Intro to Shadowdark RPG - Adventures in Alkesh

This is an improvised one-shot adventure set in or around the city-state of Alkesh and the surrounding desert, known as the Djurum. Characters can earn some quick coin by working as guides or guards for caravans, hunting bandits & thieves, fighting as gladiators (or healing them for their next bout), capturing wild animals for the arenas, smuggling goods (or people) into or out of the city, exploring Alkesh's ancient sewers & catacombs, and taking various missions for wealthy patrons that typically involve retrieving an important item or eliminating a rival by any means necessary. The market stalls of Alkesh have some interesting items for adventurers with enough gold, notably various exotic herbs, healing potions & poisons, masterwork scimitars, spyglasses & burning glasses, scale armor made from lizard hide, lightweight plate armor made from ankheg chitin, and shields made from bulette hide. Alkesh is also ideal for "carousing" between adventures and turning spare coins into XP, although risk-averse folks are better off sticking to the taverns in the nicer parts of the market and artisan districts.

Rather than using a virtual tabletop to track the characters' movement each round, we'll use the "theater of the mind" method where players imagine their positions based on the GM's description of the scene. This is a great way for players to earn some money & gain some experience in between pre-packaged adventures set in the trackless wastes of the Djurum.

NOTE: To make this a "sandbox" where players can go wherever they want rather than following a less flexible "railroad" adventure with a pre-written plot, I'm using ChatGPT to help with narration. This allows me to quickly improvise scenes & NPC dialogue on the fly, and the process is getting better the more I use it. The vivid descriptions tend to be appealing to players who like dialogue and descriptions that sound like they came from a fantasy novel, but it can be annoying to players who just want to get straight to the point and fight monsters, collect treasure & gain XP.

Session Number: 1 - new players are welcome!

OSR System: Shadowdark RPG

Created by Kelsey Dionne and published in 2023 after raising $1.4 million on Kickstarter, Shadowdark is an old-school fantasy adventure game redesigned with 50 years of innovation. It won the Three Castles Award for best role-playing game design and the gold ENNIEs for Product of the Year, Best Game, Best Rules & Best Layout and Design! Earlier this year, Shadowdark's Kickstarter for the "Western Reaches" campaign book raised $2.6 million and should be released by March/April 2026, giving us a more detailed look at the setting for the official Shadowdark adventures.

Shadowdark RPG is fast, familiar, intuitive, and deadly. It’s primarily built for old-school dungeon crawls and experience points (XP) are awarded for finding treasure, not killing monsters. Combat can be lethal, especially at lower levels, so it's often best avoided through stealth & strategy. There's the familiar D&D classes (fighter, priest, thief, wizard, bard, ranger) as well as some new classes unique to the setting. Players generate character statistics and class abilities through randomized dice rolls. Gameplay focuses on risk evaluation, resource management, and problem-solving. Shadowdark uses a 20-sided die for action resolution. One of its unique features is that real time comes into play - a torch only holds back the looming darkness for one hour of actual game time!

Setting: Two days' ride south from the mining town of Ragadorn, the arid scrubland gradually gives way to a vast, shimmering desert known as the Djurum. The land is a mix of undulating sand dunes and rocky badlands, bordered on the northeast by the Gilzai Mountains and on the southwest by the Yarin Salt Flats. The harsh environment and the monsters that lurk in the desert wastes present formidable threats to unwary travelers, but the spice trade draws merchants & adventurers alike. Merchant caravans coming down from the north must typically pay the Siruul Elves for safe passage across their lands and then make their first stop at the Shar Oasis, a palm-ringed settlement guarded by the former gladiator Rameer the Lion and his men. From there, caravans have 3 options, each with its own risks: (1) head east to the foothills of the Gilzai Mountains and make camp at the abandoned Sandstone Fortress, which the bandits who patrol this region avoid because it's rumored to be haunted, (2) head southeast to "The Bones", the skeleton of a gigantic beast half buried in the desert that offers some meager shelter, or (3) head south to a natural spring on the edge of the salt flats guarded by the Hamad Clan, a semi-nomadic tribe of lizard-herders. From either of these 3 resting points, it's another day's travel southeast to the gates of Alkesh. (Caravans headed north to Ragadorn must retrace these steps in reverse.)

Alkesh's white walls and bronze-capped domes rise above the surrounding desert, and its natural springs and clever aqueducts water the hanging gardens that feed its populace of almost 70,000 people. Alkesh is ruled by the young Shar Yasmila and her vizier, Afarim Zarad. The city is divided into 7 districts: the Alabaster Citadel (royal district), the Gardens (noble district), the Spires (temple district), the Suq (market district), Silver Street (artisan district), the Forgotten Quarter (low district), and the Old Quarter (slums). Treasure-hunters & adventurers aligned with the "Torch-Bearers" guild often gather at the Jewel of Borak, a rough tavern located among the twisting back alleys of the Forgotten Quarter. There's a more sinister & secretive guild known as the "Jeweled Eye" that also operates in the city and tends to attract evil wizards & warlocks, but little is known about its ultimate purpose.

How to Join: Click on the Zoom link on the scheduled date/time

PREPARATION: Before the session, please design a 3rd-level character using the Shadowdarklings character-generator page: https://shadowdarklings.net/create

PLAYER BACKGROUND: Feel free to pick a background that makes sense (i.e. your pre-adventuring trade) rather than randomly rolling it. You'll get advantage on skill checks associated with your background.

PLAYER ALIGNMENT & DEITY: In terms of alignment, choose any you wish. In terms of deity, choose one that matches your alignment, but don't pick any gods form the Norse pantheon (Odin, Freya, Loki) since it wouldn't fit the setting.

PLAYABLE CLASSES/RACES: The inhabitants of the Djurum are primarily humans, although elves and half-elves are not uncommon among the desert nomads, while dwarves occasionally work as caravan guards or as smiths & artisans in Alkesh. Half-orcs are often seen among the mountain bandits or fighting in the arenas at the Shar Oasis & Alkesh for coin. "Skurrids" (rat-men) live in the sewers of Alkesh and occupy the lowest rung of society, doing most of the dirty work. Halflings, goblins & kobolds are almost unheard of in this region, so they're not available as player characters. Certain classes are only open to certain "ancestries" (a.k.a. races) as follows:
- Fighter (any race except skurrid)
- Thief (any race)
- Priest (human, dwarf or half-elf** only)
- Wizard (human, elf or half-elf** only)
- Bard or Duelist* (human or half-elf** only)
- Ranger (human, half-elf**, or half-orc only)
- Desert Rider (human, half-elf**, half-orc only)
- Kyzian Archer (human, elf, or half-elf** only)
- Ras Godai (human or half-elf** only)
- Pit-Fighter (dwarf or half-orc only)
- Warlock of Almazzat (half-orc only)
- Warlock of Kytheros or Shune (human, elf or half-elf** only)
- Warlock of Mugdulblub (human or skurrid*** only)
- Delver* (dwarf or skurrid*** only)
- Shaman*** (elf or half-elf only)
- Plague Doctor*** (skurrid*** only)

*NOTE: The Duelist & Delver classes debuted in Cursed Scrolls #5-6 but aren't yet listed on the Shadowdarklings character generator page, but you can find their class details in this Reddit thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/shadowdark/comments/1j93qbt/new_classes_from_cursed_scrolls_5_and_6_previews/

**NOTE: Details on Half-Elves and Kyzian Archers only recently appeared in the free preview of the Players Guide to the Western Reaches sourcebook - see pages 6-8 of the Dropbox copy: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/bneo4ii3tca2wba5hkpxa/AH9f36wT7k7lP71d9ZIXfQk?rlkey=k81omxc93aei2w4wfldo9hxri&e=1&st=0xhhym6b&dl=0

*** The Skurrid ancestry and the Plague Doctor class are from a third-party Shadowdark supplement but you can easily find their stats on the Shadowdarklings site's character creation tab if you check the Unnatural Selection" tab under 3rd Party Sources.