, so I had plenty of time to change things, unlike David Wesely who put it all on the line running it live and in person.


- The most important part of a Braunstein rules-wise is combat/conflict rules. Many rules can be handwaved, but when the actual players directly come into conflict, that's when the rules matter. I suspect that playing in person it would be important to have a rules system that the players could use themselves to handle a fight. If everyone knows AD&D combat and there's no secret elements, players ought to be able to run their own combat between the Gnoll Chief and the Orc Chief. Braunstein combat is like a sport; it needs to be fair, because the game itself is closer to a sport than a traditional RPG.

- Design the scenario for the number of players you have. I would have replaced the dukes with something else if I'd known I'd only get one duke player. I like to run NPCs like video game NPCs (and leave most of the active agents of the game under player control), outside of characters like Khan or Alcar Dovan, which I run like they're a player (ie, they're allowed to actively try to kill players)

- I did find I had the most fun when I was refereeing an intense encounter between players, or when I tried to kill my players. Try to kill them, reasonably.
I suggest having a few chaos elements ready to drop into the game if need be, and if things start slowing down, have a NPC go after a PC at full throttle.
A great perk of using the Star Trek setting is everyone roughly knew how the world operated, so what would typically be lore we had to absorb was just basic knowledge everyone had. That's one perk to a historical Braunstein like David Wesely's, everyone basically knows what an 1800s soldier or CIA agent is capable of, so you can deduce what your opponent might be trying from that, along with being able to easily come up with ideas for what you want to do.
- Use pregens for session Braunsteins (a Braunstein that's meant to be played and have a clear ending). The characters need clear goals to shoot for, and a clear idea what who they are and what they have at their disposable.
- Give your NPCs one clear goal. I found when I had to use Khan I had a clear idea what he would do, so it felt like I was just channeling what Khan would do. Moving forward, I'll make NPCs that I have a clear idea of how they'll act and what they want.
- Generally, have two main factions for people who oppose each other, and then add subgoals for specific characters to spice things up. Starfleet and the Klingons were opponents, but Dukes had more individualized goals that throw more nuance into how the game plays out.
- Have an initial moment where the game begins. For Trekstein, it was just as the Klingon and Starfleet ships dropped out of warp.

What does the gameplay actually look like?
Here's what happened if you were a player.
You joined the Discord server.
You looked over a channel with public knowledge about the planet Nimbus.
You selected a pregen character from a list.
I created a private channel for you and me to talk, and send you your character sheet.
In your private channel, I provided info on your exact starting situation. Where you are, what your goals are.
At this point, you tell me what you want to do, and I tell you what happens.
If you're part of a faction, you also have a faction specific channel you can freely use at all times for talking to your faction members. (You always need these)
You can also see a channel everyone is in if you want to in character send a message to everyone.
If you come into contact with another player, I'd create a channel for you and the other players you are present with or directly hailing, etc. Then you'd talk and say what you're doing until there's a need for me to step in.
For example, Harry Mudd, Sulu, and Commander Korax were all meeting at Mudd's town. During the ensuing conversation, Korax drew his disrupter to shoot Sulu. I ran combat between them using the rules until it was resolved (Korax ruled horribly and ended up getting stunned before he could fire). Then players continued dictating their actions/speech.
And then game continues as such. During the above fight, Sulu and Korax were using their private channels to tell me any secret actions they were taking/asking for clarification on knowledge.

While you're sending me your actions and I'm resolving them, all the other players are also sending me their actions, and it's a bit like being in The Hunt for Red October, because you know the enemy captain is plotting your demise just as you are plotting yours. You also don't know what their secret goals are.
Play continues until our agreed-on ending, in this case Nimbus deciding which empire they're joining.

​A dungeon by Brynjar Már Pálsson, levels 1-3
Written for Shadowdark
  It’s rare, but it happens. You’re fishing in a little stock pond, mostly snagging little baitfish, nothing substantial. Then, suddenly, something big hits your line. You struggle a minute, and bring up…okay, nothing to write home about in the grand scheme of things, but this thing is big enough to actually fillet. That’s my experience with this adventure, a Shadowdark product that has twenty-three pages, detailing a dungeon of twenty-five rooms. Again, this isn’t anything record-setting, but it’s substantial enough I actually had to read a couple things twice. Like seeing a dog walk, it’s so remarkable to see at all you don’t even think at first to see if it’s doing it well.
  The story of the dungeon is pretty involved, thickly populated as these things tend to be. Ancient empire had a brass industry and horrible cursed time machine, seal up the device with the dwarven slaves still in the complex, dwarf slaves become crazed blind mutants “cragbairn”, sahuagin (pronounced like “Samhain”) settle caves nearby, local bumbling villagers fall into the area in a well-making accident. Also there’s a hungry chul. Enter heroes.

​    You can see this thing. What I like first of all has be this map, that chasm is great with multiple iffy bridges, multiple entrance points, and despite being split up into “zones” there’s still a decent back-and-forth flow. I like the magic items, there’s a +1 trident that helps in underwater combat, a +0 sword that gives fighters a feat, a great brass helmet that gives bonuses to mace/hammer attacks but attracts lightning, and my favorite, a sentient wand that hates being used at all and curses on a casting fumble. Good thinking. Mutant dwarves using pocket-rats as sling ammunition is fun. I like the chul as a nasty much-more-dangerous monster for the area that menaces everything else in the dungeon.
  This is leading to a common comment on what can be improved, this tightly packed monster zoo has “factions” sitting on top of each other extremely tightly. There’s also too much work on making the human-hunting sahuagin and the blood-cultist cragbairn into sympathetic people to work with, heck, even the chul has tadpoles its caring for. The density of everything adds to this difficulty as well, widening the spaces of the map would make actual faction play a lot more interesting. There’s also a lot of complex backstory with four ancient dwarven kings, a lot of in-universe information is conveyed pretty naturalistically but the reward for paying attention is…a trap that amputates your hand?
  This all means for me personally the best use case is going to be “steal the magic items and maybe the map”. I like both those elements a lot, sadly the main thing isn’t handy for me. If you’d like to blow the minds of Shadowdarkians, though, this thing practically classes as a megadungeon among the itch field, so that’s a use for those poor souls.
  Final Rating? **/***** with a bit of disappointment, there’s a reach that’s exceeding the grasp. Some worthwhile ideas here though.

​A pulp cowboy adventure by Orion, level 3
Written for Shadowdark*
*with tons of rules for turning it Western
  A major genre that has been woefully underserved in TTRPGs is the Western. Arguably the largest influence in the baseline D&D set of assumptions, where a group of violent drifters wander into each town looking for gold and bad hombres to kill, the plot structure is there but the aesthetic and the trappings aren’t. It’s a strange oversight. Before someone says Boot Hill, that’s more of a gunfight simulator that a full RPG system. I guess by consensus we’ve all agreed the biggest desire is “Weird West”, with alchemy or magic or steampunk tech or whatever added to the mix. I also enjoyed Brisco County Jr, sure. Anyway, this is eight pages, abandoned mine is nine keys, you know the drill by now, but we’ve also got to stat out rifles and revolvers and dynamite.
  This sucker’s got ‘em all. Cowboys and Aliens plus ghost stories plus the no-foolin’ Harry Houdini except he’s a real magician. Hooks are you’re all either time-lost medieval guys, wandering Clint Eastwoods, and/or paranormal investigators wandering into town which is being troubled by ghosts (holographic projections) and a moon cult both caused by weird lost aliens trapped rather pitifully in an abandoned mine. The mine has a toxic atmosphere only breathable by the aliens or with a gas mask, which…I guess is on the standard Shadowdark equipment list? Because it sure isn’t mentioned here. A big roster of townsfolk is randomly rolled on to determine who’s the cult leader and then who gets kidnapped by the aliens down to the mine. The mine is pretty simple, because there’s also stuff about a ghostly gunslinger and his magic gun and Houdini’s ongoing investigation and the cult leader hiding daily mutations and it’s all a bit of a mess. I guess you end by killing the aliens and freeing the abduction victims?

​   In case it wasn’t clear, what I like is the Western setting. I also like the famously skeptical Houdini as the historical figure touchstone (sucks if you roll him being the cult leader though). I like the gun duel quick minigame.
  Everything else falls into what can be improved I’m sorry to say. It’s just…not nearly complete for the kind of investigatory adventure that it wants to be. Couple that with the fact that it’s been written for a D&D dungeon crawler system and yet you’re trying to run Call of Cthulhu along hyper-gonzo lines, it’s a fundamental mismatch. Investigations need more than “the bad guy is 1d20 of these people”, there needs to be a mystery with concrete clues. Also, the guns and dynamite is fine, but you need a lot more to patch Shadowdark into something that can be a Western. This is coming from a guy who’s played in hacked Pathfinder for a Western game for Pete’s sake.
  I reckon the best use case for this is to have a Western one-shot, ignoring the rough patches or sanding them smooth as best you can. While the minigame and the bits of gear are fine, I wouldn’t grab this just for the parts, you have the knowledge instinctively for how to do this yourself, and you might also add more 1800’s gear while you’re at it.
  Final Rating? */***** with a lot of disappointment, as someone who loves both pulps and Westerns this was an easy sell but unfortunately it needed to be a good ten pages longer to really support what it is trying to do.