Denton and Tragan

System: Shadowdark
Played: August 8, 2026
Sessions: 1 (one-shot)
Status: both dead

A Real and Accurate History of OSR Gaming

With most of the group unable to make it to our regular Witchlight game, one player offered to run a one-shot of Shadowdark. Shadowdark is the latest “new old-school darling” that the internet will recommend to anyone looking for some traditional dungeon crawling goodness. When I was new to RPGs, I think it used to be Lamentations of the Flame Princess. At least that was the game I found everyone raving about when I was looking for something traditional. All the adventures written for it were pretty strange, but the system itself was a nice, slimmed-down old-school D&D. We tried it, and everyone died in the first dungeon.

Then, Dungeon Crawl Classics came out and became the web’s new favorite. It had none of the weirdness associated with Flame Princess, and included the fun concept of a level zero funnel. It also used strange dice and had lots of wacky tables for everything. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but I did borrow one of the spell mishap tables for another game. We used it once, and it killed a character.

Then there was Old-School Essentials. None of the wackiness of DCC, and despite being streamlined, it was very faithful to ye olde editions of D&D. Or at least, so I’m told. Whatever. Due to its faithfulness, it had a mix of roll over, roll under, and sometimes just-roll-a-d6-why-the-hell-not–mechanics. Despite this, it was old-school cool enough to be the internet’s official favorite until Shadowdark came out.

Shadowdark is what you get when you take D&D 5.5e and remove everything that feels out of place in an old-school game. There, just saved you $60.

Okay sure, there’s a bit more to it than that. There’s slot-based equipment too. And torches burn in real time, which means that the amount you need to bring to the dungeon is primarily dictated not by how long you intend to spend there, but rather by the speed of your group’s playing style. There’s also the somewhat baffling initiative rules, where only the highest roll matters, and you stay in initiative outside of combat, which meant our torchbearer went last and everyone else had to wait for them to see anything.

Still, it does feel like a solid “default” OSR game, and the character advancement system is pretty cool, as is the spellcasting. (No spell slots! Take that, Jack Vance!) With the popularity of D&D 5e, I’m surprised something like this didn’t exist before. Actually, it probably did and I just didn’t play it. Let’s see how long it can last as the internet’s favorite.

The Actual Thing I Meant to Write About Before Getting Distracted by My Opinions on OSR Games

With only two players, we rolled up two characters each. As keen observers will no doubt have deduced from the title of this page, mine were called Denton and Tragan. The names were rolled randomly, as were most of their characteristics. Denton was a human priest of a god called Ord. He was the healthiest in the party with a massive four hit points. With thirty-five starting gold, he was also one of the richest. I made sure to buy lots of proper adventuring equipment for him so the party could survive the deadliness of old-timey dungeons. He was armed with a shield and a mace, and he talked like Jason Statham.

Tragan was a half-orc fighter. He was a former sailor who got surprisingly lucky with his starting ability rolls, and thus was pretty handy with a greatsword. He had three hit points, and was tasked with carrying all the loot due to his high strength. He talked like Gru from Despicable Me.

Denton and Tragan were joined by goblin assassin Tark and elf witch Jirwyn, who each had two hit points to their names. They were tasked with investigating why a meadery hadn’t been able to get hold any honey recently. The party started their investigation by visiting a cave with bees in it. On the way there, Tragan tripped and almost died. Denton used his magic to heal him and, due to a critical miss, was unable to heal again until he spent time and money on a ritual apologizing to his god for being a shit priest.

Inside the dungeon, they met a gang of human-sized bees. They weren’t making any honey because they were being disturbed by smoke. Venturing deeper into the cave, the party found the source of the smoke: a group of gnolls who had lit a campfire. Unfortunately, Denton’s lack of healing magic would prove an issue here, as the gnolls had more hit points and dealt more damage than the group did. It didn’t help that the group was outnumbered. Every attack from the gnolls that hit was an instant kill, and so only Tragan survived long enough to run away. Then, a random gnoll showed up by the cave’s entrance and killed him too.

They even killed Jirwyn’s owl familiar.