So, TTRPGs.
Let’s chat a little bit about them. I’m not going to go into the history of the hobby. All of that is well documented elsewhere and there are opinions galore about what it is, what it means and why it is what it is.
I’m just going to blab a bit about why I have selected the Shadowdark game to rejuvenate my love for rolling dice and telling stories.
Three years ago, I got the itch.
Since about 2011, I had been struggling trying to find my footing and also trying to re-engage with the hobby that’s been apart of my life since I was 16. I didn’t have great success with either. I got by, but was never fulfilled in any real sense.
I was drifting.
So, three years ago, I sent out a tweet bemoaning this fact. How sad, right? But that’s what social media excels at isn’t it? Giving anyone and everyone a platform to pout about their own personal travails and tribulations.
Luckily, because I have a certain following, I was contacted about joining an online game and so I did. I joined a well run game of D&D 5E and found myself as player again after close to a decade without regular sessions of play. It was terrific, and allowed be to be a part of a social group once again - even if over great distance on Discord and through Foundry (a virtual table-top application).
For better or for worse, it stoked the flames of my need to run my own game.
This was also about the time that WoTC had their OGL debacle and the phrase Dungeons & Dragons suddenly didn’t roll of the tongue as nicely as it had in the past and left a decidedly sour taste in the mouth.
So, I and my online friends began to explore Pathfinder and for a while it scratched that itch much better than the original game that started me out in the hobby.
I still shy away from D&D (though the Baldur’s Gate 3 video game was a mastertful example of how well it can be done when done right) and have no plans at present to play it as my go to TTRPG. My thoughts and feelings about our current society’s systems and greed have a lot to do with that - but that’s a discussion for a different time.
So, having kept in touch with a high school friend who also learned how to play D&D along with me, I was able to put together a game with him and two of his friends and we began playing Pathfinder together. And it was fine.
Until it wasn’t.
A lot of why it wasn’t was because I come down on the other side of the fence from the other guys on a lot of issues. Life issues, issues that affect our everyday experience of this boring dystopia we’re all experiencing together.
Now, those issues were easy to ignore when we were only getting together one day a week to play through events and scenarios in this Pathfinder game… but then January 2024 rolled around and plans had been made to travel to one member’s house and to spend four or five days playing some old-school 2nd Edition D&D and that game would be run by my friend from high school.
It turned out not to be a great time at all. It was kind of a disaster, to be honest - at least for me.
I found my high school friend still played the game the same way he had back in 1980. It was still DM as aggressor, because, as Gygax wrote in the Dungeon Master’s Guide: “As a DM you must live by the immortal words of the sage who said” “Never give a sucker an even break.””
My friend and I learned that the hard way. One of the first DMs we had was a real bastard and did everything he could to kill characters at every opportunity.
My high school friend embraced this style of play as we continued to play and learn about the game. It was the DM “against” the players in most ways. They set up obstacles and worked to try and protect them as best they could. The DM was not on the player’s side and that is how my friend still plays the game.
The game he ran while we all together those few days in January was exactly as it had been when we played in high school. There were clever parts, there were battles and fights. There was a character death, there was a resurrection and then there was the last night where the DM angrily bellowed “This is my world and my game, we will play it my way!”
And that was it. I was done.
Those few days in January in a real sense killed the joy I had gotten out of playing the game and, it killed the Pathfinder game as well. I no longer wanted to play with that friend. I did not want to waste any more time on an outdated and stagnant kind of game play.
The one good thing about those few days playing in that style, was I felt challenged to create a similar old school type game/setting - but without all the me vs. the players bullshit.
I never saw the game as a competition. I never saw it as anything other than cooperative storytelling and yes, I resisted for a long time the “emergent story” type of game play. As a DM I fleshed out the world, I set up the enemies, I guided players through a world of story and adventure. I never felt like I railroaded players, but I always played the game with an overarching story to tell.
I don’t play that way now. I’ve grown to like the emergent story mode of the game - and when I got back after that disastrous trip I began thinking how I do things differently.
I thought I could run a 2E game… but the more I read, the more I realized I didn’t want to play D&D of any edition. So I began looking elsewhere.
I had been aware of the OSR (Old School Renaissance) for quite some time. I had looked into various editions of those types of games and while I enjoyed some of them, none of them truly grabbed me.
And then I stumbled across The Arcane Library’s Shadowdark RPG.
It hit that sweet spot. Dark, grim, gritty old school dungeon crawling but with a few sprinkles of modern RPG goodness that streamlines gameplay and dice rolls.
I was hooked. And so I immediately began crafting the world I wanted to explore with the Shadowdark rules and really, really dove into capturing all the feelings I remember from those early days of playing D&D - but without the DM as asshole antagonist.
The game is lethal enough, the risks are great enough, with out the arbiter/storyteller being a dick about it.
Shadowdark would be familiar enough for experienced players to jump into right away, and easy enough for new players and it allowed me an out to end the Pathfinder game and find a group that were more compatible. I don’t regret my time with my high school friend or his fellows, nor do I regret the chance to DM them in Pathfinder.
I just learned that I want more folks who are more in line with my values, to feel more welcomed and less taking the piss out of each other or jockeying about for who can be the butt of the joke every few minutes. I am not a competitive person, not someone who enjoys being pushed all that often. And I communicated that to the Pathfinder group. They weren’t happy, but also don’t think it bothered them that much.
For the rest of January and February, I continued building the world I envision for the Shadowdark game. I used Wonderdraft to create my map(s), I found resources for adventures and maps, I began to write articles and ideas using World Anvil to flesh out details and factions and histories… all the groundwork you need for a grounded, realistic and believable low fantasy pulp-tastic old school TTRPG experience.
Now all I needed was players.