Collecting the first four issues of the ShadowDark zine, Twisted Tales, this book is a nice little mix of resources and adventures to pick and choose as you like it.  One of the things I’ve really enjoyed since getting back into the hobby, is the much stronger presence or wider reach of more DIY, fan-made material for games.  In my day (shakes fist at the sky!), we had a few zines, but mostly had to share stuff among friends, and that was about it.  And you had to be careful, because there were a few companies that were super sue-happy.  The wider availability of fan-made material means that we’ve got a lot more options and inspiration, from a lot more varied voices, and I love that.

With issue 1, we have a small somewhat undead-themed, hex-crawl, as well as an adventure site to plug into it.  There are also a few creature stat blocks and a few new items.  There’s also a new character class, the Archeologist, and I like this one.  I’m definitely going to put it on the list of classes available to my players when I finally get a chance to run some ShadowDark.  I love the “Friends Abroad” ability, which allows you to have a contact in any major settlement you’ve visited.

Issue 2 follows a similar format.  The hex-crawl in this one features a notable city, and the overall “theme” of the encounters revolves around a sort of thieves/assassins guild.  I’m not well enough versed in the game to know if the new class is different enough from the core book’s Thief to make it worth the effort.  But there is a new one, the Mercurian Blade, for folks who are interested.  

The format is broken with issue 3, where we’re presented with a (non-hexed) town map with a few keyed locations.  Much of the issue is taken up with something I think counts as a megadungeon, though I’m not sure what the cut-off is for that term to apply. A few creatures and items round things out.  No new class this time around.

The final issue is one multi-part adventure, with a few new creature stat blocks.  No new classes or items, and no hex-crawl, but several keyed location maps.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading through this.  There are definitely several things I’m likely to lift, including a few of the locations, and possibly some of the monsters.  The writing is occasionally a little awkward, like it needed another editing pass.  Sometimes things are said in a way that I think is supposed to sound archaic and portentous, but instead is just clunky or wrong.  I think it was especially true in the first issue, so perhaps feedback led to some smoothing out of that feature.  I’m not plugged into the online discourse around most of this stuff, so I typically only see the final product in a sort of vacuum.  When I got this from DriveThru, it was about $12, which I think is a very good price.

See my unboxing video here.

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