Shadowdark Review: D&D 5.BX

  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…

---