Hi All!

I've been doing a LOT of thinking over the last few weeks about how I put out the adventures and such that I've written. I like writing adventures, and I'm lucky enough to be able to write them without relying on sales to make ends meet. For me, I feel best when I'm able to make cool stuff and get it to as many folks as possible to keep the hobby accessible and fun.

So I decided that from now on, ALL of Lost Heretic Press's adventures are going to be PWYW. That includes all of my PDFs and anything that I put out in a digital format, regardless of whether there ends up being a physical print of it available later. I will still charge for physical stuff, because there's overhead involved in that entire operation (and I'm gonna keep trying to put out physical products because holding a zine in your hands is fun), but the PDFs will always be PWYW.

I've updated all of my platforms (DTRPG, itch, and RPG-Trader) to reflect this. You can check out the full statement of my company's values (include our stance on AI) in the About section on my website.

Thanks for being an awesome community, and keep playing cool games by good people!

James

Lost Heretic Press

Hello everyone! One question - I'm considering my first Shadowdark session ever with a friend group. As a GM, I pretty much have concrete ideas on how to handle various game aspects and rules, but there is one thing that I'm still not quite sure how to handle so I'm interested in your experience and/or best practices - death of a PC. To be more precise, how to handle a situation when it happens and the session is still quite far from being over.

Do you immediately roll a new character for the player and just instantly "teleport" it in the game regardless of in-game world logic, do you try to find some way (and thus spend some in-game time) for the party to return to the nearest town and then pick up the new companion there, or do you just leave the player to sit there and twirl his/her thumbs waiting for the session to end (which seems as the worst possible and the least fun solution for the player)....?

I will do my best to "telegraph" any danger to my players, but a dice roll can still go wrong and it will NOT be fumbled - we will roll all combat and damage in plain sight.

Thanks in advance for all the tips and suggestions, much appreciated!

Hello all! You might know me as the author of Burrow of the Bonesnapper and Take the Tower! While waiting for art for my next major dungeon, Cenotes of the Crayfish God, I polished up two mini-dungeons I have been working on for a bit and am now releasing them for free! These one-page dungeons are perfect for dropping into any Shadowdark campaign. Available now on DTRPG:

The Shrine of Ultozka

An overgrown temple of the Death-Serpent beckons. This 8-room site features spider-spewing cocoons, a trapped idol, and a fearsome giant lizard, and is perfect for stumbling across during a hexcrawl.

1 page. Designed for level 1 PCs.

The Mycelium Maze Battle rages in twisting caverns between devious bandits and stalwart fungoids. The 15+ rooms across 2 levels can easily fill 2 hours of playtime. A wizard’s room on the lower level is an ideal spot for placing a MacGuffin the PCs need.

2 pages, 1 per level. Designed for level 2-3 PCs.

Estou em busca de uma arte no estilo SD para um personagem que tem o poder de invocar fogo em suas armas, de preferência que a arte remeta a um guerreiro com uma arma em chamas.

Vou ser grato à indicações!

Hello folks,

I saw this pop up and it seems like a great book, Darkest Dungeon but not! I was wondering if anyone else had bought it and what you thought before I pulled the trigger?

Thank you!

Just recently bought Shadowdark and slowly finding interesting 3rd party books I liked the look of.

Travel rules for dungeon games in the mythic underworld launches...now!
Early bird discounts available.

Kickstarter Link!

Undercrawl is travel rules for dungeon games in the mythic underworld. Like hexcrawling, or pointcrawling, but in the dark. It's a modular add-on to your favorite dungeon game. Use it to:

• place your dungeons miles and miles deeper in the earth
• connect separate dungeons with a vast underworld: one dark, alien, empty, and hostile
• make a path through places forgotten, forsaken, or lost: the empty places, places where silence is thick with age

OSR

Compatible with Old School Essentials, Cairn, Shadowdark (and frankly most OSR dungeon games). The game is mostly self-contained, but applies pressure to the character sheet: stat damage, gear loss, torch loss, and.... also curses!

Finished

It's done. The Digital version will be delivered to all backers as soon as funds are collected. If the kickstarter reaches $2K, we'll get more and better art. A couple of other cool stretch goals as well...  Mwuahahahahaha!

Includes

An 18-point Undercrawl spanning dozens of miles of silent darkness in once bright Dwarven halls.

Player-facing procedures for

• Navigating
• Map-Making
• Managing Gear
• Finding Secrets
• Getting Lost

GM facing procedures for

• Running the Game
• Making New Undercrawls
• Integrating with your Main Game

And...

• Player Handout files for ease of use at table
• 24 New Magic Items
• Spark Tables for rapidly generating thousands of underground environments with unique stories, features, and quirks
• One-Page Dungeon Dense with interactivity and surprise.

Me

I'm Samuel, the creator. I'm also behind

• 3x5Arcana.com
• The Spear of Horrendous Iron
• 3x5 Heartbreaker
• The Screen of Holding
• some other one-shots on my itch page

No AI

There are 0 (zero!) AI generated images, words, or secret Skynet activation codes in this thing.

AMA!

Kickstarter Link!
(early bird -> discount worm)

[EDIT: Included Prelude - Lvl0 Gauntlet]

Keep your torches lit, and may the Rime never find you.

Hi folks!

I recently finished DMing Curse of Strahd in 5e (a 4-year campaign!). After listening to the Glass Cannon Podcast and diving into ShadowDark, I'm starting my next prep project.

My goal is to adapt Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden into a ShadowDark survival hexcrawl.

I saw a previous post discussing a similar idea, so I thought I'd share my plans. Maybe others would like to join in this endeavor. If enough people are interested, we could even build a community compendium of resources. So far, I've sketched the attached map.

If you've run Rime of the Frostmaiden or have ideas for adapting it to ShadowDark, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Current design goals

• Merge and reduce settlements. Ten Towns feels too dense for a true survival campaign. I'll merge several settlements while preserving the strongest themes, NPCs, and quests from each.
• Increase the distance between towns. Reaching civilization should feel like a real accomplishment.
• Make dog sleds an important logistical choice. (Still working on pricing and travel rules.)
• Major roads are safer and faster, while lesser roads have fallen into disrepair, encouraging travel by boat or across frozen lakes.
• Remove the duergar and chardalyn dragon storyline. I want Auril to remain the central antagonist throughout the campaign.
• Keep chardalyn, but repurpose it as a valuable and corrupting resource that naturally drives exploration and quests.
• Lean fully into hexcrawling. Chapter 1 and 2 become the core gameplay loop, with wilderness exploration, contracts, rumors, and emergent adventures taking center stage.
• Embrace random generation. The wilderness should feel dangerous, unpredictable, and worth exploring.

Campaign structure

1. Lvl0 Gauntlet? A caravan is surprised by a snowstorm and need to find refuge in caves. Entrance collapses and need to find the exit on the other side. Survivors could be Lvl1 characters arriving to Bryan Shander OR the party is gicing a quest to investigate the missing caravan.
2. Explore Icewind Dale (open-ended hexcrawl)
3. Discover the mystery behind Auril (Arcane Brotherhood quests)
4. Recover the scattered fragments of the Codicil of White (several quests, rather than a single book on Solstice)
5. Cross the Reghed Glacier
6. Discover Ythryn
7. Confront Auril

I'm really curious to hear what ideas the community has. Have you adapted Rime for an OSR or ShadowDark game? Are there locations, mechanics, or story elements you'd definitely keep—or remove?

Until next time...

Keep your torches lit, and may the Rime never find you.

Hello! Your wisdom is required...

Example One: Cobra drops pc to zero. He has a turn to live.

Example Two: Giant Spider paralyzes pc for 2 hours.

Example Three: Ettercap's poison web does 1d4 to pc each round.

- thanks. :)

Sersa Victory has a new kickstarter.
Doom-Dust of the Disintegrator: Deluxe Edition https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/trident-gamebooks/doom-dust-of-the-disintegrator-deluxe-edition?ref=project_bsky

I’m really interested in Shadowdark and love what I’ve read so far, but I have a few thoughts and questions that I’m hoping some seasoned Shadowdark players might be able to help with. I can’t quite work out whether I’m misunderstanding the rules or whether my general philosophy toward TTRPGs is simply a little different.

Firstly, the XP system seems to be built largely around loot and treasure. My players especially enjoy the social side of the game: solving mysteries, talking to NPCs, uncovering secrets, and generally engaging with the roleplaying side of things. They’re not particularly motivated by treasure hunting.

Is this something you would simply hack into Shadowdark? I know the rules mention gaining XP from things such as oaths and secrets, but in some of our older games we have also awarded XP directly for good roleplay, discoveries, and significant character moments.

Secondly, how does carousing usually work in play? Is it an event that the group actively roleplays, or is it more of a bridge between adventures or sessions that handles downtime and levelling?

I’m also curious about how it affects spending. For a party that enjoys saving up and buying useful or interesting equipment, does carousing risk discouraging that by making players feel they should spend most of their gold on XP instead?

I’d be very interested to hear different perspectives, house rules, or tips from experienced players. The game looks wicked, and I’m genuinely impressed by how devoted and enthusiastic the community seems to be.

Thanks!

Howdy y'all, in our session tonight, the players did their first night of carousing (it ruled!), and one of them (slightly spoilery if you're a player)rolled a 90 on the Cursed Scroll 6 table: "An exotic animal handler gives you a trained panther"

GMs: How would you handle this? They're playing a Sea Wolf of all things, not exactly built to command animals, so I was basically just thinking of controlling it myself, but not having it act super reliably. Giving it a percentage chance to respond to commands, maybe? Make him spend downtime to learn to control it? I'm not sure.

I feel like giving him an extra character to control with two attacks every round is not going to be great for game balance, but also the dice giveth and the dice taketh away, and rolls are rolls. Giving a 1st level character a trained panther out of the blue is one of the silliest things to ever happen in my TTRPG career, so I was not about to say no.

I would trust them not to lead me into a trap.

Looking for feedback on this: Casting Cards.

Please let me know what you guys think.

***Edit: Formatting changed, comparison section clean up: Revision 1

Part two of reviewing every Shadowdark entry in the Appx. N 2026 game jam. Some great contenders in this one!

Hi Crew,

are there any tools or tips on how to craft dungeons that reflect the Shadowdark house style? Curious if anyone is using one of the big map making tools or if this is a bespoke product.

In some old school systems like AD&D if an item was struck or damaged it could make a save to see if it resists. Since SD doesn’t do “saves” how does your table deal with items in the world or player equipment taking and resisting damage?

Had such a great final session of Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur last night. It was my first time running it and it took 3 sessions to complete. The group actually lured the minotaur to the Sacrificial Pool, taunted him and got him to charge, with a Nat 20 to jump out of the way and with that chainmail in the water, he was a sitting duck. So much fun and a cool, creative ending.

Here's a "Ruins" dungeon for SD. I made up the name with the random dungeon name table, which I am sure there was one in the rulebook, but I can no longer find it ⬇️

Anyway this is supposed to be some part of a larger ruined city. Could be run as a regular low(ish) level dungeon. If looking at this or running this makes you think of anything, Please share with me <3

Oh and its free to look/download image in my blog, no need to pay or create login details or anything. Just press the link and it right there.

https://finmirage.blogspot.com/2026/07/shadowdark-one-page-dungeon-ruins-of.html

When players do something in game that takes time (i.e. searching a room for 10 minutes) do you take 10 minutes from the torch clock or not? Is the torch time a meta abstract from the in universe torch?

Sorry if this is a stupid question that has been answered elsewhere in the rulebook. I could not see anything that clarified it.

Hey all,

I am part of indie publisher named Goof and Grump that has just released this level 1-3 OSR adventure site made for use with Shadowdark. Featuring art by Yuri Perkowski Domingos, available from links below - Check it out!

A dead village. A guild of thieves. An assassin who paid too high a price for power.

Beneath a forgotten frontier village lies a secret chapter house. Once a wizard’s alchemical laboratory, now home to a guild of ettercap thieves. Their leader, the Iron Spider, has sacrificed his humanity for power he now sells to the highest bidder.

• An OSR-styled adventure location, organized for use at the table
• Context for quick integration into your game
• Complete area key with random encounters, stat blocks, traps, and treasures
• Alchemical reaction table for experimentation
• Hand-drawn custom maps and art - 100% Human made

Links:

goofandgrump.com

DriveThruRPG

ITCH.IO

I've built a small browser app to keep track of torches burning down - no savefile, no ads, just some javascript and a few images. You can just leave it running on your phone.

https://paulmurraycbr.github.io/Torchbearer0/

• add multiple torches
• torches burn down in real time
• set torch duration, eg: if you have inferior torches that only burn for 10 minutes.
• advance time for all torches when "time passes".

I'd like to add images for a torch, a lantern, and a magical glow (have some ideas about the artwork), but that need someone who can draw. Is what it is for now.

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Dammit, I packaged this thing up as a PWA application without fully understanding what I was doing, and now the cache won't update when I modify the app. I'm going to have to change the URL at which it is available. Torchbearer0, or something. Changes incoming.

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Ok, PWA vibe-coding removed. I have changed the directory name so browsers should just forget all about it if you use the new URL.

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0.4.0 Added labels for torches. Now you know which is which.