Work in Progress

I rotated in as GM for our local weekly game, and I had originally hoped to run Shadow of the Weird Wizard out of the kickstarter preview material. Unfortunately, while there's preview information on the rules, the campaign's not available yet, and a big part of my curiosity was around that. So, that was a disappointement, but I had gotten sufficiently invested that I decided that I might take a swing at Shadow of the Demon Lord (SotDL).

There is a lot that I like about the mechanics in SotDL. It's sort of a D&D-written-in-shorthand rules system, but the core of the pitch has always been than it is designed for short, advancement-centric arcs. That is, the default model is an 11 session adventure arc, with characters advancing each time. What's more, each level is a genuinely interesting step - there are (theoretically) no dead levels. That's all some pretty cool stuff!

However, the overall theme and tone is less my bag. It is 100% grimdark, taking many flavor notes from the classic Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, making it something more akin to a horror game with swords than anything else. There are parts of this I like - the fact that the arc is going to end badly is kind of neat - and I even enjoy dark games like Blades in the Dark, but grimdark has always been a bit too much for me. Its over-the-top nature (which serves it well when drifting into satire) deflates the sentiment for me.

So, while I was resistant, I was curious enough to try to overcome my resistance, and I have now put forward SotDL as our next campaign. I honestly have no idea how this is going to go, but I'm going all in on the experiment.