Feels like the old-school RPG experience is having a moment. You don’t have to look far to immerse yourself in the world of single-digit hit points, punishing encounters, and gameplay that rewards ingenuity in the moment.
Keeping It Simple
If you’re coming from 5E or Tales of the Valiant, the looseness of a Shadowdark adventure might seem a bit daunting. To go from a fully plotted adventure with detailed NPCs, treasure lists, and extensive maps, to a handful of bullet points and a very general directive that “adventurers need adventures” can feel like you’re being thrown into the storytelling deep-end without so much as a pair of +1 water wings.
But it doesn’t have to feel like that. The beauty of a game like Shadowdark is precisely in the simplicity of its storytelling tools. It’s hard to railroad your players when there’s not even a track.
Shadowdark is fun because it’s easy. Shadowdark is fun because it’s hard.
Dos & Don’ts for New Shadowdark GMs
DO: Ask Players What They’re DOING
A 5E character sheet contains 18 skills designed to address any problem an adventurer might encounter. These options are great. However, many skills often push players to play their sheet rather than their character. It’s simple, efficient, and boring.
Being an adventurer is about taking action. With only six abilities available to your PCs, asking them to describe how they take action is critical to an interesting narrative.
Not only that, Shadowdark rewards specificity. Sure, you can ask your players to roll INT to search for secret doors, and they might succeed, but if your players know they can find a secret door by describing how they tap the walls with a 10-foot pole (no roll necessary), they’ll start being WAY more descriptive of their actions. Don’t forget that ingenious solutions get an XP reward!
DO: Keep Time
Here’s a little peek behind the curtain at Kobold Press: every Wednesday at lunch we get together for a game of Shadowdark. That game lasts exactly as long as one torch, one hour, and it’s never NOT exciting.
This real-time element of Shadowdark is essential to the game. Many GMs are tempted to throw it out, but in a game where NOBODY has darkvision, the monsters are unbothered by darkness, and you spend most of your time crawling through honest-to-goodness dungeons, light is your most important resource.
A ticking clock means no more expansive planning sessions, less OOC chatter, and a diminishing bubble of safety that your players learn to respect, especially as the torch supply runs low.
DO: Embrace Simplicity
Shadowdark is built on the principle that adventurers go on adventures, and they get better at adventuring when they come back with loot.
This isn’t to say you can’t have political intrigue, complicated villains, and challenging moral quandaries where kingdoms rise and fall based on your decisions. It just means that at the heart of every Shadowdark game is a party looking for treasure. Embrace it and let it inform your storytelling and adventure design.
And never let anyone ask you how many feet away something is. It’s Close, Near, or Far. You’ll come to love this simple truth.
DO: Let Your PCs Fail
The system is made to let PCs fail, so get used to it. In the world of Shadowdark, spells fail and become unusable, random encounters are unbalanced, and battles become a rout with one bad roll (ask me how I know).
Telegraph danger when you can. Offer your players an escape route. But never, ever pull your punches. It’s a dangerous world out there, let them experience it!
DO look into Snarl of the Pale Swine, Kobold Press’s first Shadowdark adventure! On sale now!
DON’T: Lean on Dice Rolls
Game Mastering 101 tells us never to lock important information behind a dice roll. Shadowdark takes this to a higher level by rewarding clever (and specific) players with opportunities to bypass rolling dice entirely. If a PC tells you they’re searching a bookshelf for a hidden lever you know is there, they find it.
DON’T: Give the PCs a Map (or Free Food)
Certain aspects of exploration have become less and less essential to the TTRPG experience. In the ancient days, someone in the party had to map the dungeon as they explored it, and heaven help you if got lost and ran out of food.
Players have become accustomed to 100% accurate, player-facing maps packaged with their adventures and hand-waving rations and cartography as needless busywork. Starving to death in a forgotten corner of the dungeon is all but impossible.
In Shadowdark, being an adventurer is always dangerous, always challenging. If someone asks for you for a map, hand them a sheet of grid paper, a pen, and make sure you describe the way into and out of every room. If they survive, they’ll have a nice souvenir!
DON’T: Ignore Random Encounters
5E GMs have a lot on their plate, so it’s not surprising that random encounters are another thing that often get set aside in favor of overarching narrative and deeper roleplaying.
Shadowdark is a game about adventurers trying to make a quick buck and not die while managing limited resources and being prepared to run away. Random encounters are an essential part of that dynamic. Rejoice in using them!
DON’T: Overprepare
No adventure survives first contact with the party, except maybe a Shadowdark adventure. Remember our intro; you can’t go off the rails if there’s no rail.
Your job as a Shadowdark GM is to know the basics, be prepared to make judgement calls rather than dig through the rules, and keep an eye on the torch clock. The back of the Shadowdark manual has an exhaustive list of tables to cover unexpected developments too, so go into your first session lean and mean and ready to roll with whatever happens next!
End of the Road
As tabletop roleplaying games have grown increasingly more complex, more power fantasy than struggle for survival, it’s not surprising that games like Shadowdark have struck a chord.
If you’re skeptical, I’d challenge you to try your hand at a Shadowdark one-shot with your regular group. You’d be amazed what kind of stories will emerge from such a simple collection of tools. Hopefully these tips inspire you to find out!
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