So I get home from work, boot up YouTube, and see that Dungeon Craft, Questing Beast, and Runehammer have all made videos promoting a pretty generic looking OSR title call Shadowdark by someone named Kelsie D Non (she's apparently worked on some 5E stuff and has a YouTube channel with 12.5K subs) like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread,  It's apparently got $100K on Kickstarter, and the whole thing just feels "off" to me.

Has anybody else heard of this thing, or am I just being a cynical incel?

Quote from: Tasty_Wind on February 28, 2023, 09:37:30 PM
So I get home from work, boot up YouTube, and see that Dungeon Craft, Questing Beast, and Runehammer have all made videos promoting a pretty generic looking OSR title call Shadowdark by someone named Kelsie D Non (she's apparently worked on some 5E stuff and has a YouTube channel with 12.5K subs) like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread,  It's apparently got $100K on Kickstarter, and the whole thing just feels "off" to me.

Has anybody else heard of this thing, or am I just being a cynical incel?

Greetings!

Yes, Tasty Wind, I also saw both the videos by Questing Beast and Dungeon Craft. I've also seen a few of Kelsey's videos in the past.  I know many people like to proclaim how our hobby is this tiny, niche thing--but in reality, I think it is a lot *bigger* in scope than many people realize or want to acknowledge. There are a good number of people--successful writers and game designers--that exist and thrive throughout the RPG hobby community. Some of the larger, more prominent luminaries, you have likely heard of. However, there seems to be many such successful and interesting people that make contributions to our RPG hobby that you and I--and many others--can literally go YEARS and never hear about.

I think Kelsey and Shadowdark are one of these examples, now coming to light. We have a number of people here on these boards that are similar, whether Eric Diaz, Melan, Alexander Macris, Venger. Many people don't know who Pundit is, either, or what he has contributed. There are surely many more as well.

In my estimation, it's a very cool thing. I hope more get involved, and get busy! Forget the more famous "RPG stars" of the past--they were just the front runners pushed and promoted by WOTC or other prominent game companies. With the advent of the OSR especially, there are more and more outstanding authors, game designers, DM's, coming to the front! 

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I'd heard of it and was actually planning to back the Kickstarter, but a few weeks ago she changed the preview documents to switch from using "race" to "ancestry." I hate that. I have more books than I'll ever use and wouldn't run the game RAW, anyway, so passing on it was an easy decision. All the luck to her but her game isn't for me.

As for the rest, I think Shark hit the nail on the head. There are a lot of gamers out there, and most of them don't post a lot online though they do follow gaming news on places like YouTube or Twitter. Given how much push Shadowdark has gotten from multiple sources, I can readily believe that it's gonna pull in very respectable numbers. It also helps that it's being marketed to both the 5e and OSR crowds.

Plus, Kelsey isn't some nobody publishing her first work. She's put out quite a few adventures in the past and been able to work up her reputation. I have no doubt that quite a lot of people who bought her adventures at DTRPG got messages letting them know all about her Kickstarter.

Just saw it today on Kickstarter. The B&W art looks fantastic, but the digest size is a minus. I love the "only 4 classes" and "no darkvision" but "no skills" is a deal breaker for me. The project on the whole looked fun and inspired.

Shadowdark got a bit of YouTube buzz when the Quickstart rules dropped a while ago. It then got a lot more buzz a few weeks ago, when Kelsey Dionne was one of the first people to announce she was stripping the OGL out and making her own OGL. She was able to position her company as one of the front line warriors in the D&D culture war, right before the game was scheduled to launch.

As to professor DM, Questing Beast et al, it seems like she was just very smart about getting review copies out to the right people, and buttering them up to time their video releases for maximum effect. It seems to me that she's just a very adept businesswoman.

As far as the game itself goes, I bought into the hype for about ten minutes back when the Quickstart rules dropped and then cooled pretty rapidly. I'll have to look at it more, but I would expect it to be another in what has become an endless list of functionally interchangeable OSR games.

EDIT: I'm watching Hankerin Furnale's video on it now, and it turns out they're not only personal friends, but he did some of the art for the book. So him giving it a rave review is easily enough explained. Furnale and Professor DM are personal friends as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if Ben Milton is in that mix, so the apparent circle jerk could just be a case of friends sticking up for each other.

There are no racial stats and ancestry rather than race.  To me, that's a sign of woke.  Maybe she's trying to avoid twitter rage or maybe she's woke.  But those are two things I saw in a review that made me go NOPE.  Pro-tip, if you want to get the old school players and not use race, then use demi-humans.

Quote from: Tasty_Wind on February 28, 2023, 09:37:30 PM
So I get home from work, boot up YouTube, and see that Dungeon Craft, Questing Beast, and Runehammer have all made videos promoting a pretty generic looking OSR title call Shadowdark by someone named Kelsie D Non (she's apparently worked on some 5E stuff and has a YouTube channel with 12.5K subs) like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread,  It's apparently got $100K on Kickstarter, and the whole thing just feels "off" to me.

Has anybody else heard of this thing, or am I just being a cynical incel?

She seems legit. Been around for a while, young enough to know how to do Social Media innately plus IT, so the tech is no problem. Her game has enough old school things about it to send snowflakes to their closest preschool for therapy, so if she incorporates a couple of new school things, whatever.  I'd have to read it to see how "modern" it is.

Is she getting more notice because she's an actual woman in this industry?  When will that not be true?

Quote from: crkrueger on March 01, 2023, 12:44:03 AM

Quote from: Tasty_Wind on February 28, 2023, 09:37:30 PM
So I get home from work, boot up YouTube, and see that Dungeon Craft, Questing Beast, and Runehammer have all made videos promoting a pretty generic looking OSR title call Shadowdark by someone named Kelsie D Non (she's apparently worked on some 5E stuff and has a YouTube channel with 12.5K subs) like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread,  It's apparently got $100K on Kickstarter, and the whole thing just feels "off" to me.

Has anybody else heard of this thing, or am I just being a cynical incel?

She seems legit. Been around for a while, young enough to know how to do Social Media innately plus IT, so the tech is no problem. Her game has enough old school things about it to send snowflakes to their closest preschool for therapy, so if she incorporates a couple of new school things, whatever.  I'd have to read it to see how "modern" it is.

Is she getting more notice because she's an actual woman in this industry?  When will that not be true?

More like she's getting noticed for the cover art and the interior art of the book. Its mostly 1E style.

Would it get the same attention if the author was a 45 year old fat white guy?  Honestly I don't know. But apart from that it seems legit AFAICT.

Never heard of it, and the Ancestry thing isn't necessarily a deal breaker for me (particularly if you can mix-and-match genetics and culture, so you can do separate human ethnicities with differing skills and humans-raised-by-dwarves or whatever). I'd have to investigate those quick-start rules, but as ForgottenF has mentioned, if it just brings a new presentation to the OSR, I already have ACKS, L&D, S&W, For Gold and Glory, and perhaps others I am not recalling immediately.

I'm probably alone in this, but the whole Kickstarter business model rubs me up the wrong way. I had thought the point of Kickstarter was to allow creators who don't have the financing to finish their projects to crowdsource investment so that they can bring it to market. What it's turned into is a way of selling over-priced "limited editions" to collectors.

Every one of these videos makes a point of the fact that the book is entirely complete, illustrated, and ready for publication (if not already printed). So why do they need $300,000 in "backing"? If they want this to be a game with a future, where people actually play it, it develops a community, gets supplements written for it, etc. then why is it $60 for the most basic hard copy of the core rulebook? It looks to me like a get-rich-quick scheme. Selling a fancy looking book which they don't expect anyone to actually play, and using "get it now while the campaign is live" to rush people so they don't consider the value proposition of what they're buying.

But maybe this is just the subject I tend to be paranoid on.

Quote from: ForgottenF on March 01, 2023, 08:27:40 AM
Every one of these videos makes a point of the fact that the book is entirely complete, illustrated, and ready for publication (if not already printed). So why do they need $300,000 in "backing"? If they want this to be a game with a future, where people actually play it, it develops a community, gets supplements written for it, etc. then why is it $60 for the most basic hard copy of the core rulebook? It looks to me like a get-rich-quick scheme. Selling a fancy looking book, which they don't expect anyone to actually play, and using "get it now while the campaign is live" to rush people so they don't consider the value proposition of what they're buying.

I'm not sure I buy it 100%, but there is a theory on business that certainly tracks with many notable successes:  The way to succeed is either go all out, fast, and grab some market share as fast as you can.  Or, go slow and make sure you build quality, and get all the details rights, and then be an "overnight" success in 10 years.  It's trying to run near the middle that nearly always leads to failure--especially if the plan is market one way and develop another.  The slow way is safer, but it is true that if you see a narrow window to grab market share, you better jump on it before it closes.

Now, I'm not one to buy into the appeal of the go fast--in games or any other products.  They tend to have flaws that they'll fix later in version 2 or 3, once the market share is secured and money is flowing.  I'm just not the "early adopter" type, and am quite happy to wait for the bugs to be found.  Others, not so much.  They like being in on the ground floor, while the thing is still raw. 

The fact she has done work in module writing as a full time career, and has the attention of Questing Beast/Ben Milton, Professor Dungeon Craft, and Hankerin Furnale is all good.  This isn't some sketchy product. 

But, the proof is if the game is any good.  It's supposed to be half 5E, half OSR.  That's a mix I think we need more of.  There are parts of 5E that are good. 

I'm also a fan of any system that ditches Vancian magic, the dumbest magic system written.  Ever.  Yup, I said it.  I think magical amnesia is bat-shit insane.  Thankfully Shadowdark is using a skill check to cast magic.  That's much better.

I never had a problem with "Race" as a descriptor, even though it did always stick in my craw a bit that it meant "Species".

Personally, I'm kind of sold on what Kobold Press' Black Flag is doing.
Lineage for the genetic stuff.
Heritage for the cultural stuff.

It splits along the actual Genetics/Culture or Nature/Nurture divide and makes it easy to have those "Born as X, Raised as Y" characters, plus the two words aren't anachronistic and they go well together.

Lineage and Heritage, I hope that one gets around.  Ancestry is too wonky (and too obviously tryhard).

BTW, there's a Free QuickStart Kit linked on The Arcane Library site.  Two 68 page books.