Shadow of the Demon Lord

[JonSetanta]

https://schwalbentertainment.com/shadow ... emon-lord/

One of my brothers mentioned this recently so I asked him about the dice mechanics, theme, class/no-class, species, and he directed me to this summary.

It looks interesting.

[angelfromanotherpin]

It's been discussed on this board a few times. My own opinion (after playing a full 0-10 campaign) is that it's ...fine. Not good, not terrible.

[JonSetanta]

Ok my mistake, I'll search for the other threads.

[Aryxbez]

I've been meaning to make a Review of the RPG for years now. I might be one of the most well informed on this game in regards to its mechanics. I've been playing it since it came out on Kickstarter, followed its release schedule since, and have personally ran Three and a half Campaigns using pre-made material. I personally find it to be one of my favorite RPG's of all time, it feels like a complete game that you can actually expect to finish a campaign with.

[JonSetanta]

I've been meaning to make a Review of the RPG for years now. I might be one of the most well informed on this game in regards to its mechanics. I've been playing it since it came out on Kickstarter, followed its release schedule since, and have personally ran Three and a half Campaigns using pre-made material. I personally find it to be one of my favorite RPG's of all time, it feels like a complete game that you can actually expect to finish a campaign with.

Wow!
So, should I buy a copy for my brother?
... Or is it just another Fantasy Heartbreaker.

[Dogbert]

SotDL is basically the game you give your edgelord DM who won't shut up about low magic misery tourism games. It was written by The Usual Suspects and I actually approve of it, since it gives all edgelords and draconian DMs a go-to game to be themselves and leave the rest of regular D&D alone.

I believe in the right tool for the right job, and SotDL is the last word in edgelordy low fantasy to the point that all games are stated to end in a TPK (R.A.W: As soon as PCs max level or it's the game's last session, Diablo appears and it's rocks fall everybody dies).

I wouldn't play it, but I acknowledge its merit.

[JonSetanta]

As with all homebrew publications I picked them like a bird of carrion does to what's left of the remains, mold a few mechanical or thematic concepts a bit, and add the thing to my own creations like some written form of a rubber band ball.

[Harshax]

I've been meaning to make a Review of the RPG for years now. I might be one of the most well informed on this game in regards to its mechanics. I've been playing it since it came out on Kickstarter, followed its release schedule since, and have personally ran Three and a half Campaigns using pre-made material. I personally find it to be one of my favorite RPG's of all time, it feels like a complete game that you can actually expect to finish a campaign with.

I would be very interested in the review. Based on your comments, I decided to give it a quick read. It has a lot of interesting features. I'd describe the game so far as half-fantasy heartbreak and half-campaign creation engine. A 'complete' campaign is built on 11 adventures, culminating with player's achieving max (10th) level and facing the cause of the upcoming apocalypse. There's an obvious design decision to make campaigns that reach their ultimate conclusions and offer a lot of replayability in terms of player choices with characters and gm choices in setting up the conditions of the world coming to an end.

There is indeed a hole of glory spell: a fixed short-range teleportation table. There's a couple of other fun references, like the screeching eels reference to Princess Bride.

Again, this is a cursory review and my opinion may change as I delve into this. The things I like most about it so far:

• The game is very much stripped-down D&D, with the removal of such sacred cows like: reducing attributes from 6 to 4, arcane/divine magic dualism, random hit point totals.
• Combat looks to be quite fast. There is less HP Bloat than 5E. Totals look to adhere more closely to what you would see in 1E/BECMI. One high-tier NPC has something like 80 Health. Which is about average for a 9th Level 1E D&D Fighter with a 16 Constitution. This character's primary attack is two melee strikes that do 3d6+2 damage each.
• There is very little page bloat. Classes, Spells, stat blocks and abilities are concisely written. At 274 pages it contains a complete sections for players, gm's and a setting.
• better boon/bane system than Advantage/Disadvantage.
• No alignments.
• Multiclassing is required. Novice paths are broad and there are only 4: warrior, rogue, priest, magician. 16 Expert Paths: their names match the core classes found in D&D with a few extra. Then there are 64 master classes: 32 focusing on magic, the others focusing on martial or skills. The combination of these 3 choices produces over 24k combinations, if I've done my math right. That doesn't include ancestries. There are no prerequisite gates, so you could play a Magician->Fighter->Gunslinger. The challenge is spending precious attribute increases to use these combinations effective, so there may combinations that maybe less effective than others.
• Magic is divided into traditions and the spell casting stat for each is Intellect or Will. I only noticed one tradition that is religious focused, so the typical Arcane/Divine dichotomy in D&D is almost entirely removed. You could very easily play a Magician that is a pyromancer/healer. Or a Priest that focuses on illusions and technomancy.
• My initial impression is that there is less disparity between martial and spell caster characters and the multi class options can produce a lot of effective gish characters. This is achieved because spell effectiveness is based on your attributes and not levels. Character who make choices to improve their (spell) Power score get more spell-castings and access to higher level spells.
• Professions are used instead of a static skill list. In the adventure I was reading some skill tests succeed automatically if a character has a certain profession.

If I were going to run a D&D game, I'd probably use this ruleset instead of any official edition. And I suspect converting encounters from one system to the other might be smooth.

EDIT: formatting.

[Harshax]

I really like this type of character progression. As every choice made in character concept builds up over time and there is no such thing a class dipping.

Code: Select all

 1     Choose a novice path from the ones presented in Chapter 3 and gain the benefits from that path for this level.
 2     You gain the benefits from your novice path for this level.
 3     Choose an expert path from the ones presented in Chapter 4 and gain the benefits from that path for this level.
 4     Gain the benefits from your ancestry for this level.
 5     Gain the benefits from your novice path for this level.
 6     Gain the benefits from your expert path for this level.
 7     Choose a master path from the ones presented in Chapter 5 and gain the benefits from that path for this level.
 8     Gain the benefits from your novice path for this level.
 9     Gain the benefits from your expert path for this level.
10     Gain the benefits from your master path for this level.