Find out the latest news and releases for Shadow of the Demon Lord and Godless from Schwalb Entertainment.
My approach to creating adventures for Shadow of the Demon Lord comes from realizations I had while working on and running other games. I like big, chunky adventures just like everyone else, but I realized I rarely ran them all the way through till the end. Sometimes, the players take unexpected directions, requiring me to develop the story in new ways, leaving behind pages of otherwise great content. Other times, the game just falls apart when real life bullied its way into our fun. Rather than pretend life works differently, I stripped down adventures to their essential elements. Here are some broad strokes to show you how I did it.
Format
I don’t plan to release many, if any, print adventures. The digital medium is cheaper on you and on me. Adventures will have a landscape, three-column format so I can fit more on the page. I don’t anticipate adventures running more than 5 pages in length so you can read them quickly and run right away.
Most adventures have the following structure.
Objective: The adventure presents to you what has to happen for the group needs to do to complete the story.
The Situation: The adventure summarizes what’s going on.
The Scenes: The adventure lays out the scenes, characters, and events tied directly to the adventure in concise chunks for easy digestion.
Length
Most, if not all, adventures can be played in a single session that lasts two to four hours. This makes them excellent options for convention games and one-shots, yes, but it makes them great for home games too. Why? I find when I start an adventure and stop before we complete it, saving the rest for the next session, I wind up missing or gaining people, forcing everyone to bend the story to accommodate the new or lost characters. As well, you lose valuable time recapping what happened last time, forget essential events, or misremember them. Groups can get through a page of adventure material in an hour. Hence, the short page counts map well to single-session play.
No Excess
You won’t find excess in Shadow of the Demon Lord adventures. The adventures tell you what you need to know and nothing more. Descriptions are similarly sparse. It’s your job, as the GM, to strike the right mood for your group. If you want to paint the walls with blood, go for it. The adventure lays out the basics and leaves the rest for you to present in whatever way you want.
Here’s an example of a “room” description (not edited yet, but it’s a taste):
- Beastmen Encampment
The beastmen encamped here intend to take Thorpe by force and sacrifice of people to their dark god. The beastmen captured Franz, one of the treasure hunters, not long after he escaped the bloody bones and have kept him a prisoner here. They’ve been cutting on him for a day so far and are eating him alive. He has been too brutalized to be of any assistance to the characters.
In addition to the fomor hunting Delia (see “Survivor”), 4 fomor and 2 gnolls make up the band. They are lax about security and may be easily surprised. None knows about the Shrine and nor do they have interest in it.
They have a few weeks of rations, a barrel of sour wine, an old sword, a longbow, quiver of 30 arrows, and a sack filled with 15 ss, 76 cp, and silverware and other valuables worth about 3 ss, all looted from nearby farms.
Ripe for Expansion
Since adventures are barebones in design, you can easily add to them for a longer play experience. Just add more scenes, more challenges, introduce complications, or whatever you want to thicken the story. Similarly, since you create the connective tissue linking one adventure to the next, it’s easy to clip them all together to form a saga (aka campaign).
Here it is, in all its glory. Join the Demon Lord’s Army and burn down your world!
Tomorrow I launch the Kickstarter campaign for my new apocalyptic horror-fantasy roleplaying game, Shadow of the Demon Lord. As you are likely to hear a lot from me over the next 30 days, I’m going to keep this post brief.
The Skinny
I’m using Kickstarter to crowd-source the funds I need to shepherd the game through production. By production, I mean editing, layout, art acquisition, and, of course, printing. The good news is that the writing is done. I just have to pare down the excess to fit a 128-page full-color softcover book. If we fund, the game will be in your hands by the end of the year. To go with the game, I’m also offering a ~20 page PDF that includes five adventures, each playable in a single session, and 36 page or so PDF starting guide that extracts the character creation section to help you and your friends make starting characters quickly.
Exceeding the Goal
I’m offering two ways to make the project bigger and better. First, I’m using Achievements. You’ll find on the Kickstarter page a list of possible achievements that unlock goodies. Each achievement attained gets crossed off the list. At ten, twenty, and thirty achievements attained, the project gets better—a free 4-page adventure for all backers, 32-pages of content added to the rulebook, and a surprise.
Second, I have a bunch of sexy stretch goals that get revealed once we fund. A stretch goal, in case you don’t know, is a level of funding above and beyond the goal. About a third of the stretch goals involve upgrading the rulebook, usually increments of 32 pages and turning the softback into a hardback book—an expensive leap, but well worth it. The rest of the stretch goals involve additional adventures by some of the finest designers in the business and, eventually, additional supplements. I have 2-4 page adventures line up from Ken Hite, Steve Winter, Skip Williams, Rich Baker, Jason Bulmahn, Monte Cook, Chris Pramas, Steve Townshend, TS Luikart, Stan!, Bruce Cordell, Steve Kenson, Shane Hensley, Miranda Horner, Scott Fitzgerald Gray, David Noonan, Cam Banks, Chris Sims, Matt Forbeck, and Ed Greenwood! I’m also offering fiction from Erin Evans, Erik Scott de Bie, Richard Lee Byers, and Elizabeth Bear. And if we do extremely well, higher stretch goals unlock additional print books that include a bestiary, big book of magic, world expansions, and a backer level that lets you get everything in print.
How You Can Help
The best way you can help is to back the campaign. Choose whatever funding level you can and make a pledge. Every little bit helps. Remember, you’re not on the hook for anything unless the campaign funds. Once the campaign is over, assuming it funds, you can choose your rewards and any add-ons you might want—dice, stack of printed character sheets, extra books, and so on.
In addition to backing the campaign, I need your help to spread the word. Raising awareness about the product creates additional backers and additional voices to create even more backers.
To entice you a bit more, here are some profile pics you can use in case you’re too shy to spread the word.
Last Thoughts
Last, I want to say thanks. Since making the announcement at Geek Media Expo in October, I have had the pleasure of running games at stores and conventions all over the place. I’ve been interviewed and been a guest on podcasts. I’ve gained so many new friends from all over the world who have shown nothing but support and excitement for this project. Thank you all. Thanks for reading and thanks for playing. We’re close to getting this book out the door and into your hands. Let’s make it happen.