I got a video on my youtube feed by the creator of Shadowdark about the RPG. It looks interesting.
My question for those who have it/have played it, is it only/mostly about dungeon crawls, or is it a fleshed out system for towns wilderness, etc?
It's spendy, but I may pick this up if I hear more good things about it.
Shadowdark is notable for lots of random tables for everything. It even has rules for partying back in town aka converting gold to XP. Sometimes with hilarious results.
It's not just a dungeon crawl. However, let's be real. The story is 99% how the GM runs the game, not the rules.
Myself and SHARK are big fans of the system. I've run multiple adventures and even at conventions with Shadowdark where only 1/10 people played 5e or Shadowdark, 9/10 were OSR-only(BECMI/OSE/LotFP/AD&D).
Where does it work well? Dungeon Crawls and events that happen after you get out of the dungeon. The rules are 5e-LITE with lots of GM interaction and slimming down all the massive skill/feature creep ripped out for simplicity. It's a fun , easy, flexible system you can play for a campaign or a 1 shot. If WOTC kills off DNDBeyond my group of players will pivot to a Shadowdark like system for ease of PC management.
Where does it need work? Wilderness and Overland travel. There's a lack of material here that's been published and there are no real hard and fast rules for trekking from location to location. There's tables to flesh out this area but it relies on the DM to come up with some rules/material on the fly. Can you run an adventure in a forest village? Absolutely, it'll take a smidge of work to do.
Overall, the community is friendly, there's a free QuickStart on Arcane Libraries website, there's hundreds of 3rd party books on DTRPG, and the rules are easy to grasp and to teach people who have played TTRPG's for 40 years to those that have never played a game ever.
Highly recommend to check out the free Quickstart and join the discord (There's no politics allowed there and they are extremely ruthless in enforcing this rule).
It is OK. Nothing to rave about. I have recently been playing some Cepheus Engine fantasy (Sword of Cepheus). Systems are systems - I prefer skill based systems rather than level based. FOr level based I just play 1e ADnD.
Good slick system! Lots of great and useful tables. You certainly don't have to go the Dungeon Crawl route either. That would not be my jam.
That said, the only thing i don't like about it is the 1 to 1 timing thing. I would not use that and just go with the more traditional way of time passing in turns, etc.
I recently checked out the free version of the Player handbook and GM book, or rather re-looked at them.
Basically, those re-create the whole game, minus tiers 3, 4, and 5 of the magic spells. There are probably other things, but not a lot is missing.
Drivethru RPG ShadowDark quickstarts (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/413713/shadowdark-rpg-quickstart-set)
Just go look and see what you think.