The best OSR I’ve played. Sure it doesn’t really do anything unique but at least it’s actually a game.

A system that automates some of the most frustrating GM qualities, such as:

Places a real world timer on gameplay.

Blocks control over substantial qualities during character creation.

Arbitrarily takes control over player character actions and forces them into compromising situations.

And more!

An awesome intro to an awesome system. Combine this with the official solo rules "SoloDark" which are also free as a PDF to see if you like it.

My current favorite system, and this Quickstart contains everything you need to play for a decade if you stretch it like we did in the 80's. The core classes are here, the core mechanics are here, and everything else depends on the adventures you make together.

In my experience, this is a better game to introduce people new to TTRPGs than 5e, while still transmitting the core mechanics of D20 systems. I would highly encrouage everyone running SD to begin with this before diluting the game with homebrew classes and other such mechanics.

A great resource even now that the full rules are out. Much easier to send/hand this to players than a 300-page rulebook (and it avoids their greasy little goblin hands getting all over my lush premium hardbook!).

A great resource even now that the full rules are out. Much easier to send/hand this to players than a 300-page rulebook (and it avoids their greasy little goblin hands getting all over my lush premium hardbook!).

Love this game. I want to play it all the time. Everyone needs to take a break from 5e and get into the dark!

A superb distillation of 5e and OSR into a fast-flowing game. Easy to pick up and have game going in no time. Admirably abundant as a quickstart.

As a product, SD is a bit marred by its 5e roots. Why does it have to have Burning Hands, demons and devils, aboleths, and all these DnD lore staples? Why can't SD have ts own flavour in lore?

Matthew Colville once said OD&D was Survival Horror. So, welcome home, dear players and GMs! My new favorite system, Shadowdark takes what old D&D and modern D&D had best and improves on it.

Kelsey Dionne is an awesome game designer, who has proven time and time again her passion. As far as my vision can reach, this game has a bright future, in contrast to its name. :)

Shadowdark RPG is a fantastic, streamlined, exploration-oriented game! This quickstart gives you everything you need to play the first couple of levels, an adventure location, and tons of GM resources to keep you going until you upgrade to the full rulebook!

Take the plunge, you will love it!

The game is well thought and clearly presented. Simple rules, very accessible layout and great illustrations. I love that this elegant take on OSR is available as such a professional product!

It seems that this game is causing a major stir in the OSR community: probably the produuction quality of Shadowdark is a greater revolution than everyone would have expected. It's great to see some outdated preconceptions fall apart.

An RPG with a dark engine lodged deep in the dark dungeons of the late 70s/early 80s, with smart updates to make it all run smooth and fast. Clean, while being nasty in all the right ways, fun and cool.
Legit banger.

ShadowDark lifts conventions from classic old school D&D and mashes them up masterfully with newer conventions and mechancis, including the d20+modifier roll over universal resolution of most modern versions of D&D, but also some tricks from elsewhere like always in turns from ICRPG and spell casting from DCC. It reads like all of your favorite homerules prepared lovingly for you in a neat package, ready to go. Or, like your own heartbreaker you've been writing since the 90's but haven't gotten around to publishing yet, but with the craft and polish of a skilled creator like Kelsey Dionne of the Arcane Library. Worth noting: the quickstart materials are less complete the promised full edition which is still as of writing (2023-04-09) is still wrapping up. So, not totally complete, but at the price of free definitely worth a download.

This is the perfect set of rules for players that already know how to play D&D 5e, mostly like the core rules of that system, but want a much simpler game and deadlier game. There are some creative new twists on those rules like real time torches and rolling on a table when you level up. You may love those ideas. You may hate them. These rules aren't for me, but this is a really great system.

For me, this game has the feel of BECMI, but it plays faster. One way it's different is that BECMI D&D had a lot of cases where random things or attacks would require you to roll e.g. save vs. poison or die … that feels a little cheap. Shadowdark by contrast will still kill you early and often, but it feels more like you had choices which led to that outcome.

There's a lot of overlap between 5E and OSR/classic edition players. If you play both, you can just pick it up and go with no learning curve. If you don't … there will be a pretty shallow learning curve either way: Either learning some more modern mechanics for us grognards, or learning that the frontal assault is rarely the best option for modern players.

There's a lot here written briefly, and leaving a few questions open to your interpretation: When do you award experience and levels, for example? It doesn't really matter for the game's cohesiveness how you do it, so it's left up to you to decide. I'll award experience on the spot, and levels only when you're back to relative safety because it gives more meaning to the downtime between adventures. But Shadowdark itself is designed for a you do you experience with such finer details, which is something I approve of.

Shadowdark draws heavy inspiration from Index Card RPG by Runehammer, a thing you should totally check out next if you haven't, but while Hank's product is kind of a beautiful mess and mishmash of material and mechanics for a skilled GM to run a seat-of-the-pants game that's as dynamic and spontaneous as its creator, Shadowdark's got a bit more to grab onto if you're not a long-time forever GM. In fact, I'd say this is a great game for someone to try their hand behind the screen because there's a lot less to keep track of at once than 5E or Pathfinder, though it's perhaps not handholdy-enough to run if you're totally new to the hobby.

If you want to use premade content with Shadowdark I'd recommend content made for Basic D&D or some OSR game first and foremost. Modern modules will need rescaling because all the numbers are smaller in Shadowdark and healing magic is less available unless you start house-ruling that stuff back in.

Speaking of house ruling… Shadowdark is intended to make that easy. It'd take half a page of house rules to turn Shadowdark into a lean and fast modern-style heroic fantasy. I know that because my own homebrew game was well on its way to becoming Shadowdark's rules, and it was a heroic fantasy game. Yes, the numbers and complexity were all scaled down for speed, but otherwise it'd be hard to distinguish it from a 5E game in tone.

And that brings up the one criticism, if you can call it that: It feels like so much of Shadowdark is stuff that has been done before by someone. Including the real-time lighting timer, it turns out. If that's the criticism, though, it applies to a lot of OSR games as well. Shadowdark is a distillation of these elements in a single package, done well amd marketed extremely well at just the right time largely to the 5E crowd looking for something better than where they fear the D&D brand is going. That's not a bad thing IMO, because it brings that crowd into the wider world of OSR and independent games.

On the whole, there's a lot here!