I ran 3 games of Shadowdark at Philly Area Games Expo (PAGE), a convention that seems to be gaining some traction in the area here in it's second year. There were plenty of YouTubers and ex-TSR era and WOTC designers at it. I sat in on some seminars, including OSR tavern keeper Tenkar talking about the jump from blogging to video. Interesting stuff.
I ran 3 home dungeons 3 home dungeons adapted to Shadowdark (the players were Vikings and Northmen exploring alien ruins in the frozen north, some horror vibes too). If that sounds familiar to old-time readers... I'm resurrecting The Black City for Shadowdark. I've got about 60 pages of it done. I figure if I keep signing up to run set pieces of it as convention dungeons, it'll force me to keep deadlines. My home games are going to be in Curse of Strahd and Karameikos for a while, so I've got a few months before the whole thing needs to be ready for the home crew.
It was interesting seeing what was being run... about 50 5E games, 30 session of AD&D 1E (respect!!), 20 Shadowdark, 20 Castles & Crusades, then 5 or so for OSE, OD&D, and B/X/BECMI.
As for my games, they went really well. Two of the tables were all new to Shadowdark and OSR style play, and they came away thoroughly entertained. The 3rd dungeon were all Shadowdark veterans. I had a couple of professional designers each sit in on a game, Richard Baker and Ed Stark. Turns out 1) professional designers are interested in trying new games; 2) they're also really really good players. Fun to have them in the sessions.
One of the Shadowdark zines (Cursed Scroll 3 - The Midnight Sun) features Viking-themed classes, equipment, monsters, and dungeons, so two of the classes from there (the Sea Wolf and Seer) were popular choices for pregens in the Black City dungeons. The Sea Wolf was average; it's a slightly worse fighter at fighting, with the ability to pick a daily boon from a Norse god, which was flavorful. However, one of the Sea Wolf players took great advantage of the "shield wall" ability to ward his group while relentlessly pushing forward against a crystalline entity hurling barbs at the players.
The Seer, on the other hand, was an MVP. Shadowdark can be swingy (especially spell casting) and the Seer (which is part diviner and Norse runecaster) can generate many luck tokens (manipulating fate), smoothing out the play experience for level 1 characters.
A couple of pics from two of the dungeon crawls:
The Black City returns! Great news!
ReplyDeleteDo you live in the Philly area, John? I work at Temple nowadays.
ReplyDeletePractically neighbors! I work in Horsham and live in Bucks County - my daughter may even be going to Temple next year.
DeleteI'm about 25 miles from Horsham... but not the same one. ;)
DeleteJeff - I dropped a connect in LinkedIn, we should try and grab lunch sometime and chat about games. I'd invite Kelvin since he's near Horsham too, but...
DeleteOh, that's great to see the Black City making a return. Your writing was so influential to me ~10 years ago when I was working up my B/X megadungeon. Love seeing Shadowdark getting some play. I am all in with Dungeon Crawl Classics these days, and I'm not really sure what Shadowdark does that DCC doesn't, but any indie RPG game is great as far as I am concerned.
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear that the delvers are once more visiting the Black City. It was a huge inspiration for me and I ran my own Vikings in a ruined Alien city campaign for a couple years in 2020-2021.
ReplyDeleteI was actually just starting to doodle in my notebook, thinking about reviving it with a new group, so it would be super fun to see new Black City posts coming out.