Shadow of Doom

Shadow of Doom is a pick-up and play, high fantasy arcade action tabletop RPG inspired by Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons Mystara duology of arcade beat 'em up video games, Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara.

I went to Russell Street Arcade and Deli the other day and they had this really neat game – Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara. It’s one of those brawler games where you have to fight off all the enemies to proceed to the next screen, but it’s a lot cooler; not only does it involve cool people with swords and shields, they have some special moves like Street Fighter II, and you have a whole inventory of special items and even magic spells! I watched some folks in the arcade play it and tried it myself, and wow, it’s fun.

My brother plays D&D Expert with his friends every week and they have a great time, but he never lets me play – “you’re too young, you wouldn’t get it.” He won’t let me borrow the books either because his friend Grant owns them all. Whatever, Tommy, I know how this game works, I played Shadow over Mystara. I’ll just make my own version and play it with my friends. And I bet it’s gonna be better than yours.

But what is this, seriously?

Imagine: it's the 1990s.  A loquacious preteen watched and played the Mystara duology and, when his brother refused to let him join, tried to reverse engineer Dungeons & Dragons from what he learned.  What would be the result?

That's Shadow of Doom.

It's a love letter.  Inspired by a uniquely Japanese view of Western sword and sorcery fantasy -- powerful heroes fight their way through waves of monsters and villainous foes to save the land from a powerful, vengeful Shadow, like Deimos the lich and Synn the red dragon, who threaten to take the lives, liberty, and property of innocents.

It's a pick up and play game.  Characters are built from one of five classes: the strong, powerful Fighter; the divine, holy Cleric; the wild, lethal Ranger; the smart, dextrous Thief; and the arcane, fiery Mage.  Choose from one or two sets of equipment, choose two Special Abilities or four Spells depending on your class, and you're ready to play!

It's action-focused.  Start in a charged situation -- around the corner from bandits lying in wait, on a winding mountain path guarded by half-frozen zombies, on top of a caravan moving at speed -- and brace yourselves for battle.  Fast pacing, minimal downtime, and easy to learn rules get you playing in minutes!

It's nostalgic in spirit, but modern in design.  It's not the 1990s anymore; we've learned a lot about game design, and this game stands on the shoulders of giants.  It's faster, tighter, and more inclusive, but with nods to the visions of the past that left us smiling and cheering.  Furthermore, the theme is pretty strict, which means sacred cows get left behind -- if it doesn't appear in the arcade games, the "author" character doesn't know about it, so he pieces together what he knows from the arcade games themselves, rumors of his brother's D&D play, and sources of his own to design what he thinks "D&D" plays like!  

Fast, dynamic tactical battles

Players act in any order.  Determine your strategy as a group before you proceed; table talk is encouraged, just like talking at an arcade cabinet!  

Take a main action to attack or cast a spell; a support action to use maneuvers like trips and throws, take measure of your foes, or use a consumable; and then see how the rest of your party fares!  

• All attacks hit -- just roll for damage.  
• Zone based movement (large squares that can fit many characters, derived from Fate) gives you tactical options without a grid, square counting, or precise ranges.
• Your Innate Abilities -- things that define your nature, like your Tactics knowledge as a Fighter or your Holy consecration as a Cleric -- either just work or require a simple d6 check.

Enemies act after PCs and follow the same rules.

The Facilitator (this game's GM) gains Badness Points equal to the number of PCs at the table -- they can use these to summon reinforcements and activate big enemies' special Badness Powers every single turn.  Defeated enemies provide Drops -- treasure, consumables, and special magic items to give you momentum.   Keep fighting, because they'll keep coming.  

This is the core, unstable equilibrium of the game -- Work together, play smart, stem the tide of your foes' overwhelming numbers, use the Drops you get, and tip the balance in your favor to come out on top, or your foes will overwhelm you.

Quick Challenges and downtime

Puzzles, navigation and infiltration, and similar happen in turns too, in Challenge Scenes.  The Facilitator generates Badness to add complications, tick down timers, and potentially end the scene in failure; be efficient and play smart to win the day!  Use Downtime Scene actions when you have a bit of respite to rest, blow off steam, shop, and find leads in town before you progress deeper into the plot.

Facilitator support for Arcs and One-shots

In a One-shot, everyone picks something they want to see happen: fight a troll, race down raging rapids, encounter a dragon, search for healing waters.  The Facilitator builds a session that fits these desires so everyone can authentically explore what excites them!

In an Arc, explore one of four plot themes:

• The Journey: wander from town to town, place to place, solving their troubles one by one.
• The Adversary: cut down the things that keep the megalomaniacal Shadow in power, or find weapons and weaknesses that will help you strike them where they're soft.
• The Conspiracy: lead by lead, thread by thread, discover an ancient magic, tyrannical cult, or other deep secret that threatens to unmake the world.
• The Guardians: stand in defense of a holding, land, person, or crucial artifact, pushing back the Shadow whenever and however it strikes.

Need online character sheets?  Copy this Google Docs character keeper to your own drive to run games online!  (Please reach out to me if you need help.  Shoutouts to the 2400 Character Keeper from Jason Tocci for direct inspiration here.)

If you like this, also check out:

• This is an action game, like Feng Shui and Feng Shui 2 before it.  That game is a beautiful take on Hong Kong blood opera, a masterclass in cutting to the chase of an action experience, and the progenitor of a lot of mechanics action games in the modern era take for granted.
• "All attacks hit" comes from Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland.  
• One roll, "vibes-based" resolution comes from 2400 and Over the Edge: 25th Anniversary Edition.  Innate abilities that "just work" if you have them come from Joe Dever's legendary Lone Wolf series of gamebooks.
• Zone-based movement comes from Evil Hat's Fate and Kirin Robinson's Old School Hack.
• The "unstable equilibrium" of constant reinforcements comes from the video game Marvel's Midnight Suns by Firaxis.  
• The "drops" system is inspired by Gila RPGs' LIGHT and LUMEN.
• The Challenge system is heavily inspired by D&D 4th edition, whose sole crime was being called Dungeons & Dragons.
• Finally, huge shoutouts to John Harper's World of Dungeons and Chris O'Neill's Mazes; two marvelous, light RPG systems inspired directly by the experience of wonder and untold possibility of older D&D.  There's room for plenty of "dungeon games" in this world and if you haven't tried them, you need to.

Many, many more suggestions can be found in this game's Acknowledgements.