Shadow Delves #1 – Dawn of the Goat can be found on Drive Thru RPG for $5.99.
~ 1800 words. 9.5 minutes to read.
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One day, I was perusing the Shadowdark section of DTRPG and came across this gorgeous cover of goatmen looking at you like you were waking up from a satanic ritual or after getting knocked down in Path of Exile. That was enough for me to take a chance. Never heard of Seidmann Games before this and I was a little hesitant when I saw they had it posted as 5e-compatible, because my primary experience with 5e/Shadowdark compatible adventures is that neither takes advantages of the strengths of the system. They also tend to be very linear 5e adventures.

That is the case here. It treats Shadowdark like 5e-lite, which I disagree. There is a sizeable group of people who think it is though.

What is it?

This is a level 1 adventure for 4-5 Shadowdark characters that can be run in about 2-3 hours. This is a twist on the “you meet at a bar” setup and doesn’t really feature any dungeon crawling. This is more about fleeing.

Unique Features?

This adventure is supposed to be a one-shot or start for a Dark North campaign. I couldn’t find any information about the Dark North from them so TBD.

There is a DOOM! timer of 10 rounds. If you don’t get everything done by then, everything is destroyed. Based on the fact that it says, “finding the hidden entrance to the thieves’ guild should be fairly easy, but make sure the party feels the pressure”, I suspect the intention is to have the doom timer only apply to the first part of the adventure, but it’s not really explicit about that being the goal. Also, it is a bit odd to include this time pressure, but remove the random encounters from that portion of the adventure since that is an OSR-style time pressure inherent in this play-style.

What’s the story?

The local baron hired the party to find the source of attacks on villages and towns in his barony. The party finds their way to Udderville (get it?) with few clues and a smidgen of their advance left. They spend it on a bender at the local tavern. They wake up from their drunken stupor to find goatmen attacking the village. Runaway.

So… Adventure?

In addition to the above story, we learn there’s a witch who is searching for an artifact that was stolen from her. There’s a few other twists, but should be enjoyable for the players as well, but I won’t spoil them.

Setup

As far as the story setup goes, I’m not a huge fan of telling the players exactly what their actions were even if they are out-of-character for the character they are playing, but it’s such a minor setup issue, that you can easily circumvent it with, “Barry the Bard went to bed to … when he was awakened by goatmen attacks” or “Chancy the Cleric went to sleep early so he could pray for his party members while they indulged in their vices”. What’s important isn’t the drunken bender, but that the members were at the tavern and were asleep when the goat men attacked. It’s an agency specificity I don’t enjoy, but one easily rectified to be a non-issue for most experienced GMs.

Room Keys

There are two adventure sites and they both start by providing the light levels of the area, NPCs, and maps. I want to note, there is a key for the doors on the side of the map in the margin. I missed this at first. I also appreciate the Skullboy-style of big, bold room keys on the map. It differentiates despite being black & white very effectively so it’s easy to navigate the maps.

The start of every room key features descriptive text. The zine doesn’t mention this, but there are several places where it provides more details than should be given to the players. This shouldn’t be treated as read-aloud text. It also doesn’t identify any important elements in the descriptive text unless it is a lock pick or trap opportunity. I’m torn on this approach. Normally, you will see something bolded and then expanded upon in the bullet points, such as in Lost Citadel.

Or the more recent shifts Arcane Library is taking to use sentence structure.

A portcullis with bars of…
~ from the currently unreleased CS5 Ghoulish Library of Leng

Each of these keying choices is valid, but keeping the consistency of the template and not the consistency of the keying technique can be a bit jarring for new GMs or individuals new to SD (which will be more common for a level 1 adventure) who are not used to it. I think it’s fine to change things, so long as you explain the choices made or are so drastically different that it’s obvious that it doesn’t follow the same expected plans.

Some differences are improvements and this one that identifies the locked door I appreciate.

I do wish it was more visually distinct from the header, either an underline under the header or a color for the lock, but it’s a smart move to put it there and I wish more creators did so.

The Bell & Whistle

All of that said, the first area of the adventure is all about the tavern – the Bell & Whistle. The descriptions and interactions are kind of sparse in a sense. What I mean is there are 18 rooms and they are governed by 8 keys that point to 1 direction. This is all about getting you to the second location (the thieves guild) and that’s it. No real interaction with the goatmen or anything else. So while I feel like the cover promised one thing an delivered something else, I also feel like, I can turn the provided basic setups & notes into something my players will enjoy. It requires more heavy-lifting by me, as the GM.

I should note, there is a distinct lack of random encounters, traps, treasure, or combat in this first section of the adventure. It plays a little more like the setup.

The Crooked Horn

Now, we have some random encounters. There are 8 for 8 rooms. They are set as risky meaning you only roll for a random encounter every 2 crawling rounds. Since, the random encounter triggers on a 1, there’s a distinct possibility you never trigger one. And this is probably a personal thing, but I sort of expect deadly here. You have a 10-round trigger that can TPK the party for 8 keys (18 rooms) in the previous area, and murderous goatmen killing everyone. Thematically, this seems like it should be deadly.

Again, there’s little interaction: 1 trap, 2 locked doors, maybe a potential combat, scant treasure in 2 places, etc. Once you’re in the thieves’ guild’s hideout, it’s pretty much follow the path. There’s a pre-planned sequence of triggers that will work no matter what the players do so… in a real sense, their actions don’t change anything. The plot twist/reveal is the same way and that is really disappointing.

Thoughts

I find odd it that the introduction specifically calls out that this adventure “rewards clever play and punishes poor decisions, staying true to the OSR tradition.” I’m not sure where it does either of those things. The lack of traps and interactivity throughout the adventure limits any rewards & punishments.

To be clear, my introduction to the OSR tradition came from adventures like Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier, Waking of WIllowby Hall, and Temple of 1000 Swords, in addition to the Principia Apocrypha. In Principia and several blogs from creators in this space, they describe the OSR style of play as having the following elements:

• high lethality;
• open world;
• lack of pre-written plot;
• emphasis on creative problem-solving;
• exploration-centered reward system (XP for treasure);
• disregard for “encounter balance”;
• use of random tables to generate world elements that surprise both players and referees; and
• a strong DIY ethic.

I would also add that players have meaningful choices, adventures have conceptual density & interactivity. In contrast, the adventure is linear to a fault. If you walk from one room to the next (“always go left”), you will miss 2-3 rooms. Exploration isn’t really rewarded with tools or treasure that will be helpful later, it just explains the plot. So long as the players follow the path laid before them, there’s no real risk. There’s no real randomness or tables to apply resource pressure or trigger surprising challenges. I’m not really sure there is a problem that requires creative solution. Elements trigger at specific times convenient to the plot.

Speaking of the plot, the setup is “investigate recent attacks”. But the adventure is ‘the village is attacked, flee.’ The players are given very little opportunity to discover the cause of the attacks or stop them. All of the clues in the Bell & Whistle only lead you to the Crooked Horn. All of the clues in the Crooked Horn help you figure out how to leave the Crooked Horn. You only receive the answer to your quest at the end during the reveal of the twist that you cannot stop. It’s a cinematic story adventure. It plays itself nearly.

So who is this for?

Anyone who finds the plot interesting & enjoys simple linear narratives. I don’t really believe this follows the OSR tradition and think most of the flaws in it are because it is written for a different playstyle. A playstyle, I admittedly, don’t enjoy. Everything is competent, but the players will have to make it interesting. I can imagine a group of role-players who enjoy getting into character and chewing a scene could enjoy the hell out of this adventure.

If you made it this far, thank you. Now, I’m going to nitpick & nerd out on design. You have been warned.

This won’t matter to most people, but I really wish more Shadowdark 3rd-party producers would venture out from the Shadowdark trade dress. I feel like Shadowdark 3PPs are falling into the trap of D&D 3PPs where everyone makes things that look like WoTC’s trade dress and it stifles the community’s creativity. We don’t have to go Mork Borg crazy, but a little personality is okay.

This uses the Sersa Victory affinity template. I wish they had done their own thing. The creators clearly have the artistic skill based on the art in this zine so it’s a bit disappointing they didn’t carry that over to the layout. I hope they experiment more as they go forward with their zine series. The second is currently out and it uses the same aesthetic. I’d like such good art to really push the boundaries rather than play it safe.

I recently finished my most recent adventure, Things Possessed of Power. It is an 124-page traipse through the underground where the players can take the loot & run or stop the flesh-splicer trying to revive a dragon. This adventures concludes the series. You can also find it on Drive Thru RPG or Itch.

This is first adventure I’ve released since I started reviewing adventures as well, but it was well into development before I even started reading others and analyzing them to help me improve. That said, I have taken insights I’ve discovered while doing this and applied it to the adventure as well so hopefully, you will think this is the best one in the series.

There is no print version at the moment, because I’m considering doing a saddle-stitched print run. If you would like a print copy, maybe hold off for a little while so you don’t pay twice.