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.

Cypher With Friends

This week, I have had the rare chance to play Cypher with others, and it has been a blast.

The system was instantly learnable; we created live in-game characters during the first encounter, and I taught the rules as we played. I used my tried and true "tutorial character" system of having someone in-game explain things as the situation progressed. That character gradually became less of a tutorial character and more of an NPC when the group felt confident.

The best thing? The players did all the rolls, and I would ask them for a d6 or d100 roll when I needed one. I forbid myself from touching dice or having them on my table as GM. When they asked why I was doing a d100 roll, I told them why, and they followed along in the book with what I was trying to reference.

So they were all learning how to game master too.

I have no "GM screen" or "secret adventure notes" to reference, and I kept a pad of paper to make world notes. I used my tablet on a stand as my "book" and played music on it. I had nothing hidden from my players, nor did I need to.

Another great note is to make the XP flow like popcorn. Use a generous XP rate, and encourage rerolls, player intrusions, and spending XP to change the world. The world is just as much of my player's creation as mine. They wanted a base; they created a "desert castle" as a home base, spent 3 XP and created it, and then spent an XP creating character arcs to repair and fix the place up.

And just like that, they were invested.

They purchased NPC contacts, created player intrusions, changed the narrative creatively, and had much fun using the one-use cyphers to cause havoc and solve encounters in ways they never expected.

Cypher System is one of the best games I played in years, and it is even better when playing with others.

"Where Do I Start...?"

I was talking to a friend about playing a traditional pen-and-paper RPG with her over Tabletop Simulator, Basic Fantasy in fact. I like Basic Fantasy for new players mainly because of the modern-style AC system, the AC of a monster is the target number, and that is what you have to roll higher than to-hit. No attack charts needed, and what you see is what you have to roll.

Now she has been out of pen-and-paper gaming for a while, and we talked about her feelings about playing. Her response was she was interested, but she had no idea where to start. I actually gave her a copy of the rules last time we met, and even a game I feel is easy to pick up as BF was still a bit much to digest for someone coming into the hobby. Yes, I asked her if I could share this, by the way, and I hope to teach her how things work very soon. A new player, I know, very exciting...

Another "hard to start" issue with pen-and-paper games is inherently their open-endedness. With a game like Monopoly, there is a set board, set pieces, and a set world in a box that a player can figure out. This makes me miss the old Dungeon board game from TSR that was sort of the same way, a set board, a set world, and an ever increasing cave of danger with keyed room colors and stacks of cards for each "level" of the dungeon.

I sit here as an experienced DM with over 40 years of experience and there is a part of me saying, "Of course it is open ended with no map! That is where the fun is!"

And then there is the new player part of me saying, "I can understand why the hesitance. I can see why someone would ask, what am I getting into?"

What Am I Getting Into?

There is no map. The rules leave a lot up to interpretation. The DM can kill my character for any reason, even a stupid mistake. The world is unforgiving, as I could wander into a dangerous part of the dungeon and it is game over. I could run out of supplies down there, or worse yet, get lost. I could roll bad and it is game over. How do I trust the DM is being fair? How do I know when the dungeon is over? What if I don't want to be a part of a story, and I just want to play combat? What if I hate combat and just want to play a story?

Halfway through that list of fears that I came up with...I started to want to play the game, because I realized no other game was like this. It is a strange thought that the bad parts that a "traditional family board gamer" can come up with are actually strong selling points of a pen-and-paper game.

But I need to work harder at this I feel, harder at "selling" that fairness part of being a DM. A lot of the hesitance I feel at getting new players excited is the inherent mistrust of the dungeon master. That a DM won't be fair. That a DM will make it up as the game goes on. That a DM will look for every chance to TPK the party. That the DM will change things secretly in the background to either make things harder or easier. That a DM has secrets and can't be trusted. That a DM will use the player's misfortune as a source of enjoyment.

Again, as a DM with over 40 years of experience I laugh at those statements, but with my friend I can see how those same fears can just make someone say, "I can't put that must trust in someone so I am going to walk away."

The Game is The DM

With traditional board games, the game board is the DM. They are inanimate objects and the interaction between the pawns on the board and the rules define the "world" and the interactions between them are physical and can be understood in a 1-to-1 relationship. Like the Dungeon board game, you have these passages and rooms, you roll dice to move, and to pull cards to see what monster is in a room and your character card gives you the information you need to succeed in that battle. If you win, you pull a treasure card.

The trust is there built into the game, except the trust is contained within the world the game's designer drew on the map and built into the interactions with the pawns and game board. I see all the game's pieces, therefore my trust is built by the interactions between them.

D&D 4 was like this for us. It was "battle chess" for our group. The game was played on dungeon tiles. You didn't really need a DM, as you could setup the scenario and go. You could round-robin the monster's turn among players and have the monsters act to the best of their abilities.

The Module is the DM

I have this feeling how I am going to solve this is hold up one of my modules and say, "we are playing this, my job is to tell you what happens depending on where you go." It sounds so simple and obvious that I wonder why I am even writing this article, because that is what you are supposed to do. It is simple, right?

But for my friend, it isn't. She has no concept of any of this. For us in the hobby, this is easy. For outsiders, it is not so easy. That is why I am writing this.

That published module becomes "the game board" in her eyes, the "story book" she will adventure through. I feel this would all be harder if I were to wing it and make things up, because, "what are we doing?" I love narrative games where the action goes wherever the players drive the story to through their actions, but another part of me loves the, "buy it and solve it" style of play with prepackaged adventures. Later on, if we ever meet people who played these adventures as well we can share stories.

This becomes an experience she can talk about to others, and they can have that same experience - and they know the game's name, the adventure, and that becomes something she can share more than, "That person played this game with me and was a really good DM and he made things up and I had fun. I don't know the name what we played but we had fun."

Winging it can come later, and more story-oriented play can come later. She may just have fun doing this and that is all we do. For now, I think I solved the problem, even if this solution was the way I was supposed to do it in the first place.

But thinking through this in a different way gives me the perspective from her viewpoint, and I find that very helpful for introducing the game to her and all it has to offer.