From the Shadows, Dark

We have been playing Shadowdark, the current old-school darling. I've been running the gang through the quickstart adventure The Lost Citadel of the Crimson/Scarlet -- I kept forgetting -- Minotaur. In general, I think everyone enjoyed it, and it was a different experience for us, having not done much old-school gaming beyond the occasional LotFP playtest.

Here are my thoughts based on one adventure and a month of play:

Darkness and light: This is one of the big selling points of the game, with darkness bringing increased danger, and tracking light sources having increased importance, but in practice it was irrelevant. The players took steps to mitigate the risk and carried plenty of light sources, and tracking light started to feel more like busywork than gameplay; you could have reduced everyone's inventory capacity by one or two slots to account for torches and just assumed they could see.

The one time it should have been relevant, when the wizard ran off with the only light source in order to distract some enemies, the rest of the party was in what was more or less an outdoor area in full daylight. Oh well.

(I placed the dungeon within easy travel of a town where the player-characters could rest and restock; maybe light sources would have been more of an issue if they had been more isolated. One to ponder.)

Death saves and stabilisation: I'm not fully convinced by this mechanic. In the interests of honest playtesting, we followed the procedures through and the elf fighter expired after a number of failed attempts to revive him. Fix? I think in future I would rule that if the situation is "safe" -- at this point the enemies had left to pursue the wizard -- then attempts to stabilise a fallen character work without a roll.

Encumbrance: I like the simplified, slot-based system. It's easy, with a minimum of book-keeping, but there were plenty of times when the party had to make interesting decisions about what to take and what to leave behind.

Experience and treasure: The way Shadowdark tracks experience and treasure is weird, but once you get your head around it it feels quite elegant, and I prefer it to the meticulous counting of every single copper coin. Money did become a bit irrelevant, in part because there was nothing to spend it on, but I believe the full rules have more options for this. The adventure as written should have had the experience values for the treasure packets listed, but that's a presentation issue more than a problem with the game.

Random Levelling: I loved the idea of this, but in practice it wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped. I allowed the players to roll at second level -- as written they don't roll until level three -- in the interests of playtesting, and I think I would continue to do it going forward as it makes the first couple of levels more engaging.

Spellcasting: Shadowdark drops Vancian fire-and-forget spellcasting in favour of casting rolls; if you succeed you cast the spell and it's available again, but if you fail you don't cast and you forget the spell until you rest. The players seemed to prefer it, but I thought the wizard player was perhaps a bit demoralised on the occasions when none of his spell rolls succeeded. Fix? I am tempted to rule that spellcasters can pick one spell that they can cast without fear of failure.

Weapon limits: The "classic" weapon usage limits return and I've never liked them. If you want to be a wizard with a broadsword, then be a wizard with a broadsword. I'd probably fix this in my usual way: weapon damage equal to hit dice, regardless of weapon type, so that wizard's broadsword does 1d4 damage, but a fighter would do 1d8 with it. +1 for two-handed weapons. Shadowdark borrows the finesse weapon property from D&D5 and I think I would probably limit that to just fighters and thieves to reflect their better combat training.

I think everyone enjoyed playing something a bit different, and getting used to the different mindset of old-school play; more thinking outside the box in terms of fighting, negotiating, retreating, using the environment more than character abilities, that sort of thing. I'm in no hurry to play Shadowdark again, but if my group requested it I'd be quite happy to run it. With some tweaks.

Our plan is to play a short Old-School Essentials campaign in May. It will be interesting to see how that compares, as a more traditional approach to the same sort of play.