Ok, so the title is a bit misleading.  There are more than just classes in most of Shadowdark's expansions.

However, the website Shadowdarklings has a nice character building page.

I was just trying out making a Grave Warden from the Unatural Selection book, which I do not own.  It turned out to be a necromancer in leather armor with an affinity for using a scythe as a primary weapon.


It even showed me all of the spells. 

Ok.  So if I just wanted more classes, I guess I don't need to buy Unatural Selection.  Shadowdarklings.net already has the whole class and spell list online.  Done. 

Right?

I was invited to a game and it took me about ten minutes to make a character from scratch, and I am no genius. However, this looks like an interesting site. The Expanded Character Options by Greg Christopher would really jazz that up too.

The expansion I want to see added to Shadowdarklings is the 3rd party book, "Into the Shadowlands". This one I do own a PDF of, just to be clear.

It's got a bunch of additional classes, but they're mostly traditional ones like Paladin or Assassin. 

Those are not up on Shadowdarklings.  As you say, it's hardly a big deal as Shadowdark PC's only take a as few minutes to roll up. 

I used to dismiss Shadowdark as just another OSR, no better than a lot of the free ones available.  I still think there are a good selection of OSR games worth playing, but I'm also more interested in SD now that there are more options on classes.

I'm just saying to anyone reading this; if you want to preview a class, the website Shadowdarklings is a stupidly easy way to do so. 

Some of my gaming group used that website to create their characters the last time we played Shadowdark.  Its definitely a nice and useful site.

But I'm not a fan of that Unnatural Selection book.  I dislike monsters as playable races, and at least one of the new classes, the Fiend, seems overpowered.  Its also odd that "Fiend" is a class.  So I'm glad I didn't actually purchase that book.  I've chatted with one of the books creators, Bunni Daniel, a few times, and she seems really nice and cool.  But I wouldn't use the options in that book in my games.

Fiend.  The half warrior, half pyromancer.

It looked like a fun class. 

But, the old school ones found in Into the Shadowlands ought to be more popular. 

I did see that the author of Into the Shadowlands extensively play-tested their classes before putting the book out.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on February 26, 2025, 06:14:25 PMI used to dismiss Shadowdark as just another OSR, no better than a lot of the free ones available.  I still think there are a good selection of OSR games worth playing, but I'm also more interested in SD now that there are more options on classes.
 

I agree with you on ShadowDark, yet I had the book and pdf and, best of all, I was invited to be a player in a game! As that is a rare situation I am taking it.