I’ve already blogged about the upcoming Shadowdark RPG and guess what there’s already on official zine. I know the first thing you’re thinking, “If the game isn’t out yet then how is there a zine?” Here’s what I’ve learned so far. First, the beta rules are available and free. The rules are solid but there’s some art and a little layout to be done. I’m going to assume there might be some minor rules tweaks or other editing but like I said the rules are solid. ETA on the published version is Spring 2022. And the rules are a kissing cousin to old school systems so conversion to your rule set of choice won’t be that hard.

Sure, you can call me a fanboy but I grabbed this up when I found out about it. So what do you get with this? There’s a mini Hex Crawl, The Gloaming. It’s complete with rumors, adventure hooks, random encounters, and several subplots and mysteries. You could plenty of sessions just out of The Gloaming. But it does have a solid horror vibe to it so be advised but it isn’t over the top Edgelord stuff. Yeah, I’m so planning using in my upcoming campaign.

Then there’s a First Level adventure too! The Hideous Halls of Mugdulblub! It’s a weird and warped dungeon crawl. Once again, I think it’s pretty cool. Of course, you could just listen to the author (a few minor spoilers).

But wait there’s more. Three new classes. Witch, Warlock, and Knights of St. Ydnis. So Warlock is pretty like the 5E style Warlock but the zine comes with its own Warlock Patrons and none of them are touchy feely types. They’re pretty mean and basically evil. The Witch comes with it’s familiar and their own spell list. So yes. there’s new spells in here too. The Knights of St Ydnis are pretty interesting. They’ve sworn to fight evil by embracing it. This is sort of a Gish type class (Fighter/Magic-User). They use the Witch Spell List and gain spells at a slower rate than full casters but also have decent combat abilities augmented by demonic possession.

So we got classes, spells, a hexcrawl, and an adventure. Since there’s a hexcrawl and adventure that also means there’s also new monsters. And there’s even a random Diabolic Treasure table to finish things off.

Overall, it’s a good zine and worth the money. I’ve paid more for less gaming content. You can grab up the Cursed Scroll at The Arcane Library.