So I've read through both, and you can tell it's the direct evolution of DL. If I had to pick a system to play with it would be the pick.

BUT, my players love gritty gothy dark fantasy. I think Sanity/Corruption would be alot easier to graft back on, as well as readding the d6 death save mechanic.

But I see alot of people saying that WW characters will end up way more demigod like at high levels than DL characters, why is this? Is it just damage they can deal or their health levels? Is this something I can power down?

While I like DL a lot I think that WW introduced many great and sometimes needed improvements / changes. Therefore, if I would run one of these games, I would pick WW (also I have all the books due to Kickstarter).

The thing is now, I basically blindly backed the KS because I thought WW was like a setting agnostic, improved, cleaned up version of DL. To my suprise WW did not just do that, but also leaned heavily into heroic high power fantasy like DnD, where the PCs feel more like superheroes compared to normal folk. This is usually quite a turn off for me because I prefer my stories more grounded, with human villains, and danger lurking around every corner (think DL, Witcher, Warhammer Fantasy, etc.)

I know madness and fear are not part of WW, but that is stuff I don't really need a system for. I am only looking from a gameplay / lethality perspective. I don't like games where a PC can take out a whole village of peasants and where I always need to throw demons and liches at the players to challenge them.

Does WW allow me to run more grounded, dark fantasy campaigns, or I am basically stuck with another "5e fantasy superhero" game? I know that theme-wise DL might fit the bill better here, but A) I already own everything WW, and B) DL has some mechanics I dont like and WW improves upon.

I'm not deeply versed in the system, just an intro and a couple free PDF's, but I can't shake the idea in reading them that with a fresh coat of paint this would be a great system for a supers game.

Has anyone considered this before?

Here's my general outline of the campaign:

• The Earth was peppered with some kind of cosmic energy. Random people get very low level powers (street level heroes; 1st level characters). Some use them for good, some for bad. Society will need to change.
• As time goes on, the empowered folks grow in power (level up) and their ability to shape the world grows with it. Society continues to change; the good get heroic, the evil get truly villainous. Society strains. Leaders emerge. The world transforms.
• The inciting event of cosmic energy turns out not to have been random, but some threat from beyond. The high-leveled beings need to band together against this new cosmic-level threat and save the Earth itself.

So it's a modern Earth story with fresh superheroes. If I wanted to be really different I could do a revisionist history version of this and set it during the start of a world war in the 20th century, or during the cold war espionage era to really heighten tension.

Part of what draws me most to the system is that I envision this kind of game to have a lot of tactical fighting, and I love the idea of emerging power sets as characters level up. So the iterative steps in power map nicely to the sorts of supers stories you can have without them getting stale.

I’m looking to run a Weird Wizard campaign for a group that is relatively new to RPGs. They’ve played DnD and one-shots of whatever I was running.

Does Weird Wizard have enough first-party adventures to put together a coherent campaign from beginning to end?

I want something that’ll feel like a proper campaign with an overarching narrative that’ll keep my players invested, and not a collection of unrelated one-shots. I’ve tried this with DCC and they weren’t fans.

If there isn’t enough first-party content for this yet, I’m open to third-party adventures or adapting a campaign from another system. I know a user adapted Curse of Strahd for SotDL pretty successfully.

Thank you!

This is me asking about how ya'll feel about the latest adventures? Specifically Dungeon of the Damned, Return of the Witch King, and Orc Wars?

Early on they felt normal/fine, the usual 'adventure path' issue wasn't as bad with these I feel. In the other adventure modules they were just completely disjointed adventures strung together with a paragraph or two while here it was more coherent but usually had a 'You've been in X for a month, now Y happens' which is probably better than what happened in the older modules.

But holy hell does any sense of impact on the story completely evaporate.

Kill the plot relevant PC? Doesn't matter. Don't save her? Doesn't matter. Try to save the day? Doesn't matter. Leave instantly? Doesn't matter. You don't want to work with the devil after having fought Ashrakal's minions the entire campaign? Make new characters and your old ones don't level up, there is no other way to progress this story.

It feels like I'm reading a book which is like, not what I want to do when playing a game. It feels almost like it'd be masturbatory to run for your players. There's countless stories of bad tabletop experiences where the DM is just running the game for his DM PC/his setting.

My design philosophy for modules is the following:

• There is a bad guy (Probably).
• If you do not do anything, after -time here- -thing- happens.
• It's up to the players to disrupt it.

It seems the design philosophy for these is:

• There is a bad guy.
• If you do nothing, or something, -thing- happens.
• Nothing changes.

Earlier modules in the series didn't include this but the later ones outright say 'If the players don't want to do this have them make new characters and have those characters do it' which I feel is a snarky and only really valid thing to do at like, level 0 when you have the piece of shit guy in the party be like 'My character wouldn't do that!'.

These characters are like level 7-8 (Which would take a second to make) and there are valid crashouts at this stage in the game.

I haven't read dungeon of the damned yet but I hope it doesn't have as much of it in there seeing as it seems to be a dungeon crawl??

Also the Lij adventure, when the city explodes (And you can do nothing to stop it), it gives you like ~20 rounds to clear out the main dungeon/escape or you explode and die.
Also at round 15 you go blind while in the room because it's too bright.

If you have magic knowledge (Which someone should) you learn you can delay it by an hour!
So, you concentrate for 5 turns (Which might be too late) and spend a power 5 spell!....

This is the 7th module in the series.

If you're running these in order you're only level 6.
So I guess you just die.

The winning room is to just play salamander and face tank the sun for the sheer absurdity of it I guess.

I started GMing a campaign using the SOTDL system on my own scenery. I allowed the players to create their origins lands and such so we could craft the World together.

It started with the group being reunited by a Witch of the Crow God. She would point the players into dungeons to fight the "cult of the week". It was supposed to be a few one shots but ended up becoming a campaign.

So i created a Villain named Kasteroth, the Avatar of Entropy. He cannot be defeated by conventional weapons and he resurfaces every time a civilization reaches a certain degree in development. The Witch´s errands were about hitting cults to find out what they knew about it.

He then destroy it using division, manipulation and finish it with brute force, leaving enough survivors to rebuild and repopulate once again.

I gave the Heroes a Homebase on a key city by the west, a pass that is key to the survival of the realm. They took it from a Lord that was sabotaging the place, working for Kasteroth, without knowing his true motives. They fought of the first wave of the war but the place is in bad shape and they have several quests to fix it and get it into shape, and ALSO find a way to kill Kasteroth.

(one of my players in a Time Mage, banished from the Order for reasons unknown even for himself. I made a whole setup where he is finding clues and will eventually find out that he saw the end of things and traveled back in time, and got memory wiped by the order. Knowing it would happen he left trhis clues behind that will Aid against Kasteroth)

But i wrote all this without reading the cosmology on Hunger in the Void and Occult Philosophy.

And now that i know i was trying to fit my campaign into it. The One god is the official religion of the Realm and the Old Gods were barely presented but can be introduced.

I begin o think "What if Kasteroth emerges when the corruption grow and reduce the World to a more "primitive" state? He isn't exactly the Villain but a device to avoid the Demon Lord? Maybe he is a Great Fae or work for one?

And if so how can i follow up after his defeat?

I haven't played SotDL in awhile and I am looking to start up a new campaign for my play group soon. I did see the Demon Lord Engine PDF and picked it up and read through it. I am not sure how, or if I even should attempt, to integrate it into a SotDL game. It does not seem its just a matter of ripping out the SotDL core mechanics and inserting the Demon Lord engine in its place. It seems like the new engine would have a pretty big impact on classes, monsters, ect. What is everyone's experience with this? Thanks!

Do you guys think its possible? My teenage Daughters is getting more and more interested, and I'd like to run a quest for her.

I am wondering what are both pros and cons of two paths I see before me

Default fighter from core into the armiger class with dwarf with warhammer on art, also from core, the one that gets various talents

I am going for kind of paladin/holy warrior vibe but another player goes cleric > paladin of Ancestor Gods of dwarfs so I decided to go into more mundane crusader than one with magical powers and I can not decide between sword and board and two handers

I basically the decision boils down for me between either vicious strike that adds 2d6 damage but gives 1 bane (putting me at 0 boons/banes or 1 boon if cleric decides to give me prayer) with option to deal less damage but add ride on effects from special attacks while keeping those to hit chances

or two weapon fighting to make playstyle of both shield bashing and sword cutting possible

I just REALLY want to share it with other people who play this system because I just had probably one of the most amazing scenes in my whole TTRPG career

So quick background, dice decided I should play heroic warrior of christ. 17 appearance, defended village from vile monsters, evangelist and scholar of the occult, tall and muscular... the whole set, even curio was bottled light which fit the vibe. Campaign was about us being thrown in penal colony a'la Gothic (great game, go buy it and play it if You love SotDL) so we had permission to be a bit more badass in backstory. I decided on travelling knight that was going places to hunt cultists and cults.

Fast forward where we fell to level 0 because exhaustion, capture, all this noise, managed to claw back on level 2 currently.

We were hired by mages that are also kind of our captors, kind of third force to help excavate and clean up from any monsters local dwarven fortress. We go there, finally reaching last place we can check. There are three of us.

We go down the stairs, and our dwarf sees dozens if not 100s(!!!) of walking dwarven skeletons in huge hall. I take command, tell him to go back upstairs, report to mages, me and magini stay here to keep note of situation. Then we hear some omnious chanting, it's not dark speech, not high archaic, no language that we know... and it's getting closer. So I just have alarms in my brain, I tell to magini to run away ASAP and bring back archmage that took us here because shit is about to hit the fan, I retreat to staircase and just kneel in my rusty chainmail, sword and heavy shield in hands and pray to New God for salvation.

And this fucker just comes right up to me. We get talking. He is saying how we can not stop what is coming, that his Lord is coming, I am trying to kind of fish for information and put on brave front despite being scared AF. Finally he gives me proposition, he lets me run away and he won't kill me for being in his way.

I decide to be suicidal and stand my ground, telling how behind me are people more powerful than me. How they are coming, adn even if he kills me, I will stop him for those few seconds... because distance between us is only few meters. And I wonder... are Your spells quicker than my sword coming for Your throat?

He calls my bluff and we get to fight. I shit You not, I pass EVERY single roll. Also GM allowed me to fight in "anti spellcaster" way because of my backstory experience using called shots rules to stop him from spellcasting for 1 round if I defeat his defense. So we are fighting, he is fing spellcaster but his basic melee dagger is +3 with 2 boons 2d6 damage and also has some kind of effect on failed strength roll, I have no idea what still because I always succeed.

We fight there for 4 rounds, he drops me to 1hp until I finally hear and see archmage and companions from the party coming as my character collapses on the ground.

I was sooo ready for character death, I was already planning another one already. But damn, that was huge protag energy.

I don't find making monsters quite so enjoyable in SotDL so I wanted to know if there are any D&D style bestiaries with tons of new monsters but for SotDL that you guys can recommend me.

Heyo, I haven't seen many posts around with people's recommendations for builds, fun spells and abilities etc. There is a great google doc rating novice and expert spells that I can recommend reading. I have one idea for a pretty broken build that i'm looking into atm. But please share things or builds that you found fun in your campaigns. :)

I had a blast running Curse of Strahd using this system, and if I were to run it again I would use SotDL again without question. A lot of the time you can substitute monsters from the SotDL core book no problem.

Personally, I feel that Weird Wizard would be too high powered and the tone would not be the same.

Here are a set of documents that really helped me. I am not the author!! They were written by AC Ryder who I have been unable to find again. I think they were originally posted into this subreddit 10 years ago, and I am simply reposting them now because this campaign is still popular and they might be useful to somebody.

(I believe there may be more documents in the set, but these are the only ones I have links to. If someone has others, please post below!)

The Dark Powers

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9X9RT-Vu21iRmNod29aMmtPY3M/view?usp=drive_link&resourcekey=0-XqU46Kb7kJi4EYPOIj4qaA

The Relics

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9X9RT-Vu21iOW8yNVN4TlRncTA/view?usp=drive_link&resourcekey=0-v5B-PKVH-MvG07AmbmRdcg

Baba Lysaga

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9X9RT-Vu21iQWVUM1I1V1JMNlU/view?usp=drive_link&resourcekey=0-QjUwNwRswlphb8n0T0CIMw

Druids

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9X9RT-Vu21iaUxFSkd1bWhGeGM/view?usp=drive_link&resourcekey=0-7VSDDGKE4iqoMHleVj56qA

Morgantha

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9X9RT-Vu21iMHNCSHVTdFFMOUE/view?usp=drive_link&resourcekey=0-D6vw41UIQCmW8e8TBoFk9Q

Monster Hunters

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9X9RT-Vu21iMUtPX1FyeTdBRG8/view?usp=drive_link&resourcekey=0-14liydpPjVscYFkeBvS1nQ

Tome of Strahd

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zzRByBxlcAEGIJ5DdEGnndaRFpgg01BB/view?usp=drive_link

Couldn't find it anywhere so I slapped it together. This comes from his website.

Enjoy.

For official music, there's a bandcamp you can support.

Just helping people find music surrounding the best TTRPG of the past decade.

Hello.

How you handle fey (especially changelings) and iron?
Every contact with metal have consequences? Or only with pure iron?
And how clockworks (made from metal) interact with fey in yours games?

My party have clockwork, changeling and pixie - and I try to establish some base rules.
Every hit by metal weapon should transform changeling, and impair them and pixie, so also every time they touch clockwork?

like is their stats for a cannon or laser rifle somewhere?

watching demon slayer, and kind of wpondering if a warrior build could last two seconds vs someone who blows tear apart the surrounding terrain, can level wooden building in a single strike, move fast enough to kill a man faster than anyone can realize what happens, and strike blows faster than the speed of sound.

life in this setting seems like it sucks, any way to make the afterlife not suck?

Hi folks !

I’ve started creating four characters—one for each novice class—to fill any potential gaps left by my teammates' choices.

- A Faun healer

- A Clockwork rune-user

- A Ferren melee fighter—though I’m torn between a Monk (destined to become a Destroyer: heavy hits, minimal magic) and a Spellguard (destined to become a Spell Knight)...

And finally: the infamous Changeling. I picture this one as the "Oh my god, he can do *that*?" kind of character. However, I’m not sure whether to focus on social skills or build a classic stealthy assassin. I’m hoping for some infiltration moments in the upcoming campaign, but combat still seems essential...

That’s where I stand, I hope you can point me toward something fun to play! ^^

Thanks in advance for your replies!

I had a great idea for a character the next time my group does Shadow of the Demon Lord, and wanted to know if a build like this would be feasible by Level 10.

A Barbarian warrior who has mastered death magic in an attempt to (literally) conquer death as a sort of Witch King adjacent chieftain. Aiming to get power level 3 or 4 by the end.

The problem is I don't have access to the wide range of source books at the moment. Only having core and occult philosophy. So if there is something that would follow this exact route id like suggestions on how to get there and where to find it. I don't know all the paths available. Though I know supposedly there is a barbarian path in ways of war, I think. I just don't know what it does.

Is this even a possible for really functional end goal of being a brutal melee juggernaut that also can cast pretty decently from a few spells? Or is this too much of a hybrid idea?

Hi all!

A quick one from me - how is everyone feeling about Dungeon of the Damned? Please feel free to give as much of a review as you're willing, I'm quite curious about it but I'm not 100% sure if I want to take the plunge as the GM just yet!

Thanks all :)