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!
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