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Shadowdark Reviewed

Jan 15, 2024

Author: Kelsey Dionne

Artists: Lucas Korte, Brandish Gilhelm, Jessee Egan, Yuri Perkowski Domingos, Matt Morrow, Matt Ray, Mark Lyons, and Abdul Latif

Year: 2023

Genre: Modern styled ruleset focusing on classic, old school fantasy roleplaying

Pages: 327 pages

MSRP: $59.99 for the hardcover or $29.00 for the PDF

I sit down to share my thoughts about the old school fueled, fantasy roleplaying game Shadowdark from The Arcane Library. The game focuses on dungeon delving and the book contains all you need to get stuck in. The corebook had a hugely successful Kickstarter by pulling in over $1.2 million but is the finished product deserving of all the hype it received during the crowdfunding run? You’re about to find out!

SUMMARY

There's plenty to really like with Shadowdark and the good certainly outweighs the things about the RPG I'm less than keen about. The game mechanics are drawn from a variety of fantasy TTRPGs and it's not like like much of this is original. It is a well constructed collection of things we've seen before though. I could easily see myself running Shadowdark with some modifications. I have to say the page count does feel artificially inflated and the pricing of the book and PDF are higher than I'd like. Still, I do give Shadowdark a very solid recommendation.

Jeff McAleer

Founder/Editor-in-chief of The Gaming Gang website and host of The Gaming Gang Dispatch and other TGG media, Jeff tackles any and all sorts of games but has a special fondness for strategy, conflict sims, and roleplaying games. Plus, he's certainly never at a loss for an opinion...