Greetings!

Interesting video. Mr. Tarrasque provides further analysis of Shadowdark, and also chews on the haters. So hilarious!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on April 03, 2023, 10:27:03 PM
Greetings!

Interesting video. Mr. Tarrasque provides further analysis of Shadowdark, and also chews on the haters. So hilarious!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

It was an interesting vid, but I think he misses an important facet of the Shadowdark rest mechanic. It requires you to consume a ration to get the benefits of the rest. Rations, like torches and treasure, take up precious gear slots. So resting becomes subject to the same resource management as seeing in the dark and earning XP.  That's huge.

Quote from: Festus on April 04, 2023, 12:24:51 AM

Quote from: SHARK on April 03, 2023, 10:27:03 PM
Greetings!

Interesting video. Mr. Tarrasque provides further analysis of Shadowdark, and also chews on the haters. So hilarious!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

It was an interesting vid, but I think he misses an important facet of the Shadowdark rest mechanic. It requires you to consume a ration to get the benefits of the rest. Rations, like torches and treasure, take up precious gear slots. So resting becomes subject to the same resource management as seeing in the dark and earning XP.  That's huge.

Yeah, having to eat to survive (wherein a piece of preserved fruit restores you to health) and needing light to see in the dark.  Those are game changers.  How has no one in the history of RPGs ever thought of this stuff before?  She really is an absolute genius. 

Crap like this is precisely why the hype over this game is out of hand. 

I think you're missing the point being made there.   This came out of the reviewer saying that he didn't like the rest rules and somebody pointing out that regaining hit points via a long rest was not quite as easy as in 5e.   No claim was being made for originality.

None (or at least very few) of the rules in SD are original - that would be very difficult given the many years' worth of rulesets that are out there.   The way that they are put together may, however have some elements of originality.

For whatever reason the rules have generated $1.3m worth of enthusiasm so should, I'd hope, be played a lot.   As somebody else said, we'll see in a year.

Quote from: Persimmon on April 04, 2023, 08:57:18 AM

Quote from: Festus on April 04, 2023, 12:24:51 AM

Quote from: SHARK on April 03, 2023, 10:27:03 PM
Greetings!

Interesting video. Mr. Tarrasque provides further analysis of Shadowdark, and also chews on the haters. So hilarious!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

It was an interesting vid, but I think he misses an important facet of the Shadowdark rest mechanic. It requires you to consume a ration to get the benefits of the rest. Rations, like torches and treasure, take up precious gear slots. So resting becomes subject to the same resource management as seeing in the dark and earning XP.  That's huge.

Yeah, having to eat to survive (wherein a piece of preserved fruit restores you to health) and needing light to see in the dark.  Those are game changers.  How has no one in the history of RPGs ever thought of this stuff before?  She really is an absolute genius. 

Crap like this is precisely why the hype over this game is out of hand.

You are building a strawman fit for a Burning Man festival here.  There is vastly more to the game than those points as has been discussed in the past 30+ pages and Shadowdark brings dozens of books together into one condescned platform. 

Is Shadowdark revolutionary? No. Is it Evolutionary? Yes. Was the kickstarter run successfully, professionally, and marketed well? Yes.

Bringing more people to OSR type games and systems benefits everyone in the gaming sphere who plays and sells products.  Embrace the nearly 14,000 new potential "customers".

Quote from: Persimmon on April 04, 2023, 08:57:18 AM

Quote from: Festus on April 04, 2023, 12:24:51 AM

Quote from: SHARK on April 03, 2023, 10:27:03 PM
Greetings!

Interesting video. Mr. Tarrasque provides further analysis of Shadowdark, and also chews on the haters. So hilarious!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

It was an interesting vid, but I think he misses an important facet of the Shadowdark rest mechanic. It requires you to consume a ration to get the benefits of the rest. Rations, like torches and treasure, take up precious gear slots. So resting becomes subject to the same resource management as seeing in the dark and earning XP.  That's huge.

Yeah, having to eat to survive (wherein a piece of preserved fruit restores you to health) and needing light to see in the dark.  Those are game changers.  How has no one in the history of RPGs ever thought of this stuff before?  She really is an absolute genius. 

Crap like this is precisely why the hype over this game is out of hand.

I did not mean it was a huge innovation for the hobby. I meant that it was a critical part of that game's design. If you watch the video, Tarrasque says that SD's rest mechanic is exactly like 5e's. It's not exactly the same because SD actually makes resource management an important part of the game. That's a huge difference from 5e.  My remark was in specific reference to the video, which I watched before commenting on it.

That being said, the irony of folks devoted to playing clones and rehashes of 30-50 year old RPGs knocking a game for not being original enough is pretty amusing.

For the folks who feel Shadowdark is unoriginal or too derivative of existing games, what new and innovative TTRPG mechanics have you seen in the last 5-10 years that you genuinely liked and thought were cool?

Follow up question: Would you consider the games with those innovative mechanics to be part of the OSR?

FATE and its more elegant derivative Tripod.   Neither of them OSR as they bear minimal resemblance to any edition of D&D.   Both use free-form descriptors both of the characters and their environment that can be literally anything on which the player and the DM agree.  (More later, if anyone is interested.)

Quote from: Festus on April 04, 2023, 12:09:48 PM
For the folks who feel Shadowdark is unoriginal or too derivative of existing games, what new and innovative TTRPG mechanics have you seen in the last 5-10 years that you genuinely liked and thought were cool?

Follow up question: Would you consider the games with those innovative mechanics to be part of the OSR?

Easy; the single save mechanic in Swords & Wizardry.  That's pretty much it, off the top of my head.  This is why I mostly stick to older games and retroclones.  I don't want or need new mechanics to have fun.  And I don't want to spend time learning new rules that then cut into my limited gaming time at the table.

So yes, Shadowdark is clearly not for me, nor am I the target audience.  Whether it does well or not, doesn't really matter to me either.  Good for her and stick it to WOTC! I just find the fawning hype rather hilarious and manufactured.  "Ohh, it's not just a short rest.  She added a sandwich to add realism to hit point recovery and emphasize resource management."  Bravo.  Stunning & brave.  And, in any case, as local favorite Daniel D. Fox once noted, "Naps don't heal stab wounds."  But if that's your kind of game, go for it.

Finally, as someone else noted, it does seem that if some rando cis white guy designed the game instead of a frumpy, middle-aged lesbian, there would be somewhat less exaggerated hype.  Maybe, I'm wrong there but I don't think so.

Quote from: Persimmon on April 04, 2023, 06:47:41 PM
Finally, as someone else noted, it does seem that if some rando cis white guy designed the game instead of a frumpy, middle-aged lesbian, there would be somewhat less exaggerated hype.  Maybe, I'm wrong there but I don't think so.

I honestly don't agree with this. The crazy hype train for Mork Borg, to me at least, has me convinced that every so often theres just a huge hype train that seems to come out of nowhere. At least Shadowdark is more competent than Mork Borg or Troika lol. Though i generally agree that I prefer other games and didn't fund Shadowdark.

Quote from: Slambo on April 04, 2023, 08:04:21 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on April 04, 2023, 06:47:41 PM
Finally, as someone else noted, it does seem that if some rando cis white guy designed the game instead of a frumpy, middle-aged lesbian, there would be somewhat less exaggerated hype.  Maybe, I'm wrong there but I don't think so.

I honestly don't agree with this. The crazy hype train for Mork Borg, to me at least, has me convinced that every so often theres just a huge hype train that seems to come out of nowhere. At least Shadowdark is more competent than Mork Borg or Troika lol. Though i generally agree that I prefer other games and didn't fund Shadowdark.

No; because I think the Mork Borg thing was primarily grounded in the weird style/aesthetic and presentation thing, amplified perhaps by the minimalist rules.  I didn't care for nor did I buy the hype for that either.  But to me, that game is more distinctive than Shadowdark along those lines.  It was the art punk presentation that stood out, especially compared to games like OSE that were also popular at that time.  Hell, it even seems like Shadowdark cribbed some of Mork Borg's design aesthetic.

THIRTY THREE!!!

Thirty Three pages of Free ShadowDark Advertising!!



And the KickStarter has been Closed for Days!



The denizens of The RPGSite did not disappoint...

Quote from: Jaeger on April 04, 2023, 08:25:04 PM


The denizens of The RPGSite did not disappoint.....

That's not what my dad said.

Adressing the above.

And though i used Mork Borg as the example, i probably should have used Index Card RPG which i also saw a sudden push for. I dunno, I just don't see Shadowdark as much different from a lot of the other hard pushes ive seen for other games. Right down to the fact that i have no idea why other people like it that much.

Quote from: Jaeger on April 04, 2023, 08:25:04 PM
THIRTY THREE!!!

Thirty Three pages of Free ShadowDark Advertising!!



And the KickStarter has been Closed for Days!



The denizens of The RPGSite did not disappoint...

That's easily a dozen sales, we really carried it over the finish line!

Quote from: Festus on April 04, 2023, 12:24:51 AM
It was an interesting vid, but I think he misses an important facet of the Shadowdark rest mechanic. It requires you to consume a ration to get the benefits of the rest. Rations, like torches and treasure, take up precious gear slots. So resting becomes subject to the same resource management as seeing in the dark and earning XP.  That's huge.

Are we talking about a video game or a tabletop RPG? Because if it's the latter, LOfuckingL