The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
Can it fulfill the hopes of what 5e failed to do? Can it be the D&D of the Folk RPG Hobby for years to come? Can it be simultaneously what is fun in modern D&D and classical D&D?The answer was “yes” to all of the above.
See in context at The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
It’s mechanics are old school in some ways, the game is fast, improvisational, and makes you feel like you are playing D&D.
See in context at The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
I eventually bent the rules to resemble something closer to what the author would create later with alternate hex-crawling. They could spend a full watch during the day that could have been spent traveling gathering food or firewood for the campfire. There was a chance they could fail at this however and it slowed them down.
See in context at The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
Either way traveling through wildernesses designed for B/X modules with weeks of travel was brutal. I also provided mules in the settlement (not included in Shadowdark) to help carry things, but that complicated the need to run away during encounters.
See in context at The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
there are some things that aren’t apparent from the book that seem important for wilderness travel. For one, I’d recommend the new “alternate hex crawling” rules or the rules coming in the new Cursed Scroll Zine 4.
See in context at The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
Next, I’d recommend more complex options than those presented in the book for items and rules covering large hex-crawls, such as mounts and beasts of burden, which are included in Cursed Scroll Zine 2, and are easily added to the game from classical and modern OSR materials which are compatible.
See in context at The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
Classic games will often have long tracks of land, impassable features going across whole hexes and the majority of hexes have no contents. My observation is this is because classic games like Original D&D and B/X depend on the game procedures to produce the game, rather than the adventure design and content. Modern OSR adventures seem to work to include interesting things and to make choices with in as many hexes as it can fit.
See in context at The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
other classic dungeon modules, that there are several long passages, sometimes more than 100 feet, that simply terminate at a dead end or no meaningful choice to make.In modern OSR dungeons this seems to be bad design.
See in context at The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
In my blog articles I often talk about “character facing” vs. “world facing” design, and how classical games are “world facing” while modern games are “character facing.” Modern OSR games sometimes seem to me “adventure facing” relying on level design and adventure content for the fun of the game.
See in context at The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
This focus on actionable and interesting content is sometimes mistakenly thought of as an objective improvement by those who misunderstand classic content, when in truth, they are simply different
See in context at The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
Where the modern OSR can sometimes feel like a conversation game of interesting choices and consequences, the classic game is more like a wargame with pieces on a board and rules where one can win or lose.
See in context at The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
In hindsight you could probably have a heroic game of Shadowdark just if you use pulp mode.
See in context at The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
This worked flawlessly in my opinion. In every sense the game provided the heroism of 5e. Additionally, by using the https://shadowdarklings.net/ website and allowing all of the character options, it put the number of character options in 5e to shame
See in context at The Five Shadowdark Experiments
Created: 2025-11-03
I feel I can say that Shadowdark has done the best job of capturing the desires of 5e players and OSR referees in the same game.