On this episode, we talk about the top mistakes we made running ShadowDark (aka "how Ken accidentally enabled hard mode for his campaign").

Our mistakes include "overly complicate torch management", "create deadlier rat diseases", "don't use Luck points", and more!

Looking for more ShadowDark content? Check out these Lair episodes:

d12 Ways ShadowDark is Awesome! (S4E15)

Shadowdark Impressions (Campaigns & Coffee)

Chapters

Listen to the Episode

Watch to the Episode

Watch d8 ShadowDark Mistakes We Made on YouTube.

Show Notes

1. Overcomplicate Torch Management

You don't need to do torch gymnastics to light a new one. If your old one is burning down, and the players want to start a new torch, they do it. The timer is reset to 60 minutes, and the old torch is discarded.

Keeping fractional torches around ("But we had 15 minutes left on this torch!") is a natural impulse given the importances (and potential scarcity) of light, but fractional torches make things complicated. And the mechanic isn't meant to be complicated.

A reasonable house rule I've seen for torches that go out less than halfway through their burn cycle is to round down to 30 minutes. Keeping track of "half torches" is still work, but less work than breaking it down further.

That said, if you’re under threat, then yes, there are torch gymnastics. There’s a DC 12 Dexterity check to ignite a torch under such conditions. - If it’s dark, same DC, but with disadvantage. We’ll talk more about that in our ShadowDark house rules episode coming up. (Sly Flourish - https://slyflourish.com/shadowdark_house_rules.html)

2. Create even deadlier rat diseases

The common rat in ShadowDark is infected with a fast acting disease that immediately saps the adventurer's Constitution. Depending on how you interpret the rule, it either prevents all healing until the adventurer makes a saving throw OR the adventure can't recover their lost Con until they make a saving throw.

Ken chose the latter.

3.  Don't use luck points

For Ken’s first few games, he didn’t use Luck points at all. Which, given how deadly ShadowDark is, can be a pretty big difficulty upgrade for players.

Running the same scenario at a convention (and swapping in a Seer character from Cursed Scrolls #3) revealed just how helpful Luck tokens are (the seer being able to create Luck tokens 3x per day).

4. Get Spell Mishaps Wrong

Ken’s game made spell failure MUCH more dangerous by rolling on the mishap chart whenever a spell casting attempt failed (and not just on critical fumbles, as per the rules).

This makes it much more likely your 1st level character is going to get killed when failing to cast a spell.

5. Don't Plan for Carousing

Carousing is a big part of the game. During downtime, players can spend gold to have adventures in town, earning XP, acquiring allies (and maybe an enemy). But to do it, they need gold … so it helps to make sure that they’ll actually have that gold when they got home. 

Also, read the carousing and “learn skills” downtime activities before you start the adventure, so you know what the players can do at the end. 

6. Get Stuck in D&D 5e Mode

ShadowDark is a cousin of D&D 5e … and 5e has a rule for everything. It’s easy to bring in default 5e assumptions (I’m looking at you, opportunity attacks) rather than looking for the ShadowDark equivalent. 

7. Stress about when to level up

Do you level up at session's end or in the middle of the session? This is more a preference than a mistake (though your mileage may vary). Leveling up is super easy in ShadowDark, but it does slow things down a bit.

8 Wasting time looking up rules that don't exist

ShadowDark is a rules-light game. D&D or Pathfinder fans may come in looking for detailed rules for, well, just about everything.

Most of the time, ShadowDark doesn’t have them. Like “Learning” during downtime.