To alleviate some of the workload of developing western-theming gear & potential rules, I looked around for some already developed in Shadowdark. I found two, ShadowWest & Veilstone. The first I came across was Veilstone, which has a lot of overlapping parts that entirely avoid being similar to Crystal Frontiers by being much more 1800s Western Expansion coded than I was anticipating. This isn’t a bad thing, but it means I approached this with the wrong expectations at first.

What belongs in a setting book?

Ask 100 different game masters or referees and you’ll get 100 different answers. Since Shadowdark (SD) hasn’t released its first official one yet (Western Reaches is still in draft), one can assume that the Cursed Scroll micro-settings are the type of content that can be found in a setting book.

1. Additional Ancestries;
2. Couple more Classes;
3. More Mechanics;
4. Setting Map;
5. Points of Interest; and,
6. At least 1 adventure.

There are probably other bits & bobs, but to me, I think these are the pieces of the pie, but really a setting book is about its flavor. The Netheril setting book has a very different flavor and plays a very different game from Sword Coast or Waterdeep despite being on the exact same continent of Faerûn. Here, I’m expecting a lot of density of ideas (callback).

All of that said, there has been a setting book for SD since the original Kickstarter run, it’s called Soulblight. It’s probably the best setting out there for SD at the moment, simply because there is so much imaginative content for it. But I know its lack of adherence to the SD trade dress is problematic for some people. Not me. I think those people are wrong.

What is Veilstone?

Veilstone is a setting book by Scelus Press. It focuses on an alternative America during the California Gold Rush and adds ancestries, classes, rules for gun-fighting, posse-generation, magic items, and a dungeon for 4th-level characters. At 140 pages, it’s pretty stacked for its $15. It does do one thing I hate. It charges for the PDF when you buy a soft or hardcover. I get it: it’s technically a second product, but seriously, add it into the book price and sell them combined without an option to get the book without the PDF. It’s placing the needs of the customer-first. Especially since Drive Thru RPG just converts the PDF into the printed book. I’m not a fan. I don’t hold that against the creators though.

Ancestries

SD ancestries are pretty simple. There’s nothing really unique or clever that really reinforces the ideas of what a Revenant or Veil-Touched should be. They aren’t bad or broken. They might even be under-tuned a little since one relies on conditions that aren’t defined. Because SD doesn’t really treat conditions as a systematic thing, having an ancestry ability dependent upon them pretty much means a GM has to make it work by doing all the pre-planning anyway.

The ancestries lack flavor though. I don’t read the abilities and go, “oh yeah, that’s what a revenant is.” Or, “ohhhhhhh, that’s what a revenant is.” It’s something that could apply to any number of myriad ancestries. Same with the Veil-Touched.

Classes

First, there’s a conversion for the core 4 classes. That’s nice since we do need to know which classes get proficiency with guns. There’s something else raised here that boggles my mind, but it also afflicts the custom classes, so I’ll address it later.

Second, we get the first custom class – the Gunfighter. It’s a better fighter in combat so long as you use a gun. But it raises some questions without guidance such as: does the Quick Draw affect creatures who cannot be surprised? Mostly though, I think if you are going to reference a rule in the Core book that is a little more niche, explain how the rule works or at least leave an annotation. There’s one for armor calculations later on, so this strikes me as odd due to its absence.

Aside from the insane power of the Iron Sight ability, when you roll a 7-9 (the most common talent rung on 2d6), you boost your attack & damage even further. It is likely that by level 10 that you will have +12 to hit & damage. It also breaks from convention by not boosting stats at any point from the class talent unless you roll boxcars (two 6s). So… you’ll never really change as you level in terms of your stats, just better with a gun & thicker skin? It’s probably wild fun, but the lack of consistency with other SD classes makes it hard to blend into a campaign set in a different setting without tweaking. At which point, you may as well just homebrew your own.

Third, you get the scout, doctor, & spirit guide classes. They have the same structural talent build of two abilities and making damage and AC increases the primary roll options rather than attributes. Scout copies some of the Ranger abilities with regards to tracking. Doctor is a near copy of the Ranger class’s medicinal properties by another name. Spirit Guide is a spellcaster. It’s oddly skill heavy for a system that doesn’t have defined skills.

At this point, everything feels a little 5e-lite to me to which I mean, it’s relying on conditions & skills to flesh out ancestries & classes rather than following the OSR principle of “the answer is not on your character sheet”. This is a good bridge for people who prefer those buttons & levers. It’s not for me. Which leads me to my other issue I mentioned above.

The Ugly Elephant: Armor

Fourth, I cannot for the life of me figure out why you would make your AC based on your class rather than your armor. I also cannot figure out how it would go up as a talent, but not by wearing more armor. An answer is provided later in the New Rules section in which they say “classes are designed for a world where armor is no longer commonly worn” and it represents the grit & situational awareness even though Dexterity doesn’t relate to either of those aspects.

The logic seems to be that guns bypass armor (they don’t) and people weren’t wearing plate mail when people were shooting guns (they did – samurai existed until 1860s & wore plated/slatted armor, they also used guns). Heck, Red Dead Redemption has people wearing metal buckets as armor.

I bring this up because metal is an effective block against bullets. World War 1, they wore metal helmets. The problem is that plate armor is heavy, and makes quick use of a gun less likely. Their effectiveness also dwindles with the introduction of improvements to rifling technology. So the premise or fantasy justifying this design choice is flawed. That’s fine. We don’t need to um, actually nag this. The part that’s odd to me is that situational awareness & grit are tied to Dexterity rather than Intelligence or Wisdom. And the reason this is so odd to me is that you can have a fighter who has a 6 in Intelligence, but an 18 in Dexterity rocking a 19AC at level 1 and potentially a 24 AC at level 10 (assuming no shield, 21/26 with shield), all while being one every day decision away from winning a Darwin award. Is the fantasy Deadwood or Mr. Magoo?

I can think of a lot of other solutions that might create interesting choices for the players. Such as guns bypass armor, but armor reduces damage. Wearing armor gives you a penalty to your to hit. Or since you’re kind of buffing the hell out of AC & +hit/+damage with the talents anyway, why not adopt an auto-hit system where you can sacrifice armor to avoid one of the auto-hits.

Further.

All weapons are less effective against people wearing no armor & we’ve eliminated one portion of the treasure reward in a game whose primary purpose is to go delving for treasure.

We’re breaking the gameplay loop that SD uses without really offering a new one.

The general disconnect for me is it makes the content less compatible with other SD content so it’s harder to adopt these fun classes into other settings. They are specifically designed for this setting, which admittedly, is what you want. But I don’t think you want to create setting adherence without reinforcing the fantasy you are trying to encourage. That is something you do not want.

Other Class Bits

The backgrounds are cool. The titles are … expected? (The Ferrier for Doctor confuses me a little, but I suppose it’s hoof care in addition to blacksmithing.) The Powers seem to be a substitute for the pantheon. But they act more like patrons. It’s very cool. It’s excellent flavor & possibly the easiest bit to crib for your own game if you don’t use this exact setting.

Magic

It’s cool. There’s mishaps for the Spirit Guide. I’m not spoiling them, but they are good. Again, I want more flavor. The spells are varied & interesting, but I do think the damage is probably over-tuned. In interviews, Kelsey has mentioned she wanted Fireball to be the big damn damage spell. Whether you want to adhere to the designer’s intent or not is up to you, but I sort of like the idea that in a world where magic is dangerous, Fireball is the big destructive spell. I also expect this will change with Western Reaches to some extent, so it’s more of a romantic nitpick than a criticism.

There are a lot of fun new spells. This is probably the second easiest thing to steal for your own game if you don’t use Veilstone as your setting.

Gameplay

I’ve already beaten the class-based armor to death. I don’t like it. It doesn’t fulfill the fantasy espoused to me. Your mileage may vary. The other optional rules introduce disadvantage against fast creatures, steady aim, & weapon misfires. Nothing real ground-breaking. Just solid. The other flavor bit we get is death in Veilstone leading to undeath so we get to address a dead body to ensure no reanimated zombies walking. This is a perfect opportunity to explain what I mean about I wish there was more flavor.

Crystal Frontiers does something similar to undeath through Crystal Poisoning. The crystal poisoning concept tells a GM about the setting, partially subverts expectations, & provides something actionable as game content since you can go find someone to remove the poison before you become a zomboid. A GM who sees this crystal poisoning concept can now go, oh masks/bandanas will be important, maybe they won’t use guns as much since cracking crystals can cause poisoning so there’s still a need for other weapons, etc. It’s a different fantasy that it’s selling, but the flavor matches it precisely. With this concept, you need to risk a desecrating a body charge from your local sheriff’s office, but nothing else in the gameplay really changes. Nothing else is really informed by it.

Gear: Armor Again?

Why? It was rendered mostly useless by making armor class-based. If you are a priest, thief, fighter, gunfighter, scout, or doctor, there’s literally no reason to acquire any armor, except maybe Shovel Iron Plate, because your base armor is better than available options. The prices also require you figure out the conversion of gold to $1 because it’s not a straight 1:1. On the gear tab, we’re told it is, but it isn’t. A 130gp plate mail suit is comparable to the shovel iron plate that costs $50. That rate is about 38%. This seems like an oversight or some items have values different from 1:1.

Mounts

The rules are simple enough. No mention of how much a mount would carry though? I think the idea is that you’d use gear (saddlebags) to determine slots, but that seems weird in the sense that you can ride bareback with your pack and it seems your horse couldn’t handle it. I’d just use the mount rules in Cursed Scroll 2 instead.

Carousing

It mimics the core book. A little more flavor, but it still has a little generic feel to it. Some of the carousing results are a bit Looney Tunes vibes which I feel like confuses the tone a little. I’d probably use the Cursed Scroll 6 carousing rules & update the results to the flavor of a western setting instead. Well… that is what I’m doing in my home game.

Law & Order

Because this is a western-themed setting, lawlessness & the development of the law are part of it. The type of crimes you commit will determine your infamy levels and the bounty on your head. The infamy level will determine who the law sends out to get you and on what number of the encounter roll die that happens at. If you use a hazard die, these two will clash. But for SD, it’s a nice and simple solution.

I probably would have put the gang and posse generator next to this since you’re going to need to be consulting it for rolling up lawmen chasing your criminals.

Veilstone Valley

Into the setting portion of the book we go.

Encounters

First, we get a page detailing how risk & weather work. It doesn’t really follow the overland travel structure presented in SD since it labels some roads as unsafe, etc. That’s okay, but I do wish it would have provided more structural guidance in this regard, because westerns, we’re going to have train robberies and late night travels between towns on horseback. A full system would have been nice. Barring that, a reference to where those rules are in the core book or Cursed Scroll 4 would have sufficed.

Second, we get the corresponding tables. They’re lists.

The Veil

Third, there’s a section on what the Veil is. The white text on a black background makes it difficult to read with the thin font choice, but it’s okay. I kind of want more. The Veil is a little bit of an Ethereal Plane situation. A shadow on top of things. More space was devoted to travel & weather & encounters than the Veil and that seems disproportionate to me.

Rumors

Next, we get Rumors. These are a lot of fun. Although, they are written in tongue so it can be difficult to parse what the individual is saying in the quote. Lots of flavor here.

Gang/Posse Generator

Should be earlier.

Veilstone Valley Hex Key

There’s over 40 keys. This is where the whole thing sells itself. Some are simple like “1504. Echo Mountain Mine”. It’s an abandoned mine. Some are complex like “902. The Starry Door Lodge”. There’s a cult, there’s some Veil thinness at the point. There’s some elder gods? Vampires. More cults. Recruitment drives. NPCs.

If the first half of the book had turned me away, this portion is reeling me back in.

That said, 1 thing that SD form factor does well is that hex keys rarely split columns, much less split pages. It avoids a GM needing to flip through pages while working it. Everything is in one space. These hex keys do not adhere to this practice at all. They split columns and pages with absolute disregard. Given that this follows a standard SD hex map size and key, it’s a small form-factor matter that immediately turns me away. This is specifically a design issue for me. I doubt it’s an issue for others, but I find it irksome. Sort of like charging for a PDF with the purchase of a physical book.

Monsters & Treasure

Both are fine. It seems like the AC & HP values are based on vibes.

SD utilizes “average HD (4.5) * level + CON” formula (SD, pg. 189-193). This is just one of those where I think everyone should be familiar with these fantastic tools to help build monsters: Creating and Adapting Monsters; and, a Guide to Shadowdark Monster Statistics. A level 9 should have HP closer to 45 than 70. You can tweak and make your own, but consistency with the underlying logic is helpful.

THE DUNGEON!

Let’s be honest, I care the most here. It’s set for level 4. Let’s go.

We get some background: cult doing cult things. We get some factions which seem to give us more background rather than providing overviews of wants, goals, resources, etc. There’s also some leading & font size shifts that are really noticeable. It’s a layout or writing issue. Then we get a description of here’s the first location. No hooks. No rumors.

Inside Tuck’s Place, we have a random encounter table that says 1d12 but only has 6 encounters. There’s a universal DC 20 INT to read some Sumerian cuneiform wards if you have the appropriate scholarly or religious knowledge. Given the standard DCs are 9, 12, 15, & 18 for easy, normal, hard, & extremely hard, I don’t understand why it would be set at impossible for level 4s after saying they can’t even make the check without the requisite background. We’re not off to a good start.

There’s a Labubu reference to Pazuzu.

Room 1, the description doesn’t highlight what will be in the bullet points after the description. It’s a design choice that goes against the SD standard & also against ease of use for by the GM when running this adventure. Treasure being found on the treasure tables in the core book without referencing page numbers is a choice. There’s a non-standard DC to see an exposed trapdoor after a character exposes it. Not only that, the check for the perception is INT over WIS. Whatever stat you want to use for perception is fine, but why is it nearly hard to spot the trapdoor I exposed by removing the rug?

Over the next several rooms, we’re hit with typos and more pointless skill checks to spot things that are obvious. Then, the most infuriating thing after the pointless aforementioned perception check to see the exposed trap door. Loot can be found after a thorough search with no check. No explanation of how long a thorough search takes or what it entails. But no check is needed to find that. But the trapdoor. The one you exposed. That’s invisible unless you make the check. It’s just nonsensical.

There aren’t many buttons to push or levers to pull. Hazards? Obstacles? Tricks? Traps? Used sparingly. The impression I get was that this adventure was written last. It received the least amount of love & care, because there are typos, DCs are all over the place, monster levels and stocking are all over the place, we’re missing half the random encounters, etc. I don’t know that it is actually for level 4 characters because everything appears to be designed based on vibes rather than the underlying math that goes into the balance of the game.

Some cool scenes. Some cool monster abilities. Some bad kerning. For me, the entire adventure is lacking. Is it runnable as it is? Sure. Will it be good? A good GM can make it work. An inexperienced one may flounder.

Conclusion

I came looking for a western setting that I could adapt to my game and I found myself not really taking anything. It has a lot of solid base pieces but makes some questionable game-design choices for me. You may be better suited to agree with those choices than myself. The art is gorgeous. It’s honestly the selling point. A lot of work & effort went into it so I’m almost certain some people will enjoy it if they play in this setting & its rules.

This is the first and only thing they have on DriveThru and I think that’s reflected in the product. If it’s the first thing ever, it’s a solid first. There’s lots of room to grow and develop.

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