Shadowdark - Quickstart Funhouse

The cover to the Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur dungeon.

Writing my first GM play report and utilizing Idle Cartulary's post on The Playful Void to structure the play report with some other notes by me. If this works well, I'll continue to use this format. Yay for trying new things!

This GM Play Report is about Shadowdark. I picked up my copy of the book at GenCon and finally had the chance to bring it to the table. Having never run it before, I used the Quickstart dungeon titled Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur. I had about 2 hours notice before running the one-shot as we had a last minute cancellation on our Call of Cthulhu campaign.

The System

Shadowdark is an OSR system that loves to dungeon crawl! My group of players are big OSE/Dolmenwood players, so bringing Shadowdark to them seemed a natural choice. The two biggest and immediate differences from systems like OSE to me were the real-life timer and tracking light sources in real life.

1. What rulings that weren’t rulebook supported were made, and why did I make them?

   None that I can recall.

2. Did I have to work around the rules in order to facilitate play? How?

   I had a player who felt the limited number of torches was punitive, and they asked to search in some crates for a torch which I allowed. Not having to worry about light dimnished quite a bit of the tension.

The Module

I liked the briefs and room breakdowns. It was easy to pick up and understand everything. In fact, some may have been too brief, but that was fine as I made up what I wanted as we went.

After we played, the group and I discussed the dungeon. It felt more like a funhouse of horrors rather than one cohesive dungeon

3. What did I change about the module? Why? How successful were those changes?

   There were two rooms (really only one) near the northeast entrance that were not labelled, so I turned one into an old storage room, while the other became an extension of the existing hallway it was connected to. It worked fine. Nothing spectacular.

4. How did I use procedures to facilitate play?

   Rolling for encounters regularly, allowing players to explore a space to trigger events

5. What did I modify “behind the screen”, and why?

   I misspoke in a room and implied the trap was a plate when it wasn't in the Sorcerous Pillars room. Rather than correct my statement, I allowed the players to continue with incorrect information (oops! big learning moment!) This was the first of many issues our party had in there. More on this below.

This is the part of the dungeon map that was completed by the party.

The Party

I used a random character generator, Shadow Darklings, which was helpful getting us right into the dungeon, but one of my players disliked not having the opportunity to prep their own gear for it.

6. When did I tailor things to my table instead of randomising them?

   I reduced the damage the minotaur did to give some party members a bit more longevity. All but 1 member died which felt good!

7. Were there any pain points in the session, and how did I respond?

   The trap in the Sorcerous Pillars room is that as you pass pairs of pillars, different effects impact you until you retreat behind them. The first is anything that can ignite, will. This is essentially everything in my mind. Further past another set of pillars was an ettercap body. The body in this room made it unclear how the trap functioned, since it had passed the fire pillars yet wasn't a pile of ash. I understand it was placed to be a clue as to how the trap functioned but ultimately left my party frustrated, so they left.

8. Were there any emotional or triumphant moments, and did I or how did you facilitate that?

   The most triumphant moment was killing the minotaur after the many hazards the party triggered in the dungeon.

9. How did I maintain pacing during this session? Did I have to work to balance attention between players?

   My group is really good about staying on task, asking questions, and sharing space around the table, so it was great!

The Takeaways

Pros:

• Enjoyed the heavy emphasis on dungeon crawling
• Can see how these mechanics are really enjoyable in a campaign
• Liked the light mechanic as a DM and needed to attack light sources MORE to up the stakes and add more tension.

Cons:

• Maybe should have walked players through character creation
• Some players found the light mechanic punitive
• Quickstart wasn't as thematically cohesive as I liked

10. Was there any prep that felt wasted or unused on reflection?

    Nope!

11. When did I have the most fun this session? Why did I think those parts were fun?

    When I wasn't speaking and really letting players sit in a space to explore or ask questions about things.