Shadow Of The Demon Lord - Anyone Played It?

[Winterblight]

So Shadow of the Demon Lord arrived through my door the other day and I'm still in the early stages of reading it. I was tempted by it because it folk on various forums talked about it having a similar feel to Warhammer, which I loved as a player, though not so much as a GM.

I like the idea of the Changeling as a character type, but the Clockworks as a character type isn't sitting well with me so far (not sure why, yet). The setting chapter also seems a little thin on the ground. Has anyone one else read/played SotDL? If so, what are your thoughts and what do you think of it?

 

[TJS]

I have it. I really like it, but I haven't had a chance to play it yet.

I don't much like the clockworks either, but feel I can leave them out. The setting is pretty sketchy, but I don't mind that, as I'd probably put together my own in play. To my mind it does what I want in tweaking D&D in the directions I like (toward dark fantasy and horror), ditching a lot of the sacred cows of D&D I've long grown tired of (if only they'd left out Dwarves!) and giving lots of player options.

 

[The Butcher]

I've never played it, but I'd love to.

I don't think it'll replace WFRP or D&D in my "pantheon" but I like the game as a whole. Curious about the setting supplements/gazetteers.

 

[natty bodak]

I've played it recently as a demo session in one of my gaming groups. I was initially all like "uh, sure, whatevs" but have become fairly enthusiastic and have played several more sessions. Because of how much fun I ended up having playing it I have been purposefully avoidant of any GM-centric content. I have no idea if the adventures we played were included with the game itself or if the were standalone adventures, but I know they were not original to our GM.

We were strongly encouraged to be human, and I think that the game itself recommended this. The setting as it was presented to us was mostly human/orc focussed, with the other stuff being uncommon. It was only after the first session that I even saw the game book and realized clockworks were a PC thing. They didn't come up in any of our play sessions.

It had a very WFRP feel in that it seemed like ancient corruptions were beginning to fester and erupt. I'm not sure how much of that is canonical setting or just what we were playing.

This is just a grab bag of my thoughts/reactions.

Boons & Banes are a more somewhat more satisfying version of advantage/disadvantage.
Stats numbers are used directly, not just for calculating bonuses.
Stats start very flat (all 10s) and you can add 2 to 1, and 1 to another. This is liberating.
Attacks and skill checks are simple and based on stats.
Different weapons have tags/features.
There are sanity and corruptions ratings.
I'm not sure this is RAW, but character creation was random lifepath-y. Character creation had a very DCC feel. You might be . a gracious but deceitful gong farmer carrying a bag of curiously fleshy rods.
Experience/levelling was at the speed of the adventure. You live, you level.
Animals are lethal. So is everything else.
Levels range from 0 to 10. Some levels you choose a path/advanced path/expert path (which don't have any specific pre-reqs), while at other levels you get some bennies based on your race / previous path choices.

Initiative is simple and weird. Rounds are broken up into "fast" and "slow" turns. You can go "fast" if you want to do just 1 thing (run, attack, etc.) or "slow" if you want to do more than one thing. PCs who opt "fast" go first, then monsters that chose "fast" then PCs that chose "slow" and then monsters that chose "slow." PCs decide what order they go amongst themselves.

I was a little apprehensive of the initiative system, but it worked just fine for us (3 players). Not sure how it would scale.

Expectations were low/non-existent, and I liked it well enough to be enthusiastic about playing more when given the opportunity.

 

[natty bodak]

Because of my intentional avoidance of spoilers for myself I may not be able to field any specific questions you have, but ask away if you're so inclined.

 

[Winterblight]

Initiative is simple and weird. Rounds are broken up into "fast" and "slow" turns. You can go "fast" if you want to do just 1 thing (run, attack, etc.) or "slow" if you want to do more than one thing. PCs who opt "fast" go first, then monsters that chose "fast" then PCs that chose "slow" and then monsters that chose "slow." PCs decide what order they go amongst themselves.
.

Thanks for the indepth reply

Ive just got to the initiative section in the book. Yeah, it left me scratching my head trying to figure it out. Seems like the bad guys never get to go first unless the PCs are suprised and can't act? Does it create some kind of tactical play? Does deciding who goes first between the Players slow things down, speed things up, or is it as quick as rolling?

 

[Charlie D]

So Shadow of the Demon Lord arrived through my door the other day and I'm still in the early stages of reading it. I was tempted by it because it folk on various forums talked about it having a similar feel to Warhammer, which I loved as a player, though not so much as a GM.

I like the idea of the Changeling as a character type, but the Clockworks as a character type isn't sitting well with me so far (not sure why, yet). The setting chapter also seems a little thin on the ground. Has anyone one else read/played SotDL? If so, what are your thoughts and what do you think of it?

I've run an entire campaign. It actually runs much closer to D&D than Warhammer.

The first five levels were great with wonderful tactical combat and a lot of excitement. As the levels got higher though the magic spells got a bit unwieldy and the rogue types especially became fragile. The rogue types don't have a way to avoid damage very well and that makes them vulnerable if they aren't also spellcasters.

I liked the game overall. I think the fear mechanic gets way too much use for high level monsters and I started dropping it for many creatures.

The game can be a bit uneven however. For example, evil spells can harm the caster and cause problems. But most spells do not. But the evil spells don't seem that much more powerful beyond the ick factor. So why penalize the caster at all?

I did like clockworks although the Godless (hate that name) supplement describes them much better. Having to get your key wound in combat to keep going is a really interesting mechanic.

The weirdest thing about the game is that all spells aren't dangerous. This is a big change from Warhammer 2E where Chaos powers all spells and makes all spells possibly dangerous. That was biggest disappointment with SotDL. D&D spell system instead of Warhammer like spell system.

I also didn't like Fortune Points very much and really toned the power down in my game.

I did like clockworks, goblins, the faerie realm, gunpowder, trains, most of the monsters, and the magic items. First five levels the game ran really well. Lots of support.

Just a heads up, some of the early rule supplements get dark/gross/angry. If weird sexual cult stuff and a real anti-religion angle doesn't bother then you're good to get anything. Some of it is quite weird though without a real clear reason on how you'd incorporate the stuff into an actual game. The core rules avoid these weird tangents however.

 

[Charlie D]

Thanks for the indepth reply

Ive just got to the initiative section in the book. Yeah, it left me scratching my head trying to figure it out. Seems like the bad guys never get to go first unless the PCs are suprised and can't act? Does it create some kind of tactical play? Does deciding who goes first between the Players slow things down, speed things up, or is it as quick as rolling?

A PC who wants to go first goes Fast but can only do one action. Then monsters can go Fast if the GM wants.

Which means a PC who goes Slow to get two actions goes AFTER monsters who go Fast. Which means the PC may get hit first before they get two actions.

My players didn't care for the initiative system all that much. I'd likely just go to cards numbered 1-10 and have everyone randomly draw if I ran SotDL again. But that's just me.

 

[farwyl]

I've also played through a campaign and GM'd a handful of separate adventures.

I really liked the initiative system of the game as a player. We had some great pre-combat discussions on how to do our turns, it's fun.
I'd also agree that the game plays more like D&D with mechanics tailored to suit the dark fantasy genre rather than WFRP.
I found the game to be the most fun at starting and novice tiers. Expert tier also plays quite smoothly, but in my humble opinion the game system starts to fall apart at Master tier. It gets hard to fail challenge rolls, and with the plethora of abilities each character has, it felt like a superhero game for me.
I am quite okay with the spell system as well, I like that each spell has a separate amount of castings available. Also, hateful defecation! \m/

I've also read quite a few of the supplements, I really liked the player options in the Demon Lord's Companion and Terrible Beauty, while the setting in Glorious Death is fantastic. I'm not familiar with the newer supplements, but I can vouch for these ones.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

I ran a few sessions and really enjoyed it. At early levels it felt brutal. We stuck with random rolls for character creation which gave us some pretty weird results, though.

 

[The Butcher]

Everyone’s experiences seem to map quite well to my only-read, never-played impression: it plays like a pared-down D&D5 with a Dark Souls/Bloodborne feel.

To be honest, the system seems to do some things better than D&D5 (the boon/bane mechanic, character creation, the class system) and I dig the shout-outs to videogame culture (“Drudge”, really?) but I feel it occupies much of the same niche, in terms of play style, as D&D5.

While it strikes me as trivial to loot SotDL for ideas to run an apocalyptic game with D&D5 (or just about any other trad system), here’s a slightly more provocative question:

How do you feel SotDL would fare with a setting/campaign that does NOT center around the Demon Lord’s cataclysmic rise/invasion/etc.?

 

[Charlie D]

How do you feel SotDL would fare with a setting/campaign that does NOT center around the Demon Lord’s cataclysmic rise/invasion/etc.?

In the core book the default Demon Lord invasion is nearly nothing (orc revolt and king dead). You could run SotDL just like D&D in Greyhawk or a homebrew without any rule changes at all if you wanted to. You might choose to pull out gunpowder or madness and you could do that if you wanted, but the default core rules really have very little to do with the Demon Lord.

Or you could use the other Demon Lord incursion options to tweak a setting to get it the way you want. To make something like Dark Sun for example or Ravenloft.

Which honestly is why I'm not too likely to go back to SotDL. I thought the end of the world would be written into the DNA of the rules. Instead we have warforged (sorry clockwork) and fireballs and dungeon crawling. Sure you can have cults and madness. But you could run a whole campaign with no Demon Lord at all and the rules work just fine.

Which is likely good news for some but seems to defeat the original purpose of the RPG existing in the first place.

 

[Winterblight]

I thought the end of the world would be written into the DNA of the rules. Instead we have warforged (sorry clockwork) and fireballs and dungeon crawling. Sure you can have cults and madness. But you could run a whole campaign with no Demon Lord at all and the rules work just fine.

This is maybe why im feeling a bit of disconect while reading the book. Kind of feels closer to a toolkit than integrated with the setting.

 

[Charlie D]

This is maybe why im feeling a bit of disconect while reading the book. Kind of feels closer to a toolkit than integrated with the setting.

I agree. The supplement the Hunger in the Void really pulls out all the stops making the Demon Lord an event. But the GM will still have to do a lot of the heavy lifting to make it work.

Basically, to me, SotDL is another D&D variant. If that's your thing great. It is quite modular and can be modified to fit what you're looking for.

If you want a bunch of farmers and railroad bums fighting the end of the world and losing, but as least slowing down the end, you have to do most of the work yourself. I think the campaign of farmers and railroad bums sounds more fun, but I can just use Warhammer if I need to I suppose with less work.

 

[The Butcher]

If you want a bunch of farmers and railroad bums fighting the end of the world and losing, but as least slowing down the end, you have get WFRP.

Fixed it but I think that’s a pretty good run-down.

 

[Charlie D]

Fixed it but I think that’s a pretty good run-down.

Actually, adding railroads and clockwork and faeries to Warhammer and having a setting other than the Old World sounds amazing. Hmmm....

 

[The Butcher]

Actually, adding railroads and clockwork and faeries to Warhammer and having a setting other than the Old World sounds amazing. Hmmm....

Zweihänder is a monster of a tome, but it does a solid job of retaining the WFRP feel while being primed for a homebrew setting. zweihander should be along shortly to take notes of what to include in upcoming books.

 

[The Butcher]

the setting in Glorious Death is fantastic

That’s good to know, because it’s today’s DrivethruRPG Deal of the Day. I’ll definitely be getting it as soon as I get home.

 

[Simlasa]

I picked up some of the books for it with an eye towards repurposing the content for other games... LotFP and Magic World in particular... I never considered running it as is.

 

[Winterblight]

Well, if I can get my head around it and can convince my group to play, I might have a look at the community content program on Drivethru. I doubt I will buy any of the supplements just yet, its a big book and there's still plenty to read.

 

[natty bodak]

Thanks for the indepth reply

Ive just got to the initiative section in the book. Yeah, it left me scratching my head trying to figure it out. Seems like the bad guys never get to go first unless the PCs are suprised and can't act? Does it create some kind of tactical play? Does deciding who goes first between the Players slow things down, speed things up, or is it as quick as rolling?

I don't know that it created any additional tactical layer to the game. With only 3 players it didn't take long to work everything out. I play a fair amount of 5e these days and despite rolling for initiative there is a fair amount of chatter about how to get order you want despite the random-ish initiative. I'd guesstimate it was about the same.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

Yeah, we didn't have any appreciable slowdown from it, either. If anything, I think being able to pick initiative rather than rolling it and being stuck with what came up made it easier for them to plan.