Shadowdark - Starter guide
What is Shadowdark?
Shadowdark is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game built around dungeon crawling, danger, and the dark. It was designed by Kelsey Dionne and published by The Arcane Library, and its tagline says it plainly: old-school gaming, modernized. Shadowdark takes the core tenets of OSR play (rulings over rules, fast and deadly combat, time and gear tracking) and marries them to newer conveniences like a d20 roll-over system, advantage and disadvantage, and ascending armor class.
The mood is sword-and-sorcery: torchlit ruins, lost cities, hungry things in the deep. It leans gritty and lethal rather than heroic, and it works best in shorter, tense expeditions rather than sprawling epics. The whole game lives in a single book, and it raised over 1.3 million dollars on Kickstarter in 2023. It later won the 2024 Three Castles Award and four gold ENNIE awards, including Product of the Year and Best Game.
How does the system work?
At its heart Shadowdark is a d20 roll-over game. You roll a twenty-sided die, add a stat modifier, and try to meet or beat a difficulty class, with stat modifiers running from -4 to +4 and DCs that stay fairly stable across the game. If you have played 5e D&D, the math will feel familiar within minutes. It also borrows the advantage and disadvantage mechanic, where you roll two d20s and keep the higher or lower result.
The signature mechanic is light. A torch only holds back the dark for one real hour of game time, so the table runs a literal timer. Torches even burn in real time during combat, which keeps play moving and adds constant pressure. That single rule shapes everything: how much you can explore, how long you dare to linger, and whether you pack another flask of oil or a healing potion.
Character creation is quick and deliberately random. The core book has six ancestries (dwarf, elf, goblin, half-orc, halfling, and human), each with its own small advantage. The four core classes are fighter, priest, thief, and wizard. If you want, you can roll up an entire character on tables: 3d6 down the line for stats, then dice for ancestry, class, and background.
Magic is risky rather than reliable. To cast a spell you know, you make a d20 spell check against 10 plus the spell's tier, so you will fail a fair amount of the time, and a natural 1 triggers a mishap for a wizard or divine displeasure for a priest. Death is fast too. At zero hit points you roll a d4 plus your Constitution modifier for how many rounds you have left, and an ally can attempt a DC 15 check to stabilize you.
What do you need to start?
You need very little. The core rulebook is a complete game on its own. It runs around 330 pages in a clean two-page-spread layout, with rules, monsters, treasure, and advice all in one tome. Beyond that, you want a set of polyhedral dice, pencils, paper, and a timer for your torches.
If you want to try before you buy, there is a genuinely useful free option. The free Quickstart Set is two 68-page PDFs plus eight pre-made characters, enough to play from level 1 to 3, and the Game Master guide even includes a full adventure, Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur. That is the easiest possible on-ramp.
Who is this game for?
Shadowdark suits players who like tension, resource management, and the real chance of losing a character. It rewards clever thinking over big character sheets, and it shines for dungeon delves, exploration, and gritty low-fantasy. New players appreciate how little there is to memorize, while OSR veterans appreciate the polish.
It is a weaker fit if your group wants long character arcs, heavy tactical combat, or high-powered superheroics. Low-level characters are fragile by design, so if attachment to a single hero matters a lot to your table, set expectations early.
How is it different from other systems?
Compared to D&D 5e, Shadowdark keeps the friendly d20 core but strips away most of the bloat. There are fewer feats, simpler classes, faster character creation, and far more lethality. Combat is quicker and exploration matters more.
Compared to classic OSR games like Old-School Essentials, Shadowdark is more modern under the hood. You get ascending armor class and tidy d20 math instead of older charts, while keeping the deadly, exploration-first spirit. The real-time torch timer is the thing that sets it apart from almost everything else.
Where do you begin?
Start with the free Quickstart Set and run Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur with the pre-made characters. It teaches the core loop without any prep. Once your group enjoys it, move to the core rulebook and roll up your own crawlers.
For your first home session, keep it small: one short dungeon, a clear goal, and a torch timer you actually use. Lean into the light mechanic from the start, because it is the heartbeat of the game. The Arcane Library runs an active Discord community, and there is plenty of actual-play footage and rules discussion on YouTube if you learn better by watching.
Recommended products
The natural starting point is the Shadowdark core rulebook.
When you want more, the Cursed Scroll zines (Diablerie, Red Sands, and Midnight Sun) add new classes, spells, monsters, and adventures, each with its own theme. Solo players should look at SoloDark, which adapts the game for play without a group, and the premade 1st-level character cards are a handy time-saver for fast, deadly one-shots.