Tuesday, February 11, 2025

The RPG as Social Glue

Shadowdark captures the original D&D aesthetic just like how the original Traveller Book captured the 2d6 science fiction spark of imagination. Do these self-contained tomes have every option, provide the most detailed combat systems, or give your billions of combinations of options?

No.

Doing any of those things would ruin what these games are, and the possibilities they offer.

Forget today's encyclopedic games which are shelf fodder for the collector's market, and not games which can be easily played with others. The best game is one small rulebook and infinite possibilities. Very few games capture this. Even the new Traveller has dipped into the collector's market a bit too deeply, and that game is a hard sell for me to anyone interested in science fiction.

With D&D, you are talking nearly $200 in books to get started, a subscription service, reading hundreds of pages of rules and options, learning a VTT, and becoming familiar with action types, turns, and all sorts of special conditions, spells, powers, and abilities. The D&D Starter Set is probably the best edition of the game, and you should ignore the rest. Very few people play past the levels given in the Starter Set, and the game at high levels is horribly broken.

Just selling someone on "hey, play this with me!" is an impossible task unless they are already deeply invested in the D&D market. Most average people, when I go up to them and offer to play a RPG with them?

Forget it. D&D is too big to even suggest. Too big of a cost, time investment, purchase, reading requirement, and commitment for any average person to make. I bring D&D up to people outside the gaming market, and I get blank stares and a feeling I should "go play with people who already know the game." D&D as "social glue" only works on those already sold on the game.

Shadowdark is different. I can start up a Shadowdark game with those outside the D&D sphere, they say "what is this" and they see how easy it is, and they are instantly interested and know "I can have fun playing this!" Me, as someone who runs the game, has a "social value" to others as a "person who plays a fun game."

And I can get anyone playing the "full version" of Shadowdark with just the Starter Set, and me owning a book. The character sheets are so simple, and what you need to read and learn can be easily passed on in one minute of showing someone how things work. The game plays like the classic Hero Quest or Dungeon boardgames, where it is just "move your piece and do something" every turn.

Shadowdark is this generation's "Basic D&D." This is the game Wizards should be selling for the hobby, and D&D has turned into a grognard-like mess of rules, options, special actions, bloated options, and an almost "Advanced Squad Leader" feeling to the entire heavy and book-heavy framework.

I can't sell people on D&D anymore.

The 2014 books were an easier sell, honestly.

These days? It is a non-starter with thousands of backward-compatible options confusing the market, and the game depending on online character creation tools. I have to sell people on a game, time commitment, huge purchase, website, subscription service, microtransactions, and a huge buy-in to get started. There is even a social commitment (orcs, drow, half-races) you need to make to align yourself with the designer's vision of the game that feels like it overreaches into your imagination.

Shadowdark is my "social glue" for fantasy these days. I can play it with someone in a heartbeat, introduce it in a minute, show them a zero-cost point of entry, and get them in game with me without them needing to buy a book or sign up for a subscription service. Sorry, Wizards, I am not selling D&D Beyond to other people to play games with me. I am not doing your sales pitches anymore.

Shadowdark works because everything is kept dirt simple.

And once people play, they are hooked, and can join in the fun for free.

I tried putting Shadowdark in storage many times and walking away from the game. To me, it was too simple and did not fill my grognard need of rules, realism, and options. I loved the respect it paid to the classic hobby, and the art and how the game is designed pays a lot of respect to the old ways. I loved the presentation, but felt the game was too simple to hold my interest.

To be honest, I feel Dragonbane fits in this equation somewhere, as the power-fantasy game many play alongside Shadowdark. Where in Shadowdark you need to play carefully, Dragonbane feels like the "charge in, slashing swords and casting spells" style of fantasy many prefer (minus the D&D commitment and bulk).

But every time I gave Shadowdark a chance with others, outside the hobby, I made new friends who were interested. I know, after a while, someone will try to sell them on D&D, but they will likely end up disappointed and leaving the hobby because for them, D&D is too big to play. D&D is the wrong game for them. They will get in, make the purchases, and feel ripped off because they don't have the time in their lives to get involved with a hobby that demands a majority of your time and attention.

Shadowdark?

I can pick this game up and put it down like a boxed set of Monopoly. For others, that is the same level of understanding and commitment they need to invest. Want to play Shadowdark? Yes! Cool! And there we are, zero time and prep needed, hand out a few simple character sheets, and we are playing a game together.

The "social glue" of Shadowdark works, and it works well.

Monday, February 10, 2025

Shadowdark Wins Again: Instant Play

I had a friend who played MMOs with those who also played D&D but wanted to play pen-and-paper games together, "inside" the MMO as the characters. So, she pulled out her copy of Shadowdark and started "just playing" inside the in-game MMO chat window - by the rules, minus a map and torch timers, but 100% doing this by the rules.

It took her zero time to "start playing" - no session zero, just the sample characters from the free starter set, and there were no long pauses to figure out what happened during a turn. One move, one action - next character in the initiative order. The tables in the book covered even the "after combat" stuff like treasure rolls and other random events.

The player (on the other side of the MMO chat window) did not need anything, just a passing knowledge of 5E. If the player had the free starter set, that is all they need to play with someone who owns the whole book or PDF. Most of the time, the referee is the only one who needs to own a book.

The concepts and language used were all very straightforward, and no knowledge of special actions or rules was needed. The D&D game has become like the Blackberry keyboard phone of the 2000s versus Shadowdark's iPhone. Shadowdark is the D&D that Wizards should be selling as D&D.

If this were D&D, let's log into D&D Beyond, create characters, buy books, and set a date and time to learn a VTT. Realistically, with people's schedules and budgets these days, it would take a week and lots of hard-to-commit-to, out-of-game commitments. This game would likely fall apart and never happen if this were D&D.

With Shadowdark, this was the difference between "playing something right now" versus "selling someone on D&D plus the D&D Beyond subscription, learning a VTT, not owning books, setting up a time, lengthy character creation, and reading through and understanding hundreds of pages of rules and character options, and so much other "pre-game" stuff that it makes "instant play" impossible.

She just started playing after one or two setup sentences.

Everything was very easily grasped and understood.

The numbers were under control and smaller.

The game played fast, with full "stunting" support to allow for various player actions.

She "added spice" in her descriptions like a great old-school game master, so the attacks, action, and tension were compelling. The "spice" mattered, too, so if a monster got hit in the arm, it could drop its weapon. No rules are needed for that; this is the "spice" that matters and affects the game.

The game can also be modded quickly and can support different settings, classes, and races.

I keep a torch lit for the more complicated games, but her experience "playing right now" inside an MMO chat window, with self-apparent rules and the action happening right now, makes all the difference in the world. This sort of "ultra-low commitment" and "play can start anytime" is enormous, and it also mirrors people's time, commitment level, and hesitancy to join a game in the real world. Shadowdark is killing many of my more complicated games, even though I see those games as "better" and more complete experiences.

I can't beat this "instant play" capability. Her experience validates it.

D&D does not have "instant play."

The MMO chat window is a terrible way to play a game, but Shadowdark does it quickly. The game can be played well, by the rules, with instant action, or in the one of the worst ways (second only to playing in IMs), and it provides a high level of enjoyment and satisfaction—with nearly zero buy-in.

Shadowdark is far easier to play with others than any other game. The gameplay is instant and viral. You just want to keep playing. This is crushing D&D and Pathfinder 2 for me, because the game is insanely easy to play with others, and play with those who have a high resistance to trying something new. And it can be played in a heartbeat, and using the worst ways to play.

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Big Gaming?

I feel that "big gaming" is dying, and my interest in these "shelf games" has fallen off a cliff. I have no longer interest in supporting a shelf of games, and if I do, it will be the best. I also feel that those buying the 2024 collector's items books are buying for the collector's value.

Any game that relies on a collection strategy isn't playable. I have been down that road with Pathfinder 1e, and even Paizo did studies on how many actually play versus collect and read. Most were to collect the books and read; as I recall, most buyers were not those who played the game.

All of 5E is in my garage. Pathfinder 2 is in boxes waiting for a space. Pathfinder 1e is in my closet. All my "library games" are going the way of the dodo. I am out of space. That's it. No more buying and collecting "just to have."

If a game can't be done in one or two books, my interest level falls off a cliff. I am serious about learning to be concise and efficient with words and publishers. These vast, bloated, overly padded, long essays on "what a fighter does" that go on for a full-sized book's two-page spread are such a waste, and nobody needs them nor reads them. They don't affect play or worth much as "flavor."

They are wasting time passing out the book to make it appear you are "getting more."

And all the AI art and text can't save some of these books. More is less.

Old School Essentials, Shadowdark, and any of these small-book games do more with less. Even Traveller, the game that was the essence of small-book gaming, has exploded into a library. I don't like the new version of Traveller as much as I do the old one. It has drifted into the collector's market, which makes them money, but it contributes to my unhappiness with gaming.

The old Traveller Book has that one-book magic to it. This one book lasts decades of gaming. The new books are a shelf-clogging mess of information, more like a set of science fiction encyclopedias. This is also a problem with the latest books; it is more work to look up a piece of information than it is just to "make it up in your head." The original Traveller book is still a fantastic game; you could play any modern Traveller adventure with it.

Is there "less here?" Yes, but that is its beauty. The game does not need much to do a lot. Two six-sided dice and a 160-page book can unlock a universe.

Cepheus Deluxe (and the Enhanced Edition) also captures that "one-book magic" I like in a game. This is the community version of Traveller, minus the official setting, and it still has a lot of great rules and improvements over the source game.

You can add any of the "Without Number" games to that list, too. These are fantastic games, and why they don't get more attention and love is one of the biggest mysteries in gaming. These are games you can disappear into and get lost for years. They also have one-page rules summaries, and they are not difficult in any way.

Shadowdark is my last version of 5E. One book and go. OSE is still on my shelves.

I currently have a shelf for D&D 3.5E alongside my Dungeon Crawl Classics books. Both are relatively small games, with DCC being one book (the adventures are fun and imaginative) and 3.5E being 3/4 of a shelf, plus PDFs. If you like modern D&D, but don't like its direction, just play D&D 3.5E and forget everything past 4th Edition ever existed.

On the plus side, you will have complete sourcebook support for every significant setting in the rules, which is something 5E can't say for itself. D&D "stopped development" at D&D 3.5E, and everything past that was either a mistake or making up for one and never regaining the glory days.

D&D 3.5E, either in the original game or DCC's version of the system, is a worthy, playable game. Even though you can fill four shelves with DCC adventures, it is still a one-book game. The balance of DCC is closer to D&D 3.5E than B/X. You could use the D&D 3.5E Monster Manual as-is for this game, ignoring some of the 3.5E-isms, and be fine.

I have three shelves for my best game, which is GURPS. Arguably, the game is just two books, and everything else is just a setting guide or genre expansion. The base game is small, and you can get away with running GURPS Lite for 90% of your session.

GURPS will be the last multi-shelf game I support.

And the often repeated line "GURPS is math-heavy and complicated" is a lie. It is no more complicated than 5E and more straightforward to grasp since there is one core 3d6 rule driving everything and no plethora of action types to spend 30 minutes figuring out what to do with during your turn. Get yourself a good electronic character sheet (GURPS Character Assistant or GURPS Character Sheet), and you will have everything you need, and the characters will be easy.

Everything else is 3d6 and roll lower.

The only hard part of GURPS is the first learning curve and grasping how to create characters. Play with pre-gens at first; it is all 3d6. Roll under, and design characters later. And unlike 5E, 90% of the rules are optional. This is why everyone misunderstands GURPS.

I swear, people hear the name GURPS and instantly recoil. Among the general public, the instant reaction is "not for me," and I get the feeling the game is a lot like Blender's 3D program. "Not for me" at first, and then "How did I live without this" after the learning curve is over.

That is where I am going. I am done with many games and am just using GURPS for them.

The last "big game" I played was Pathfinder 1e. These days, I am just as happy playing GURPS or Shadowdark on Roll20 and using maps and hex grids online, even as a solo player. I don't have time for a big game, and tighter games with fewer books are more enjoyable.

But in my experience, Pathfinder 1e was "too big to quit," - which is why I suspect many of these companies flood the market with books. What does this do? If you are unhappy with the game, you will buy more to fix it. You will continue to be disappointed, and you will keep buying. You will extend your time with a game that makes you unhappy for years or even decades and ignore simpler games you would have enjoyed.

I still like the system, but it is a behemoth.

I was like this with Pathfinder 1e versus D&D 3.5E, a game I dismissed as being "less" because Pathfinder 1e has so much "more." Later on, I went back and rediscovered a classic. The size of my library forced me to ignore a game with merit and style.

Beware of "big gaming"—these libraries will prevent you from playing other games, take up all your time and money, and lead you into an "unhappy relationship" with a system just because of the sunk-cost feeling you have with it.

Big games are less.

Friday, January 31, 2025

Et Tu, Orcs?

So, did D&D 2024 drop the orc as a monster?

Thank you.

I give them points for being honest and telling customers who enjoy movies like Lord of the Rings and old-school gaming to stay away from their game. The current books look like a joke designed by people who are bitter and angry at the hobby. The 2024 books aren't D&D.

And if 5E is still your thing?

Tales of the Valiant has orcs. They are also a socially conscious company that makes a good game.

Level Up Advanced 5E has orcs. EN World is very socially conscious.

Shadowdark has orcs. Another progressive group here and a disciplined team.

Outside of 5E? OSRIC has orcs. Along with every other OSR game I can think of.

Pathfinder 2 Remaster has orcs, and this is Paizo, a very progressive company. I wish they could stay on message, and I hope their current bad press blows over. Wizards may have just saved Pathfinder again by doing something more stupid that will take the headlines off of them.

People at Paizo are probably cheering this news right now.

Want an even more progressive company that makes an excellent game? Cypher System has orcs on page 347. You can have progressive companies with their heads screwed on straight and who make great stuff. They know certain things are part of the hobby; they try to appeal to the traditional gaming customers and don't let their HR departments write their games.

The D&D owners and designers did this to make people angry and get in the news. It is the same old sad "outrage marketing" where "you are either with us or against us." They want to paint all these other games in a bad light, which is wrong, hurts the hobby, and divides us. Go away, clickbait anger marketing. Go away, like the entire Internet era that fostered you.

Social media killed the hobby.

Good.

We can return to being a niche group of friends playing games we like.


Thursday, January 30, 2025

Shadowdark: Hacking Classes

Since Shadowdark keeps it simple, the classes are easy to hack, modify, and create. Using our examples, we must set a few things regarding armor, hit dice, and weapons. Next, we get to the fun part, coming up with 2-4 class special abilities, and the class will have less if they are a caster.

Skilled classes, like the thief, are simple - a group of actions to have an advantage.

The spell list, if you have one, is the hard part. Still, it isn't hard; more than that, it is a little work looking at existing spells and modeling your new ones after those. If you have a spell list to convert over, just use the names and model the effects using Shadowdark spells as your guide. And just pick the best spells! Four spells per level of tiers one and two are all you need to start; if the class is fun, you can do the others later.

I could develop hundreds of classes using this framework, everything from cowboys to space marines.

I could put together a "ShadowTrek" game in about an hour with command, science, medical, engineering, and security classes. Looking for "position skills" to create navigation, piloting, and communications specialists? Use the "profession system" in the game and give the character an advantage on the rolls. Weapons? Two or three types of phasers that do a d10 ranged damage with a few settings, and you are good to go.

A scanner, technical, or med kit? Okay, just say what they are. They take one slot of gear. Try a profession without them, and you roll at a disadvantage. If you had an advantage since this is your specialty, it cancels out, and you make do with what you have and roll with no modifiers. Put a 3-use limit on them before they need a recharge, if you want to avoid "scan everything" syndrome. Bigger 2-slot kits with 8 uses? Why not?

The main rules will handle everything else. Hand out a sheet for the classes, and players can play just with the free downloadable rules in any genre or game.

Ships? Design them as monsters. A level 10 "cruiser class ship?" AC 17, 50 hp, two "phased laser" attacks doing 1d10, and two short-range torpedo attacks doing 3d6 damage each. A +10 attack modifier and +4 for the ship's "ability scores." It is good to start; if those stats are wrong, it will work out in your first few ship combats. The pilot for the show will be the first few games, and things will change for the better. Want shields? Give it a 20-hp shield that goes down as it is damaged and restored when the ship "rests." Take everything else from the TV show. It feels right.

I need 4-6 pages of notes; it is an entirely different game.

You can't do this in 5E without a 300+ page book and a Kickstarter. The current generation of "phat book" games is bloated and blatantly obese, and the frameworks of the games themselves are so heavy that they drain all the fun and imagination out of the hobby. Wizards designed D&D to need so much support that it takes over your shelves and puts a structural limitation on who can support the game. Pathfinder 2 is no different; it is a super-heavy game.

D&D was designed to limit competition by requiring all this "stuff" to work with the main rules, heavy subclasses, action support, multiclass support, and all these other rules-heavy dongles. Bloat keeps the little people out of the market.

Even many OSR games "miss the point" with this modular design. I could put my ShadowTrek character in any Shadowdark game and have them work correctly, and I would have no issues with needing a saving throw table or any other OSR cruft we enshrine as part of the hobby. The class? It works. The phaser? It works. The combat system is Shadowdark.

What compatibility problems?

One little book is all I need for a lifetime of fun.

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Hacking Shadowdark

Shadowdark is awesome.

I love not adding modifiers to damage rolls - those things are flat on the die, except if you have a special modifier. There are many books out there on this topic that break the system or introduce complexity when it isn't needed.

The "Shadowdark" way of doing things keeps that "flat & dry" level of balance, where characters aren't stacked full of powers and abilities like some over-frocked 5E Christmas Tree with too many lights and ornaments.

That said, we have a few books adding extra "stuff" and filling in a few holes in the system. You begin to run into a problem with the community using the same names as other books or even the official ones. Speaking of official classes...

One great place to start is the official Bard & Ranger classes straight for the Arcane Library. Looking for a bard and ranger? Well, here they are.

Unnatural Selection is another excellent book with a few detailed classes, spells and powers, and many new ancestries. New spells, magic items, and monsters are included, too. We get premium necromancer-style, beast-master, and shaman classes, among many others. This is the best single-book expansion for the base game and has more of everything.

Player Companion for Shadowdark is a good "stuff book," but it has a few issues with quantity over quality. We have many new classes but no class and level titles; some have the same class names as other books. There is a necromancer here that is sort of like a mage, not as in-depth as the Unnatural Selection's Grave Warden, but still, the class holds up. There are some good options here, but be prepared to sort through a lot of chaff for wheat kernels.

I like this book because of the variety of options but be prepared to untangle many conflicts with similar-named stuff in other books. This is a solid book if you want to expand your game but pick and choose the best options that speak to you and your table.

Nashcraft offers a good option and a blackguard class if you are looking for the elusive Paladin. These have titles as well, so you are getting full support.

The Book of Shadows is a book with a bunch of interesting stuff, including an interesting expansion to the base game's skill system. If you want to "hack" Shadowdark into having a more traditional skill system, this is a good book to start with. This takes your professions, assigns three subskills to each, and gives you a +1 rank in each subskill.

The game is straightforward, which makes you want to expand it infinitely.

Without too much effort, you can add a special class or ancestry here or there and not break the game's great feeling and tight balance.

Monday, January 27, 2025

Please No More AI RPG Books

There is a trend in PDF game books to fill them with AI art and text, slap a cover on them, and ship them as books to "fill shelves." Random tables are filled with AI-generated results. AI art is splashed across pages. Only a handful of things in the book have any human input or thought behind them, or, honestly, I can't really tell.

What AI is doing is killing the market.

I see these books, and I turn away.

The AI art generation is bringing in a ton of censorship by corporations; even slightly risqué, historically accurate, or mildly offensive pieces are getting banned in masse. These programs would ban most of the 1990s cheesecake comics art by Marvel and DC. Violent and dark art is forbidden. Most of the classic Boris Vallejo or Frank Frazetta-style art is banned. Mentions of historical events that happened in real life have been erased.

AI is the corporate takeover of imagination and free expression.

It is massive corporate censorship.

It is the rewriting of history.

When an administration or government comes into power that doesn't like what you are saying or creating, your free expression will get turned off. Your grammar checkers will be turned off, leaving you sounding uneducated. Your AI art tools will be taken away. Your accounts will be closed.

You will become a digital non-person without a voice.

By relying on these tools or perpetuating the creators that use them, you will eventually be part of the Great Silencing to come. I feel bad since AI enables creators to have things they never could imagine doing.

But the damage outweighs the good here.

DIY.