Friday Night Crawls (Powered by Shadowdark)

Creating your character

Shadowdark character creation is a fairly quick process. If this is your first time playing, I suggest showing up a little early to the session to build your first one with me; otherwise, I have a healthy store of pre-made characters for you to select. Shadowdark uses the most hallowed of stat generation methods: 3d6, 6 times, in order. It also uses random rolls for background, starting Talent, and gold. To avoid the temptation to fudge these rolls (You, I am sure, would never, but some people out there...) I do require that these rolls be made publicly in the Roll20 game, with clear labels before each roll.

Preparing for the session

To play, you will at minimum need to join the Roll20 game here, and be able to use Roll20's in-engine voice and video chat: https://app.roll20.net/join/21950213/4aHtiw It is highly recommended, but not required, that you join the Friday Night Crawls Discord server, to pre-coordinate with your party about which dungeon you will explore. When you join your first Friday Night Crawl, you'll be sent an invitation link. You will need a copy of the Shadowdark Player Quickstart Rules, which can be downloaded from the Arcane Library website for free: https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/products/shadowdark-rpg-quickstart-set-pdf?srsltid=AfmBOorGjvCBP77Ejca0RfyACGouBEDqHC3-nbJ1FVfx4SjFLGNgqEln I suggest keeping paper and pencil handy during the game to make notes and draw maps.

What Sean Mullins brings to the table

This is a very theater-of-the-mind oriented system and game, so visual aids will generally be few. You'll also need to rely on your (or your party's) own mapmaking skills to keep track of what you've explored. It's also a somewhat low-stakes, 'beer-and-pretzels' kind of environment, where I'm a little more lax about table-talk, out-of-character remarks, and silly jokes than I would be in a more sustained campaign. That said, when combat occurs, I do limit the amount of time you have to think about your actions in combat to about thirty seconds.

Homebrew rules

A few of Shadowdark's rules are calibrated around sitting together around a physical table, and so I have a few modifications for running in a digital space. I use freeform turns outside of combat, allowing you to order and interlace your character's actions as you like. Shadowdark's attempts to track game time passing in real time are... idealistic. I prefer to simply have 10 rounds of actions correspond to an hour, regardless of how much real time has passed. Finally, I use slightly modified ability score modifiers more in line with games like BECMI D&D and Basic Fantasy.

How Sean Mullins creates a safe table

Before your first Friday Night Crawl, I will send you a list of possible topics that might come up in game, based on the Monte Cook RPG Consent Checklist. Before cutoff time, I ask that you message me with a list of any items from that list, or any you choose to add, that rank for you as 'red' (hard line, do not include), or 'yellow' (soft line, either warn in advance if included or include only in an 'offstage' fashion). All items you do not list will be assumed 'green'. I will respect your selections, though I may follow up with clarifying questions. This is a game where lots of physical perils await your characters. If you find yourself checking a lot of boxes to do with physical danger, this may not be the best game for you.