This is a review of the first issue of Cursed Scroll, a zine for the Shadowdark rpg. If you have not heard of the game, you should check it out. This is not a review of the Shadowdark (hence SD, if I need to reference the game system) book, which is not out yet.
If you want to pick up the free quickstart of the game, it can be found here: Shadowdark
The author is a cool chickadee named Kelsey Dionne. She has a YouTube channel (Arcane Library, I think it's called). The zine is OGL, which as of this past week, might pose an issue with getting new copies in the next few weeks.
So, are you kids ready to dive in to this most happy and uplifting zine? No? Well that is probably good since this zine is dark, dreary, gloomy, and slimy.
The zine is black and white, with a dash of yellow on the cover. The cover is an evil-looking, horned dude, swinging a big axe, chopping through two unlucky foes and perhaps into a third fellow. I think this gnarly, beastly dude might be a dralech, which is one of the new monsters in the book. I will get to new monsters later.
The back cover is a random table of twenty diabolical treasures. All of the treasures are pretty neat. Anything from a ring of daisies to a shrunken head might be rolled.
When the zine is opened, you get right into the gloomy, slimy goodness.
Before we open it though, this issue is all about devils, demons, slimy things, and other sorts of badness. Be warned! You, unwary reader, might end up gibbering in the darkness as mighty Mugdulblub dissolves your flesh as a tribute to Its Ooziness.
The inside cover is a map for a hex crawl, called the Gloaming. The map is usable but the hex lines are unusable other than for the numbered encounter hexes, the outside edge, and in Finimere Lake. Elsewhere, they are so light as to be unreadable.
Once past the map, we get to the first page, which is random encounters and rumors for the Gloaming. The encounters include monsters from the rulebook and well as this zine. We start to get the gist of the zine and the adventures by reading the rumor table. It has sort of a dark fairy tale, black forest, swamp witches vibe - think Grimm fairy tales without the hideous Disney (the real diabolical cultists) whitewashing. The encounters and rumors are really cool. My only hesitation with them is that I worry that in future issues of the Cursed Scroll, encounters might point back to monsters in this zine, which would require referees to own each issue. That isn't an issue for me so far as I'm madly in love with this game and I will probably purchase them all as they come out. But for others though, I can see this being a future problem. I would encourage the author to only reference the rulebook or the zine in question when creating encounter tables like this.
We next have the table of contents and introduction. Nothing out of the ordinary so far.
The zine then delves into three different character classes. My biases will come out here, just so's ya knows...
The first class is called Knight of St. Ydris. These are knights who voluntarily accept a curse in order to fight demons. This class is fine for the included hex crawl. My issue with it is that it fills a very narrow niche. In a class-based game, I want classes to be as broad as possible - fighter, the guy who fights! - thief, the gal who steals! cleric - the crusader bringing God to the heathens! - the wizard, using sorcery to subvert reality! Characters who want to play this class have to do it in the included adventure (no spoilers, but there is really one specific place for the knights to be generated). I would rather have just had a list of options for the Knights - something like "Fighter with d6 hit points but can cast 1st level witch spells or 3 times per day, you gain demonic possession (player choice at creation)". Something like that.
All of that being said, the Knights of St. Ydris are basically a fighter-witch multi-class. They can use demonic possession to do extra damage in combat and get minor and mid-range magical abilities, starting at 3rd level.
The next new class is the Warlock. Now, as everyone should know by now, I jumped off the D&D bandwagon at 3rd edition. Warlock wasn't a thing in the D&D games I played. Warlocks in this zine are characters who gain a boon from a dark patron. There is a list of patrons in the book, and some of them are doozies! I do have another gripe. I will have a few more, don't worry. My issue with Warlocks is that they can use daggers as weapons and they can use long swords as weapons. What is the reasoning for disallowing short swords? It is not logical.
A quick sidetrack on the SD game system. There are no specific, level-based benefits, other than hit points. At each odd level, the player makes a roll to find out which "talent" his character will gain. You need to know this while reading about the classes.
Ok, back to our Warlocks. They are "howling warriors with sharpened teeth" and "wild-eyed doomspeakers". I can imagine them as cannibalistic cultists, dancing around a statue of Cthulhu in the swamps of Louisiana - except, you know, a different patron and it's the Gloaming, rather than Louisiana. This class has broader game play for players than the previous Knights.
The last new class is the Witch. Forget those lame, dirty hippy, wiccan freaks of our degenerate modern times! No, THESE witches are the real deal! Cackling crones with bubbling cauldrons, outcast maidens with milky eyes, covered with dirt and talking to their pet toads. My oh my, this is the way a witch should be portrayed!
So, what does Esmerelda get in this game? Witches have a familiar, of course, and they can cast spells. Witches have their own spell list. I will point out some spell list details when we get to it.
The next page is a list of class titles, which is something that SD is really into. I'm ambivalent about class titles.
Following class titles, we get the descriptions of the patrons. Some of them are really cool. I will say, though, that as awesome as they sound, a couple are statted out in the included adventures, which turned them from "oh heck ya! This thing is some elder god from beyond the stars!" to "oh, wow, my fighter has just as many hit points as this patron of immense eldritch power?!" It is a lot like getting Deities and Demigods as a kid and having your players go into battle against the gods so they can score Thor's hammer.
I will quote the entirety of Mugdulblub here so you can see how awesome it sounds. "The Elder Ooze that leaks between the cracks in memory and the darkness between the stars, Mugdulblub seeks the dissolution of all physical form". Sounds bad ass, huh? In the zine, there is the Mugdulblub, Almazzat (a wolf demon guy), Kytheros (sort of a Cronus I think), Shune the Vile (mother of the witches), Titania (fairy queen), and the Willowman (fear and nightmare thing).
Patron boons follow. Some are basic between all classes (ability score gain, spell bonus, etc.) but some are unique, such as turning into slime for a few rounds or able to hypnotize foes. There is a list of diabolical backgrounds which follows the boons. Some are very fairy taleish (is that a word?), such as "Woodborn. They found you in the hollow of an oak tree" or dark fairy taleish (Witchborn. They burned your mother, but spared you". I dig them.
Diabolical Mishaps comes next. Another side note. Shadowdark, as written, requires a spell casting check, and on a natural 1, the player or referee needs to roll on a table for the spell fumble. Some of them make a lot of sense for the included hexcrawl/setting. Cackles, Wither, or Mother of Night are all very setting-specific and make sense. One of the mishaps has iron spikes which appear and cause damage. This one I don't dig that much.
Next up we have witch spells. The spell names are freaking awesome - eyebite, frog rain, dreamwalk - all are evocative. When/if I ever run this game and if I allow Witches (or Knights of St. Ydris) as a class, I would modify a few of the spells. Bogboil? Awesome as written. Cauldron? Eh, not as much. Having a witch with a cauldron is M1A1 standard. This spell, however, conjures the cauldron. I'd make the witch have her own cauldron and then, when this spell is cast over it, the effects can be used. Having a boiling cauldron just pop into existence is too high fantasy for the genre this zine is emulating. The Coven spell allows the caster to gain the reuse of a spell. That makes sense for a witch with a coven. Another change I would make is for Pin Doll. I'd make the character already have the voodoo doll before the spell would work. I wouldn't allow it to just poof into existence.
After spells, The Gloaming hex crawl is detailed. All of it is dark fairy tale goodness. Hexes can contain anything from an orc village, to a dragon, to a down and out village that is burning witches (hell ya!), to the Greywall Priory, which is where the Knights of St. Ydris are based.
New monsters are next. As stated, some of these are needed for the included adventures and won't have much use elsewhere (named NPCs fall into this category). Unfortunately, as stated, a couple of the warlock patrons are statted out. If I was to use them, I would probably have the Mugdulblub in this section be a minor avatar of the real Mugdublub. The characters can kill it (not an easy thing, fyi) but it's just a blip on the real Mugdulblub's galaxy-spanning goopiness.
The Hideous Halls of Mugdulblub is one of the included adventures (I'm counting the hex crawl as one and the cardstock encounter the third). Hideous Halls is an adventure for 1st level characters. The adventure oozes (get it? Yuck yuck yuck) charm, sliminess, and fun. There are three factions all living in the dungeon. Any of them might recruit the characters or at least remain neutral. There are a couple of issues with the adventure though. My biggest issue with it is that every room has an occupant or something notable in it. I can see players after four or five rooms saying, "alright folks, another room up again, something will be there". Monster, trap, or weirdness, there are no empty rooms. Personally, I think that 20-25% of dungeon rooms should be empty. Empty rooms both keep players on their toes, not knowing if it is empty, and also give characters breathing room and a place to fall back to. I will avoid specifics about the adventure as I don't want to spoil it for players. There are some really neat NPCs, traps, and treasures. One of the three groups living in the dungeon is quite memorable (the ones that really need to be near water), one group is very Lovecraftian and degenerate, and the third are a bunch of junkie, mushroom eaters. I like all three. One other issue I have with the adventure is the stairs in room 18. From what I can tell, they don't go anywhere. It is stated in the adventure that there are two ways to enter the dungeon and this isn't one of them. I would probably not even mention the stairs to the players unless I expanded the adventure.
The book finishes with the map of the dungeon.
There is a card included that is a small encounter. It has a map and random encounters on one side and room descriptions on the other side. This mini adventure is also pretty cool. It is less dark fairy tale and more Lovecraftian. The referee is going to have to hit up a dictionary though unless he is well versed in jurassic lore (I have kids so I know all about ammonites and trilobites and all that prehistoric jazz).
So, should you get this zine? Hell ya! Provided you like dark fairy tales, Cthulhuisms, or proper, old-school witches.
⇒ GRIT: ★★★★☆ This zine is 64 pages of dark, dreary, swampy goodness. Want to run a game of Grimm fairy tale D&D? Get this zine. The classes (well, two of them) are great, the adventure is really fun, the spells are witchy. Do you have fond memories of fighting Kuo-toa in the depths of the earth? Did you fear Blipdoolpoolp and her lobster boobs in the 80s? Do you enjoy listening to Acid Bath? This zine is for you.
⇒ VIGOR: ★★☆☆☆ As awesome as the stuff included in this zine is, it is really only usable in the specific genre it is emulating. Bits and bobs of it can be stolen to be used in other genres but, really, it is limited to a dark, fairy, swampy, setting.
⇒ GRACE: ★★★★☆ Yowza! If the rulebook, when it comes out, is as gorgeous as this zine, we gamer folk are in for a treat! Now, I give it four stars, but I LIKE black and white for my fantasy. If you want lots of color, you may not like it as much. The zine has an incredible layout. The only real shortcoming with this issue of Cursed Scroll is the faded hex lines on the inside cover. Some of the art is perfect (witch and cauldron on page 25, for example). The rest of the art certainly fits and I'm not knocking it. I would like to see more art but I imagine Mrs. Dionne is saving some pieces for the main rulebook. I assume that if the main rulebook is as great as I believe it will be, she may score some more art in subsequent issues.
If this zine seems interesting to y'all, I strongly recommend you buy it now because in a few weeks, it might not be available if Lizards of the Toast go through with their OGL backstab.
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