Off the Shelf: Shadow of the Demon Lord

Christmas is not the day to pull this one off the shelf. But I did.

I did not have this one in storage; it sat on one of my secondary shelves, waiting for another look. With Lamentations off the shelf and DCC begging for attention, I am pulling out older games in my collection and looking for the definitive fantasy horror experience. Some games, like Forbidden Lands, do the survival and exploration well, but not horror.

In many ways, this game destroys the Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Dungeon Crawl Classics games in horror fantasy.

The rules? It's a mix of 4E and 5E, and it makes sense since the designer worked for Wizards and on many of their darker and demonic books. The rules are a masterful mix of White Box sensibilities and 4 and 5E but with everything streamlined and improved to make the gameplay seamless.

And the character advancement and builds put 5E to absolute shame. Building characters in this game reminds me of one of those JRPGs where you can combine three classes and get something incredibly cool and fun - like nothing else you have ever seen. For those not into horror, this system is coming to a more traditional fantasy game called Shadow of the Weird Wizard.

Fantasy horror gaming? This is the place to go. Full stop, end of story. Games like Warhammer get too bogged down in the percentages and the realism. Lamentations I love as a basic B/X with gonzo adventures, but it needs those add-on adventures to shine; very little in the rules make it a horror game. Dungeon Crawl Classics borders on a gonzo and crazy version of Gamma World mixed with a fantasy game. Parts of it feel wacky and over-the-top, which is where the game shines.

The Demon Lord game makes me box up Lamentations, which is sad since I like that game. The Lamentations game hints at the darkness and has one objectionable table result. Shadow of the Demon Lord delivers a total horror game; start to stop. The sex is kept out of the game, which is honestly how it should be. Sex is a touchy subject; every group will be different on what is considered "okay."

Every group should decide for themselves if they open that door.

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

SotDL is pure DIY insanity and horror. The rules and spells reinforce the genre. You can play this anywhere from a year-zero beginning of the end to a full-on end-of-days experience. This works well for one-shot adventures and non-world-ending horror.

And it keeps the rules dirt simple, to the point, and familiar. I know a few B/X-type games that are far more complicated than this. The initiative is baked-in. Fast turns, slow turns, and end of the round. Players always go first in a turn, then monsters. To-hits are modified d20 rolls against the defense. For all other actions, the target number is 10.

Toss out most of your other dice, even the d100s, since there are no d100 charts. This game just uses d6 and d20. You will never confuse a d14 and d16 here. You are not flipping through the book to consult spell charts.

And you could buy and buy and buy expansions and have a lifetime of things to do. There are an insane amount of books for this game, and the primary book is enough for years of fun. There is a rules hacking guide and companions that multiply the upper-level paths, allowing for a near-infinite amount of character customization. There are no restrictions on character type combos; your rogue could become a paladin and then finish as a pyromancer. That character is not gimped either; they are pretty kick butt even with less-than-ideal magic power choices.

Progression is fast by default, but you could slow this down or speed it up. You do this by milestones, so you are not doing the XP thing.

The game was written with pre-safety tools, so bring your own if that helps you find players. I can't fault it for not having them, nor should you fault any game for the same. Since tastes and attitudes change, these should be optional community tools and not written into games. I would not play this with a younger audience and walk carefully with new players until I get to know them better.

You could rule the horror stuff out and play this as a 5E variant, but that is what Shadow of the Weird Wizard will do.

But if you can find a table with horror film fans, wow, you are in for a fun time. You are free as a GM to say, WTF, this crazy thing happens - and this is the game. You can stay more in the rules and play it like a lethal and gritty 5E. You could shift anywhere in between.

The best thing about this game is it is built to do one thing well. And it excels since it simplifies everything else.

You don't need to play in their world. They have clockwork kin and black powder, so you could play in a late Renaissance world, Victorian era, or Steampunk Industrial Revolution. There is a master path of gunslinger that lets you craft your own personal six-shooter. This game has the same 'cool factor' as Deadlands. You could easily reskin the path as a rifleman, let them only use rifles, and craft a lever action with six shots.

You could play a clockwork Clint Eastwood, who specializes in assassinating powerful undead and has bullets with the names of vampires on them that they will use someday. Give them a fistful of boons when the moment comes to use the 'Strahd bullet.' I don't need enchanting mechanics, unique magic items in a book, crafting systems, special classes to craft these, or anything else to make this happen. If a player legitimately saves this otherwise typical bullet, and even chases after it if it gets lost, and says, 'This is the one, and there is no other,' - then those actions enchant that round of ammunition with the power of 'the rule of cool.'

If you start the game at level seven, you could start playing with that character.

What is not to love?

You can't do that in 5E or Pathfinder 2, or it takes weeks of play to get there if you manage to hack something similar together, and the character sheets are atrocious tax forms and need computers to figure out.

I could build that character on paper in five minutes in SotDL with simple additions and a few selections. And if you feel a level ten cap is too low, and your progressions will be capped, there are rules in one of the hacking guides for going past that level and turning into epic superheroes.

Yes, the game is a horror game, but in many ways, this game gives you the tools to build larger-than-life characters on the level of anime and manga to slap evil in the face and say, "Not today, darkness."