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by Mike on 31 March 2025
I love Shadowdark. I ran a year-long campaign in Shadowdark and learned a lot about the system. The following is a list of house rules I've used that have made the Shadowdark experience more fun for my players and I.
Instead of losing access to a spell when you fail a spellcasting check, you instead lose the spell only if you've cast it successfully at least once.
This rule is forgiving but it ensures a character gets to successfully cast a spell at least one time before they lose it.
The GM subtracts 1d12 from the torch timer so no one is quite sure when it's going to go out. This alteration adds a little fun variance.
Players aren't allowed to use a timer to keep track of torches on their side. They can look at their watch or phone and note the time but they can't set a stopwatch or timer to keep track of torches for them.
This limitation puts more responsibility on players to remember to deal with their torches before they go out.
Lighting a torch when you can see requires no check. Lighting a torch in the dark requires a DC 12 Intelligence or Dexterity check at disadvantage (since you can't see).
This check isn't exactly a house rule but it came up often enough that I'm explicit about it. Being in the dark should be really scary.
Character's can't be stabilized at zero hit points. Characters either have at least 1 hit point or they're dying. Stabilizing someone can bring a character back to one hit point if you roll a 20 but otherwise they're dying.
This rule prevents players playing an unconscious character when they just want a new character to jump into the action. I've seen variants where characters who were stabilized return to 1 hit point after ten minutes – just long enough to be out of combat. I don't hate this idea but I haven't tried it.
Characters start with one luck point at the beginning of a session and luck points generally don't come back. If, for some reason, they already begin with one luck point, they instead have two luck points. Luck points can be shared among players and can let them reroll any d20 roll but they cannot use luck points to force monsters to reroll.
No silvery barbs here...
1st level characters start with maximum hit points and add their Constitution modifier if it's above zero.
I haven't used this one myself yet but a lot of people said it works well – just taking the edge off of the super-deadly nature of Shadowdark. I'm going to try it out.
When a character drops to zero, the GM rolls 1d4 in secret to determine the number of rounds before that character dies. Then the GM looks at the player, forlorn, shakes their head slowly, and forces a tear to drop from one eye.
[Editors note: facilitator for storytelling my ass.]
When a character at zero hit points takes damage, they lose one round on their death timer. Determined monsters can coup de grace a character at zero hit points if they choose, killing dying characters instantly. GMs should warn players if death is likely to happen given the situation.
Shadowdark is a superbly hackable game so I expect this list to grow but, for now, I think these house rules add a lot of fun to the game. What are your favorite Shadowdark house rules?
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