Should I boughted buyed this game? What's the opinion on it?

>>95891683 (OP)
consumer product for those that don't play OSR but are "interested in the culture"
the only changes it makes to their holy scripture is dogshit that gets old after one novelty session

>>95891683 (OP)
i have no opinion on it. but i have seen people have lots of opinions and apparently it is just 5e

>>95891683 (OP)
It's nothing special, but the book looks nice and have big font for toddlers who like holding big books, but don't like reading. It doesn't actually do anything well or have anything special about it that makes it worth buying when you could 1) pirate it, or 2) play any of the other hundreds of free, or cheapter (or pirate-able) streamlined OSR or OSR-adjacent systems out there.

What separates this from other OSR or 5E games apart from the darkness mechanic?

>>95893223
Over reliance on randomization for too many things.

>>95891683 (OP)
Simply and succinctly: a sub-optimal retread of Old School variant and 5E rules together again for umpteenth time.

Also in no way helped by the talking heads on youtube constantly humble bragging/propping up about how impossibly perfect 'millwin-dawaur-kikstarta-Shadowdark' is but then selling their own retreaded rules systems over it.

I'd just like to point out that everyone that says this game is just 5e is completely wrong. It's also not quite OSR, though is very close to it. All in all, the game is good, but it's not any better than the actual OSR games out there.

Also note that the idea that it's just merch for people wanting to pose as OSR players is ludicrous. This game sees lots of play. If you don't believe that, check games listed on the VTTs or on startplaying.

Personally, I prefer Swords & Wizardry complete, but this is a good game. The people shitting on it are doing so because they have to shit on anything that is popular.

>>95891683 (OP)
Love it actually. It's 5th ed, minus the "super-hero with a sword" bullshit and really deadly. It's what I was hoping Knave and Blood&Coin would be but weren't.
Really easy to port OSR, old D&D, and nu-OSR stuff over to it so there's no shortage of wells to draw from.
Running a hex-crawl in a homebrewed setting every week rn, probably be doing Dark Sun or Birthright in it next.
Needs muticlassing rules though, thinking I might homebrew those too and just pull whatever rules there are out of 1st or 2nd ed (don't remember if 1st ed. even had rules for muti-/dual classing tho).
Gotta apply logic to the torch-timer too, house-rule some stuff but that's standard-fair for anything.

>>95891683 (OP)
holy fucking ESL
kill yourself asap

>>95893223
>other OSR or 5e
retard

>>95891683 (OP)
Have a pdf?

Shadowdark is just a compilation of house rules stolen from youtubers and 15 year old blog posts and the result is a vaguely reduced 5e/ OSR mongrel. But it comes in a nice book, and requires no fixes for what it wants to do, so it's basically 9/10 if we grade on a scale.
>it's easy to port OSR stuff over
Not past level 3, the scaling is fucked and burned.

>>95893946
Retards separate them?

Wtf even is OSR in the grand sxheme of things? Why can't it's fans just get AD&D and play that?

>>95894668
Because they can't profit off of people playing older editions, so they have to constantly repackage the same fucking ideas and mechanics endlessly while holding them up as some kind of undiscovered revelation about roleplaying games as a hobby.

>>95891683 (OP)
>boughted
>buyed
It's another half-baked BX clone with Advantage tacked on. Don't waste your time. The only thing it does differently is use one of the Blume Brother's house rules where durations are based on IRL time not in-game time.

Don't care about the forced hate
Knight of st. ydris is a fun class

>>95894668
OSR is BFRPG

>>95894668
Are you retarded or something? You're going to talk about how you don't know what something is, and then complain even more that you don't understand why people are engaged with it?
>>95895437
Not even close. It's a pile of dogshit made for people with no sense of smell

>>95894668
A massive grognard purity spiral combined with what >>95894973 said.

>>95894070
>compilation of house rules stolen from X and Y
Like... everything after 2000. Can you give something useful?

>>95891683 (OP)
So shadow dark is the new meta for getting a 300+ reply thread full of pissed off people?

>>95895766
Absolute buffoonery. Try having actual information next time you post in the ig boy forums.

>>95895567
>Doesn't at least respect Basic Fantasy as the founding father it is even if you don't like its changes
You are not a member of the OSR. Your dice are unbalanced, and your dungeons are boring.

>>95891683 (OP)
It's very pretty but lacking in substance.

>>95891683 (OP)
Don't bother with the actual game part of the book, it isn't worth engaging with.

There's cool art, and the game-master advice section is worth reading for it's own sake.

>>95896210
If you're this paranoid then sure, why not

>>95896276
I love how the post right below yours is YOU'RE NOT A REAL OSR FAN purity spiral retardation.

>>95895567
>Are you retarded or something?
I fail to see how the question posed isn't a legitimate one, and doubly so why the OSR community can't seem to just play what already exists instead of wasting money and splitting their already small pool of players into multiple different products that all supposedly amount to the same thing, since they're all trying to "relive" a game that still exists to this day.

>>95896294
Why would I respect a garbage game just for being old? It's obsolete, it doesn't work as intended, it breaks the entire osreecology, and the game is only considered a founding father because it was the only piece of shit available for years

>>95899026
Why do you read any books? Why do you watch any movies? Why aren't you watching reruns of things that you've already consumed?
By the way, since you're such an expert, can you list all of the specific differences between the osr games? Because if you can't, then you're just pissing in the wind and complaining about the rain

>sit down at my desk
>bbc slips inside my ass
>mfw

does this happen in your rpg?

>>95895965
Have you ever wondered why every RPG made after 2000 sucks? Or why we need another one?

>>95891683 (OP)
I've run it for three sessions now. My players really like it. I really like it. It's insanely fucking easy to run compared to my experiences with 5e and BECMI. Some of that is probably me getting better as a DM over time, but I also feel the system is just easier. I find myself very rarely if ever needing to consult the rules despite having little-to-no experience with the system. I do "correct" a couple things. Notably, the travel rules aren't my favorite. It's also not clear in the 4.8 rulebook whether stealth gives you advantage to attack so I personally give my players advantage if they stealth.

A lot of the feedback in this thread is (and will be) "Oh the rules are too simple" or "It's not innovative", and yeah, it's not innovative. There's enough RPG systems out there that you can take almost anything in any rulebook and point to ten other games that did it. It doesn't really matter.

I personally think that Shadowdark packages a solid ruleset into an easy-to-read and explain package, but the thing my players will remember is the setting, and the characters, and fighting that one really hard monster, and hanging out having beers on a Saturday night. It's not going to be that fitting the main combat rules into 2 pages is really convenient and elegant for running the game.

>>95901852
Because d&d 3.5 was a disaster for the industry as a whole , causing a divergent timeline leading us to our present circumstance

I am running a small campaign, so far only 2 sessions and both me and the players have been enjoying it. It is quick to learn, simple and reasonably deadly.

>>95893790
>Personally, I prefer Swords & Wizardry complete,
Question: do you know S&W is ignored on /osrg/ compared to OSE, LL and other B/X retroclones?

>>95891683 (OP)
If you want.

It's mediocre.

>>95893223
>>95893237
Darkness and stupid random bullshit tables are already a BX thing.

>>95891683 (OP)
Wow this is an embarrassingly cringe esl post

It's my favorite game system. Solid (but not innovative) rules foundation presented neatly, with great art and compatible with older d&d modules and adventures easily. Third party content scene is fantastic and it's easy to find games to play in person and online.

>>95896210
OSR is 2020-2024 bait. The grift is already searching for new fields.

>>95901859
>It's not going to be that fitting the main combat rules into 2 pages is really convenient and elegant for running the game.
Oh, I like that.

>>95903029
What a worthless post

>>95902216
And doing them badly is something worth mentioning.

>>95891683 (OP)
It's what 5e should have been.
It's not OSR but better than 5e.

Look if I’m going to my local game store for a public game, I’d much rather sit at a table running shadowdark than 5e.

I don’t play it at home but I am glad that there is a popular alternative to 5e (that is just 5e but not as bad)

>>95894668
Because AD&D was out of print c.2006 when OSRIC kicked off the retroclone trend.

>>95905773
It's available as PoD.

>>95906257
Yes because it is now 2025 and OSR is a commodified part of the games market, in 2006 it was not.

>>95906257
Yes, because the success of the retroclones over the next 10ish years made Wizards realize that they could sell their TSR back catalog as PDFs for essentially free, and offer some of the more popular ones as POD.

>>95891683 (OP)
Embarrassingly dogshit esl post

>>95891683 (OP)
You can download the quickstart rules free from Arcane's own website. Check it out and see if it's for you. The only feedback you're going to get on /tg/ these days is Dunning/Kruger snark from no-games neckbeards.
>>95894070
>Shadowdark is just a compilation of house rules stolen from youtubers and 15 year old blog posts and the result is a vaguely reduced 5e/ OSR mongrel.
>implying this is bad

>>95894983
shockingly based

>>95907978
>what makes it good?
>it's the same as every other game of the kind, except where it's not
>implying this is good

This game does absolutely nothing new that OSR clones and a few houserules havent been doing for decades. No one will ever convince me that this game isnt astroturfed by simps hoping to be within 50 feet of a crumb of convention pussy because the creator is a 4/10 woman. That isnt even the most egregious about the game though. The worst part is the game doubles down on all the worst parts of OSR bean counting torch timing mud dork fantasy slop.

Obligatory

>>95915067
Damn I’m calling this game Scarytown from now on

>>95894668
>>95905773
Amusingly the 1e-fags who came up with the term the OSR don't actually care much for the modern OSR aside from a couple of adventures and even ended up making a separate label FAG/CAG to stop having people bother them about it.

>>95914927
>No one will ever convince me that this game isnt astroturfed by simps hoping to be within 50 feet of a crumb of convention pussy
Doubt.jpg, it's well known that she's a lesbiak. No way she has simps jostling for her cunt hairs.

>>95915132
Lesbians aren't real, Anon.

>>95915132
You think these boomers with their obese bitch wifes don't dare to hop in the presence of a 30-something woman that's not fat and into nerdshit?

>>95916676
No? Hopping would just make them look even more abnormal and maladjusted. Lesbians won't be more likely to fuck you if you start randomly hopping in public.

>>95916664
You are not real, Faglord

>>95921920
He's right though, Rourke won that one in every meaningful sense. That tight little slut wasn't a lesbian when she left the house.

>>95922372
>derp and durr

>>95922756
>t. Seething Tranny
Shouldn't you be in favor of lesbians converting to dick?

>>95922787
You can have all the dicks, dumbass

>>95916808
Hope. They can't help but hope for crumb of pussy like underfucked guys do when there's a GORL! in the vicinity, especially when she's presentable. Not that it's a bad thing to take care of your appearance in your 30s, but the halo effect is real.

>>95921920
>>95922756
>>95922816
kek, this li'l nigga really got mad at Anon for pointing out that Mojo Jojo entered the Big Brother house as a lesbian and left as a confirmed convert to dick

>>95924018
No one cares to hear about your love of dicks.

>>95924054
>he is still here seething about a straight girl he doesn't even know getting her cervix hammered

>>95924326
The thing you know about is you getting your pooper hammered.

>>95924412
>this kind of repetitive sperging no-u attempt at insults
Wait a minute... are you the 2efag from /osrg/?
LMAO

>>95903494
Who does it well?

>>95905773
>>95915127
>trying to pass off this lie even though you had it disproven in the OSR thread
Holy shit, you're actually deliberately trying to mislead people and hoping they don't know any better.

You are the scummiest sort of shit imaginable.

This system's greatest strength is, by far, the simplicity and succinctness of its prose. The content itself is decent — better than 5e but not by much, and there are many better systems in this vein — but the lack of needless explanations and gay little sidebars is superb. I like some artful writing in my games, but the overwhelming majority of TTRPG books could benefit from going towards the Shadowdark polarity.
>inb4 I'm illiterate or hate reading
If I want to read for reading's sake, it's not a game book

>>95925646
What are you crashing out over, retard?

>>95925902
OSRIC did not "kick off" the OSR trend. OSRIC came out in 2006, two years after Castles & Crusades, and four years after Dragonsfoot Forums became a major hub of the OSR community, with an Old School Revival being discussed as early as 2003.

The OSRIC game came from a small (very small in fact ) faction that splintered off from the Dragonsfoot forums, and included someone who used the term Old School Renaissance in 2004, and they had a much more narrow definition of what OSR meant that had them essentially chased off of Dragonsfoot forums because the much larger majority refused to take their autism seriously.

Cue some 20 years later, and the small splinter group's forum is essentially dead, but their autism lingers on, apparently now trying to infect 4chan.

>>95926120
Castles and Crusades is not strictly a retroclone. OSRIC represented a legal experiment in using the OGL to clone an out-of-print D&D edition not licensed under the OGL. This legal experiment proved to be true, and it's simply historical fact that OSRIC's publication unchallenged by lawfare from Wizards launched the wave of retroclones that followed over the next decade.

>>95926252
You dumb shit. C&C was the first OGL compatible game made in an effort to capture the essence of older editions of D&D without tripping WotC's legal tripwires, a full two years before OSRIC.

>>95891683 (OP)
It's the fast food version of D&D.

>>95915067
"Double Hell" always gets a smile out of me

>>95893237
There's a lot of great random tables in the book, but I don't know why they're treated as the only way DM's are allowed to make decisions.

>>95891683 (OP)
The starter pdf is free on the website, just get that and look it over. I've run it a few times and have had very good luck with it. I can't point to any one special mechanic that you won't find anywhere else, its just a selection of established rules that bring about the intent of OSR-style play without the baggage of design from the wargame era.

I run shadowdark but I make everyone use THAC0 instead of AAC

Shadowdark is a monument to how lazy and bankrupt the OSR scene is. They took OSE and made it black and removed out any numbers that scare girls. Then they explained the rules somewhat. This simple few hours' work made shadowdark sell more copies than every other indie RPG combined. Any one of you could have made it, but you didn't, because every single person who plays RPGs is a retarded dork. And now you're all seething that someone put in a tiny bit of effort for once and got paid for it.

And Shadowdark released 2 years ago. That's how lazy you are, it takes you 2 years to play the book you all spent 1.4 million dollars on and compliment it for being so fast to play. Darkbad is going to be funny for 400 years because of how useless you "OSR" bandwagoners are.

>>95914927
>doubles down on all the worst parts of OSR bean counting torch timing mud dork fantasy slop
Well what do you think are the best parts of old school games that creators should double down on instead?

>>95939055
Shadowdark isn’t OSR, anon.

In predictable and boring 4chan fashion, this thread is full of angry losers who just hate [popular thing], and most of these retarded faggots probably haven't even played the fucking system.

The game works well, it's fun, roll-to-cast is great, darkness is scary and interesting, and so on. It's just a clean fucking game. I love the shit out of OSE too (and I'm still waiting for Dolmenwood to arrive), but Shadowdark is just easier to run and I don't need to worry about a few classes needing a ton of fixes. Also (and this is going to offend the grognards), retainers are fucking boring and lame. Shadowdark doesn't even have rules for retainers and that's a good thing. The game is most fun if there's just a group of adventurers going on fucking adventures, but if every adventurer has 20 people following him then that sucks ass.

>>95948892
Agreed. Without Shadowdark we would never be able to run an RPG where it is dark and there are no retainers. It also made my wife's boyfriend come back and looks great on a shelf next to my funko pops and 100 NuSR games released over the last 15 years that have all done exactly the same thing already. I'm a huge fan, I own the book and all the expansion zines and I can't wait to play it someday.

>>95948892
>full
It’s only a handful of them. We’ve been dealing with these chucklefucks for quite a bit, but there’s mounting evidence of who they are and where they stand, and there’s a pretty good way of dealing with them now that we know them.

It’s kind of obvious, in a way. OSR already is something that would attract a certain kind of hyper grognard, a kind that’s been a boil on the ass of the RPG community all the way back to its earliest days. That’s not to say that the entire OSR community is like that, but there actually was a schism in the community over 20 years ago that falls exactly on the lines we see today. A majority that is fairly normal and discusses OSRs in a fairly open-minded fashion, and a tiny group that only believes there is a single “correct” way to play. A group composed of the elitist nerd who genuinely believes he knows best, while relying on fallacies like Appeals to Tradition and Appeals to Authority to argue for him whenever they’re applicable but hypocritically ignoring them whenever he finds them inconvenient. They will be stupid, stubborn, and intolerant, because they rely on these to act as walls to protect their personal views that would otherwise immediately fall apart.

The way to handle these kinds of grognards is the same it’s always been: Don’t fall for their posturing. They will pretend they are the experts, they will pretend they’re the ones who speak for a much larger group, they will use every possible fallacy imaginable and even just outright lie to you. And, you can happily ignore them and treat them like the powerless idiots they are.

The schism 20 years ago was when the K&KA group tried to start a “civil war” on the Dragonsfoot forums, and left to make their own forum when the overwhelming majority (some 90%+) on DF refused to accept their ideas. This splinter forum ended up being only a few hundred men, and now lies largely dead, but its insane spirit apparently still lives on.

>>95948892
>(and I'm still waiting for Dolmenwood to arrive)
>he paid

>>95953347
>waah people who played this hobby before me are mean and say my 5e hack is unoriginal

>>95891683 (OP)
>should I
No
>opinion
Bad

>>95953835
And look.
>They will be stupid, stubborn, and intolerant, because they rely on these to act as walls to protect their personal views that would otherwise immediately fall apart.
It's like the only thing you understand how to do is be stupid to try and tire people out from having to explain basic things to you.

>>95954010
What are you explaining, exactly? Aside from ranting about some dads on an obscure forum that's even more irrelevant than this one.

>>95954023
>felt the need to reply without even understanding
Probably best for you to just stay quiet.

>>95948892
No I actually love the game, hell, I even bought the first zine in pdf

>>95953347
FYI, if you're wondering who the weird ass pompous fuck is behind the above rant, it's the current troll infesting osrg who's extremely mad that no one likes his pet game.

>>95891683 (OP)
They types of people shilling it makes me (correctly) assume that it's shit. Thus no point in playing it and spending any amount of money on it.

>>95955333
Which types of people? This just sounds like paranoia.

>>95955295
This post is some of that hyper-hypocrisy that comes out of this K&KA groupies, and the funny thing is that even a message as clear as all their posts getting deleted isn't enough to convince them that they're the ones seen as trolls.
>who's extremely mad
The hyper-hypocrisy continues on, because at least one of these trolls is so mad he spent the last week flooding the /osrg/ with enraged spam (which all got deleted), and all because people continue to discuss games he personally doesn't like and no one is listening to him.

>>95891683 (OP)
Played six sessions with people I met at the LGS, the seventh is tonight. Thoughts so far:
>It's not really all that deadly. Falling to 0 hp means you die in 1d4 + [CON modifier] rounds unless healed or stabilized. No one died in our game so far, and I know fudging wasn't involved since the GM rolls everything in the open. And we don't even have a Priest, mind you.
>I'm not a minmaxer or buildfag, but it does bum me out a bit that I barely get to decide anything about my fighter. Levelling up gives you only more HP and a randomly determined talent. I'm all for spontaneous play, rolling stats in order, and "discovering" my character as I go along, but this just leaves me feeling like my character isn't really mine. Probably should've played a caster, they at least get to choose their own spells.
>The game pretends to use abstract distances like Close/Near/Far, but then it gives them precise measurements. They're also used in ways that sound really unnatural, like the Sleep spell being a "near-sized cube" or some monsters having a speed score of "double near"
>Real-time torches are just a dumb gimmick and a decisive party can clear out a small dungeon without ever running out of one. The game basically acknowledges this by advising the GM to go out of his way to extinguish the party's torch.
Overall, meh. Not something I'd buy or run, but I'm having an ok time as a player.
Surprisingly pic related, our GM recently dropped time-travel on us for some reason. No idea why someone would do that to their campaign, but it did get me curious to see what he's planning.

>>95953835
You were not around before 5e existing, retard.

>>95891683 (OP)
I have a friend who is totally enamored with BörkMorg and its myriad offspring, as well as a friend who plays mostly 5e because it's all he knows, and some others who have played everything from 5e and Shadow of the Demon Lord to Call of Cthulhu and BRP with me. Do you think those people will be able to enjoy this game?

>>95960226
Seems like a lot of the people you know enjoy horror games, so yeah, run Shadowdark and use eldritch monsters and they'll have fun. Shadowdark is more fun than Börkbörkborgmörk games.

>>95925832
Which other games in this vein do you think are better? I'm looking for something new to run.

>>95960237
Something about the görkbörk games just throw me off personally. Hate the presentation and too little substance. I'll check Shadowdark out. Thanks anon.

>>95926278
>"essence" of older editions
>literally just stripped down 3E with a universal skill system

>>95960226
Yep, it's a 5e/Morkborg hybrid.
>>95960249
Dungeon Crawl Classics, Delving Deeper, OSRIC if you've got the autism for it. Shadowdark is poorly balanced as far as I can tell, and even though that's not as important with this kind of game it will eventually start to make stretch marks in a serious campaign. Plus, mudcore city dude! And not even diving in vats of bloody orc fetuses edgy mudcore like Mork Borg, it's just generic rats and ogres forever.