I searched for Shadowdark on Youtube and nearly every video that popped up was over a year old. Seems like it made a huge splash and then mostly disappeared. Am I missing something, do they have a massive Rumble community, did it just turn out to be "ok" after all the hype, is it because the pdf is $30 and you can only get it from Arcane Library so it's slipping out of the public zeitgeist? Curious what others think.

Note - I am aware of the review on this board from January.

It's not my thing, but Sly Flourish has a series of videos where he talks about prepping for his ongoing Shadowdark game.

I was pretty harsh on Shadowdark when it came out. My opinion on it hasn't changed on it, but in fairness its extremely rare for a new game to make much of a lasting impact.  I think Dragonbane is the only new RPG I've seen evidence of people continuing to play on a long-term basis in the last couple of years.

I think this is the nature of the beast. RPG campaigns take a significant investment of time and energy, moreso for a new system. I run a different system every campaign, but I seem to be in the minority there. Most people are only going to put that effort in for a new game if it offers something substantially different than what they already run. That's doubly true in the OSR space, where almost everyone has long ago picked a game they prefer (usually OSE it seems), or are running their own homebrew. One of the things that became clear to me in the discourse around Shadowdark when it came out is that even its most strident defenders can't tell you much that's new that it brings to the table.

The pattern with these big Kickstarters appears to be that they get a bunch of buzz, a lot of people buy in because it looks cool, then the vast majority of those people run the game a handful of times before going back to whatever their go-to already was. I think industry veterans like Kelsey Dionne know that, and design their campaigns around it. I'm not going to go all the way to calling product like Shadowdark a get-rich-quick scheme, but it looks to me like they're very much intended to prioritize intitial Kickstarter revenue over game longevity.

They got their kickstarter money, and that's all

I meant to add on my previous post that the only reason to suppose Shadowdark was going to make a splash on the RPG scene was the idea that it was going to be "OSR for the 5e crowd". At this point I think it's pretty clear that was just marketing hype. The 5e crowd mostly isn't interested in the OSR, and the ones that are didn't need Shadowdark to be a gateway drug.

Greetings!

I have been running a campaign using Shadowdark rules for some time now. I have several friends out of stte that are likewise running Shadowdark campaigns. On YouTube, Unscripted & Unchained, and several others run regular Shadowdark campaigns.

Shadowdark is an excellent game system and set of fun, simple, and brutal rules that make running an OSR campaign quick, smooth, and always fun!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

It's got zero presence where I am, though I think I saw a copy of the core book in the local game store around Christmas last year.  I remain unconvinced that it's anything more than another set of cobbled together house rules, which I'm perfectly capable of doing myself.  Some people lack the time or creativity to do that, so I suppose it's good for them.  Or maybe they just like other people's house rules.

A quick look at DriveThruRPG shows over 300 3rd party Shadowdark products.
Couple thousand people in Arcane Library's Discord
Arcane Library YouTube channel has over 23k subscribers
Sly Flourish's latest SD video (the 30th session prep video!) has 1.9k views
Bob World Builder just kickstarted (funded 5/31) an SD supplement "Delve" - raised $380k with ~1250 backers for the SD version and ~3000 backers for the 5e version, and a couple thousand getting both versions in a digital only bundle.

As noted the book is only available on the Arcane Library site so actual sales figures aren't public, but I'd say there's a thriving base for such a new game created by a one-woman shop. Whether it "mostly disappeared" or not is probably a function of the social circles and online communities one belongs to.

Full disclosure: I backed it and played it a handful of times. Decent game but it has one feature that I, as an old wargamer, really dislike: close/near/far abstract movement/range. Thus it didn't earn a regular place at my table. But I don't regret adding it to my collection.

It delivered well on the Kickstarter rewards and last I was on the Discord it was very lively with games and third party products. The game itself did what it was supposed to do: be an easy casual pick up game with some of the feel of OSR.

But we'll see in another year or two if people move on or we get more substantial stuff for it.

Quote from: Festus on June 04, 2024, 09:30:29 PMFull disclosure: I backed it and played it a handful of times. Decent game but it has one feature that I, as an old wargamer, really dislike: close/near/far abstract movement/range. Thus it didn't earn a regular place at my table. But I don't regret adding it to my collection.

I'm probably a bit off-topic here, but I find this a bit perplexing.  The swap between zone-based and grid-based combat is fairly easy, and you have literally decades worth of examples to draw from. I myself am playing F.O.R.G.E, which also uses zone combat, and I just bolted on the S&W Revised combat system and it has been pretty seamless.  What game has been hitting your table instead?

Now I'm not evangelizing Shadowdark here.  I'm not playing it either, but it has to do more with the community of players where I live rather than any particular dislike of the product.

DC20 is kickstarting and filling up YouTube now, from a number of the same YouTubers that praised Shadowdark last year. From what I can tell it seems that DC20 is fiddly and complicated and not particularly OSR. Its more of a 5.1E so it's not likely to cut into the same audience. Will see.

Quote from: Ruprecht on June 05, 2024, 01:39:35 PMFrom what I can tell it seems that DC20 is fiddly and complicated and not particularly OSR. Its more of a 5.1E so it's not likely to cut into the same audience. Will see.

Yeah. DC20 is real fiddly and the game feels basically like "I have this cool idea, let's add it" without any real core concept of the game's design. You have action points, hit points, mana points, stamina points and grit points you get to track round to round. Armor is deflection AC but also absorbs damage, because why not have both when one will do. Advantage/disadvantage can stack up now, when the entire point of it was to eliminate tracking stacking mods.

But hey, it's at 560k on day 4 when 13th Age 2nd edition is about half that on day 29. Clearly, the new kids on the block understand better how to market in today's Kickstarter scene.

Quote from: rkhigdon on June 05, 2024, 10:47:17 AMI'm probably a bit off-topic here, but I find this a bit perplexing.  The swap between zone-based and grid-based combat is fairly easy, and you have literally decades worth of examples to draw from. I myself am playing F.O.R.G.E, which also uses zone combat, and I just bolted on the S&W Revised combat system and it has been pretty seamless.  What game has been hitting your table instead?

I've been mostly running a heavily homebrewed 5e, plus a few one shots of Savage Worlds. It's not that zone based combat is hard - Far from it. Or that I can't swap out one system's combat for another. But why bother? As you say, there are decades worth of games out there. That advantage of "5e" (not sure what I'm playing now truly qualifies anymore) is that it's easy to find players for and many won't even recognize how much you've altered it. But if I'm not going to carry on with the homebrew I've done, I'll move to a system I don't need to homebrew that much.

Zone-based combat is not too big a deal in Shadowdark if you're playing it "as intended" i.e. dungeon-crawling where the combat area is mainly defined by how far your torches' light carries. But my homebrew campaign is heavy on wilderness and exploration, so SD just isn't a great fit for me. Has some great random tables that I use on occasion tho.

I still collect a lot of different games and mine them for ideas and inspiration.

I was a big fan of simplified zones until I tried Roll20 and with everything visual and using grids both zones and grid seem about the same.

Quote from: Festus on June 05, 2024, 06:03:07 PMI've been mostly running a heavily homebrewed 5e, plus a few one shots of Savage Worlds.....

Zone-based combat is not too big a deal in Shadowdark if you're playing it "as intended" i.e. dungeon-crawling where the combat area is mainly defined by how far your torches' light carries.

Ah.  To be clear I wasn't suggesting you use zone-based combat, but rather switch Shadowdark to grid-based.  However, if you've got a different homebrew going already there's no reason to make the effort.