Shadowdark Review: Players With Character

  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:

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​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…