Shadow of the Demon Lord

Shadow of the Demon Lord is a horror fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) created by Robert J. Schwalb. A Kickstarter campaign^[1] was launched and funded on March 12, 2015.

Game

Setting

The game takes place in a world standing on the brink of the apocalypse. What is the cause? Who is responsible? The Demon Lord, of course! This being of staggering power and boundless evil authors the catastrophes blighting the landscape. Each new horror released reflects the Demon Lord's approach, the touch of its shadow, and its growing hunger for not only the planet but the entirety of all things. Although near, the Demon Lord remains outside the cosmos, rattling the cage of its prison as it strains to escape the Void to visit catastrophic destruction to your world.

The apocalyptic tone is on a dial. If you don’t want to blow everything up right away, tune it down low and the game plays fine as a less perilous, dark fantasy role-playing game. But if you are inclined to crank up the volume, the game provides several catastrophic templates you can use to model how the world is falling apart. These templates represent the Shadow of the Demon Lord; wherever the Shadow falls, chaos and upheaval are born. The Shadow might loose global pandemics, famines, droughts, earthquakes, demon princes to stomp across the countryside, the living dead, and other world-spanning disasters and threats.^[2]

Game Mechanics

Shadow of the Demon Lord is played by using a d20 and a d6. Instead of using a scaling set of numbers to model easier and harder tasks, the game uses banes and boons. For each different positive circumstance that could help you succeed, you have a boon. For each different negative circumstance that might prevent your success, you have a bane. Banes and boons cancel each other out. When attempting to complete a task, for each bane or boon, you roll a d6 with your d20. Of the numbers rolled for boons, you add the highest number rolled to the number you rolled on the d20. Conversely, of all the numbers rolled for banes, you subtract the highest number rolled from the number rolled on your d20. ^[3]

Insanity and Corruption

Characters may gain insanity when they see or experience something that strains the way they understand the world or something that harms them in a way that’s difficult to accept. Coming back from the dead, suffering a grievous wound, seeing a loved one brutally killed can all inflict insanity. Seeing a 30-foot tall corpulent demon riddled with drooling maws from which spill slime covered fleshy monstrosities as it waddles across the countryside might also shatter a character’s mind.

Corruption functions as a control mechanism for curbing excess in the game. Shadow of the Demon Lord is an amoral game. There is no such thing as good or evil. Players can play their characters in whatever way makes sense for their individual stories. Some actions and activities have lasting consequences. Murder in cold blood, torturing the innocent, learning Black Magic or Demonology spells can leave stains on the character’s soul. Corruption measures the degree to which a character’s soul is stained. A few points has little affect on a character, but accumulating several may cause some interesting developments to occur in the game. For example, a character with a handful of Corruption points might cause children in his or her presence to cry, animals to attack, food to spoil, and shadows to writhe. A character that gains Corruption from certain sources might suffer other effects. One effect from the Black Magic tradition states that if you learn too many Black Magic spells your character might become so corrupted that once each week a child within 8 miles of the character simply dies. ^[4]

Character Creation and Advancement

Character advancement in Shadow of the Demon Lord is based on a path system. In the beginning, players create 0 level characters who do not yet realize that a greater destiny awaits them. For them, they are completely new to adventuring and have not yet met the other characters that will form their group. At 0 level, players begin by making one big choice, their Ancestry. ^[5] Ancestries are akin to traditional fantasy rpg settings as race or ethnic origin such as elves, dwarves, or humans. In Shadow of the Demon Lord, there are also other, more unique, choices, such as Jotun "a hulking albino humanoid with the blood of giants flowing through her veins" and clockworks "a person made from cogs, springs, and gears."^[6] Once a player makes this initial choice, they fill in their character sheet with the information provided by that Ancestry. That's it. Character creation takes between 5 to 10 minutes.^[7][8]

Once the group completes their first story (or adventure), they are ready to take the next step on their path to greatness by choosing a Novice path. Typically this choice is made based on things you accomplished during the first story. If a character spent time fighting in hand to hand they may choose Warrior. If the character found a tome of ancient magics then they may choose to be a magician. ^[9] After completing a few more stories the group then chooses their Expert path. Oracle, Druid, Archer, and Thief are but a few of the choices characters can make at this point. After several more stories are completed the characters choose their Master path. Some of the Master path choices include, "sharpshooter, shapeshifter, dervish, gunslinger, or something else that describes the area where your character focuses his or her training." As the group advances through paths they gain benefits from their paths. With each choice the characters become more powerful and complex. ^[10]

Products

Core Products

Press

On October 25, 2014, Schwalb announced the creation of a new company, Schwalb Entertainment,^[11] and the creation of a new role-playing game entitled Shadow of the Demon Lord.^[12] The press release describes the game as mixing horror and fantasy elements.

The game has been previewed at several small conventions, with a large playtest at the Winter Fantasy convention in January 2015. A Kickstarter is planned for the Spring of 2015, with a potential publishing date in the Fall of 2015. The Schwalb Entertainment web site has provided several previews of the game's underpinnings, including systems for magic, combat, and initiative.

Robert discussed the game in an interview on the German site Obskures.de,^[13] on the Obsidian Portal blog Words in the Dark,^[14] in episode 73 of the Table Topics podcast,^[15] and in an interview with Skullbanger Media.^[16]

Tribality posted an article about the game on their site on March 12, 2015.^[17]

References