My local post office got their stuff together and I’ve finally got physical copies of the Shadowdark Quickstart. It was fun watching the tracking.

I know, I’ve ranted about Shadowdark before. But there is something even more special about having a physical item. If you’re link weary let me go over it really quickly. Shadowdark is old-school at its core (3d6 in order, lower HD, rulings not rules) with some influence 5E and other more modern games. The new stuff does not over shadow (no pun intended) those newer elements.

The Quickstart also gives a good feel at how I hope the final game is laid out and organized. It’s clear and there’s plenty of useful charts. Heck, I grabbed the GM Guide because it was close this weekend for some random treasure in my current campaign. Heck, I’m already using the most of the spells from the beta rules and Cursed Scroll Zine No 1.

There’s no wasted space in the booklets. Handy charts are on the back and interior covers. And there just enough implied setting material to get you by as well as an introductory adventure, “Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur.” And bonus it also comes with a gaggle of pre-generated characters on heavy card stock.

As I said previously, it’s been a long time since I’ve been excited about an upcoming game. Well, I am excited about Shadowdark. It hits a sweet spot between old and new while favoring the old-shcool style. It’s got plenty of material that is useful that can be easily folded into whatever old-school rules that you happen to be using. You can grab any one of the old-school modules out there and run it with little or no conversion work. And it’s got a very generous third party publisher license already. Yep, I do have a crazy idea for it, so stay tuned for that.

The latest news that I’ve been able to dig up is that final rule book will be released Fall 2022. Can’t wait for it. But in the mean time, you can check out the PDF of the Quickstart and other news at The Arcane Library.