I would like to do a memorable and meaningful project for this game.

After I wrote Crawler’s Armory for the Shadowdark Game Jam, I felt like I had a niche I could kinda fill within the Shadowdark creator’s community. However, it hit me like a ton of bricks when I discovered I’m very likely wrong about that. You all are doing such a great job and I feel like I’m way out of the loop and don’t belong at all. Let me elaborate a little.

I was working on a project for Old School Essentials that I was calling [REDACTED.] Basically, I wanted to bring all of the 5E elements we never had back in the day over to OSE. It was a heap of new ancestries, classes, magic items, spells, etc. Modeled after Unearthed Arcana in all of its glory. I then got the bright idea that I could maybe do something similar for Shadowdark. Only, I’m suddenly finding out that a lot of the ground I wanted to cover has been done two or three times over already.

I also had some ideas that I think might be kinda cool, but they might also go against the grain of the original design principles, and I don’t want to do that. Sorry for the long email, but I have a lot on my mind when it comes to Shadowdark. If I don’t keep up on Cursed Scroll, am I going to double up on something already in the books? What’s considered canon? What happens if I come out with something someone else did without knowing it was already out there?

I recently found a really neat project on BackerKit that looked like a real winner. I recommend checking out this link for Unnatural Selection. It’s a great project, except it’s right along the lines of what I was wanting to do. I almost cried when I saw the Shaman, but I’ll chalk it up to something a lot of us want in Dungeons & Dragons 5E and other games. Props to Dungeon Damsel Creations, though. It looks like a great supplement. (I may have backed this project. <Grin.>)

I’m somewhat determined to make it a supplement of some kind. Nothing wrong with writing adventures, but it’s like being a small fish in a large pond full of other small fish. There are hundreds of adventures for Shadowdark out there already. Can I come up with an adventure that hasn’t been done before? I dunno. Characters, monsters, and items I can do.

The Arcane Library serves as inspiration for a lot of things in the TTRPG field right now. That’s why I chose to Shadowdark to try to figure out how to go forward. Should I just leave Shadowdark for the pros and move onto something else? How can I build a supplement for the game that isn’t going to be a total flop?