Very much enjoyed the episode, thanks for playing in the game, I think you make some food points about Shadowdark; personally I don't find any "simplicity" benefits have been balanced out by the amount of stuff I've had to house rule. Might not be such as problem running a more traditional campaign, but there's a fair bit of stuff I consider pretty much vital in an old school game that isn't included.
I like it the system but—like any RPG—it's not perfect, I wish I had time/energy to also run an open table OSE game as well so I could do a more direct comparison. I have to admit that—despite Shadowdark being lauded as having a big player base—I've not found that to be the case, but maybe I just don't hang around online in the places they frequent or perhaps the typical Shadowdark player doesn't go for an old school megadungeon game 🤷
Thank you for the feedback from the GM perspective. I can definitely see how a single party campaign of dungeon crawls could simply run without much of what you've had to add in for the drop in/western marches style campaign. (hope I used that term correctly..I'm struggling these days to remember if I'm using the proper terms for this style of hexploration).
I didn't even question the player base..but your point got me wondering and doing a little imperfect research. I tried comparing OSE and Swords and Wizardry online community size..although I can't be sure that is relevant at all. Swords and Wizardry has been around a long time and OSE's most recent Dolemenwood kickstarter was every bit as big as Shadowdark.
On reddit OSE has 1.6k members and Shadowdark 4.5k. On discord Necrotic Gnome has 6.5k and The Arcane Library has 7.1k. So they seem similar in size. I guess one of the morals of this story is that neither is a huge community and it's tough to gauge how active a ttrpg community is...I mean there is online play and in person play as well..so little info we can glean on this type of thing. I haven't seen the roll20 ORR report be updated in years. Like you said..maybe I'm just out of touch with where the player base convenes.
Very much enjoyed the episode, thanks for playing in the game, I think you make some food points about Shadowdark; personally I don't find any "simplicity" benefits have been balanced out by the amount of stuff I've had to house rule. Might not be such as problem running a more traditional campaign, but there's a fair bit of stuff I consider pretty much vital in an old school game that isn't included.
I like it the system but—like any RPG—it's not perfect, I wish I had time/energy to also run an open table OSE game as well so I could do a more direct comparison. I have to admit that—despite Shadowdark being lauded as having a big player base—I've not found that to be the case, but maybe I just don't hang around online in the places they frequent or perhaps the typical Shadowdark player doesn't go for an old school megadungeon game 🤷
Thank you for the feedback from the GM perspective. I can definitely see how a single party campaign of dungeon crawls could simply run without much of what you've had to add in for the drop in/western marches style campaign. (hope I used that term correctly..I'm struggling these days to remember if I'm using the proper terms for this style of hexploration).
I didn't even question the player base..but your point got me wondering and doing a little imperfect research. I tried comparing OSE and Swords and Wizardry online community size..although I can't be sure that is relevant at all. Swords and Wizardry has been around a long time and OSE's most recent Dolemenwood kickstarter was every bit as big as Shadowdark.
On reddit OSE has 1.6k members and Shadowdark 4.5k. On discord Necrotic Gnome has 6.5k and The Arcane Library has 7.1k. So they seem similar in size. I guess one of the morals of this story is that neither is a huge community and it's tough to gauge how active a ttrpg community is...I mean there is online play and in person play as well..so little info we can glean on this type of thing. I haven't seen the roll20 ORR report be updated in years. Like you said..maybe I'm just out of touch with where the player base convenes.